Content area
Full text
Transcript from Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable The Marquess of Salisbury [. . .], 24 vols (London 1883-1976) Volume 8, p. 209
Most mighty and gracious Queen. The manifold miseries and grievous calamities endured in this my long imprisonment, amongst Turks and Moors, would 'ere this have moved compassion, when in justice my liberty were not due unto me. But this merciless, faithless, filthy and most barbarous nation, in their pride disdaining all others, and of opinion that they were born only to command and all others to obey and serve them, I truly think that God hath stirred up not so much for the disturbing of the quiet, peaceable and blessed reign of your Majesty and other the States of Christendom, as for their own chastisement and destruction, which no doubt is a thing easy to be put in execution if your Highness strike while the iron is hot; or to force them to those conditions which should be most honourable. And, in discharge of my duty and with your Majesty's pardon, according to my understanding, in a few reasons I shall be able to make plain, and that, in reason and civil policy, profit is to be made of the opportunity, being the common enemy of all Christendom and the most tyrannous people that ever hath been known. And, first, I will touch their strength, which I hold to be weakness, and then their riches, which truly considered is but poverty; and, for conclusion, what may be the end of the war, if profit, or honour, or contrariwise. And to the first point, I say that the kingdom of Spain hath his forces divided in sustaining Naples, Sicily and Milan, with the forces in Barbary, in maintaining the war with Flanders and England, in peopling and providing defence for the East and West Indias, with their kingdoms and islands adjacent.
England hath no employment of men of importance but against Spain, nor cause to divide her forces; and, the kingdoms well considered, England is not inferior to Spain in anything but in circuit, and in many superior, as in people, in victual, in munition, in shipping and unity. Spain cannot victual an army, no, nor sustain itself,...