solution, but was diverted from it by the advice
of his confessor. This conclusion of the enterprise would have been more
glorious to the English; but the event proved almost equally fatal to
the Spaniards. A violent tempest overtook the armada after it passed the
Orkneys; the ships had already lost their anchors, and were obliged to
keep to sea: the mariners, unaccustomed to such hardships, and not able
to govern such unwieldy vessels, yielded to the fury of the storm, and
allowed their ships to drive either on the western isles of Scotland, or
on the coast of Ireland, where they were miserably wrecked. Not a half
of the navy returned to Spain; and the seamen as well as soldiers who
remained, were so overcome with hardships and fatigue, and so dispirited
by their discomfiture, that they filled all Spain with accounts of the
desperate valor of the English and of the tempestuous violence of that
ocean which surrounds them.

Such was the miserable and dishonorable conclusion of an enterprise
which had been preparing for three years, which had exhausted the
revenue and force of Spain, and which had long filled all Europe with
anxiety or expectation. Philip, who was a slave to his ambition, but
had an entire command over his countenance, no sooner heard of the
mortifying event which blasted all his hopes, than he fell on his
knees, and rendering thanks for that gracious dispensation of Providence
expressed his joy that the calamity was not greater. The Spanish
priests, who had so often blessed this holy crusade and foretold its
infallible success, were somewhat at a loss to account for the victory
gained over the Catholic monarch by excommunicated heretics and an
execrable usurper: but they at last discovered, that all the calamities
of the Spaniards had proceeded from their allowing the infidel Moors to
live among them.[*] [29]

{1589.} Soon after the defeat and dispersion of the Spanish armada, the
queen summoned a new parliament, and received from them a supply of two
subsidies and four fifteenths, payable in four years. This is the first
instance that subsidies were doubled in one supply; and so unusual a
concession was probably obtained from the joy of the present success,
and from the general sense of the queen's necessities. Some members
objected to this heavy charge, on account of the great burden of loans
which had lately been imposed upon the nation.[**] [30]

Elizabeth foresaw that this house of commons, like a