It was oak from the Weald of Kent for the most part that built the men-of-war of Queen Elizabeth’s fleet which drove the Spanish Armada through the Channel and North Sea to its doom on the reefs of Stornaway and the quicksands of Connemara—ships timbered and planked with oak from the Kentish Weald, and shaped and framed and clamped together in the Kentish Dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich. Phineas Pett, a Kentish man by birth, designed and built the famous _Sovereign of the Seas_; and his grandson, Sir Phineas Pett, designed and built our first _Britannia_. The _Great Harry_ was mostly built of Kentish oak; as was, at a later day, Sir Richard Grenville’s “little” _Revenge_, and, at a still later day, Nelson’s _Victory_, launched at Chatham. * * * * * It was a Man of Kent who, as admiral in chief command, planned and gave the order for the capture of Gibraltar. It was another Man of Kent who, as admiral second in command, carried that order out. Sir George Rooke, one of the Rookes of Monk’s Horton, Kent—by far the ablest sea-officer in the British service in the hundred years between Blake and Hawke—was the Commander-in-Chief before Gibraltar. Byng, Sir George Byng, was the second in command—the elder of the two Byngs known to naval history, “Mediterranean Byng,” as he was called in the Navy in connection with a later exploit of his, and remembered nowadays as the Byng who beat the enemy and was not shot. He became Lord Viscount Torrington, and may, in like manner, be distinguished from the other Lord Torrington of naval history (Arthur Herbert) as the Torrington who beat the enemy and was not court-martialled and broke. A famous family of old-time Kent were the Byngs, seated at Wrotham ever since the fifteenth century, more than one member of which came to the front in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and the Stuart kings. Such as, for instance, the fine old Kentish cavalier of Browning’s rousing song: Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing, And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, Fifty score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song! Fifty score strong! Fifty score strong! Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!