After he had defeated the Armada in 1588, Lord Howard of Effingham, later raised to an earldom, determined to commemorate the victory by depicting the scenes he had so recently passed through. Accordingly Hendrik Corneliszoon Vroom, who had at this time obtained a European reputation as a marine artist, was invited from Haarlem to paint the pictures. From these Francis Speiring, an eminent craftsman, wove the designs into tapestry. Howard, or, as he now was, the Earl of Nottingham, sold them in his old age to James I., who hung them in the precincts of the House of Lords. When, during the Commonwealth, the House of Lords was abolished, the tapestries were fitted into brown wooden frames and hung on the walls of the chamber which had been used for the Upper House. Here they remained until the House was burned down in 1834, when the ten tapestries perished. Fortunately, however, even in the inartistic eighteenth century, an artist, John Pine, and a friend of Hogarth, had the inspiration to reproduce them by engraving, But for this we should lack what is a most valuable record. It is so easy to fall into inaccuracies a century after an event, but since Pine copied from the tapestries, and the tapestries were executed under Howard’s own supervision, there cannot be much room left for anything incorrect in respect of the ships. Howard had fought against the Spanish ships night and day in that memorable month of July, and had every opportunity of noting the rigging and lines of his enemy’s vessels, so that when he had left the sea and, not unnaturally, devoted his attention to his own memorial, he would be the ideal person to see that accuracy was insisted upon. These engravings are still to be picked up occasionally in some of the London print-sellers, but the illustration here given is from the collection in the Print Room of the British Museum.[86]