[18] The Spaniards accused Queen Elizabeth of aiding Drake, and it is known that she lent John Hawkins one of her ships. “The great Queen,” as Mowbray Morris observes, “had a most convenient way of publically deprecating the riotous acts of her subjects, when she found it expedient to do so, and roundly encouraging them in private. She was fond of money, too, and ... had found a share in these ventures uncommonly remunerative. Unqueenly tricks, as they seem to us, and apt to confuse the law of nations, they were, as things went then, extremely useful to England.”—Tales of the Spanish Main, p. 131, London, 1901.
Père Labat cleverly hits off the policy of France and England towards the Buccaneers in a single sentence, “On laissoit faire des Avanturiers, qu on pouvoit toujours desavouer, mais dont les succes pouvoient être utiles”—they connived at the actions of the Adventurers, which could always be disavowed, but whose successes might be of service. [↑]
[19] By-Ways of War, The Story of the Filibusters, p. 251, Boston, 1901. [↑]
CHAPTER XIV
THE RICH COAST
“But oh! the free and wild magnificence
Of Nature in her lavish hours doth steal,
In admiration silent and intense,
The soul of him who hath a soul to feel.