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.
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