whom for the space of foure whole yeares your Lordship committed the
gouernment and instruction of that honorable yong noble man, your sonne &
heire apparant, the lord William Howard, of whose high spirit and wonderful
towardlinesse full many a time hath he boasted vnto me. Secondly, the
bounden duetie which I owe to your most deare sister the lady Sheffield, my
singular good lady & honorable, mistresse, admonished me to be mindfull of
the renoumed familie of the Howards. Thirdly, when I found in the first
Patent graunted by Queene Marie to the Moscouie companie, that my lord your
father being then lord high Admirall of England was one of the first
fauourers and furtherers, with his purse and countenance, of the strange
and wonderfull Discouerie of Russia, the chiefe contents of this present
Volume, then I remembred the sage saying of sweet Isocrates, That sonnes
ought not onely to be inheritors of their fathers substance but also of
their commendable vertues and honours. But what speake I of your ancestors
honors (which to say the trueth are very great, and such as our Cronicles
haue notably blazoned) when as your owne Heroicall actions from time to
time haue shewed themselues so admirable, as no antiquitie hath affoorded
greater, and the future times will not in haste (I thinke) performe the
like. To come to some particulars when the Emperors sister the spouse of
Spaine, with a Fleete of an 130. sailes, stoutly and proudly passed the
narow Seas, your Lordship accompanied with ten ships onely of her Maiesties
Name Roiall, enuironed their Fleet in most strange and warrelike sort,
enforced them to stoope gallant, and to vaile their bonets for the Queene
of England, and made them perfectly to vnderstand that olde speach of the
prince of Poets:

Non illi imperium pelagi sauummque tridentem,
sed tibi sorte datum.

[Footnote: Virgil, Aneid I _Translation_ "Not to him is given by fate the