incommodity which will come by the contrary, God had so balanced princes'
powers in that age, as they rather desire to assure themselves at home,
than with danger to invade their neighbours."

Perhaps the mariners of England--at that very instant exchanging
broadsides off the coast of Devon and Dorset with the Spanish Armada,
and doing their best to protect their native land from the most horrible
calamity which had ever impended over it--had arrived at a less reverent
opinion of princes' oaths; and it was well for England in that supreme
hour that there were such men as Howard and Drake, and Winter and
Frobisher, and a whole people with hearts of oak to defend her, while
bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards were doing their best to
imperil her existence.