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 sail from Plymouth (14 Sept. 1585) on his memorable voyage to Spain. The little fleet numbered twenty-flve sail all told. It was not the last of those strange ventures in which the queen herself took shares, and which had as their object the committing ravages upon the dominions of Philip and enriching the shareholders. Drake returned 28 July 1586. The expedition hardly paid its expenses, but to Spain and her trade it bought heavy calamity. Meanwhile Elizabeth was dreaming of deserting the Netherlands. She was allowing her small army to waste away inactive and half starved, and actually making or listening to overtures for a peace with Spain on the basis of abandoning the cause of the provinces and surrendering, not to them but to their implacable foe, the cautionary towns that had been handed over to her as the price of her co-operation. While she was halting between two opinions, perplexing her ministers and herself, and trying to outwit every one by turns, Drake was allowed to slip away with a squadron of thirty sail, of which this time six large ships belonged to the queen's navy, with orders to 'impeach the joining together of the king of Spain's fleet,' and otherwise to do them all the harm he could. Drake got off on 2 April 1587. Exactly a week after he had sailed Elizabeth changed her mind, and sent him counter orders. They came too late; Drake was not the man to tarry. On the 19th he made a dash upon Cadiz, burnt and sank thirty-three vessels, and brought away four that were already laden with provisions for the forces that were to invade England, when the great expedition should be ready to start. There was no secret about it now. Philip II had made up his mind at last, and was grimly in earnest.

When Philip II embarked upon the ambitious enterprise of the conquest of England, he had been engaged for thirty years in a vain attempt at making himself absolute ruler of the Netherlands, and as far as the seven northern provinces were concerned he was no nearer than he had ever been to success. The cost of this protracted war had got beyond the power of calculation. Spain had become the poorest country in Europe, and her people the most heavily taxed people in the world. What is most surprising is the fact that Philip himself knew the desperate condition of his finances, and yet never for one moment swerved in his purpose, and never doubted his ability to invade and conquer England, and sweep her navies from the sea. As little did his infatuated subjects doubt the omnipotence of their sovereign. In the pride of his immeasurable self-reliance he was incapable of understauding that while he had been wrecking his finances in bootless warfare, the rest of the world had been benefiting by his blind expenditure. He knew nothing of England's real resources, nothing of that mighty reserve of power which the queen of England could always full back upon.

A standing army was a thing unknown in England. But the musters constituted a militia ready at any moment to take the field fully armed; while the liability to furnish ships for the defence of the coast, assessed by no means exclusively upon the seaports and the counties most exposed to invasion, guaranteed to the nation at large that a national fleet could be provided at the expense of all in the hour of need, and by the simplest financial machinery. Of the whole number of ships, great and small, which sailed out to meet the Armada, not a third were even paid and victualled by the queen. More than 120 vessels were fitted out by the London merchants and the smaller seaports (, Annals of Commerce, ii. 185; Cal. Dom. 1588, pp. 477, 482), and these were as a rule far better furnished than the queen's ships. The latter were notoriously and scandalously ill-furnished with stores and provisions for the sailors, and it is impossible to lay the blame upon any one but the queen. She would not believe that invasion was seriously intended; she shut her eyes to facts. At a time when it was of supreme importance that there should be no hesitation, no delay, no appearance of stint, there was everywhere niggardliness and trumpery higgling with contractors about the price of supplies. It was not so much that the commissariat broke down, as that there was no commissariat. The queen had gone on from day to day putting on the giving of those orders which involved the spending her money generously. So elaborate had been the arrangements for providing all needful supplies to the Armada, that the number of the victualling and store vessels accompanying the fighting ships proved a serious embarrassment. The queen's ships were without the barest necessaries.

Elizabeth stubbornly refused to open her eyes to the danger, even when the Spanish fleet had been sighted off the coast (Cal. Dom. 1588, p. 493). Lord Howard, writing to Walsingham in June, bitterly grieves that her majesty will not thoroughly awake... in this perilous time.' Here and there offers were sent up by generous volunteers to supply victuals for a month at their own cost (p. 494). Everywhere there was a burning impatience to act upon the offensive, and it was the