Drake’s private war with Spain, however, was not itself an inheritance, and arose from nothing so abstract as a sense of public or religious duty. It sprang, like Samson’s private war with the Philistines, from a deep personal grievance. Young Francis Drake had been in the harbour of San Juan de Ulua with John Hawkins when the armed ships of that prosperous merchant were treacherously set upon and overwhelmed by the Armada of New Spain.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 186