It had been the wish of Sir William Stanley that Ireland should be
subjugated first, as a basis of operations against England; but this had
been overruled. The intrigues of Mendoza and Farnese, too, with the
Catholic nobles of Scotland, had proved, after all, unsuccessful. King
James had yielded to superior offers of money and advancement held out to
him by Elizabeth, and was now, in Alexander's words, a confirmed heretic.

There was no course left, therefore, but to conquer England at once.
A strange omission had however been made in the plan from first to last.
The commander of the whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head
was the whole responsibility. Not a gun was to be fired--if it could be
avoided--until be had come forth with his veterans to make his junction
with the Invincible Armada off Calais. Yet there was no arrangement
whatever to enable him to come forth--not the slightest provision to
effect that junction. It would almost seem that the letter-writer of the
Escorial had been quite ignorant of the existence of the Dutch fleets off
Dunkerk, Newport, and Flushing, although he had certainly received
information enough of this formidable obstacle to his plan.

"Most joyful I shall be," said Farnese-writing on one of the days when
he had seemed most convinced by Valentine Dale's arguments, and driven
to despair by his postulates--"to see myself with these soldiers on
English ground, where, with God's help, I hope to accomplish your
Majesty's demands." He was much troubled however to find doubts
entertained at the last moment as to his 6000 Spaniards; and certainly
it hardly needed an argument to prove that the invasion of England with
but 17,000 soldiers was a somewhat hazardous scheme. Yet the pilot
Moresini had brought him letters from Medina Sidonia, in which the Duke
expressed hesitation about parting with these 6000 veterans; unless the
English fleet should have been previously destroyed, and had also again