When Catharine de Medici got wind of the business she seems to have thought it a good opportunity for getting rid of Guise and checkmating Philip at the same time, and urged him (Guise) to go himself to aid his kinsman James to the crown, in which case she would largely subsidise him; and Guise himself was so incensed at the way {202} Philip had treated him that he threatened to divulge the whole of Bruce's plot to James, and very probably did so. Elizabeth, too, sent young Gary to warn James of what was going on, so that when Bruce arrived in Scotland the King was fully prepared for him; and although he appeared to acquiesce in the hint from Bruce that the Spaniards would aid him to avenge his mother, he was now surrounded by ministers favourable to the Protestant interest, who saw that James had more to hope for from Elizabeth than from Philip, and the matter was deferred indefinitely. It was late in autumn when Bruce arrived in Scotland, too late in the season to freight ships, and he suggested that in the following summer ships for the transport of Parma's 6,000 men to Leith should be freighted in Flanders. This was impossible--in fact, the long delay whilst Philip and Parma were hesitating had ruined the project, which was now public and consequently impracticable, though Bruce and the Scottish lords continued to clamour for Spanish men and money until the Armada appeared. And so again Philip's want of promptness lost this chance, which might have saved the Armada. By this time, late in the year 1587, the final plan of the Armada had been settled. Parma had received his full instructions from Philip some months before; all Spain and Catholic Christendom were ringing with preparations for the fray, and the great fleet--or what Drake had left intact of it on his summer trip to Cadiz--was mustering at Lisbon under gallant old Santa Cruz, who was already dying broken-hearted at the neglect of his wise precautions, at the confusion, waste, and ineptitude which foreboded the crowning disaster. {203} With the subsequent mishaps and catastrophe this study is not concerned. My object has been to show how circumstances drove Philip to adopt the course he did, both with regard to the invasion itself and his claim to the English crown; and to demonstrate that the ostensible prime object of the Armada, the conversion of England to Catholicism, although undoubtedly desired by Philip, was mainly used as a means to his real end--namely, a close political alliance with England, without which Spain was inevitably doomed to the impotence which eventually fell upon her. [Illustration: Tailpiece] {205} _A FIGHT AGAINST FINERY._ {207} [Illustration: Headpiece] _A FIGHT AGAINST FINERY._ (A HISTORY OF THE SUMPTUARY LAWS IN SPAIN.)