Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/443

 15 77-1 # SPANISH TREATY. 4^3 posed towards your Highness. You may be told it will ruin our commerce. Do not believe it : you will but establish your own superiority at sea. If you will let us first do this, we will next take the West Indies from Spain. You will have the gold and silver mines and the profit of the soil. You will be monarch of the seas and out of danger from every one. I will do it if you will allow me ; only you must resolve and not delay or dally The wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death/ l This paper is dated the 6th of November, t.,. November. 1577. In the first fortnight of the same month, Francis Drake had in readiness a fleet of five armed ships, equipped by a company of adventurers, among whom the Queen and Leicester were the largest shareholders. The coincidence at first suggests Drake as the possible author of the suggestion. The New- foundland fleets contained 25,000 innocent industrious men, all of whom were obviously meant to be destroyed ; and if Drake it was, and if the proposal had been ac- cepted, the naval annals of England and the fame of her greatest seaman would have been stained with a horrible crime. But the visionary audacity of the scheme, and the melodramatic imaginativeness of the closing words, point to some one of a less practical tem- perament ; nor is it likely that Drake's fleet would have been already prepared with the object of his enterprise undetermined. However this be, on the I5th of the 1 Discourse addressed to the i Spain, November 6, I577> cuu ' Queen how to annoy the King of [ densed : MSS. Domestic,