AN EXCURSION


"And we beseech Thee, O Lord, to give help and succour to Thy servants
the people of Holland, and to deliver them from the cruelties and
persecutions of their wicked oppressors; and grant Thy blessing, we
pray Thee, upon the arms of our soldiers now embarking to aid them in
their extremity." These were the words with which the Rev. John
Vickars, rector of Hedingham, concluded the family prayers on the
morning of 6th December, 1585.

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