The history of these years is obscure. It is usually asserted that, while in Alba's service, about the year 1584-5, Lope married, and that he was soon afterwards exiled to Valencia, whence he set out for Lisbon to join the Invincible Armada. This does not square with Lope's statement in the Dedication of _Querer la propia Desdicha_ to Claudio Conde. There he alleges that Conde helped him out of prison in Madrid, a service repaid by his helping Conde out of the Serranos prison at Valencia, and he goes on to say that "before the first down was on their cheeks" they went to Lisbon to embark on the Armada. He nowhere alleges that they started from Valencia, or that the journey followed the banishment. In an eclogue to the same Conde, Lope avers that he joined the Armada to escape from Filis (otherwise Dorotea), and he adds:—"Who could have thought that, returning from the war, I should find a sweet wife?" The question would be pointless if Lope were already married. Moreover, Barrera's theory that the intrigue with Dorotea ended in 1584 is disproved by the fact that the _Dorotea_ contains allusions to the Conde de Melgar's marriage, which, as we know from Cabrera, took place in 1587. What is certain is that Lope went aboard the _San Juan_, and that during the Armada expedition he used his manuscript verses in Filis's praise for gun-wads. He was a first-class fighting-man, and played his part in the combats up the Channel, where his brother was killed beside him during an encounter between the _San Juan_ and eight Dutch vessels. Disaster never quenched his spirit nor stayed his pen; for, when what was left of the defeated Armada returned to Cádiz, he landed with the greater part of his _Hermosura de Angélica_—eleven thousand verses, written between storm and battle, in continuation of the _Orlando Furioso_. First published in 1602, the _Angélica_ comes short of Ariosto's epic nobility, and is unrelieved by the Italian's touch of ironic fantasy. Nor can it be called successful even as a sequel: its very wealth of invention, its redundant episodes and innumerable digressions, contribute to its failure. But the verse is singularly brilliant and effective, while the skill with which the writer handles proper names is almost Miltonic.