the kingdom, and Philip was assured on the side of France. [Sidenote: The Armada sails.] The revolution was hardly over when at the end of May the Armada started from Lisbon. But it had scarcely put to sea when a gale in the Bay of Biscay drove its scattered vessels into Ferrol, and it was only on the nineteenth of July 1588 that the sails of the Armada were seen from the Lizard, and the English beacons flared out their alarm along the coast. The news found England ready. An army was mustering under Leicester at Tilbury, the militia of the midland counties were gathering to London, while those of the south and east were held in readiness to meet a descent on either shore. The force which Parma hoped to lead consisted of forty thousand men, for the Armada brought nearly twenty-two thousand soldiers to be added to the seventeen thousand who were waiting to cross from the Netherlands. Formidable as this force was, it was far too weak by itself to do the work which Philip meant it to do. Had Parma landed on the earliest day he purposed, he would have found his way to London barred by a force stronger than his own, a force too of men in whose ranks were many who had already crossed pikes on equal terms with his best infantry in Flanders. "When I shall have landed," he warned his master, "I must fight battle after battle, I shall lose men by wounds and disease, I must leave detachments behind me to keep open my communications; and in a short time the body of my army will become so weak that not only I may be unable to advance in the face of the enemy, and time may be given to the heretics and your Majesty's other enemies to interfere, but there may fall out some notable inconveniences, with the loss of everything, and I be unable to remedy it." What Philip really counted on was the aid which his army would find within England itself. Parma's chance of victory, if he succeeded in landing, lay in a Catholic rising. But at this crisis patriotism proved stronger than religious fanaticism in the hearts of the English Catholics. The news of invasion ran like fire along the English coasts. The whole nation answered the Queen's appeal. Instinct told England that its work was to be done at sea, and the royal fleet was soon lost among the vessels of the volunteers. London, when Elizabeth asked for fifteen ships and five thousand men, offered thirty ships and ten thousand seamen, while ten thousand of its train-bands drilled in the Artillery ground. Every seaport showed the same temper. Coasters put out from every little harbour. Squires and merchants pushed off in their own little barks for a brush with the Spaniards. In the presence of the stranger all religious strife was forgotten. The work of the Jesuits was undone in an hour. Of the nobles and squires whose tenants were to muster under the flag of the invader not one proved a traitor. The greatest lords on Allen's list of Philip's helpers, Cumberland, Oxford, and