Santa Cruz must command, and Philip had
resolved to go with him, to prevent too violent proceedings. Santa Cruz
dead, he could find someone who would do what he was told, and his own
presence would no longer be necessary.
The Duke of Medina Sidonia, named El Bueno, or the Good, was a grandee
of highest rank. He was enormously rich, fond of hunting and shooting, a
tolerable rider, for the rest a harmless creature getting on to forty,
conscious of his defects, but not aware that so great a prince had any
need to mend them; without vanity, without ambition, and most happy when
lounging in his orange gardens at San Lucan. Of active service he had
seen none. He was Captain-General of Andalusia, and had run away from
Cadiz when Drake came into the harbour; but that was all. To his
astonishment and to his dismay he learnt that it was on him that the
choice had fallen to be the Lord High Admiral of Spain and commander of
the so much talked of expedition to England. He protested his unfitness.
He said that he was no seaman; that he knew nothing of fighting by sea
or land; that if he ventured out in a boat he was always sick; that he
had never seen the English Channel; and that, as to politics, he neither
knew anything nor cared anything about them.
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