ABSTRACT
The I590S thus marked a decline in real maritime enterprise after the glowing achievements of the previous thirty years. In part this was because so much money and energy concentrated on sea-warfare-whether the small privateering expeditions or the great attacks on Cadiz and the Azores-and in part because the heroes were going out and finding only successors of a lesser stamp. But the chief reason lay deeper. English mariners and merchants were only beginning to grasp that their real future lay not in the search for rapid enrichment-the capture of treasure ships, the plundering of gold-exporting shores-but in the ordinary pursuit of a trade whose horizons had grown enormously in those hundred years. And while they sought profit at the expense of Spain, they found Spain growing stronger. The defeat of the Armada and Philip's failure in the Netherlands had indeed heralded the decline of Spain, but the greatest empire of the day could still give a good account of itself in defence. In the last analysis the rather sombre note which hangs over the naval story of the IS90S describes only the difficulties encountered by a somewhat slapdash and over-confident attacker in the face of a resistance whose competence was novel and surprising.
