Smithfield massacres. They found help where it could least have been
looked for. Henry II. of France hated heresy, but he hated Spain worse.
Sooner than see England absorbed in the Spanish monarchy, he forgot his
bigotry in his politics. He furnished these young mutineers with ships
and money and letters of marque. The Huguenots were their natural
friends. With Rochelle for an arsenal, they held the mouth of the
Channel, and harassed the communications between Cadiz and Antwerp. It
was a wild business: enterprise and buccaneering sanctified by religion
and hatred of cruelty; but it was a school like no other for seamanship,
and a school for the building of vessels which could out-sail all others
on the sea; a school, too, for the training up of hardy men, in whose
blood ran detestation of the Inquisition and the Inquisition's master.
Every other trade was swallowed up or coloured by privateering; the
merchantmen went armed, ready for any work that offered; the Iceland
fleet went no more in search of cod; the Channel boatmen forsook nets
and lines and took to livelier occupations; Mary was too busy burning
heretics to look to the police of the seas; her father's fine ships
rotted in harbour; her father's coast-forts were deserted or dismantled;
she lost Calais; she lost the hearts of her people in forcing them into
orthodoxy; she left the seas to the privateers; and no trade flourished,
save what the Catholic Powers called piracy.

When Elizabeth came to the throne, the whole merchant navy of England
engaged in lawful commerce amounted to no more than 50,000 tons. You may
see more now passing every day through the Gull Stream. In the service
of the Crown there were but seven revenue cruisers in commission, the
largest 120 tons, with eight merchant brigs altered for fighting. In
harbour there were still a score of large ships, but they were
dismantled and rotting; of artillery fit for sea work there was none.
The men were not to be had, and, as Sir William Cecil said, to fit out