That Saturday afternoon, Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron of sixteen
lay between Dungeness and Folkestone; waiting the approach of the two
fleets. He spoke several-coasting vessels coming from the west; but they
could give him no information--strange to say--either of the Spaniards
or, of his own countrymen,--Seymour; having hardly three days' provision
in his fleet, thought that there might be time to take in supplies; and
so bore into the Downs. Hardly had he been there half an hour; when a
pinnace arrived from the Lord-Admiral; with orders for Lord Henry's
squadron to hold itself in readiness. There was no longer time for
victualling, and very soon afterwards the order was given to make sail
and bear for the French coast. The wind was however so light; that the
whole day was spent before Seymour with his ships could cross the
channel. At last, towards seven in the evening; he saw the great Spanish
Armada, drawn up in a half-moon, and riding at anchor--the ships very
near each other--a little to the eastward of Calais, and very near the
shore. The English, under Howard Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins, were
slowly following, and--so soon as Lord Henry, arriving from the opposite
shore; had made his junction with them--the whole combined fleet dropped
anchor likewise very near Calais, and within one mile and a half of the
Spaniards. That invincible force had at last almost reached its
destination. It was now to receive the cooperation of the great Farnese,
at the head of an army of veterans, disciplined on a hundred battle-
fields, confident from countless victories, and arrayed, as they had been
with ostentatious splendour, to follow the most brilliant general in
Christendom on his triumphal march into the capital of England. The
long-threatened invasion was no longer an idle figment of politicians,
maliciously spread abroad to poison men's minds as to the intentions of
a long-enduring but magnanimous, and on the whole friendly sovereign.
The mask had been at last thrown down, and the mild accents of Philip's