The harbors of Portugal gave shelter as well as supplies to the English fleet, while the latter defended the rich trade of Portugal with Brazil.

The antipathy between Portugal and Spain made it necessary for the former to have an ally, strong yet distant.

None is so advantageous in that way as England, which in her turn might, and always has, derived great advantages from Portugal in a war with any of the southern powers of Europe." This is an English view of a matter which to others looks somewhat like an alliance between a lion and a lamb.

To call a country with a fleet like England's "distant" from a small maritime nation like Portugal is an absurdity.

England is, and yet more in those days was, wherever her fleet could go.