“He was also a member of the British nobility,” continued Mr. Bickford. “The Earl of Cumberland, a graduate of Oxford with the degree of M.A., a wealthy peer, romantic, picturesque, a courtier, a noted gambler and a man of tremendous personal strength and courage. In his youth he had taken part in the attack on the Spanish Armada under Drake and had been made a Knight of the Garter and was a great favorite with Queen Elizabeth. In fact, through some favor, the queen had presented the Earl with one of her gloves—a claret-colored, diamond-studded thing which the dashing adventurer invariably wore tucked through the band of his broad-brimmed plumed hat. It became his crest, his badge, and far and wide, to friends and enemies alike, he became famed as ‘the man with the glove in his hat.’ “Like Prince Rupert, Lord Cumberland found too few opportunities for his love of adventure ashore and so turned to the sea and the Indies for excitement. No doubt he found it in plenty, for he became a terror to the Dons, took many prizes, accumulated vast wealth and seemed to bear a charmed life. Again and again he returned to England to settle down, but ever the life of the sea rover appealed too strongly to him, and donning his hat with its jeweled glove, he would up and away to some new daredevil adventure. “Finally, in March, 1598, he set sail from Plymouth harbor with twenty ships, all his own, for the greatest attack on the Dons in the Caribbean that had ever been organized. His flagship bore the curious name of The Scourge of Malice, and the Earl’s bold scheme was to attack the supposedly impregnable port of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Drake and Hawkins had tried it, but had been driven off, and the reckless devil-may-care ‘man with the glove in his hat’ saw, in a raid on Puerto Rico a fine chance for adventure such as his heart craved. “Having captured a few prizes in mid-ocean, the fleet arrived at Dominica in May, and the Earl allowed his men shore liberty and a good rest before continuing on his daredevil foray. Being totally unexpected by the Dons, the Earl’s ship approached unseen at dead of night, and six hundred men were silently landed about two miles to the east of Morro Castle. Dividing his force into two parties and following the road, Cumberland led his men close to the city walls and at break of day rushed the sleepy sentries and the gates. Shouting and yelling, brandishing cutlasses, firing pistols, the wild horde of Englishmen appeared to the frightened, surprised Spaniards like fiends suddenly sprung from the earth. Terrorized, they retreated to the inmost fastnesses of the town before they rallied and, realizing the dreaded British were upon them, turned to face their foes. But it was too late. The English were in the streets, and although the Dons fought manfully and many fell on both sides, the Earl’s men were victorious, and within two hours the city was in their hands.