His progress in the queen's favor was enhanced by his demeanor when the matter in dispute between him and his superior officer was brought before the privy council, and each party was called upon to plead his own cause. "What advantage he had in the case in controversy," says a contemporary writer, "I know not; but he had much the better in the manner of telling his tale." The result was, that he became a man of "no slight mark;" "he had gotten the queen's ear in a trice;" "she took him for a kind of oracle," and "loved to hear his reasons to her demands," or, in more modern phrase, "his replies to her questions." The reign of Queen Elizabeth has been called the heroic age of England. And, let us remember, the England of that day is ours as much as theirs who still bear the name of Englishmen. The men whose gallant deeds we now record were our ancestors, and their glory is our inheritance. The Reformation in religion had awakened all the energies of the human mind. It had roused against England formidable enemies, among which Spain was the most powerful and the most intensely hostile. She fitted out the famous Armada to invade England; and England, on her part, sent various expeditions to annoy the Spaniards in their lately acquired possessions in South America. These expeditions were generally got up by private adventurers; the queen and her great nobles often taking a share in them. When there was nominal peace with Spain, such enterprises were professedly for discovery and colonization, though the adventurers could not always keep their hands off a rich prize of Spanish property that fell in their way; but, for the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign, there was open war between the two powers: and then these expeditions had for their first object the annoyance of Spain, and discovery and colonization for their second.