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Viewed from the present, the long growing and carefully nourished hatreds, which settled their disputes in the English Channel in 1588, were mainly important to the world at large because, indirectly, they involved the fate of America. Had Spain, and not England, been victorious, the American continent might still have developed into a congeries of republican states; but we may be sure that the prevailing republicanism of those states would have been rather of the central than of the northern American type, and we may well doubt whether a republican union, such as was founded under Washington, and kept together under Lincoln, would have been ever possible in the New World.^[1]

Before publicly putting forth her whole strength against England, Spain more than once tried to injure her enemy by surreptitious blows. In 1580,^[2] for example, Munster was in the throes of civil war, and the opportunity seemed a good one for dispatching from Corunna a little expedition to foment the rebellion against the English power. Italians as well as Spaniards took part in it. They landed at Smerwick, in Dingle Bay, in September; but Arthur, Earl Grey de Wilton, who, as Lord-Lieutenant, had gone to Ireland earlier in the same year with a large body of picked troops, speedily made himself master of a fort which had been built on the coast in the previous year by James Fitzmaurice and a feeble Papal force, and which was occupied by the new invaders, hardly one of whom escaped to tell the story. In his preface to Vol. XII. of the new series of Acts of the Privy Council of England, Mr. J. R. Dasent notes a curious coincidence in connection with this abortive invasion.

"On some unknown day^[3] in 1580," he says, "the Pelican, soon to be re-named the Golden Hind,^[4] which had sailed with her consorts from Plymouth in November, 1577, returned alone to England, laden with the plunder of the Spanish settlements in the Pacific, and cast anchor in Plymouth Sound after circumnavigating the globe, thus narrowly escaping, as she crossed the mouth of the Bay, the Spanish squadron which bore the invaders from Corunna to Dingle. As these luckless invaders, who could show no commission from Philip, were treated by Grey, so, no doubt, would the Spaniards have treated Drake, who had no commission from Elizabeth. ... The Smerwick invasion following so soon after that of James Fitzmaurice no doubt rendered it difficult for the Spanish ambassador to press his complaints against Drake."^[5]

1. In 1578 Martin Frobiser again attempted a N.W. passage. See Chap. XVI.
2. In this year Charles Jackman and Arthur Pett sought a N.W. passage. See Chap. XVI.
3. Generally said to have been September 26th.
4. She had, in fact, been so re-named in August, 1578.
5. In 1582 Edward Fenton set out on his voyage to South America, and in 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert set out on his expedition to Newfoundland. See Chap. XVI.