On our own side there were also defects of management, not, however, attributable to the officers in command, but partly to the poverty of the queen's Government, and partly to the vacillations of the queen. Elizabeth, it must not be forgotten, was a very poor sovereign, and the maintenance of a great fleet was a heavy drain upon her resources. Moreover, she had an artistic love of tricks. She could not be thoroughly persuaded that it was hopeless to expect to avert the Spanish invasion by artful diplomacy. Therefore, between her impatience under the expenses of the fleet and her profound belief in her own cleverness, she vacillated all through the spring of that eventful year. Her ships had been brought into excellent order by John Hawkins. Her subjects were full of zeal; and although the smaller ports met the demand for ships with loud complaints of poverty and of the ruin of their trade by war, yet London freely offered twice as many vessels and men as the Crown asked for, while the nobles and those adventurers of the stamp of Drake and Hawkins, who had grown rich at the expense of the Spaniards, were active in fitting out vessels and collecting crews. The queen's Lord High Admiral, Charles Howard, Lord Effingham, was as fit a man for the place as could have been found. He had, it is true, no experience in war; and it does not appear, from anything recorded of him, that he was a man of much ability. But he had character and tact, and the happy faculty of allowing himself to be guided by his abler and more experienced subordinates, without suffering his authority to be diminished. By the mouth of Howard, Elizabeth's captains implored her for leave to repeat the cruise for 1587. They pointed out that, if we must fight the Spaniard, it was better to fight him on his own coast than ours, and, moreover, it was safer, since, even if we were to be beaten, defeat would be less dangerous a long way off than at home. But Elizabeth would not part with the hope that her diplomacy, which had stood her in such admirable stead during the twenty-eight years of her reign, would serve her again, and she would not allow her fleet to sail for an attack upon Spain, which must necessarily have broken off the negotiations of peace. Still, the preparations for war were not neglected. The Admiral of England, Lord Howard, with Drake as Vice and Hawkins as Rear Admiral, had his headquarters at Plymouth, while Lord Henry Seymour commanded the ships of London and the East Coast, in the Thames. On the approach of the enemy, his station was to be in the Downs, where he was to watch the Duke of Parma, who was collecting the army of invasion in the Flemish ports. In this work Seymour had the help of a squadron of Dutch vessels, commanded by Justinus of Nassau, a natural son of William the Silent.