In fact there is no reason to doubt that the Council of War was unanimous. The idea that Medina Sidonia could or would have tried to browbeat his experienced lieutenants into a decision they disapproved of is absurd. The custom of the Spanish service was that when a Council of War was divided, even by a single dissent, its members had to be polled, their individual opinions recorded and the whole record transmitted to the King, as was done after the council at Corunna. Medina Sidonia was a great stickler for the customs and etiquette of the service, the kind of commander William Borough would have liked to serve with; he would never have omitted so serious a formality. Nor would he have ignored the consensus of his senior officers.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 612