were ready to receive them, and Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Frobisher, Seymour, and Cumberland vied in their endeavours to win the highest distinction. Terrible scenes were presented at the different stranded galeasses. That off Calais, after a desperate engagement, was boarded, its crew and troops cut to pieces or pushed overboard, and 50,000 ducats were taken out of her. One great galleon sunk under the English fire; another, the San Matteo, was compelled to surrender; and another, dismantled and in miserable plight, drifted on shore at Flushing and was seized by the sailors. Some of the battered vessels foundered at sea, and the duke, calling a council, proposed to return home. This was vehemently opposed by many officers and the seamen, who had fought furiously and now cried for revenge; but the admiral held that it was impossible long to hold out against such an enemy, and gave the order for Spain. But how? The English now swarmed in the narrow seas, and the issue of the desperate conflict which must attend the attempt the whole way was too clear. The only means of escape he believed was to sail northward, round Scotland and Ireland. Such a voyage, through tempestuous seas and along dangerous coasts, to men little, if at all, acquainted with them, was so charged with peril and hardships, that nothing but absolute necessity could have forced them to attempt it. The remains of the Armada, no longer invincible, and already reduced to eighty vessels, was now, therefore, seen with a favourable wind in full sail northward. With such men as Drake and the rest it might have been safely calculated that not a ship would ever return to Spain. A strong squadron dispatched to meet the Spanish fleet on the west coast of Ireland, and another following in pursuit, would have utterly destroyed this great naval armament. But here again the parsimony of Elizabeth, and the strange want of providence in her Government, became apparent. Instead of pursuing, the English fleet returned to port on the 8th of August for want of powder and shot and, as if satisfied with getting rid of the enemy, no measures whatever were taken to intercept the fugitive fleet. "If," says Sir William Monson, "we had been so happy as to have followed their course, as it was both thought and discoursed of, we had been absolutely victorious over this great and formidable navy, for they were brought to that necessity that they would willingly have yielded, as divers of them confessed that were shipwrecked on the coast of Ireland."
This great piece of misgovernment occasioned much disappointment amongst the brave seamen, both officers and men, a few ships only being able to follow the Spaniards as far as the Frith of Forth. Walsingham, in a letter to the Lord Chancellor at the time, said, "I am sorry the lord admiral was forced to leave the prosecution of the enemy through the want he sustains. Our half doings doth breed dishonour, and leaveth the disease uncured." But the winds and waves did for the English what they themselves left undone in a great measure. A terrible tempest assailed the flying Armada to the north of Scotland, and scattered its unhappy ships amongst the iron-bound islands of the Orkneys and Hebrides. To save themselves, the Spaniards threw overboard their horses, mules, artillery, and baggage, and in many instances to no purpose. On many a wild spot of the shores of the "Western Isles, and those of Scotland and Ireland, you are still told, "Here was stranded one of the great ships of the Invincible Armada." How many summer tourists hear this at Tobermory, in the Isle of Mull; and how many visitors to the Giant's Causeway are shown the terrible cliffs of Port-na-Spagna, still bearing the name from the awful catastrophe which occurred there. More than thirty of these vessels were stranded on the Irish coast; others went down at sea, every soul on board perishing; and others were driven to Norway, and stranded there.
Never was there so fearful a destruction; and well might the triumphant Protestants exult in the idea that the wrath of an avenging deity was let loose against this devoted navy. No mercy was shown to the wretched held that it was impossible long to hold out against such sufferers in general who escaped to land. In Ireland the fear of their joining the natives made the Government scandalously cruel. Instead of taking those prisoners who came on shore, they cut them down in cold blood, and upwards of 200 are said to have been thus mercilessly butchered. Some of the scattered vessels were compelled to fight their way back down the English Channel, and were the prey of the English, the Dutch, and of French Huguenots, who had equipped a number of privateers to have a share in the destruction and plunder of their hated enemies. The Duke of Medina eventually reached the port of St. Andero in September, with the loss of more than half his fleet, and of 10,000 men, those who survived looking more like ghosts than human beings.
Philip, though he must have been deeply mortified by this signal failure of his costly and ambitious enterprise, was too proud to show it. He received the news without a change of countenance, and thanked God that his kingdom was so strong and flourishing that it could well bear such a loss. He gave 50,000 crowns to relieve the sufferers; forbade any public mourning, assigning the mishap, not to the English, but the weather; and wrote to the Duke of Parma—whom the English Government had tempted at this crisis to throw off his allegiance and make himself master of the Catholic provinces of the Netherlands, as the Prince of Orange had done of the Protestant ones—to thank him for his readiness to have carried out his design, and to assure him of his unshaken favour.
In following the fate of the Spanish fleet, and the bravery and address of England's naval commanders, we have left unnoticed the less striking proceedings of the army on shore. The chief camp at Tilbury, which would have come first into conflict with the Spanish army had it effected a landing, was put under the command of Leicester—a man who had been tried in the Netherlands, and found wanting in every qualification of a general. To such a man had Elizabeth confided the destinies of England, and to the son of his wife, the Earl of Essex, now rising also in favour with this lover-loving queen. Had Parma landed, it assuredly would not have been the talents or the bravery of the commander-in-chief which would have repelled him. Elizabeth herself talked loudly of taking the field in person, and, no doubt, would not have flinched there; but Leicester wrote her a very loving and familiar letter, declaring that he could not allow "her person, the most dainty and sacred thing in
