"Upon Drake's voyage, in very truth, dependeth the life and death of the cause, according to man's judgment," said Walsingham.
The issue was encouraging, even, if the voyage--as a mercantile speculation--proved not so brilliant as the previous enterprises of Sir Francis had been.

He returned in the midsummer of 1586, having captured and brandschatzed St.Domingo and Carthagena; and burned St.Augustine.
"A fearful man to the King of Spain is Sir Francis Drake," said Lord Burghley.

Nevertheless, the Queen and the Lord-Treasurer--as we have shown by the secret conferences at Greenwich--had, notwithstanding these successes, expressed a more earnest desire for peace than ever.
A simple, sea-faring Englishman, with half-a-dozen miserable little vessels, had carried terror, into the Spanish possessions all over the earth: but even then the great Queen had not learned to rely on the valour of her volunteers against her most formidable enemy.
Drake was, however, bent on another enterprise.

The preparations for Philip's great fleet had been going steadily forward in Lisbon, Cadiz, and other ports of Spain and Portugal, and, despite assurances to the contrary, there was a growing belief that England was to be invaded.

To destroy those ships before the monarch's face, would be, indeed, to "singe his beard." But whose arm was daring enough for such a stroke?
Whose but that of the Devonshire skipper who had already accomplished so much?
And so Sir Francis, "a man true to his word, merciful to those under him, and hating nothing so much as idleness," had come to the Netherlands to talk over his project with the States-General, and with the Dutch merchants and sea-captains.