Spanish Armada it up the east coast of England. The commander ordered a return to Spain, but the Armada was disrupted during severe storms in the North Atlantic and a large number of the vessels were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Of the initial 130 ships over a third failed to return. As Martin and Parker explain, "Philip II attempted to invade England, but his plans miscarried, partly because of his own mismanagement, unfortunate weather, and partly because the opportunistic defensive naval efforts of the English and their Dutch allies (the use of ships set afire and sailed into
An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland concerning the present wars, made from the execution of his holiness' sentence, by the highe and mightie King Catholike of Spaine (1588) was written by William Cardinal Allen in an attempt to raise Elizabeth I's Catholic subjects against her while the Spanish Armada mounted their invasion of England. The publication was a scathing attack on Elizabeth, her ancestry and her legitimacy. Allen wrote that Elizabeth was "known for an incestuous bastard, begotten and born in sin of an