ting to cross
from the Netherlands. Formidable as this force was, it was far too weak
by itself to do the work which Philip meant it to do. Had Parma landed
on the earliest day he purposed, he would have found his way to London
barred by a force stronger than his own, a force too of men in whose
ranks were many who had already crossed pikes on equal terms with his
best infantry in Flanders. "When I shall have landed," he warned his
master, "I must fight battle after battle, I shall lose men by wounds
and disease, I must leave detachments behind me to keep open my
communications; and in a short time the body of my army will become so
weak that not only I may be unable to advance in the face of the enemy,
and time may be given to the heretics and your Majesty's other enemies
to interfere, but there may fall out some notable inconveniences, with
the loss of everything, and I be unable to remedy it." What Philip
really counted on was the aid which his army would find within England
itself. Parma's chance of victory, if he succeeded in landing, lay in a
Catholic rising. But at this crisis patriotism proved stronger than
religious fanaticism in the hearts of the English Catholics. The news of
invasion ran like fire along the English coasts. The whole nation
answered the Queen's appeal. Instinct told England that its work was to
be done at sea, and the royal fleet was soon lost among the vessels of
the volunteers. London, when Elizabeth asked for fifteen ships and five
thousand men, offered thirty ships and ten thousand seamen, while ten
thousand of its train-bands drilled in the Artillery ground. Every
seaport showed the same temper. Coasters put out from every little
harbour. Squires and merchants pushed off in their own little barks for
a brush with the Spaniards. In the presence of the stranger all
religious strife was forgotten. The work of the Jesuits was undone in an
hour. Of the nobles and squires whose tenants were to muster under the
flag of the invader not one proved a traitor. The greatest lords on
Allen's list of Philip's helpers, Cumberland, Oxford, and
Northumberland, brought their vessels up alongside of Drake and Lord
Howard as soon as Philip's fleet appeared in the Channel. The Catholic
gentry who had been painted as longing for the coming of the stranger,
led their tenantry, when the stranger came, to the muster at Tilbury.

[Sidenote: The two fleets.]

The loyalty of the Catholics decided the fate of Phili