Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/544

530 Lord Hunsdon defended the capital with an army of, 28,000 men, supported by 10,000 Londoners.

Such were the preparations for the vaunted Invincible Armada. With all the courage of Elizabeth, however, she continued to negotiate anxiously for peace to the very last minute, and to the great chagrin of Leicester and Walsingham, who assured her that such a proceeding was calculated to encourage her enemies and depress her own subjects. Burleigh, with his more cautious nature, supported her, and even so late as February, 1587, she sent commissioners to Bourbourg, near Calais, to meet the commissioners of Philip, and they vainly continued their negotiations for peace till the Armada appeared in the Channel.

And now the time for the sailing of this dread fleet had arrived. The King of Spain, tired of delays, ordered its advance. It was in vain that Providence appeared to suggest the wisdom of further postponement, by taking away his experienced Admiral Santa Cruz, and his excellent Vice-Admiral the Duke of Paliano; he immediately gave the command to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a man wholly without such experience, and the second command to Martinez de Ricaldo, a good seaman. In vain the Duke of Parma entreated that he might reduce Flushing before he carried such a force out of the country, and Sir William Stanley, who had deserted to Spain from the Netherlands army, recommended the occupation of Ireland before the descent on England. The Pope had delivered his bull for the deposition of Elizabeth, had collected the money which he promised to advance, had made Dr. Allen a cardinal, and appointed his legate in England to confer on Philip the investiture of the kingdom; the fleet was at anchor in the Tagus, and he commanded it to put forth.

This famous Armada consisted of 130 vessels of different sizes. There were forty-five galleons and larger vessels of from 500 to 1,000 tons each; twenty-five were pink-built ships, and thirteen were frigates. It carried 2,431 guns of different calibres, and 20,000 troops, exclusive of the crews which worked the vessels, of whom 2,000 were volunteers of the highest families in Spain. The English fleet outnumbered the Armada by about sixty vessels, but its entire tonnage did not amount to half that of the Armada.

On May the 30th, 1588, this formidable and long prepared fleet issued from the Tagus. The spectacle was of such grandeur, that no one could behold it without the strongest emotions and the most flattering expectations of success. But these were of very brief duration: one of those tempests which in every age, since the Norman Conquest, as if indicating the steady purpose of Providence, have assailed and scattered the fleets of England's enemies, burst on the Armada off Cape Finisterre, scattered its vessels along the coast of Gallicia, ran three large ships aground, dismasted and shattered eight others, and compelled the proud fleet to seek shelter in Corunna, and other ports along the coast. The damages to the ships were so considerable, that it occasioned the admiral a delay of three weeks at Corunna.

No sooner was this news announced in London, than Elizabeth, amid her most warlike movements never forgetting the expense, immediately ordered the lord admiral to dismantle four of his largest ships as if the danger were over. Lord Howard had the wise boldness to refuse, declaring that he would rather take the risk of his sovereign's displeasure, and keep the vessels afloat at his own cost, than endanger the country. To show that all his vessels were needed, he called a council of war, and proposed that they should sail for the Spanish coast, and fall on the fleet whilst it was thus disordered. At sea they saw and gave chase to fourteen Spanish ships. The wind veered and became at once favourable to his return, and also to the sailing of the Armada. He turned back to Plymouth, lest some of the Spanish vessels should have reached his unprotected station before him.

The event proved that his caution was not vain. He had scarcely regained Plymouth and moored his fleet, when a Scotch privateer, named Fleming, sailed in after him and informed him he had discovered the Armada off the Lizard. Most of the officers were at the moment playing at bowls on the Hoe, and Drake, who was one of them, bade them not hurry themselves, but play out the game and then go and beat the Spaniards. The wind, too, was blowing right into harbour, but having with great labour warped out their ships they stood off, and the next day, being the 20th of July, they saw the Spanish fleet bearing down full upon them. They were drawn up in the form of a crescent, the horns of which were seven miles apart, and a nobler or more imposing sight was never seen on the ocean. Lord Howard deemed it hazardous to measure strength with ships of such superior size and weight of metal, and he was soon relieved from the necessity, for the Duke of Medina, on perceiving the English fleet, called a council of his officers, who were impatient to attack and destroy the enemy at once, and showed them his instructions, which bound them, strictly to avoid all chance of damage to his vessels by a conflict before he had effected the main object of seeing the Flemish army landed on the English coast. The grand Armada, therefore, swept on in stately magnificence up the Channel, the great galeasses, with their huge hulks, their lofty prows, and their slow imposing motion, making a brave show. To the experienced eyes of the English sailors, however, this immediately communicated encouragement, for they saw at once that they were not calculated like their own nimbler vessels to tack and obey the helm promptly.

And now began, as it were, a strange chase of the mighty Armada by the lesser fleet. The Duke of Medina pressed on with all sail to reach Dunkirk, and make a junction with the fleet of flat-bottomed boats of the Duke of Parma, which were to carry over the army; but some of his vessels soon fell behind, and spite of his signalling for them to come up, they could not do so before the nimbler English vessels were upon them, and fired into them with right good will. The Disdain, a pinnace commanded by Jonas Bradbury, was the first to engage, and was speedily seconded by the lord admiral himself, who attacked a great galleon, and Drake in the Revenge, Hawkins in the Victory, and Frobisher in the Triumph, closed in with the others. Ricaldez, the rear-admiral, was in this affray, and encouraged his men bravely, but it was soon found that the Spaniards, though so much more gigantic in size, had no chance with the more