Note 1331 — Chapter VIII

And when they did, it was to their own cost, as Stanhope found, at the beginning of his career as British minister to the court of Madrid, in 1690. See his letter to Lord Shrewsbury, in Mahon's Spain under Charles II., London, 1840, p. 3. ‘We were forced into a small port, called Ferrol, three leagues short of the Groyne, and, by the ignorance of a Spanish pilot, our ships fell foul one with another, and the admiral's ship was on ground for some hours, but got off clear without any damage.’ Indeed, the Spanish seamen, once the boldest and most skilful navigators in the world, so degenerated, that, early in the eighteenth century, we find it stated as a matter of course, that ‘to form the Spaniard to marine affairs, is transporting them into unknown countries.’ The History of Cardinal Alberoni, London, 1719, p. 257.