eing strengthened every moment; the young nobility emulously
hastened on board. But neither could the admiral proceed to Dunkirk,
as the harbour was then far too narrow to receive his large ships, and
his pilots were afraid of being carried to the northward by the
currents. He anchored in the roadstead east of Calais in the direction
of Dunkirk.

He had already previously informed the Duke of Parma that he was on
the way, and had then, immediately before his arrival at Calais,
despatched a pilot to Dunkirk, to request that he would join him with
a number of small vessels, that they might better encounter the
English, and bring with him cannon balls of a certain calibre, of
which he began to fall short.[273] It is clear that he still wished to
undertake from thence, if supported according to his views, the great
attempt at a disembarkation which he was commissioned to effect. But
Alexander of Parma, whom the first message had found some days before
at Bruges, had not yet arrived at Dunkirk when the second came: the
preparations for embarking were only then just begun for the first
time; and they could scarcely venture actually to embark, as English
and Dutch ships of war were still ever cruising before the harbour.

Alexander Farnese's failure to effect a junction with Medina Sidonia
has been always traced to personal motives; it was even said in
England, at a later time, that Queen Elizabeth had offered him the
hand of Lady Arabella Stuart, which might open the way to the English
throne for himself. It is true that his enterprises in the Netherlands
appeared to lie closest to his heart; even Tassis, who was about his
person, remarks that he carried on his preparations more out of
obedience than with any zeal of his own. But the chief cause why the
two operations were not better combined lay in their very nature. The
geographical relation of the Spanish monarchy to England would have
required two separate invasions, the one from the Pyrenean peninsula,
the other from the Netherlands. The wish to combine the forces of such
distant countries in a single invasion made the enterprise, especially
when the means of communication of the period were so inadequate,
overpoweringly helpless. Wind and weather had been little considered
in the scheme. In both those countries immense materials of war had
been collected with extreme effort; they had been brought within a few
miles of sea of each other, but combine they could not. Now