ships without men was to set armour on stakes on the seashore. The
mariners of England were otherwise engaged, and in a way which did not
please Cecil. He was the ablest minister that Elizabeth had. He saw at
once that on the navy the prosperity and even the liberty of England
must eventually depend. If England were to remain Protestant, it was not
by articles of religion or acts of uniformity that she could be saved
without a fleet at the back of them. But he was old-fashioned. He
believed in law and order, and he has left a curious paper of
reflections on the situation. The ships' companies in Henry VIII.'s days
were recruited from the fishing-smacks, but the Reformation itself had
destroyed the fishing trade. In old times, Cecil said, no flesh was
eaten on fish days. The King himself could not have license. Now to eat
beef or mutton on fish days was the test of a true believer. The English
Iceland fishery used to supply Normandy and Brittany as well as England.
Now it had passed to the French. The Chester men used to fish the Irish
seas. Now they had left them to the Scots. The fishermen had taken to
privateering because the fasts of the Church were neglected. He saw it
was so. He recorded his own opinion that piracy, as he called it, was
_detestable_, and could not last. He was to find that it could last,
that it was to form the special discipline of the generation whose
business would be to fight the Spaniards. But he struggled hard against
the unwelcome conclusion. He tried to revive lawful trade by a
Navigation Act. He tried to restore the fisheries by Act of Parliament.
He introduced a Bill recommending godly abstinence as a means to virtue,
making the eating of meat on Fridays and Saturdays a misdemeanour, and
adding Wednesday as a half fish-day. The House of Commons laughed at him
as bringing back Popish mummeries. To please the Protestants he inserted
a clause, that the statute was politicly meant for the increase of
fishermen and mariners, not for any superstition in the choice of meats;
but it was no use. The Act was called in mockery 'Cecil's Fast,' and the