Note 2 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
The destination of Drake was kept so secret that the first hint that he might attack Cadiz was only made by Stafford, the English ambassador in Paris (who was a traitor in Philip’s pay), to Mendoza on April 9. He told Mendoza that not a living soul but the queen and Cecil really knew what the design was, the lord admiral himself being kept in the dark, “as the queen considered him a frank-spoken man.” It was only by chance hints that Stafford surmised that Cadiz might be the destination. In the letter by which Philip conveyed the news of Drake’s ravages in Cadiz to Mendoza he says that he grieves not so much for the actual harm done, as for the daring insolence of the thing.