One of the outstanding characteristics of the later Tudor period was the remarkable development of individual initiative. Men were no longer content “ever like sheepe to haunte one trade,” but in every field of human endeavor were striking across new paths. It was, moreover, an age of glorious amateurs. As in the best days of Greece, the bars that bound the individual within narrow limits of professionalism were broken asunder. It was as if to the nation's mature powers had suddenly been added the gift of youth. It was a cry of youth which Thorne uttered when he swept away all objections to the dangers of the Northwest Passage with his “there is no land unhabitable nor sea innavigable.” Elizabeth's well-known methods, which perhaps temperament, necessity, and policy all had their share in fashioning, were admirably adapted to bring out, and to use to the utmost, these qualities in her subjects. Personal loyalty and individual initiative were largely fostered in place of taxation and governmental enterprise, and the patriotism of a united nation rose to new levels. “He is not worthy to live at all,” wrote Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1576, “that for feare, or danger of death, shunneth his countries service, and his owne honour.”[58] Footnote 58: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, vol. VII, p. 190. This growing national feeling was strengthened by religious motives. The persecutions under Mary, and the tortures of the Inquisition, to which English sailors were so often subjected in the ports of Spain, both played their part in the drama now being enacted. Five thousand English volunteered for service against the Spaniard in the Netherlands, and the Queen's hand was being forced by the national feeling that she herself had aroused. The conquest of Portugal by Spain, in 1580, nominally transferred to the latter all the colonial possessions of the entire world she did not already possess, leaving no room open for other nations, according to Spanish pretensions. The English government at last spoke, however, and in the same year, in answer to Spain's demand for the return of Drake's plunder, announced that Spain “by the law of nations could not hinder other princes from freely navigating those seas and transporting colonies to those parts where the Spaniards do not inhabit; that prescription without possession availed nothing.”[59] The rights of other nations were definitely settled by the defeat of the Armada eight years later. Footnote 59: Cited by Alexander Brown, _Genesis of the United States_ (Boston, 1890), pp. 9 _f._ The original source is not indicated.