To her cool, sceptical, disenchanted mind the enthusiasms of her own people were becoming almost as unintelligible as the dark passions of Spain. But more and more the thrust of those enthusiasms disturbed the delicate balance of forces which preserved her own freedom of action. Some lust or idealism the Golden Hind had stirred when it floated triumphantly on the Thames sent more and more of her subjects to trail pikes beside the Dutch or wake West Indian echoes with their guns.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 72