For twenty years the first portion of this prayer had been repeated
daily by him, as it had been in tens of thousands of English
households; for since the people of the Netherlands first rose
against the Spanish yoke the hearts of the Protestants of England
had beat warmly in their cause, and they had by turns been moved
to admiration at the indomitable courage with which the Dutch
struggled for independence against the might of the greatest power
in Europe, and to horror and indignation at the pitiless cruelty
and wholesale massacres by which the Spaniards had striven to stamp
out resistance.

From the first the people of England would gladly have joined
in the fray, and made common cause with their co-religionists;
but the queen and her counsellors had been restrained by weighty
considerations from embarking in such a struggle. At the commencement
of the war the power of Spain overshadowed all Europe. Her infantry
were regarded as irresistible. Italy and Germany were virtually her
dependencies, and England was but a petty power beside her. Since
Agincourt was fought we had taken but little part in wars on the
Continent. The feudal system was extinct; we had neither army nor
military system; and the only Englishmen with the slightest experience
of war were those who had gone abroad to seek their fortunes, and
had fought in the armies of one or other of the continental powers.
Nor were we yet aware of our naval strength. Drake and Hawkins and
the other buccaneers had not yet commenced their private war with
Spain, on what was known as the Spanish Main -- the waters of
the West Indian Islands -- and no one dreamed that the time was
approaching when England would be able to hold her own against the
strength of Spain on the seas.