are but seventeen." "How many soldiers are in the fort?" I answered, "Two hundred." "That is not so," quoth a Conde, "there are but twenty."
The Marquis Alquenezes asked me "Of what strength the little island was before Plymouth?" I told him, "I knew not." "Then," quoth he, "we do."
"Is Plymouth a walled town?" "Yes, my Lords." "And a good wall?" "Yes," said I, "a very good wall." "True," says a Duke, "to leap over with a staff!" "And hath the town," said the Duke of Medina, "strong gates?" "Yes." "But," quoth he, "there was neither wood nor iron to those gates; but two days before your fleet came away."
Now before I go any further, let me not forget to tell you, that my two Irish confessors had been here in England the last summer; and when our fleet came from England, they came for Spain: having seen our King at Plymouth when the soldiers there showed their arms, and did then diligently observe what the King did, and how he carried himself.
"How did it chance," said the Duke Giron, that "you did not in all this bravery of the fleet, take Cadiz as you took Punthal?" I replied, "That the Lord General might easily have taken Cadiz, for he had near a thousand scaling ladders to set up, and a thousand men to lose; but he was loth to rob an almshouse, having a better market to go to." "Cadiz," I told them, "was held poor, unmanned and unmunitioned." "What better market?" said Medina. I told him, "Genoa or Lisbon." And as I heard there was instantly, upon this, an army of six thousand soldiers sent to Lisbon.
"Then," quoth one of the Earls, "when thou meetest me in Plymouth, wilt thou bid me welcome?" I modestly told him, "I could wish they would not too hastily come to Plymouth; for they should find it another manner of place, than as now they slighted it."
Many other questions were put to me by these great Dons; which so well as God did enable me I answered. They speaking in Spanish, and their words interpreted to me by those two Irishmen before spoken of; who also related my several answers to the Lords.
And by the common people, who encompassed me round, many jeerings, mockeries, scorns and bitter jests were to my face thrown upon our nation: which I durst not so much
