The time had come when Philip the Second at last decided that the insolence of England must be punished. The exploits of men like Hawkins and Drake and Ralegh and Frobisher were becoming intolerable, and though Elizabeth had at first given no sanction to their enterprises, treating them much as she had treated the English supporters of the Protestant cause in France, yet the knighthood of Drake on the deck of his own ship at length declared the bent of her sympathy. The time had come for action: and the time seemed specially favourable to Philip. Sextus the Fifth was Pope, and he had created the league for the subversion of heresy, and the arch-heretic of Europe must be put away. The Prince of Parma was in the Netherlands ready to invade England. The Catholics in England would be united by the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Protestants themselves would be averse to the surrender of the throne to her son and his Scotch followers. So Philip thought, and slowly set the immense machinery of preparation to work. Elizabeth possessed remarkable foresight and a remarkable dislike for definite action. Her foresight was as uncanny as an instinct, or her power of dissimulation, which is the art of diplomacy. Accordingly, it is probable that her efforts for peace, and the treaty which she patched up with the Prince of Parma, did not arise from any fear of war, but were a clever design to increase the proud confidence of the enemy by making him think that England was in reality in a state of panic, quite unprepared for war. She knew well of the preparations, and of their huge scale. Drake had sent news to Lord Burghley: "Assuredly," he wrote, "there never was heard of or known so great preparations as the King of Spain hath and daily maketh ready for the invasion of England." With daring he sailed into the very harbour of Cadiz and damaged more than a hundred tall ships. He was forbidden to do further damage. Spain's enterprise was not destined to be strangled at home. Elizabeth's fear, if her fear existed, allowed Philip to spend untold sums of money on his fleet, and to adorn it with the flower of his nobility, and allowed England to overcome her enemy in the full ostentation of his display. Certainly Lord Howard of Effingham, Admiral of the Fleet, knew nothing of Elizabeth's intentions, nor did Sir John Hawkins, the paymaster. They wrote angry letters to Walsingham when the movements of their ships were confined, and some of their men disbanded. "Never," wrote Lord Howard, "never since England was England was there such a stratagem and mask made to deceive us as this treaty." And Sir John Hawkins was even more vehement: "We are wasting money, wasting strength, dishonouring and discrediting ourselves by our uncertain dallying." Naturally they desired to repeat Drake's exploit, to run every risk, like brave Englishmen, and to crush the Spanish fleet in the Spanish harbours. But they must wait.