where the princess's interest was strong. Sir Henry Jernegan, one of the officers engaged in this levy, had the courage to put off to the squadron in an open boat, and the ability to persuade the whole command to declare for Queen Mary. At about the same time the Warden of the Cinque Ports took the same course, and the result of these and other pronouncements was that opposition ceased before blood had been shed, and that Mary mounted the throne peaceably.[1] In the following year, on March 26th, she appointed William, first Lord Howard of Effingham, to be Lord High Admiral.[2]
In the meantime, Captain William Wynter had been sent with a squadron to Ostend to bring to England the ambassadors of the Emperor Charles V., who were charged to negotiate the preliminaries of a marriage between his son, Philip of Spain, and the new queen.[3] The emperor on this occasion sent Wynter a chain of gold, which upon his return to England the honest seaman showed to Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, who exclaimed: "For this gold chain you have sold your country."[4] Such indeed was the unpopularity of the proposed match that Sir Thomas Wyatt's abortive rebellion was the instant outcome of the arrival of the ambassadors. But nothing sufficed to stay the execution of the project, and in the summer of 1554, Philip with an imposing fleet of one hundred and sixty sail set out for England.
Effingham, with twenty-eight ships, had ere this begun to cruise in the Channel, nominally to guard the trade, but really to welcome the arrival of the future King Consort. He welcomed it in strange fashion. Philip came up Channel with the Spanish flag at his main, and when he sighted Effingham's squadron, proudly kept the flag flying in expectation that Effingham would salute it. The Lord High Admiral did salute, but it was with a shotted gun. It did not seem fitting to him that any foreigner, no matter his rank and pretentions, should enter the seas of the Queen of England without paying the accustomed deference to her rights there. The shot caused Philip to strike his colours and lower his topsails, the marriage being too important a part of his plans to permit of his then disputing the English claims; and the gallant Effingham at
