DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 30 ) as large as his. From three in the afternoon till daybreak next morning Grenville held out against them all. Time after time a huge Spanish ship attempted to board him, and was driven back. At last all his powder was spent, the pikes all broken. Of his crew of 140 men, forty were killed; the rest were wounded. Grenville, severely injured, could fight no more, but he would not surrender. At last he was taken on board the Spanish Admiral’s ship, saying that they might do with his body what they liked, for he esteemed it not. In a few hours he died, crying, ‘Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and for his Queen.’ By encouraging actions such as these, many more of which could be related, Elizabeth fostered the British love of pluck and adventure, and laid the foundations of that magnificent carrying fleet of England, which is now the envy of the world, and which then consisted only of a few fishing- smacks. ‘I have desired,’ Elizabeth said to her Parliament, almost immediately after her accession to the throne, ‘to have the obedience of my subjects by love and not by compulsion.’ But almost the noblest words that are recorded of her are the last she ever spoke in public, two years previous to her death. The parlia-