These vessels carried. 837 guns and 6279 men. But the navy was reinforced by the patriotism and liberality of English merchants and private gentlemen. The city of London having been requested to furnish 15 ships of war and 5000 men, asked two days for deliberation, and then gave 30 ships and 10,000 men of which number 2710 were seamen. Other cities, particularly Plymouth, came forward with proportionate liberality, and private individuals, nobles, merchants, and men of humblest rank, were enthusiastic in volunteering into the naval service, to risk property and life in defence of the country. By midsummer there had been a total force of 197 vessels manned, and partially equipped, with an aggregate of 29,744 tons, and 15,785 seamen. Of this fleet a very large number were mere coasters of less than 100 tons each; scarcely ten ships were above 500, and but one above 1000 tons—the Triumph, Captain Frobisher, of 1100 tons, 42 guns, and 500 sailors.
Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord High-Admiral of England, distinguished for his martial character, public spirit, and admirable temper, rather than for experience or skill as a seaman, took command of the whole fleet, in his "little odd ship for all conditions," the Ark-Royal, of 800 tons, 425 sailors, and 55 guns.
Next in rank was Vice-Admiral Drake, in the Revenge, of 500 tons, 250 men and 40 guns. Lord Henry Seymour, in the Rainbow, of precisely the same size and strength, commanded the inner squadron, which cruised in the neighbourhood of the French and Flemish coast.
The Hollanders and Zeelanders had undertaken to blockade the Duke of Parma still more closely, and pledged themselves that he should never venture to show himself upon the open sea at all. The mouth of the Scheldt, and the dangerous shallows off the coast of Newport and Dunkirk, swarmed with their determined and well-seasoned craft, from the flybooter or filibuster of the rivers, to the larger armed vessels, built to confront every danger, and to deal with any adversary.
Farnese, on his part, within that well-guarded territory, had, for months long, scarcely slackened in his preparations, day or night. Whole forests had been felled in the land of Waas to furnish him with transports and gun-boats, and with such rapidity, that—according to his enthusiastic historiographer—each tree seemed by magic to metamorphose itself into a vessel at the word of command. Shipbuilders, pilots, and seamen, were brought from the Baltic, from Hamburgh, from Genoa. The whole surface of the obedient Netherlands, whence wholesome industry had long been banished, was now the scene of a prodigious baleful activity. Portable bridges for fording the rivers of England, stockades for entrenchments, rafts and oars, were provided in vast numbers, and Alexander dug canals and widened natural streams to facilitate his operations. These wretched Provinces, crippled, impoverished, languishing for peace, were forced to contribute out of their poverty, and to find strength even in their exhaustion, to furnish the machinery for destroying their own countrymen, and for hurling to perdition their most healthful neighbour.
And this approaching destruction of England—now generally believed in— was like the sound of a trumpet throughout Catholic Europe. Scions of royal houses, grandees of azure blood, the bastard of Philip II., the bastard of Savoy, the bastard of Medici, the Margrave of Burghaut, the Archduke Charles, nephew of the Emperor, the Princes of Ascoli and of Melfi, the Prince of Morocco, and others of illustrious name, with many a noble English traitor, like Paget, and Westmoreland, and Stanley, all hurried to the camp of Farnese, as to some famous tournament, in which it was a disgrace to chivalry if their names were not enrolled. The roads were trampled with levies of fresh troops from Spain, Naples, Corsica, the States of the Church, the Milanese, Germany, Burgundy.
Blas Capizucca was sent in person to conduct reinforcements from the north of Italy. The famous Terzio of Naples, under Carlos Pinelo, arrived 3500 strong—the most splendid regiment ever known in the history of war. Every man had an engraved corslet and musket-barrel, and there were many who wore gilded armour, while their waving plumes and festive caparisons made them look like holiday-makers, rather than real campaigners, in the eyes of the inhabitants of the various cities through which their road led them to Flanders. By the end of April the Duke of Parma saw himself at the head of 60,000 men, at a monthly expense of 454,315 crowns or dollars. Yet so rapid was the progress of disease— incident to northern climates—among those southern soldiers, that we shall find the number woefully diminished before they were likely to set foot upon the English shore.
Thus great preparations, simultaneously with pompous negotiations, had been going forward month after month, in England, Holland, Flanders. Nevertheless, winter, spring, two-thirds of summer, had passed away, and on the 29th July, 1588, there remained the same sickening uncertainty, which was the atmosphere in which the nations had existed for a twelvemonth.
Howard had cruised for a few weeks between England and Spain, without any results, and, on his return, had found it necessary to implore her Majesty, as late as July, to "trust no more to Judas' kisses, but to her sword, not her enemy's word."