Maritime history only when his ship was too disabled to offer any resistance. The Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidona in 1588. The Spanish Armada was sent by King Philip II of Spain, who had been king consort of England until the death of his wife Mary I of England thirty years earlier. The purpose of the expedition was to escort the Duke of Parma's army of tercios from the Spanish Netherlands across the North Sea for a landing in south-east England. Once the army had suppressed English support
Philip II of Spain I, Duke of Guise signing on behalf of the Catholic League; consequently Philip supplied a considerable annual grant to the League over the following decade to maintain the civil war in France, with the hope of destroying the French Calvinists. A devout Catholic, Philip saw himself as the defender of Catholic Europe against the Ottoman Empire and the Protestant Reformation. He sent a large armada to conquer Protestant England in 1588, with the strategic aim of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England and the establishment of Protestantism in England. He hoped to stop both English interference in the Spanish Netherlands and