Page:A School History of England (1911).djvu/153

 fighting ships that England could put to sea far outnumbered those that Spain could send into the Channel. And our men were going to fight, not only for Queen and faith, but for home and wives and children; to fight too on their own shores, every tide and shoal of which was well known to them.

When Spain had discovered America and the Portuguese had found the way round the Cape of Good Hope to India, each tried to exclude all other nations from the seas they had explored, from the lands they had discovered, and from the trades they had opened up. And a Pope had had the astounding insolence to divide these seas, countries, and trades between the Spaniards and Portuguese, giving the Western World to Spain, the Eastern to Portugal. Englishmen, when they abolished the Pope, naturally laughed at this exclusion; they meant to take, and did take English goods to all countries where they could find a market for them, and this rough deep-sea game went on all through the reigns of Edward and Mary. In the reign of Elizabeth it became the game of Englishmen. You can imagine some simple English sailor lad, who had perhaps never done more than a few coasting voyages from one little port of Devon to another, opening his eyes to the wonders of the Tropics as he sails in Francis Drake's great voyage in the Golden Hind, across the Atlantic, across the Equator, south and ever south till the Strait of Magellan opens the door into the Pacific; then north again, picking up here and there some rich Spanish merchant-ship as a prize; then across through innumerable spice islands to the Indian Ocean, and so round the Cape of Good Hope and home; home to his own wind-swept Channel and the dear cliffs by Ply-