AUTHORITIES.--In addition to the books quoted at the head of the last chapters, Sir William Monson's _Naval Tracts_, to be found in vol. iii. of Churchill's _Voyages_, are of great value for the later part of the great queen's reign. Sir Richard Hawkins's account of his own voyage to the South Seas contains much most valuable information as to the naval life of the time. It has been published by the Hakluyt Society. Linschoten, printed in English by the same Society, is valuable for the loss of the =Revenge=, and for the picture it gives of the Spanish and Portuguese methods of conducting trade, and of their disasters. The accessible evidence for the voyages of the Earl of Cumberland is in Purchas. Southey took the cream off the narratives of Elizabethan sea adventure in the _Lives of the Admirals_, written for the Cabinet Cyclopædia. Being now delivered from all fear of an attack by Spain, and at the same time persuaded that there was no hope of peace with Philip till he was thoroughly broken, Elizabeth's Government retaliated for the Armada by a vigorous raid on the coast of Spain. In theory, the expedition was intended to do much more than merely harass the King of Spain's coasts. There was an avowed intention to help the Prior of Ocrato, who claimed the throne of Portugal, to recover the kingdom out of the hands of King Philip. But the forces provided were quite insufficient for such a serious undertaking as the reconquest of Portugal, although they were very large in proportion to the resources of England and her Dutch allies. The Dutch, in fact, who were threatened by a serious attack at home, were compelled to withhold a great part of the forces which they had promised to contribute. Still, the expedition contained 11,000 troops and 1500 seamen. The command at sea was given to Sir Francis Drake, and the command of the troops to the officer who had then the greatest military reputation in England, Sir John Norris. It did not, on the whole, prove successful. The withholding of the old English troops in the Low Countries made it necessary to rely wholly on new levies. They, as usual, proved untrustworthy. Upwards of one-third of the men are said to have deserted before the expedition sailed at all. Finding that if they delayed much longer they would probably be weakened to a much more dangerous extent, Drake and Norris put to sea on the 15th of April, and five days later landed in the neighbourhood of Corunna, with the intention of taking the town. They had no difficulty in burning the suburbs, and in scattering a body of country militia brought down by the king's governor to attack them. But the upper town beat off all their attacks; and in the meantime the soldiers had broken into the stores of wine collected for export, and had drunk so freely that illness began to infest the squadron. Corunna having beaten it off, the fleet now went on to the coast of Portugal.