Gloomy Prospects of the Protestants on the Continent 472 Relations between Elizabeth and the Huguenots CHAPTER XLVII. In ENGLAND ON THE SEA. is the purpose of this chapter to trace the first movements of the struggle which transferred from Spain to England the sovereignty of the seas; the first beginnings of that proud power which, rising out of the heart of the people, has planted the saplings of the English race in every quarter of the globe, has covered the ocean with its merchant fleets, and flaunts its flag in easy supremacy among the nations of the earth. In the English nature there were and are two antagonistic tendencies-visible alike in our laws, in our institutions, in our religion, in our families, in the thoughts and actions of our greatest men: a disposition on the one hand to live by rule and precedent, to distrust novelties, to hold the experience of the past as a surer guide than the keenest conclusions of logic, and to maintain with loving reverence the customs, the convictions, and traditions which have come down to us from other generations: on the other hand, a restless impetuous energy, inventing, expanding, pressing for VOL. VIII. 1 ward into the future, regarding what has been already achieved only as a step or landing-place leading upwards and onwards to higher conquests-a mode of thought which in the half-educated takes the form of a rash disdain of earlier ages, which in the best and wisest creates a sense that we shall be unworthy of our ancestors if we do not eclipse them in all that they touched, if we do not draw larger circles round the compass of their knowledge, and extend our power over nature, over the world, and over ourselves. In healthy ages as in healthy persons the two tendencies coexist, and produce that even progress, that strong vitality at once so vigorous and so composed, which is legible everywhere in the pages of English history. Under the accidental pressure of special causes one or other disposition has for a time become predominant, and intervals of torpor and inactivity have been followed by a burst of license, when in one direction or another law and order have become powerless; when the people, shaking themselves free from custom, have hurried forward in the energy of their individual impulses, and new thoughts and new inclinations, like a rush of pent-up waters, have swept all before them. Through the century and a half which intervened between the death of Edward the Third and the fall of Wolsey the English sea-going population with but few exceptions had moved in a groove, in which they lived and worked from day to day and year to year with unerring uniformity. The wine brigs made their annual voyages to Bordeaux and Cadiz; the hoys plied with such regularity as the winds allowed them between the Scheldt and the Thames; summer after summer the 'Iceland fleet' went north for the cod and ling which were the food of the winter fasting days; the boats of Yarmouth and Rye, Southampton, Poole, Brixham, Dartmouth, Plymouth, and Fowie fished the Channel. The people themselves, though hardy and industrious, and though as much at home upon the ocean as their Scandinavian forefathers or their descendants in modern England, were yet contented to live in an unchanging round from which they neither attempted nor desired to extricate themselves. The number of fishermen who found employment remained stationary; the produce of their labour supported their families in such comforts as they considered necessary. The officials of the London companies ruled despotically in every English harbour; not a vessel cleared for a foreign port, not a smack went out for the herring season, without the official license; and the sale of every bale of goods or every hundredweight of fish was carried on under the eyes of the authorities, and at prices fixed by Act of Parliament. To men contented to be so employed and so rewarded, it was in vain that Columbus held out as a temptation the discovery of a New World; it was in vain that foreigners guided English ships across the Atlantic and opened out the road before their eyes. In 1497 John Cabot, the Venetian, with his son Sebastian-then a little boy-sailed from Bristol for the Islands of Cathay.' He struck the American continent at Nova Scotia, sailed |