“Is it possible that any Englishman can abandon such a glorious cause, or refuse to lay down his life in defence of this heroic Princess?”
The sentiment may be authentic, but the expression of it is modern.
The speech over, Leicester reverently held the gilt stirrup, and Elizabeth alighted from her white charger, and went into his pavilion to dinner.
Before the repast was over, Sir Edward Hoby arrived from Lord Howard. He was taken at once to the tent, that the first freshness of his news might be for the Queen’s own ears. It had taken him three weeks to reach Tilbury from Plymouth. Kneeling before the Queen, he reported that he had been sent in all haste to entreat for “more aid sent to the sea,” for Medina was known to be coming, and that quickly.
“Let him come!” was the general cry of the troops outside.
“Buenas horas, Señor!” said the royal lady within, wishing good speed to her adversary in his own tongue.
And both meant the same thing,—“We are ready.”
It was England against the world. She had no ally, except the sixty Dutch ships. And except, too, One who was invisible, but whom the winds and the sea obeyed.
The aid required by Lord Howard came: not from Elizabeth, but from England. Volunteers poured in from every shire,—men in velvet gowns and gold chains, men in frieze jackets and leather jerkins. The “delicate-handed, dilettante” Earl of Oxford; the “Wizard” Earl of Northumberland, just come to his title; the eccentric Earl George of Cumberland; Sir Thomas Cecil, elder son of the Lord High Treasurer Burleigh,—weak-headed, but true-hearted; Sir Robert Cecil, his younger brother,—strong-headed and false-hearted; and lastly, a host in himself, Sir Walter Raleigh, whose fine head and, great heart few of his contemporaries appreciated at their true value,—and perhaps least of all the royal lady whom he served. These men came in one by one.
But the leather jerkins flocked in by hundreds; the men who were of no account, whose names nobody cared to preserve, whose deeds nobody thought of recording; yet who, after all, were England, and without whom their betters would have made very poor head against the Armada. They came, leaving their farms untilled, their forges cold, their axes and hammers still. All that could wait till afterwards. Just now, England must be saved.