The treaty for that match had been originally carried on through the agency of the Earl of Bristol, and hence the jealousy which had already broken out on various occasions between the Duke of Buckingham and that able and experienced ambassador; whilst the failure of the negotiations, which were undertaken with the pretext of gaining the restoration of the Palatinate, was the origin of the rash war with Spain, which Charles, without the usual form of a proclamation, resolved on commencing.
The English, however, delighted as they had been at the rupture of the treaty, were indignant at this informality, as well as averse to a war which seemed to be the result of private passions rather than the well-considered act of a monarch anxious for the dignity of his subjects.
But a worthy representative of James’s style of policy remained in his unhappy son. Supplies for the war with Spain were refused in the first Parliament that Charles called; a compulsory loan was exacted. Whilst the country was burning with resentment at this unequally imposed burden, a fleet of eighty sail, English, and twenty sail supplied from Holland, carrying ten thousand men, was sent to the coast of Spain. This grand armament, raised by the energy of the Lord High Admiral, was an object of pride to the nation, who had never before beheld so glorious a fleet; yet it was entrusted, not to Sir Robert Mansel, a distinguished commander, but to Cecil, Viscount Wimbleton, a favourite of Buckingham’s, and a man neither of talent nor experience. Thus, the fatal vice which has obtained the popular name of jobbery was exhibited at this most critical period.
A signal failure was the result; the fleet reached Cape St. Vincent, and landed the troops; a fort was taken, but there was neither discipline nor decision to restrain the troops, who rushed into a store of wine, and soon abandoned themselves to the most disgraceful excesses. Sickness was the consequence, and the expedition returned ingloriously to England, with the additional discredit of its being known that a stay of two days longer would have sufficed to take all the shipping collected into the bay of Cadiz, and thus to have struck a grand blow, at the very commencement of the war, against the power of Spain.