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. It seems peculiarly
necessary and proper, however, in this work, to give a very curious
unpublished record respecting the miserable fate of the Spanish armada,
as written by a contemporary, the Reverend James Melville, minister of
Anstruther, a sea-port town on the Fife, or northern, shore of the
Frith of Forth.
[Footnote 349: From MS. Memoirs of James Melville, a contemporary.]
James Melville, who was born in 1556, and appears to have been inducted
to the living of Anstruther only a short time before the year 1588, left
a MS. history of his own life and times, extending to the year 1601. Of
this curious unpublished historical document, there are several copies
extant, particularly in the splendid library of the Faculty of
Advocates, and in that belonging to the Writers to the Signet, both at
Edinburgh. The present article is transcribed from a volume of MSS
belonging to a private gentleman, communicated to the editor by a valued
literary friend. It had formerly belonged to a respectable clergyman of
Edinburgh, and has the following notice of its origin written by the
person to whom it originally belonged.
"The following History of the Life of James Melville, was transcribed
from an old MS.
