ngth the Spanish admiral, despairing of
success, fled northward with a southerly wind, in the hope of rounding
Scotland, and so returning to Spain without a further encounter with the
English fleet.

Lord Effingham left a squadron to continue the blockade of the Prince of
Parma's armament; but that wise general soon withdrew his troops to more
promising fields of action. Meanwhile the lord admiral himself, and
Drake, chased the "vincible" armada, as it was now termed, for some
distance northward; and then, when they seemed to bend away from the
Scotch coast toward Norway, it was thought best, in the words of Drake,
"to leave them to those boisterous and uncouth northern seas."

The sufferings and losses which the unhappy Spaniards sustained in their
flight round Scotland and Ireland are well known. Of their whole armada
only fifty-three shattered vessels brought back their beaten and wasted
crews to the Spanish coast, which they had quitted in such pageantry and
pride.

Some passages from the writings of those who took part in the struggle
have been already quoted, and the most spirited description of the
defeat of the armada which ever was penned may perhaps be taken from the
letter which our brave vice-admiral Drake wrote in answer to some
mendacious stories by which the Spaniards strove to hide their shame.
Thus does he describe the scenes in which he played so important a
part:[5]

"They were not ashamed to publish, in sundry languages in print, great
victories in words, which they pretended to have obtained against this
realm, and spread the same in a most false sort over all parts of
France, Italy, and elsewhere; when, shortly afterward, it was happily
manifested in very deed to all nations, how their navy, which they
termed invincible, consisting of one hundred forty sail of ships, not
only of their own kingdom, but strengthened with the greatest argosies,
Portugal carracks, Florentines, and large hulks of other countries, were
by thirty of her majesty's own ships of war, and a few of our own
merchants, by the wise, valiant, and advantageous conduct of the Lord
Charles Howard, high admiral of England, beaten and shuffled together
even from the Lizard in Cornwall, first to Portland, when they
shamefully left Don Pedro de Valdez with his mighty ship; from Portland
to Calais, where they lost Hugh de Moncado, with the galleys of which he
was captain; and from Calais, driven with squibs from their anchors,
were c