312 Professor J. K. Laughton [May 4, 



Bueno, Duke of Medina-Sidonia, to the vacant command. Medina- 

 Sidonia, now in his thirty- eighth year, was a man with no qualifica- 

 tion for the post except his distinguished birth and a gentleness of 

 temper which, it was perhaj^s thought, would fit better with the idea 

 of making him subordinate to the Duke of Parma. It had indeed 

 appeared that Santa Cruz was not in the least disposed to accept this 

 inferior part ; and it may very well be that the king was almost relieved 

 by the solution of the difficulty which his death had offered. His 

 successor was utterly ignorant of naval affairs, had but little expe- 

 rience of military, and none whatever of high command. Personally 

 brave, as became his long line of ancestry, he was, as a commander, 

 by his total want of experience and knowledge, timid, undecided, and 

 vacillating. His answer to the king on being ordered to take on 

 himself the command is, in itself, a curiosity. The business, he 

 wrote, was so great, so important, that he could not conscientiously 

 undertake it, being, as he was, altogether without experience or 

 knowledge of either the sea or of war.* His objections were, how- 

 ever, overruled ; and in an evil hour for his reputation, he consented. 

 The equipment of the fleet was pushed on, and by the middle of 

 May it was ready to sail from the Tagus. It did actually sail on 

 20-30 May. 



I may here say that the name " Invincible," so commonly given 

 to this fleet, was certainly not official. I know that, in common belief, 

 it was given to it by the king himself. In Philip's numerous letters 

 there is no trace of any such thing. By him, by his secretary, by 

 Medina-Sidonia and other officers, the fleet is spoken of as the Grand 

 Fleet — a name constantly used in England during the eighteenth 

 century for what we would now call the Channel Fleet. In a semi- 

 official list printed at Lisbon — a copy of which got into Burghley's 

 hands, and is now in the British Museum — it is called " La felicissima 

 Armada," the fortunate fleet ; but the term " Invincible " is unknown. 

 It would seem probable that the name sprung out of the idle talk of 

 some of the young adventurers — braggarts as became their age — or 

 out of the silly gossip of the Lisbon taverns. 



None the less, however, the power and might of Spain were at 

 this time so great, that when it was known they were being put forth 

 to crush England, the thing was regarded as done. Anglia fuit was 

 something like the expression of this general idea. Of the European 

 opinion of the power of Spain at this epoch there is an admirable 

 summary in the opening sentences of Lord Macaulay's ' Essay on the 

 War of the Succession in Spain.' The Spaniard, he says, was, in 

 the apprehension of our ancestors, " a kind of doBmon, horribly male- 

 volent, but withal most sagacious and powerful." Their language 

 is just such " as Arminius would have used about the Eomans." " It 

 is the language of a man burning with hatred, but cowed by those 

 whom he hates, and painfully sensible of their superiority, not only 

 in power, but in intelligence." 



♦ Duro, i. p. 415. 



