66 her, had deposed her, had absolved her subjects from their oaths of allegiance, had published a crusade against England, and had granted plenary indulgences to every one engaged in the present invasion," as Hume truly remarks, yet some gentlemen of that sect, conscious that they could not expect any trust or authority, entered them. selves as volunteers in the fleet or army: some equipped ships at their own charge, and gave the command of them to protestants; others were active in animating their tenants, and vassals, and neighbours, to the defence of their country and every rank of men, burying for the present all party distinctions, seemed to prepare themselves, with order as well as vigour, to resist the violence of these invaders." We may imagine Shakspere, like the rest of his countrymen, burning with ardour to make good his martial name, and shake a spear in the fight for the liberty of his country. We may imagine him uttering, with all the eloquence of patriotic feeling, the noble sen- * timent he has put into the mouth of the Bastard, in "King John," and it is the very closing passage, the last sentence of the play : : : "This England never did, nor never shall, But when it first did help to wound itself. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true." On the twenty-ninth of May, the so-called Invincible Armada sails from Lisbon, consisting of one hundred and thirty ships, whereof, as Sir Richard Baker informs us, seventy-two were galeasses and galleons, "goodly ships, like to floating towers; in which were soldiers nineteen thousand two hundred and ninety; mariners, eight thousand three hundred and fifty; galley-slaves, two thousand and eighty;" and having two thousand six hundred and thirty pieces of large brass ordnance. "It was victualled," says Hume," for six months; and was attended by twenty lesser ships, called caravals, and ten salves with six oars a piece." They send to bid the Prince of Parma to be ready with his fifty thousand soldiers, to land them at the mouth of the Thames; and in their own expectations, "This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, (Which serves it in the office of a wall, This blessed plot, this carth, this realm, this England;" as Shakspere makes John of Gaunt call our native land in first scene of the sccond act of "King Richard II.”;— "This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, Dear for her reputation from the world, Like to a tenement or pelting farm; England, bound in with the triumphant sea, they fondly imagine is already bowed down beneath the iron heel of a foreign tyrant. Sir Walter Raleigh is amongst the English gentlemen who have so bravely volunteered their services in defence of their homes and altars; and it is worthy of remark that Lope de Vega, the Shakspere of the Spanish stage, was amongst the volunteers on the other side. Every reader of English history is familiar with the fate of this boasted expedition; every child has heard, or should have done, from its parents and teachers, how the very elements fought against them, and how the very bulk of those ponderous warvessels proved an advantage to the English, by rendering the vessels of the foe unmanageable. British valour finishes what the elements had begun, and the invaders of England are never permitted to land; or Elizabeth, who bravely addresses her troops at Tilbury, like another "British warrior-queen," would head her army with all the heroism of a Boadicea. The total number of vessels furnished for the defence of England amounts to a hundred and forty. By the end of September this "invincible" armament* is completely conquered. Every history of England records the various engagements, as of right they should; and therefore I will not further occupy the little space at my disposal with details, but conclude the subject by presenting to the reader a poem of Southey's thereon, not so generally known. "The Spanish priests, who had so often blessed this holy crusade," says Hume, "and foretold its infallible success, were somewhat at a loss to account for the victory gained over the catholic monarch by excommunicated heretics and an execrable usurper: but they at last discovered, that all the calamities of the Spaniards had proceeded from their allowing the infidel Moors to live among them !" "Clear shone the morn, the gale was fair "To England's shores their streamers point, "Along the ocean's echoing verge, "Commingling with the ocean's roar, Ceaseless and hoarse their murmurs rise; And soon they trust to see the winged bark That bears good tidings home. "The watch-tower now in distance sinks, "Each like some moving citadel, On through the waves they sail sublime; And now the Spaniards see the silvery cliffs Behold the sea-girt land! "Oh fools! to think that ever foe Should triumph o'er that sea-girt land: "For not in vain hath Nature rear'd "On come her gallant mariners! What now avail Rome's boasted charms? Where are the Spaniard's vaunts of eager wrath? His hopes of conquest now? "And hark! the angry Winds arise, Old Ocean heaves his angry waves; The Winds and Waves against the invaders fight To guard the sea-girt land. "Howling around his palace towers The Spanish despot hears the storm; He thinks npon his navies far away, And boding doubts arise. "Long, over Biscay's boisterous surge The watchman's aching eye shall strain! The puritan party are now attacking episcopacy with all their vigour. As the press is trammeled, and a dissenter accounted a seditious person, their tracts for the most part are printed in secret. Under the name of Martin Marprelate, John Penry (or Ap Henry) Job Throckmorton, and John Udall, attack and satirise poor prelacy most awfully. Their press is removed from place to place, to evade the pursuivants who are hunting for it in all parts of the country. At first the fugitive press is set up at Moulsey, near Kingston, in Surrey; then it is removed to the seat of Sir Richard Knightley, at Fawsley, in Northamp tonshire; from thence to Norton, near Daventry, in the same county; anon it is at Coventry; then at Sir - Wickstone's house, at Woolstan, in Warwickshire; from thence it is conveyed to Warrington, in Lancashire; and at last is seized at Manchester. On the thirty-first of February, of the present year, Sir Richard Knightley, Sir Wickstone, Mrs. Wickstone, and Mr. Hales (cousin to Sir Richard Knightley,) are arraigned before the court of Star-Chamber, on a change of maintaining seditious persons, harbouring an itinerant printing-press, issuing seditious books and libels, etc. Sir Richard Knightley is mulcted in the sum of two thousand pounds; Mr. Hales, one thousand pounds; Mrs. Wickstone, one thousand pounds; and Sir - Wickstone, for not betraying his wife, is fined five hundred marks and the whole of them are to be imprisoned during her majesty's pleasure.-Some of these Marprelate pamphlets are curious: I give the title of one in full, printed this year, in forty-eight quarto pages, attacking Thomas Cooper, the bishop of Lincoln, who is married to a dissolute woman, from whom the University of Oxford would fain have divorced him, but he would not. The punning on the bishop's name is well kept up. "Hay any work for Cooper; or a brief pistle, directed by way of an hublication, to the reverend Bishops, counselling them, if they will needs be barrelled up, for fear of smelling in the nostrils of her Majesty and the state, that they would use the advice of reverend Martin, for the providing of their Cooper. Because the reverend T. C. (by which mystical letters is understood, either the bounsing Parson of Eastmeane, or Tom Coakes, his Chaplain,) to be an unskilful and deceitful tubtrimmer. Wherein worthy Martin quits himself like a man, I warrant you, in the modest defence of his self and his learned pistles, and makes the Cooper's hoops to fly off, and the Bishop's tubs to leak out of all cry. Penned and Compiled by Martin the Metropolitan. Printed in Europe, not far from some of the bounsing Priests." Job Throckmorton is said to be the author of the attacks on Bishop Cooper. Four puritans present a petition to the house of commons, with a book of devotions which they wish to adopt, but Elizabeth sends for the book, and commits the four members to prison for presenting the petition. Such is the liberty of the subject under the despotic Elizabeth, that even the right of petition is denied the people.-Thirtythree Roman catholics suffer death this year, for their religion, (without reckoning Mary Queen of Scots, who doubtless was a religious victim,) of which number twentytwo are priests, ten are laymen, and one a lady: and great numbers of the professors of that faith are confined in Wisbeach castle, and other prisons. One of the priests, named William Gunter, is "drawn on the twenty-eighth of August, from Newgate to the new pair of gallows set up at the Theatre, and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered,' not being allowed to speak at the time of execution. William Hartley, another of the priests, is "executed near the Theatre," on the fifth of October. So that if the "gentle Shakspere" be too humane to go to see the revolting sight of ripping up his fellow-creatures, for believing what he holds to be untrue, the inhuman butcheries are brought under his very nose. It is gratifying to know, however, that the sceptic Shakspere was a decided enemy to all persecution for mere matters of opinion. On the thirteenth of February, a proclamation is issued against seditious publications. "The English Mercury," (upon the credit of which the invention of newspapers is ascribed to Lord Burleigh,) three numbers of which are deposited in the British Museum, bears date this year; but as these prints are now looked upon as modern forgeries, I shall pass them by withont further notice. Queen Elizabeth grants to her jeweller, (a German, named John Spilman,) a license to erect a paper-mill at Dartford, in Kent, which some regard as the first paper-mill erected in England. Spilman is also said to have brought over to this country two lime-trees, which he planted at Dartford, and that they were the first ever planted in the island. Thomas Cavendish returns to England, after having navigated the globe in two years and forty-nine days. Duelling with small swords, a practice "more honoured in the breach than in the observance," is now introduced into |