And I know it to be true that
a fleet of ships may be seen at sunset, and after it at the Lizard, yet
by the next morning they may recover Portland, whereas an army of foot
shall not be able to march it in six days.
"Again, when those troops lodged on the sea-shores shall be forced to
run from place to place in vain, after a fleet of ships, they will at
length sit down in the midway and leave all at adventure. But say it
were otherwise, that the invading enemy will offer to land in some such
place where there shall be an army of ours ready to receive him; yet it
cannot be doubted but that when the choice of all our trained bands, and
the choice of our commanders and captains, shall be drawn together--as
they were at Tilbury in the year 1588--to attend the person of the
Prince, and for the defence of the city of London, they that remain to
guard the coast can be of no such force as to encounter an army like
unto that wherewith it was intended that the Prince of Parma should have
landed in England.
"For end of this digression, I hope that this question shall never come
to trial: his majesty's many movable forts will forbid the experience.
And although the English will no less disdain, than any nation under
heaven can do, to be beaten upon their own ground, or elsewhere, by a
foreign enemy, yet to entertain those that shall assail us, with their
own beef in their bellies, and before they eat of our Kentish capons, I
take it to be the wisest way--to do which his majesty, after God, will
employ his good ships on the sea, and not trust in any intrenchment upon
the shore.
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