The image of Our Lady venerated in the College Chapel is that of "La Vulnerata", or "The Wounded One". The story of the Vulnerata goes back centuries; but in 1596, as Spain was gathering a fleet in the city of Cadiz, the Earl of Essex together with Sir Walter Raleigh led an English fleet into the harbour, defeated the Spanish fleet and sacked the city. Some of the English troops started a riot and dragged a statue of the Virgin Mother and Child from a church to the market square where they desecrated it. They cut off both arms, and all that remained of the child were parts of his tiny feet on his mother’s knee.