He did not
die, like Recalde or Oquendo, seeing no occasion for it. He flung down
his command and retired to his palace at San Lucan; and so far was
Philip from resenting the loss of the Armada on its commander, that he
continued him in his governorship of Cadiz, where Essex found him seven
years later, and where he ran from Essex as he had run from Drake.
The Spaniards made no attempt to conceal the greatness of their defeat.
Unwilling to allow that the Upper Powers had been against them, they set
it frankly down to the superior fighting powers of the English.
The English themselves, the Prince of Parma said, were modest in their
victory. They thought little of their own gallantry. To them the defeat
and destruction of the Spanish fleet was a declaration of the Almighty
in the cause of their country and the Protestant faith. Both sides had
appealed to Heaven, and Heaven had spoken.
It was the turn of the tide. The wave of the reconquest of the
Netherlands ebbed from that moment. Parma took no more towns from the
Hollanders. The Catholic peers and gentlemen of England, who had held
aloof from the Established Church, waiting _ad illud tempus_ for a
religious revolution, accepted the verdict of Providence.
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