arian opposition to the
general policy of England persisted for a few years longer. But the
merchants who were the inheritors of centuries of commercial intercourse
with England's new enemies were soon to receive a shock that completely
changed their minds. They were themselves one of the strongest factors
that made for war in the knotty problem now to be solved at the cannon's
mouth because English trade was seeking new outlets in every direction
and was beating hard against every door that foreigners shut in its
face. These merchants would not, however, support the war party till
they were forced to, as they still hoped to gain by other means what
only war could win.

The year that Drake came home (1580) Philip at last got hold of a
sea-going fleet, the eleven big Portuguese galleons taken when Lisbon
fell. With the Portuguese ships, sailors, and oversea possessions, with
more galleons under construction at Santander in Spain, and with the
galleons of the Indian Guard built by the great Menendez to protect New
Spain: with all this performed or promised, Philip began to feel as if
the hour was at hand when he could do to England what she had done to
him.

In 1583 Santa Cruz, the best Spanish admiral since the death of
Menendez, proposed to form the nucleus of the Great Armada out of the
fleet with which he had just broken down the last vestige of Portuguese
resistance in the Azores. From that day on, the idea was never dropped.
At the same time Elizabeth discovered the Paris Plot between Mary and
Philip and the Catholics of France, all of whom were bent on her
destruction. England stood to arms. But false ideas of naval defence
were uppermost in the Queen's Council. No attempt was made to strike a
concentrated blow at the heart of the enemy's fleet in his own waters.
Instead of this the English ships were carefully divided among the three
squadrons meant to defend the approaches to England, Ireland, and
Scotland, because, as the Queen-in-Council sagely remarked, who could be
expected to know what the enemy's point of attack would be? The fact is
that when wielding the forces of the fleet and army the Queen and most
of her non-combatant councillors never quite reached that supreme point
of view from which the greatest statesmen see exactly where civil
control ends and civilian interference begins. Luckily for England,
their mistakes were once more covered up by a turn of the international
kaleidoscope.

No sooner ha