likely to serve Philip as the Tudor Queen if it came to a matter of
deciding between Popery and Protestantism. He received their
instructions in a courtly way, but there are striking evidences that
he was ever on the watch for their vacillating pranks, and he always
dashed out of port as soon as he had received the usual hesitating
permission. Once out of reach, he brushed aside imperial instructions
if they stood in the way of his own definite plan of serving the best
interests of his country, and if the course he took did not completely
succeed--which was seldom the case--he believed "the reason was best
known to God."

John Hawkins and Francis Drake had a simple faith in the divine object
they were serving. Hawkins thought it an act of high godliness to
pretend that he had turned Papist, in order that he might revenge and
rescue the remnant of his poor comrades of the San Juan de Ulloa
catastrophe, who were now shut up in Seville yards and made to work in
chains. Sir John hoodwinked Philip by making use of Mr. George
Fitzwilliam, who in turn made use of Rudolfe and Mary Stuart. Mary
believed in the genuineness of the conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth
and set up the Queen of Scots in her place, to hand over Elizabeth's
ships to Spain, confiscate property, and to kill a number of
anti-Catholic people. The Hawkins counterplot of revenge on Philip and
his guilty confederates was completely successful. The comic audacity
of it is almost beyond belief. The Pope had bestowed his blessing on
the conspiracy, and the Spanish Council of State was enthusiastically
certain of its success. So credulous were they of the great piratical
seaman's conversion, that an agreement was signed pardoning Hawkins
for his acts of piracy in the West Indies and other places; a Spanish
peerage was given him together with £40,000, which was to be used for
equipping the privateer fleet. The money was duly paid in London, and