CONCERNING A WAR WITH SPAIN. 231 



age, take it for 100 years, there was ever any en 

 counter between Spanish and English of importance, 

 either by sea or land, but the English came off with 

 the honour ; witness the Lammas day, the retreat 

 of Gaunt, the battle of Newport, and some others : 

 but there have been some actions, both by sea and 

 land, so memorable as scarce suffer the less to be 

 spoken of. By sea, that of eighty-eight, when the 

 Spaniards, putting themselves most upon their stir 

 rups, sent forth that invincible Armada which should 

 have swallowed up England quick ; the success 

 whereof was, that although that fleet swam like 

 mountains upon our seas, yet they did not so much 

 as take a cock-boat of ours at sea, nor fire a cottage 

 at land, but came through our channel, and were 

 driven, as Sir Walter Raleigh says, by squibs, fire- 

 boats he means, from Calais, and were soundly 

 beaten by our ships in fight, and many of them sunk, 

 and finally durst not return the way they came, but 

 made a scattered perambulation, full of shipwrecks, 

 by the Irish and Scottish seas to get home again ; 

 just according to the curse of the Scriptures, &quot; that 

 &quot; they came out against us one way, and fled before 

 &quot; us seven ways.&quot; By land, who can forget the 

 two voyages made upon the continent itself of 

 Spain, that of Lisbon, and that of Cales, when in 

 the former we knocked at the gates of the greatest 

 city either of Spain or Portugal, and came off without 

 seeing an enemy to look us in the face? And 

 though we failed in our foundation, for that Antonio, 



