fleet made my Lord Duke take post the same day towards the Downs, to embark himself the next morning in the ships that were already there for the expedition of the fleet to the number of 23 or 24; with the which, having an exceeding good wind, he made after the pretended Spaniards, whom he found to be Hamburghers and Hollanders together, laden with salt; so as without any further exploit His Grace took land again at Portsmouth, and came back to the Court on Saturday night.'

The scare was all the more reasonable as England was illprovided with ships at that time, and, worse than this, was burdened with a most incompetent Lord High Admiral, the allpowerful favourite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who had for some years held this important office. When rather more than half of his reign was passed, His Majesty King James I was seized with a fit of reforming administrative activity. He made an honest effort to cut down his expenses, and looked into the working of what we should now call 'the departments'; at least he caused them to be looked into by persons who could discover and root out abuses. Among the other departments more or less severely overhauled was the Navy. Its condition was not a subject of complaint for the first time, but until 1618 no really serious attempt had been made to amend it. Even in that year nothing might have been done had it not happened that George Villiers had an interest in blackening the character of the Admiral in command. When the Commission began its work the Earl of Nottingham, better known as Lord Howard of Effingham, was, under the superior title of Earl of Nottingham, still Lord High Admiral. Buckingham wanted the post and hated the Howards. If he could prove that the gallant and veteran Earl, who had so distinguished himself in the repulse of the Spanish Armada in 1588, had mismanaged the navy, he would be able to both get the place and injure his political rivals. For the grand old Earl had in truth allowed that navy he had once so gloriously led to fall into a very shameful condition. It is painful to have to acknowledge that the man who had marshalled the defensive forces of England,

'When that great fleet invincible against her bore in vain
The richest spoils of Mexico, the stoutest hearts of Spain,'

should have tolerated peculation and protected the peculators, but so it was. Nottingham, who had succeeded the Earl of Lincoln as Lord High Admiral because he was a nobleman well liked at Court, and had been kept in his place by Queen Elizabeth partly because his rank gained him an amount of respect from well-born volunteers which they would never have shown to tarpaulin' admirals, was a gallant gentleman, yet he was neither a seaman nor a man of business. In Elizabeth's time the actual administrative work of the Navy had been mainly discharged by Sir John Hawkins, who was not a seaman but a large and successful shipowner. Lord Howard led in the day of battle with a good deal of advice from professional officers, and at other times did the representative work of his office with becoming dignity. In the first easy-going days of James he had everything his own way, and governed the Navy with the careless stateliness of a nobleman, who, far too big a man to attend to small matters of business, left his subordinates to do as they pleased. His own hands were clean, but he allowed those whom he had appointed to rob the department very much as he would have allowed his own grooms and cooks to pilfer in his stables and kitchen. He treated every proposal for inquiry as a personal insult dictated by the malice of his enemies at Court, in which he was not wholly in the wrong, and supported the evildoers because he had appointed them. At length the influence of Buckingham proved too strong for the old Earl. A commission of men of business, consisting mainly of official personages of the stamp of Cranfield, Buckingham's relative, and Sir John Coke, was appointed. It sat, inquired, and published reports and proposals which are among the most interesting documents for the history of the English Navy (see an article on The End of Elizabeth's Navy,' Saturday Review, vol. lxii. p. 186).

The veteran Earl was ill-replaced by the confident, vainglorious Buckingham, who had no knowledge of the art of naval warfare and who had never heard a gun fired except as a salute.

The rumours that the strange vessels off the coast of the Isle of Wight were Spanish heightened the terrors of the scare, for Spain was still one of the chief maritime powers. Even

after the defeat of the Armada, English statesmen continued to look with great dread upon the Spanish Navy. 'The King of Spain,' said the Lord Keeper to the two Houses of Parliament in 1593, 'since he hath usurped upon the kingdom of Portugal, hath thereby grown mighty by gaining the East Indies, so as how great soever he was before he is now manifestly more great. . . . He keepeth a Navy armed to impeach all trade of merchandise from England to Gascoign and Guienne, which he attempted to do this last vintage, so as he is now become a frontier enemy to all the West of England as well as all the south ports, as Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight.'

In the year 1627 England had the misfortune to be at war with Spain. There had been great alternations in the policy of the English Government towards Spain since the death of the lion-hearted Queen Elizabeth. Few kings or statesmen have the self-denial and magnanimity to walk in the ways of their predecessors. King James was the very reverse of a magnanimous ruler of men. His foreign policy was weak and discreditable. At his accession James found the direction of foreign affairs in the hands of Cecil, and so long as Cecil lived the Elizabethan policy was in the main adhered to. Peace was made with Spain, but a close alliance with the United Provinces and a close friendship with France held the ambition of Spain as closely in check as war. No sooner did danger appear in Germany from the intrigues of the House of Austria than the marriage of James's daughter Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine promised support to the Protestant powers. It was indeed mainly to the firm direction of English policy during Cecil's tenure of office that the preservation of peace throughout Europe was due. But the death of Cecil was quickly followed by a disastrous change in the conduct of foreign affairs. James at once proceeded to undo all that the wise policy of Elizabeth and her triumph over the hostile Armada had done. He began a series of negotiations for the marriage of his son with a Princess of Spain. Each of his successive favourites supported the Spanish alliance, and after years of secret diplomacy the King's intentions were proclaimed to the world at the moment when the religious truce, which had so long preserved the peace of

Germany, was broken by the revolt of Bohemia against the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand who claimed its crown, and by the elevation of the Elector Palatine to the vacant throne. James, in reliance on the kingcraft' and 'statecraft' on which he prided himself, tried to cajole the well-trained diplomatists and statesmen of Spain into making the best terms for his daughter's husband who had lost the Palatinate, and for securing a marriage for his son Charles with the sister of Philip IV, who as a youth of nineteen had just succeeded to his father Philip III. The House of Commons, which did not share in James's predilection for the Court of Madrid, drew up a petition praying him to make war upon Spain and marry his son to a Protestant. The reply of James was that they had no right to meddle in such matters, and when they protested that they had a right to treat of any business they pleased he tore with his own hand the protestation out of their journal book and dissolved the Parliament. The unpopular scheme of the Spanish marriage was still persevered in with obstinate resolve. So bent was King James on its realization that, after fruitless negotiations, the Prince quitted England in disguise and appeared with Buckingham at Madrid to claim his promised bride. On the road it appears that Charles was smitten by the charms of the French princess, Henrietta Maria, whom he afterwards made his Queen. The story of this strange adventure has been well told in Mr. Gardiner's excellent book, Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage. It must be acknowledged that the stately and punctilious Court of Spain had just reason to be affronted with the gross conduct and bullying manners of the upstart Buckingham and the duplicity of Charles, who, though resolved not to marry the Infanta of Spain at any price, was so far ready to forfeit the character of an English gentleman as, in his parting interview with the young Queen and Donna Maria, to play the part of a disconsolate lover forced away from the object of his passionate affections, presenting to the Infanta a diamond anchor as the emblem of his constancy in order the better to carry on his deception. Philip IV was naturally indignant at the insult thus cast upon his sister, while Charles and Buckingham returned to England with rage in their hearts

and resolved upon war. These two, who had played so mean a part in trifling with the affections of the royal lady to whom the Prince had been betrothed, obtained a passing and undeserved popularity at home by personally joining the Parliament in a demand for the rupture of the treaties and a declaration of war with Spain. English historians have dwelt upon the way in which the Spanish Government became the dupe of its own artifices and crafty policy, but the shame of the transaction really rests with Charles, who had renewed his vow of affection to his betrothed on the very eve of his departure from Madrid, only that he might break his word when he was safe at home, where his first remark was that he had duped the Spaniards and that the Spaniards were fools to let him depart so freely. His coldblooded treachery to the Infanta, who had bestowed on him her heart and hand, and his betrayal of Strafford are the blackest stains on the memory of this unhappy sovereign. February 9, 1889.

THE SCOTCH TROOPS IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, SEPTEMBER, 1627; FROM THE OGLANDER MSS.

IN the Vectis Magazine, June, 1822, will be found a 'memorandum' from the Oglander MSS., in which the Knight of Nunwell says, 'The greatest error our island ever committed was the permitting the Scottish regiments to be billeted among us'; after which judgement he proceeds to enumerate the inconveniences that followed their arrival. Mr. Long, in his valuable edition of the Oglander Memoirs, has given in full a copy of Sir John's words on this subject, which are much abbreviated in the extract from the Vectis Magazine, and has transcribed them in the eccentric spelling of the outspoken writer.

The inhabitants of the Isle of Wight of the present