Although Her Majesty Had Taken The Most Vigilant Precautions To Foresee
And Prevent All Dangers That Might Threaten From Sea,
Yet did she not
deem herself and country too secure against the enemy by these means,
and therefore prepared a
Royal army to receive them in case of landing.
But it was not the will of God that the enemy should set foot on
England, and the queen became victorious over him at sea with small
hazard, and little bloodshed of her subjects. Having thus shewn the
designs of the Spaniards, and the course pursued by the queen to prevent
them, I propose now to consider the errors committed on both sides[348].
[Footnote 348: Our readers are requested to remember that these are the
reflections of Sir William Monson, a contemporary. - E.]
Nothing could appear more rational or more likely to happen, after the
Duke of Medina Sidonia had got intelligence of the state of our navy,
than a desire to surprise them at unawares in harbour; since he well
knew, if he had taken away or destroyed our strength at sea, that he
might have landed when and where he pleased, which is a great advantage
to an invading enemy: Yet, admitting it to have had the effect he
designed, I see not how he is to be commended for infringing the
instructions he had received from his sovereign. That being the case,
it is easy to appreciate what blame he deserved for the breach of his
instructions, when so ill an event followed from his rashness and
disobedience. It was not his want of experience, or his laying the blame
on Valdes, that excused him at his return to Spain, where he certainly
had been severely punished, had not his wife obtained for him the royal
favour.
Before the arrival in Spain of the ships that escaped from the
catastrophe of this expedition, it was known there that Diego Flores de
Valdes had persuaded the duke to infringe the royal instructions.
Accordingly, the king had given strict orders in all his ports, wherever
Valdes might arrive, to apprehend him, which was executed, and he was
carried to the castle of Santander, without being permitted to plead in
his defence, and remained there without being ever seen or heard of
afterwards; as I learned from his page, with whom I afterwards
conversed, we being both prisoners together in the castle of Lisbon. If
the directions of the king of Spain had been punctually carried into
execution, then the armada had kept along the coast of France, and had
arrived in the road of Calais before being discovered by our fleet,
which might have greatly endangered the queen and realm, our fleet being
so far off at Plymouth. And, though the Prince of Parma had not been
presently ready, yet he might have gained sufficient time to get in
readiness, in consequence of our fleet being absent. Although the prince
was kept in by the thirty sail of Hollanders, yet a sufficient number of
the dukes fleet might have been able to drive them from the road of
Dunkirk and to have possessed themselves of that anchorage, so as to
have secured the junction of the armada and the land army; after which
it would have been an easy matter for them to have transported
themselves to England. What would have ensued on their landing may be
well imagined.
But it was the will of HIM who directs all men and their actions, that
the fleets should meet, and the enemy be beaten, as they were, and
driven from their anchorage in Calais roads, the Prince of Parma
blockaded in the port of Dunkirk, and the armada forced to go about
Scotland and Ireland with great hazard and loss: Which shews how God did
marvellously defend us against the dangerous designs of our enemies.
Here was a favourable opportunity offered for us to have followed up the
victory upon them: For, after they were beaten from the road of Calais,
and all their hopes and designs frustrated, if we had once more offered
to fight them, it is thought that the duke was determined to surrender,
being so persuaded by his confessor. This example, it is very likely,
would have been followed by the rest. But this opportunity was lost, not
through the negligence or backwardness of the lord admiral, but through
the want of providence in those who had the charge of furnishing and
providing for the fleet: For, at that time of so great advantage, when
they came to examine into the state of their stores, they found a
general scarcity of powder and shot, for want of which they were forced
to return home; besides which, the dreadful storms which destroyed so
many of the Spanish fleet, made it impossible for our ships to pursue
those of them that remained. Another opportunity was lost, not much
inferior to the other, by not sending part of our fleet to the west of
Ireland, where the Spaniards were of necessity to pass, after the many
dangers and disasters they had endured. If we had been so happy as to
have followed this course, which was both thought of and discoursed of
at the time, we had been absolutely victorious over this great and
formidable armada. For they were reduced to such extremity, that they
would willingly have yielded, as divers of them confessed that were
shipwrecked in Ireland.
By this we may see how weak and feeble are the designs of men, in
respect of the great Creator; and how indifferently he dealt between the
two nations, sometimes giving one the advantage sometimes the other; and
yet so that he only ordered the battle.
SECTION VI.
_Account of the Relief of a part of the Spanish Armada, at Anstruther in
Scotland, in 1588_[349].
However glorious and providential the defeat and destruction of the
_Invincible Armada_, it does not belong to the present work to give a
minute relation of that great national event.
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