King James had yielded to superior offers of money and advancement held out to him by Elizabeth, and was now, in Alexander's words, a confirmed heretic.
There was no course left, therefore, but to conquer England at once.

A strange omission had however been made in the plan from first to last.
The commander of the whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head was the whole responsibility.

Not a gun was to be fired--if it could be avoided--until he had come forth with his veterans to make his junction with the Invincible Armada off Calais.

Yet there was no arrangement whatever to enable him to come forth--not the slightest provision to effect that junction.

It would almost seem that the letter-writer of the Escorial had been quite ignorant of the existence of the Dutch fleets off Dunkerk, Newport, and Flushing, although he had certainly received information enough of this formidable obstacle to his plan.
"Most joyful I shall be," said Farnese--writing on one of the days when he had seemed most convinced by Valentine Dale's arguments, and driven to despair by his postulates--"to see myself with these soldiers on English ground, where, with God's help, I hope to accomplish your Majesty's demands." He was much troubled however to find doubts entertained at the last moment as to his 6000 Spaniards; and certainly it hardly needed an argument to prove that the invasion of England with but 17,000 soldiers was a somewhat hazardous scheme.