Whether or not Elizabeth had genuinely hoped that she could release Drake without starting a war, for Philip the raid was the last straw. Encouraged by his leading counsellors, Juan de Idiaquez and Cristóbal de Moura, he recognized that even though Parma had captured Antwerp, even though Leicester’s English army had achieved little to halt the Spanish tide in the Netherlands, Spain’s communications with both the Low Countries and the Americas depended upon defeating England. It had to be done, for God and Empire. From the different proposals submitted to him by Santa Cruz and Parma came the king’s great crusade against England.

John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, loc. 829