["God hath mightily preserved her Majesty’s forces with the least losses that ever hath been heard of, being within the compass of so great volleys of shot, both small and great.  I verily believe there is not threescore men lost of her Majesty’s forces.”  Captain J. Fenner to Walsingham, 4/14 Aug. 1588. (S.  P. Office Ms.)]

Nearly all the largest vessels of the Armada, therefore, having, been disabled or damaged—­according to a Spanish eye-witness—­and all their small shot exhausted, Medina Sidonia reluctantly gave orders to retreat.  The Captain-General was a bad sailor; but he was, a chivalrous Spaniard of ancient Gothic blood, and he felt deep mortification at the plight of his invincible fleet, together with undisguised:  resentment against Alexander Farnese, through whose treachery and incapacity, he considered. the great Catholic cause to have been, so foully sacrificed.  Crippled, maltreated, and diminished in number, as were his ships; he would have still faced, the enemy, but the winds and currents were fast driving him on, a lee-shore, and the pilots, one and all, assured him that it would be inevitable destruction to remain.  After a slight and very ineffectual attempt to rescue Don Diego de Pimentel in the St. Matthew—­who refused to leave his disabled ship—­and Don Francisco de Toledo; whose great galleon, the St. Philip, was fast driving, a helpless wreck, towards Zeeland, the Armada bore away N.N.E. into the open sea, leaving those, who could not follow, to their fate.

The St. Matthew, in a sinking condition, hailed a Dutch fisherman, who was offered a gold chain to pilot her into Newport.  But the fisherman, being a patriot; steered her close to the Holland fleet, where she was immediately assaulted by Admiral Van der Does, to whom, after a two hours’ bloody fight, she struck her flag.  Don Diego, marshal of the camp to the famous legion of Sicily, brother, of the Marquis of Tavera, nephew of the Viceroy of Sicily, uncle to the Viceroy of Naples, and numbering as many titles, dignities; and high affinities as could be expected of a grandee of the first class, was taken, with his officers, to the Hague.  “I was the means,” said Captain Borlase, “that the best sort were saved, and the rest were cast overboard and slain at our entry.  He, fought with us two hours; and hurt divers of our men, but at, last yielded.”

John Van der Does, his captor; presented the banner; of the Saint Matthew to the great church of Leyden, where—­such was its prodigious length—­it hung; from floor to ceiling without being entirely unrolled; and there hung, from generation to generation; a worthy companion to the Spanish flags which had been left behind when Valdez abandoned the siege of that heroic city fifteen years before.