"Here have the troops of adventurers made their _rendezvous_ for attempting new discoveries or inhabitances, as Thomas Stukeleigh for Florida, Sir Humfrey Gilbert for Newfoundland, Sir Richard Grenville for Virginia, Sir Martin Frobisher and Master Davies for the North-West Passage, Sir Walter Raleigh for Guiana." It is indeed no exaggeration to say that in the reign of Elizabeth Plymouth had become the foremost port in England. "If any person desired to see her English worthies, Plymouth was the likeliest place to seek them. All were in some fashion associated with the old town. These were days when men were indifferent whether they fought upon land or water, when the fact that a man was a good general was considered the best of all reasons why he should be a good admiral likewise. '_Per mare per terram_' was the motto of Elizabeth's true-born Englishmen, and familiar and dear to them was Plymouth, with its narrow streets, its dwarfish quays, its broad waters, and its glorious Hoe." The roll of Plymouth's naval heroes begins with the Hawkins family, and one looks in vain in modern Plymouth for some statue to commemorate the most illustrious of her sons. These Hawkinses were a remarkable race. "Gentlemen," as Prince says, "of worshipful extraction for several descents," they were made more worshipful by their deeds. "For three generations in succession they were the master-spirits of Plymouth in its most illustrious days; its leading merchants, its bravest sailors, serving oft and well in the civic chair and the Commons House of Parliament. For three generations they were in the van of English seamanship, founders of England's commerce in South, West, and East, stout in fight, of quenchless spirit in adventure--a family of merchant statesmen and heroes to whom our country affords no parallel."[41] [41] WORTH.