At the period of Elizabeth's accession, owing to the treachery as much as to the supineness of her predecessor, of the Royal Navy which had been created by Henry the Eighth, only twenty-three vessels of war, few of them of more than 600 tons burden, remained. There was one only of 800, one of 700, a few being above 200, while the remainder were sloops or other small craft. The Government had therefore to depend chiefly on private ships in the war with France, and the expected struggle of far greater magnitude with Spain. Numerous English subjects had also suffered from the Spanish Inquisition, and Englishmen of rank and wealth considered that they were justified in retaliating on the authors of the cruelties practised on their own countrymen. From every port and river vessels fitted out as traders went forth heavily armed to plunder on the high seas any of the ships of the common enemy of mankind with which they could fall in. At first the bold privateersmen confined themselves to the narrow seas, pouncing down upon any Spanish ship which approached their shores, either driven in thither by the wind, or compelled to seek shelter by stress of weather. Many a trader from Antwerp to Cadiz mysteriously disappeared, or, arriving without her cargo, reported that she had been set upon by a powerful craft, when, boats coming out from the English shore, she had been quickly unladen, her crew glad to escape with their lives. The Scilly Islands especially afforded shelter to a squadron of vessels under Sir Thomas Seymour, who, sailing forth into the chops of the channel, laid wait for any richly-laden craft he might happen to espy. Among other men of rank who thus distinguished themselves were the sons of Lord Chobham. Influenced by that hatred of Roman abominations which had long been the characteristic of their family, Thomas Chobham, the most daring of the brothers, had established himself in a strongly-fortified port in the south of Ireland, from whence, sailing forth with his stout ships, he attacked the Spaniards on their own coasts. Coming in sight of a large ship in the channel, laden with a cargo valued at 80,000 ducats, and having on board forty prisoners doomed to serve in the galleys, he chased her into the Bay of Biscay, where, at length coming up with her, he compelled her to strike, when he released the prisoners, and transferred the cargo to his own ship. The Spaniards declare that he sewed up all the survivors of the crew in their own sails and hove them overboard; but as the story rests on no better authority than that of the Spaniards themselves, we may be excused from giving it credence. The stories of the cruelties practised by the Spaniards on their prisoners are too well authenticated to be doubted. The men who could be guilty of one-tenth part of the horrors they compelled their fellow-subjects in the Netherlands to endure, or those inflicted on the hapless Indians of America, were capable of any conceivable cruelty.