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
2nd Spanish Armada were more concerned with defending the peninsula. The shock of the disaster reverberated into every corner of Philip's dominions, loosening everywhere the frayed bonds of his system and threatened to complete what Essex's successful Cadiz campaign had left undone. After the defeat at Cadiz, bankruptcy had stared the King of Spain in the face and in the aftermath of the Armada, he was forced to suspend payment to creditors. Philip had declared the third major bankruptcy of his reign. The King desperately wanted only a postponement of the Armada not an abandonment and was obliged to borrow more money but