pacity, he considered.
the great Catholic cause to have been, so foully sacrificed. Crippled,
maltreated, and diminished in number, as were his ships; he would have
still faced, the enemy, but the winds and currents were fast driving him
on, a lee-shore, and the pilots, one and all, assured him that it would
be inevitable destruction to remain. After a slight and very ineffectual
attempt to rescue Don Diego de Pimentel in the St. Matthew--who refused
to leave his disabled ship--and Don Francisco de Toledo; whose great
galleon, the St. Philip, was fast driving, a helpless wreck, towards
Zeeland, the Armada bore away N.N.E. into the open sea, leaving those,
who could not follow, to their fate.
The St. Matthew, in a sinking condition, hailed a Dutch fisherman, who
was offered a gold chain to pilot her into Newport. But the fisherman,
being a patriot; steered her close to the Holland fleet, where she was
immediately assaulted by Admiral Van der Does, to whom, after a two
hours' bloody fight, she struck her flag. Don Diego, marshal of the camp
to the famous legion of Sicily, brother, of the Marquis of Tavera, nephew
of the Viceroy of Sicily, uncle to the Viceroy of Naples, and numbering
as many titles, dignities; and high affinities as could be expected of a
grandee of the first class, was taken, with his officers, to the Hague.
"I was the means," said Captain Borlase, "that the best sort were saved,
and the rest were cast overboard and slain at our entry. He, fought with
us two hours; and hurt divers of our men, but at, last yielded."
John Van der Does, his captor; presented the banner; of the Saint Matthew
to the great church of Leyden, where--such was its prodigious length--it
hung; from floor to ceiling without being entirely unrolled; and there
hung, from generation to generation; a worthy companion to the Spanish
flags which had been left behind when Valdez abandoned the siege of that
heroic city fifteen years before.
The galleon St. Philip, one of the four largest ships in the Armada,
dismasted and foundering; drifted towards Newport, where camp-marshal Don
Francisco de Toledo hoped in, vain for succour. La Motte made a feeble
attempt at rescue, but some vessels from the Holland fleet, being much
more active, seized the unfortunate galleon, and carried her into
Flushing. The captors found forty-eight brass cannon and other things of
value on board, but there were some casks of Ribadavia wine which was
more fatal
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