world by sea as well as land. Philip did his ineffective best: drank
English beer in public as if he liked it and made his stately Spanish
courtiers drink it too and smile. He spent Spanish gold, brought over
from America, and he got the convenient kind of Englishmen to take it as
spy-money for many years to come. But with it he likewise sowed some
dragon's teeth. The English sea-dogs never forgot the iron chests of
Spanish New-World gold, and presently began to wonder whether there was
no sure way in far America by which to get it for themselves.

In the same year, 1555, the Marian attack on English heretics began and
the sea became safer than the land for those who held strong anti-Papal
views. The Royal Navy was neglected even more than it had been lately by
the Lord Protector. But fighting traders, privateers, and pirates
multiplied. The seaports were hotbeds of hatred against Mary, Philip,
Papal Rome, and Spanish Inquisition. In 1556 Sebastian Cabot reappears,
genial and prosperous as ever, and dances out of history at the sailing
of the _Serchthrift_, bound northeast for Muscovy. In 1557 Philip came
back to England for the last time and manoeuvred her into a war which
cost her Calais, the last English foothold on the soil of France. During
this war an English squadron joined Philip's vessels in a victory over
the French off Gravelines, where Drake was to fight the Armada thirty
years later.

This first of the two battles fought at Gravelines brings us down to
1558, the year in which Mary died, Elizabeth succeeded her, and a very
different English age began.