So we were launched by the Elizabethan seamen upon our long career of adventure across the seas: adventure leading to discovery, discovery to explora… - A. L. Rowse

... I suggested that he write for Oldham's Press, which I was advising, a biography of Mountjoy: Elizabethan General. This was a congenial subject, which made the most of. ...
... 's long liaison with , the wife of , was recognised by society, until Mountjoy married the lady, when social humbug made a scandal of it. All this appealed to Cyril, who had a soldierly gallantry for the fair sex.

Within the the authorities had increasing difficulties to contend with from the puritans in these middle years of the reign: at their height from 1571 to 1584. The strength of puritanism was that it was the ideology, or if you prefer, the religion, of the forward-looking gentry and middle class.

The truth is that all these men exemplify a triumph of will-power: that is what enabled them to succeed. The strain made some of them harsh — Grenville was harsh, and Bligh of the Bounty. Perhaps Drake too — as certainly he was in his execution of Captain Doughty in South America, before breaking into the Pacific. Still you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. It is a mistake to be too soft; one can't expect to achieve anything without grit. That they all had.