Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/149

1545.] food of the people might fall short. But this anxiety was found unnecessary. The wives and daughters of the absent sailors along the western shores, the mothers of the hardy generation who sailed with Drake round the world, and explored with Davis the Polar Ocean, undertook this portion of their husbands' labours. 'The women of the fishers' towns,' wrote Lord Russell, 'eight or nine of them, with but one boy or one man with them, adventure to sail a-fishing sixteen or twenty miles to sea, and are sometimes chased home by the Frenchmen.'

A greater difficulty was occasioned by the multitude of prisoners who had been brought in by the privateers, and could neither be efficiently kept, for want of men to guard them, nor could be allowed to escape without danger. Minor perils, however, could and must be overlooked. The whole serviceable fleet remaining in the English waters was collected by the end of June at Portsmouth—in all a hundred sail and sixteen thousand hands.

In England itself party animosities were for the time forgotten. The counties vied with each other in demonstrations of loyalty. The Duke of Norfolk, after a general survey of England, reported that ' he found both gentlemen and all others very well minded to resist the enemy if they should land—the most part saying, 'My lord, if they come, for God's sake bring us between the sea and them.'' The martial ardour had even