The next year, in spite of Drake’s ravages, sailed the great armada—one hundred and forty ships and thirty thousand men, with friars, inquisitors, etc.—for the conquest and conversion of England: argosies in which were centred the hopes of Spain; only to be crushed and defeated by one half its number of English ships, combined with the adverse elements, so that only a pitiful remnant returned to Spanish ports. A last expiring effort at naval supremacy was made in 1595; but this fleet also was sunk, carrying with it Spain’s prestige on the ocean wave. And at last, in misery and torture from a loathsome disease, at the age of seventy–one, in the year 1598, Philip II departed this life; his chief legacy an impoverished kingdom, his greatest monument the Escorial, that palace, monastery, mausoleum, library, upon which he had spent thirty years of time and lavished millions of treasure. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Two royal lives practically extend throughout the sixteenth century, or from the year 1500 to 1598. The lives and reigns of three of their successors carry us forward exactly a century further, for Philip III reigned from 1598–1621; Philip IV, 1621–1665; and Charles II, 1665–1700. The house of Hapsburg had come in with Charles I, who was also Charles V of Germany; it terminated in Spain in the reign of Charles II, after an even two hundred years of power. It will do us no harm to recapitulate, that under Isabella and Ferdinand the Spanish monarchy was consolidated; under Charles I it grew to be an empire, wide–extended, world–embracing; and under Phillip II began to shrink again to meaner proportions.