Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/27

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that tender affection which must have been the daily teaching of a home where a mother like his bore sway, was that loyalty learnt in childhood, called into practice when grey hairs had come and old age was close at hand. Never could he forget those two cloudless July days, just before he went to the King’s School at Canterbury, when all Folkestone gathered on the cliffs to watch the contest between the Armada of Spain and the few ships which then represented the navy of England. On the one side religion was said to be engaged (but never was she further than from the blessings and the cursings uttered then in her name), on the other were ranged all who were moved by love of country, love of freedom, love of all that makes life worth the having, just as they had been on a wider field, upon the Southern Sea, seventeen years before.[1] No Englishman, whatever his creed, hesitated then, as none would hesitate now, in determining the side on which he would be found contending; and the names of Howard, of Southwell, and of Montagu gave the verdict

  1. The battle of Lepanto, fought on Rosary Sunday, October 7, 1571.