to do that hath fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour: whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do."
Froude well says:—[1]
"Such was the fight at Flores in that August, 1591, without its equal in such of the annals of mankind as the thing which we call history has preserved to us. At the time England and all the world rang with it. It struck a deeper terror, though it was but the action of a single ship, into the hearts of the Spanish people, it dealt a more deadly blow upon their fame and naval strength, than the destruction of the Armada itself, and in the direct results which arose from it it was scarcely less disastrous to them. Hardly, as it seems to us, if the most glorious actions which are set like jewels in the history of mankind are weighed one against the other in the balance, hardly will those three hundred Spartans, who in the summer morning sat combing their long hair for death in the passes of Thermopylae, have earned a more lofty estimate for themselves than this one crew of modern Englishmen. After the action there ensued a tempest so terrible as was never seen or heard the like before. A fleet of merchantmen joined the armada immediately after the battle, forming in all one hundred and forty sail; and of these one hundred and forty, only thirty-two ever saw Spanish harbour; the rest all foundered or were lost on the Azores. The men-of-war had been so shattered by shot as to be unable to carry sail; and the Revenge herself, disdaining to survive her commander, or as if to complete his own last baffled purpose, like Samson, buried herself and her two hundred prize crew under the rocks of St. Michael's."
- ↑ Forgotten Worthies.
