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Besides 2088 galley-slaves.

The Spanish official account, since received, gives a total of 28,687.* If the galley-slaves are not included, the amount would be 30,621.

Nothing being left for the distressed and disheartened Armada but to make the best of its way home, they proceeded along the western coast of Ireland, where their losses in ships and men were excessive. By an account taken apparently with great care, and after much inquiry and research, the result was, that—

On the west coast of Ireland Ships.

were wrecked and destroyed

Men.

17

5,394

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*This amount of men is taken from a small book in the black-letter, dated 1588, and supposed to be a copy of one ordered by Burleigh to be translated and printed. It contains a most minute account of every ship, galley, galleon, and other vessel; their armament in guns, weapons, and men; their commanders, inferior officers, volunteer adventurers, ministers of religion and justice, knights, &c. It was first published at Lisbon, with a view probably of making an impression of the formidable Armada. Its title is A True Discourse of the

exclusive of those ships taken and men slain in fight, and those that died of sickness and famine. But Stow makes the loss much greater, and Hakluyt says, "They lost 81 ships in this expedition, and upwards of 13,500 soldiers."*

The English loss was very small; a Londoner, of which one Cocke was master, is the only vessel mentioned to have gone down in the midst of the enemy. The Spanish narrator ascribes our escapes from their shot to the smallness and nimbleness of our ships in comparison with their own: and he is partly in the right; but their guns, tier above tier, in the lofty forecastles, fixed point blank, threw their shot into the highest rigging or over the mastheads of our small ships. So sensible were the Spaniards of this defect, that, shortly after the war, they began to alter the mode of building their ships, and in the course of the seventeenth century produced some of the finest ships in Europe.

It is now, and has long been, the custom after a great battle, by sea or land, for the commander-inchief to write a public eulogium of those who have behaved well; but nothing of the kind, beyond general praise, appears to have been issued from Lord Charles Howard, either during the contest

Armie which the King of Spain has caused to be assembled at Lisbon, &c.'-In Mr. Thorpe's Catalogue of many very rare and curious old books.

* Stow. Hakluyt.

or at its close; and if he has recorded the merits of any, such record must be looked for in some private collection. Of Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Wynter, who remained to watch over the movements of the Duke of Parma, he speaks in terms of praise, but nothing after the termination of the contest; nor, indeed, does it appear in any of the chronicles, whether this second son of the Protector belonged either to the army or navy, or neither: he might have subsequently obtained some employment at court, for Rowland White tells us that the salary of Sir Walter Raleigh, as governor of Jersey, was burthened with 300l. a year to Lord Henry Seymour. Before he paid off the Rainbow he became querulous, was jealous of Drake and Frobisher, and in his letters to Mr. Secretary Walsingham was always talking of going home.

There were two officers in the fleet who had more service than any others, yet never received a separate command nor promotion- Captain Thomas Fenner and Captain Robert Cross. The former was Captain of Drake's ship, the Elizabeth Bonaventure, in 1585; of the Dreadnought, in Drake's expedition to Cadiz; of the Nonpareil, in the Armada; of the Dreadnought, in the Portugal expedition; commanded one of the ten ships in Hawkins and Frobisher's expedition to the coast of Spain; of the Lion, in Lord Thomas Howard's expedition;

S

of the Rainbow, before Brest, when Frobisher lost his life.

Captain Robert Cross was almost constantly employed. In Drake's West India voyage he commanded a bark; in the Armada he commanded the Hope. In Lord Thomas Howard's expedition, in 1592, he was Captain of the Bonaventure; in Frobisher and Burroughs' to the coast of Spain, he commanded the Foresight; in the Cadiz expedition, under Essex and Howard, he was Captain of the Swiftsure; and in the Downs fleet he commanded the Nonpareil.

Many other officers distinguished themselves in the Armada, and on other occasions-the Earl of Cumberland, Sir Henry Palmer, Sir George Beston, Richard Hawkins, and two brothers of Thomas Fenner, one of whom was killed on the Groyne expedition. Nothing indeed could be more gratifying to the Queen than the conduct of all who participated in the overthrow of the Armada; which just at that time was enhanced by the opportune arrival of Sir Robert Sidney from Scotland, who reported to Her Majesty the determination of King James to stand firm to her interests, and to support those of the Protestant religion; and Sir Robert said that when he laid before James the arts and machinations of the Papists, the young King remarked that "he expected no other favour at the

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hands of the Spaniards than what Polyphemus promised to Ulysses-that when he had devoured all the rest, he would reserve him for the last morsel." This may be considered a fit place to introduce the Spanish narrative of the expedition of their Armada, which is not only authentic, but remarkably accurate, when compared with those of our own historians.*

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* In the Life of Drake' the following narrative was frequently alluded to, and several passages quoted to show how very nearly the English and Spanish accounts of the proceedings of the two fleets in 1588 agreed, and (in a note) was given the following brief but correct history of the MS. Spanish document:"This manuscript, in the Spanish language, was sent to a gentleman of the Admiralty, from the archives of Madrid, after the conclusion of the revolutionary war. It is evidently a journal kept by an officer of the Duke of Medina's flag-ship, and it may safely be pronounced a modest and honest narrative.". -Barrow's Life of Drake, p. 287.

"The Duke of Medina Sidonia (says the Spanish manuscript narrative of the invasion, which Mr. Barrow quotes in a provoking manner, not giving any satisfactory account of its authenticity, or informing us what or where it is) summoned to him," &c.-Edinburgh Review, No. 162, p. 397.

The gentleman of the "Edinburgh Review" may be well assured that the writers in that journal are the last to be treated "in a provoking manner." In the present case it was thought that the brief notice was sufficiently explicit as to the authenticity, the what and the where; but Diis aliter visum: therefore the whole journal, as it is, shall be given in a true and faithful translation (by H. F. Amedroz, Esq. of the Admiralty), being a document more appropriately inserted here than in the 'Life of Drake.' It may be considered as an interesting historical record.

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