For three years had Philip been preparing, in all parts of his dominions, for this overwhelming expedition, and his equipments were fully equal to his extensive preparations; and so popular was the project in Spain, and so ardent were its votaries, that there was not a family of any note which had not contributed some of its dearest and nearest members; there were also one hundred and eighty Capuchins, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Mendicant friars; and so great was the enthusiastic anticipation, that even females hired vessels to follow the fleet which contained those they loved; two or three of these were driven by the storm on the coast of France. This Armada consisted of about one hundred and fifty ships, most of which were of an uncommon size, strength, and thickness, more like floating castles than anything else; and to this unwieldy size may, probably, be attributed much of their discomfiture. For the greater holiness of their action, twelve were called the Twelve Apostles; and a pinnace of the Andalusian squadron, commanded by Don Pedro de Valdez, was called the "Holy Ghost." The fleet is said to have contained thirty-two thousand persons, and to have cost every day thirty thousand ducats. The Duke of Parma's contemporary preparations were also prodigious, and of a nature which plainly declared the full certainty and confidence in which the invaders indulged of making good their object. But the preparations were doomed not to be even tried. The finesse and manoeuvres of the shrewd Sir Francis Walsingham[123] had caused the invasion to be retarded for a whole year, and by this time England was fully prepared for her foes. The result is known. The hollow treaty of peace into which Parma had entered in order, when all preparations were completed, to take her by surprise, was entered into with an equal share of hypocritical policy by Elizabeth. "So (says an old historian) as they seemed on both sides to sew the foxe's skin to the lion's." So powerful was the effect on the public mind, not only of this projected enterprise, but of its almost unhoped for discomfiture, that all possible means were taken to commemorate the event. One method resorted to was the manufacture of tapestry representing a series of subjects connected with it. At that time Flanders excelled all others in the manufacture of tapestry, it was scarcely indeed introduced into England; and our ancestors had a series of ten charts, designed by Henry Cornelius Vroom, a celebrated painter of Haarlem, from which their Flemish neighbours worked beautiful draperies, which ornamented the walls of the House of Lords.