The Spanish nobility were encouraged to join in this new crusade, and responded to the invitation in crowds. The ships, collectively, were to carry more than three thousand guns. A Vicar-General of the Inquisition was to accompany the fleet, and establish the Inquisition in England; and it has been affirmed that complete sets of instruments of torture were also taken. The Duke of Parma, with a large army, was to join the Armada from Belgium, and insure the conquest. This, we shall see, was prevented by the noble and faithful conduct of Holland, which, in spite of legitimate cause of complaint against England, in the recent design of the Earl of Leicester, came nobly to the rescue, and blockaded Parma, so that he and his troops were rendered unavailable. But for this, and some mistakes of the naval commanders, in all probability English history would have been very different. Many reports of the expedition had reached England, but just about the time it was ready Elizabeth’s fears had been lulled by the prospect of successful negotiations, and many of her advisers thought the threatened expedition would never approach English shores. Elizabeth, fortunately for England, had revived the navy, as well as the merchant service, which had been so greatly neglected between the death of her father and her own accession. The wealthier nobles and citizens, encouraged by the queen, built many men-of-war, and the Royal navy was soon able to take the sea with 20,000 fighting men. The prudence and foresight of the queen in these measures was rewarded by the success of her seamen in disposing of a force such as had hardly ever been arrayed against any country, by sea. Philip, “who from his closet in Madrid aspired to govern the world,” and who hated Protestantism with so great a hatred that he declared “if his own son was a heretic he would carry wood to burn him,” had good and devoted soldiers to carry out his views. The Duke of Alva was inconceivably cold-blooded and cruel, yet he was a man of great ability. No more perfect chevalier and enlightened soldier existed than the young Don John, whose career was so short; and the famous Duke of Parma, the greatest general of the day, was to command the army of invasion; while the Duke of Medina Sidonia, one of the highest grandees of Spain, was a most gallant soldier. He was no seaman, and was surrounded by a staff of soldiers, or else there might have been a different story to tell of Philip’s Armada. But that does not detract from the Duke’s personal devotion and gallantry; and the expedition was accompanied by hundreds of officers of like personal character.