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.

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