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Exchequer was so empty.* Slowly and with difficulty, however, the sick were healed, and both sick and well were paid their due and put in readiness for other patriotic work.

In the meanwhile the Invincible Armada was being finally vanquished. The storm of the 4th of August that had harassed the English ships on their return to the Downs brought terrible misfortune on the Spanish ships in the North Sea. Some were wrecked on the shores of Norway; some on the shores of Scotland; some on the shores of Ireland. The story of all the grievous troubles and dismal adventures of the Spaniards who came out to conquer England would fill a volume. Early in October a shattered remnant of the famous fleet found its way back to Spain,-fifty-three ships out of the hundred and thirty-two that had at first composed it; ten thousand spiritless men out of the thirty thousand who had embarked.

Hardly even then could Philip II. believe that his Armada had been defeated. For many weeks Catholic Europe had been cheating itself with the belief that already England was being restored to the true faith and had been brought under subjection to the Cæsar of the sixteenth century by Spanish soldiers and by the agents of the Holy Inquisition. "They were not ashamed," as Sir Francis Drake said in a very memorable letter, which sums up the whole story in one long sentence, "to publish in sundry languages great victories in words, which they pretended to have obtained against this

RECORD OFFICE MSS., Domestic, vol. ccxv., No. 63.

1588.] The Troubles of the Vanquished Spaniards. 245

realm, when, shortly after, it was happily manifested in very deed to all nations how their Navy, which they termed Invincible, consisting of one hundred and forty sail of ships were, by thirty of her Majesty's own ships of war and a few of our merchants, by the wise, valiant, and advantageous conduct of the Lord Charles Howard, High Admiral of England, beaten and shuffled together even from the Lizard to Calais, and from Calais, driven with squibs from their anchors, were chased out of the sight of England round about Scotland and Ireland; where, for the sympathy of their religion hoping to find succour and assistance, a great part of them were crushed against the rocks, and those other that landed, being very many in number, were notwithstanding broken, slain and taken, and so sent from village to village, coupled in halters, to be shipped into England; where, her Majesty disdaining to put them to death and scorning either to retain or entertain them, they were all sent back again to their countries to witness the worthy achievement of their Invincible Navy. With all their great terrible ostentation, they did not, in all their sailing round about England, so much as sink or take one ship, bark, pinnace or cockboat of ours, or even burn so much as one sheep-cot on this land."* * STOW, p. 750.

246

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SEQUEL TO THE GREAT ARMADA FIGHT.

[1588-1603.]

"GREAT thanks," Philip II. is reported to have said, when intelligence of the entire overthrow of his Invincible Armada was brought to him—" great thanks do I render to Almighty God, by whose generous hand I am gifted with such power that I could easily, if I chose, place another fleet upon the seas. Nor is it of very great importance that a running stream should be sometimes intercepted, so long as the fountain from which it flows remains inexhaustible."* But Philip overrated his own power. The fountain from which, through thirty years, had flowed the poisonous stream of Spanish aggrandizement and tyranny was beginning to fail. Tokens of failure had appeared even before the time of the Great Armada Fight, and during every one of the next twelve years, until haughty Philip was forced to seek relief from the injuries brought upon him by the open warfare and the privateering enterprises of England by virtually giving up the contest, it was made more and more apparent. Throughout those twelve years Spain and her possessions were the sport and * MOTLEY, vol. ii., p. 535.

1588.]

The Results of the Armada's Defeat.

247

the prey not only of hardy English seamen and singlehearted English patriots, but even of inexperienced adventurers highly born or highly placed, who set themselves herein to relieve the monotony of courtly avocations and to acquire wealth that should help them to shine with freshened splendour in the showy Court of Queen Elizabeth.

While the defeated Armada was being wrecked upon the shores of Scotland and Ireland, Englishmen were planning further retribution upon Spain for her insolent attempt to conquer England. Uncertainty as to the whereabouts of the Armada and the expedience of maintaining a strong force in the Narrow Seas to be on the watch for any invasion that might be attempted by the Prince of Parma, prevented Lord Admiral Howard from giving it any further chase. He also prudently discountenanced a project which seems to have been advanced by Queen Elizabeth herself or by some of her courtiers, more zealous than wise, for utilizing a part of the naval force then stationed off Dover in an expedition to the Azores, there to wait for the passing of a fleet of Spanish and Portuguese trading ships on their way back from the Indies. "Upon your letter," he wrote to Walsingham on the 27th of August, "I presently sent for Sir Francis Drake, and showed him the desire that her Majesty had for intercepting of the King's treasure from the Indies; and so we considered it, and neither of us find any ships here in the fleet anyways able to go such a voyage before they have been aground, which cannot be done in any place but

at Chatham, and it will be fourteen days before they can be grounded. Belike it is thought the islands be but hereby," he added, with a touch of scorn: "it is not thought how the year is spent. I thought it good, therefore, to send with all speed Sir Francis Drake, although he be not very well, to inform you rightly of all. He is a man of judgment and acquainted with it, and will tell you what must be done for such a journey."*

The result of Drake's visit to Court was the partial abandonment of the intended expedition to the Azores and the planning of a much more formidable expedition against Spain to be sent out next spring, with Drake himself for leader. The other project issued only in the lending of two ships to George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, for such work as he could manage to do with it. This nobleman, born in 1558, had won fame for himself in earlier years as the best tilter in England, and in all courtly tournaments he appeared as the Queen's champion. Following the tide of seafaring zeal, he had in 1586 sent out two barks, Sir Walter Raleigh contributing a third, under Robert Withrington, for voyaging in the South Sea. Withrington reached Brazil and then, proving coward, returned to England, when all men grieved "to see my Lord's hopes thus deceived and his great expenses cast away." In 1587 the Earl of Cumberland took a small part in the war in the Netherlands, and during the Armada Fight he

*RECORD OFFICE MSS., Domestic, vol. ccxv., No. 59.
HAKLUYT, vol. iii., pp. 769-778.

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