of the inhabitants had fled, the Cardinal Viceroy Archduke Albert had but
a very insufficient guard, and there were many gentlemen of high station
who were anxious to further the entrance of the English, and who were
afterwards hanged or garotted for their hostile sentiments to the Spanish
government.

While the leaders were deliberating what course to take, they were
informed that Count Fuentes and Henriquez de Guzman, with six thousand
men, lay at a distance of two miles from Lisbon, and that they had been
proclaiming by sound of trumpet that the English had been signally
defeated before Lisbon, and that they were in full retreat.

Fired at this bravado, Norris sent a trumpet to Fuentes and Guzman,
with a letter signed and sealed, giving them the lie in plainest terms,
appointing the next day for a meeting of the two forces, and assuring
them that when the next encounter should take place, it should be seen
whether a Spaniard or an Englishman would be first to fly; while Essex,
on his part, sent a note, defying either or both those boastful generals
to single combat. Next day the English army took the field, but the
Spaniards retired before them; and nothing came of this exchange of
cartels, save a threat on the part of Fuentes to hang the trumpeter who
had brought the messages. From the execution of this menace he
refrained, however, on being assured that the deed would be avenged by
the death of the Spanish prisoner of highest rank then in English hands,
and thus the trumpeter escaped.

Soon afterwards the fleet set sail from the Tagus, landed, and burned
Vigo on their way homeward, and returned to Plymouth about the middle of
July.