In the early spring of 1586 Santa Cruz had furnished a complete estimate of all that would be required for the Armada--a perfect monument of knowledge and foresight. There were to be 150 great ships, 320 smaller vessels of from 50 to 80 tons each, 40 galleys and 6 galleasses, 556 in all, besides 240 flat boats and pinnaces. There were to be 30,000 seamen and 63,890 soldiers, with 1600 horses; and the extra expenditure was calculated at 3,800,000 ducats. But to concentrate so powerful a force as this in Spain itself was too great a task for Philip’s haste, and he took the first fatal step by arranging that one-half was to be raised by Farnese in Flanders, for now Philip, like most slow men when they have once made up their minds, was in a desperate hurry. For thirty years he had driven his most faithful servants to despair by his stolid impassibility to English insult and aggression. He had seen his colonies sacked, his commerce destroyed by English privateers; he had been robbed of treasure beyond calculation, and suffered every imaginable insult from a queen whom he could have crushed a dozen times over in the earlier years of her reign. Leicester, who had fawned upon him, and had sworn eternal fealty to him, had commanded an army against him in his own territory; and the English privy councillors, who for years had battened on his bribes, had connived at the placing on the brows of a foreigner one of his own ancestral crowns. He had stood all this without revolt, in the face of his councillors, but, when at last he had lifted his ponderous “leaden foot,” he must needs do things in haste. Santa Cruz, old sailor as he was, could ill brook divided command with Parma, knowing that he must in the end take second place, and he became discontented and jealous at the alterations of his plans. He urged--as did every one else--that some safe ports of refuge must first be secured in the North Sea; but Philip was in a hurry, and trusted to happy chance. In September 1587 Santa Cruz received his instructions. He was to go direct to Margate and protect the passage of Parma’s troops across, and he was on no account to allow himself to be diverted from this course until he had joined hands with Parma. In vain the old sailor represented the danger of adopting this plan until they could be sure of harbours of refuge in case of need. The king still hoped to beguile the English with thoughts of peace, and answered with harsh hauteur Santa Cruz’s assurance that hurry meant failure. The old hero, who would have stood unmoved before an army, incontinently went home and died of a broken heart (February 1588). Philip so rarely said a hasty word, that when he did so, the effect was terrible.