their object.
But the preparations were doomed not to be even tried. The finesse and
manoeuvres of the shrewd Sir Francis Walsingham[123] had caused the
invasion to be retarded for a whole year, and by this time England
was fully prepared for her foes. The result is known. The hollow
treaty of peace into which Parma had entered in order, when all
preparations were completed, to take her by surprise, was entered into
with an equal share of hypocritical policy by Elizabeth. "So (says an
old historian) as they seemed on both sides to sew the foxe's skin to
the lion's."

So powerful was the effect on the public mind, not only of this
projected enterprise, but of its almost unhoped for discomfiture, that
all possible means were taken to commemorate the event. One method
resorted to was the manufacture of tapestry representing a series of
subjects connected with it. At that time Flanders excelled all others
in the manufacture of tapestry, it was scarcely indeed introduced into
England; and our ancestors had a series of ten charts, designed by
Henry Cornelius Vroom, a celebrated painter of Haarlem, from which
their Flemish neighbours worked beautiful draperies, which ornamented
the walls of the House of Lords.

At the time of the Union with Ireland, when considerable repairs and
alterations were made here, these magnificent tapestries were taken
down, cleaned, and replaced, with the addition of large frames of dark
stained wood, which set off the work and colouring to advantage. They
formed a series of ten pictures, round which portraits of the
distinguished officers who commanded the fleet were wrought into a
border.

With a prescience, which might now almost seem prophetic, Mr. John
Pine, engraver, published in 1739 a series of plates taken from these
tapestries; and "because," says he, "time, or accident, or moths may
deface these valuable shadows, we have endeavoured to preserve their
likeness in the preceding prints, which, by being multiplied and
dispersed in various hands, may meet with that security from the
closets of the curious, which the originals must scarce always hope
for, even from the sanctity of the place they are kept in."

"On the 17th day of July, 1588, the English discovered the Spanish
fleet with lofty turrets like castles, in front like a half moon, the
wing thereof spreading out about the length of seven miles, sailing
very slowly, though with full sails, the winds being as it were tired
with car