The Spanish Armada

by Hutchinson, Robert

  In reality, despite strenuous efforts to buy weapons in Germany and harquebuses from Holland at 23s 4d (£1.17) each, many militiamen did have to be content with only bows and arrows with which to face the enemy. Kent had 12,654 available men, of whom 2,958 were ‘trained’ infantry and 4,166 untrained, including 1,662 archers and 1,762 ‘shot’,61 armed with harquebuses and calivers, but these had little ‘powder, match, lead, nags and carts’.62 Equipment shortages were endemic and the old, rusty armour and weapons brought out of store did little to improve morale or create an aggressive esprit de corps within the militia. The Earl of Leicester complained that:

  A number of burgonets63 have arrived from the Tower but not a man will buy one, being ashamed to wear it.

  The armoury must be better looked to. [There is] a great want of powder and munitions, which is known abroad.64

  Gradually, out of the administrative chaos grew order and organisation. As in the dark days of 1940, when Britain faced the prospect of a Nazi invasion, it was realised in 1587–8 that, rather than attempting to defend every inch of the coastline, it would be much better to concentrate forces to stand and fight at the most dangerous landing places. The veteran soldier Sir John (‘Black Jack’) Norris was commissioned to travel to the southern maritime counties and identify sites where invading troops could be ‘impeached’ and ‘some apt and fit places for retreat of forces to withstand’ the enemy ‘and the erecting of a body of an army to make head against him’. Norris had with him only men of ‘skill and trust’ for ‘there should not be many acquainted with the danger and weakness of the said places’. In vulnerable Kent, probable landing places were identified on the Isles of Sheppey and Thanet, in the Downs, at Sheerness on Romney Marsh and along the broad Thames estuary. 65 Parties of local militia were stationed at these possible invasion beaches, but as they rarely numbered more than two hundred strong, they were very much ‘forlorn hopes’ – expendable sacrifices to buy time to allow larger forces to be concentrated inland, rather than seriously intended to halt the Spanish on the high-water mark. Kent’s defence plan also listed the ‘fittest places to be put into defence to hinder the enemy’ at Canterbury, Sandwich, Rochester, Aylesford and Maidstone.

  Throughout the south and south-west of England, the militia would therefore be concentrated near major ports and would counterattack if possible, but in retreat, would practise a ‘scorched earth policy’, destroying bridges, burning crops and driving off farm animals to deny the invader sustenance from the land. Kent was to send four thousand men to any port or part of Sussex threatened and if Sheppey was attacked, four thousand reinforcements from Essex would join the men of Kent.66 In March 1587, the southern counties were warned to ensure that their militia were ready to repel an invasion: ‘The trained bands are to be [re]viewed and put in strength and to repair to such places as were formerly instructed within an hour’s warning.’67

  The main army was divided into two groups. The first, under the Earl of Leicester, with 27,000 infantry and 2,418 cavalry, would engage the enemy once he had landed in force. The second, under Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, numbered 28,900 infantry and 4,400 cavalry, would defend the sacred person of the queen herself, who would probably remain in London, with Windsor Castle as a handy bolt-hole if the capital fell.

  On 8 March 1588 Elizabeth wrote to the City of London, ordering them to provide men and weapons as part of this personal bodyguard:

  Upon information given us of great preparations made in foreign parts with intent to attempt somewhat against this our realm, we gave present order that our realm should be put in order of defence . . .

  Within our said City, our pleasure is there be forthwith put in readiness for defence of our own person . . . the number of ten thousand able men furnished with armour and weapons convenient . . . of which number . . . six thousand be enrolled under captains and ensigns and to be trained at times convenient . . .

  The trained men were divided into four regiments, each 1,500 strong, armed with harquebuses, pikes and halberds with which they drilled twice a week. Those untrained were also mustered into four regiments.68

  As well as fears about how an invasion could be driven back into the sea, there remained nagging doubts about the loyalty of Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects if or when the Spanish arrived. Burghley and Walsingham were plainly as afraid of a Catholic rising as Cardinal Allen was confident of it happening.69 These worries were reinforced in early June 1586 by reports of an intended rebellion ‘in the country near Portsmouth’. Within days, the Earl of Sussex reported that he had quelled it and had arrested a number of its leaders, adding on 13 June that ‘some recusants, privy to the insurrection, were going to sea’ and that he would attempt to detain them.70 Raleigh reported in December 1587 that several of his commissioners in Devon were ‘infected in religion and vehemently malcontent’. The citizens of Exeter had refused to pay their contribution towards the cost of defending the county.71 The same month, a list of English captains who had served under the Spanish flag in the Low Countries was submitted to the Privy Council. Apparently realigning their loyalties, they wanted passports to return to England but they were described as ‘most dangerous papists and thought to be bloody men, not fit to have any liberty in England’.72

  Roger Walton reported that English priests would enter England and ‘raise a Catholic party’ at the invasion. The chief agent for the plan was said to be Thomas Hole, the tutor in the Earl of Northumberland’s household. Walton talked darkly of a plan to capture a blockhouse between Rye and Winchelsea. The papist Thomas Dence also warned of ‘great rejoicings and preparations’ by Catholics in advance of the Armada’s arrival.73 Perhaps of more concern were reports of disaffection below decks in Elizabeth’s warships. After a scare on board Lord Edmund Sheffield’s Bear, the ‘barber and three or four others have taken the oath [of allegiance] and renounced the Pope’s authority’.74

  Following Walsingham’s old internment plan, dangerous recusants and priests were now confined in a number of fortresses. Quarrels over living conditions broke out between the Jesuit and other seminary priests imprisoned in Wisbech Castle. The Jesuit leader William Weston demanded that the internees should follow a stricter discipline as more fitting to their vocation and accused the others of loose living and immorality. Relations were not improved by the Jesuits receiving the lion’s share of alms sent in by the faithful outside the walls.75 Security was so lax that one prisoner was able to secretly celebrate Mass within the castle:

  In the dead of night, we were able to obtain vestments by a rope which was let down from [a] window [above] and in the early morning, before the wardens and other prisoners were awake, we returned them in the same manner.76

  Under the slipshod regime of Thomas Gray, keeper of the recusants, matters had grown so lax that Wisbech became a kind of unofficial ecclesiastical college, a forum for debating theological issues, as well as a place of pilgrimage for the Catholic laity. What was worse, the priests could unlock each other’s doors, and they interrupted Gray’s own evangelical prayers by whistling and stamping on the floorboards of the room above. His daughter, Ursula, had even become a Catholic convert. Furthermore, two of the recusants, Charles Borne and Nicholas Scroope, had beaten Gray’s wife and servants while he was away. Enough was enough. A commission of local justices recommended that ‘trustworthy townsmen’ should be selected to assist the keeper, who was not permitted to absent himself without written permission. Visits were stopped; letters censored and no communication between prisoners was allowed except at meal times. The only snippet of good news for Walsingham in this sorry tale was that one of the prisoners, Thomas Travers, who had complained of his ‘hard treatment’ at Gray’s hands, now submitted to Elizabeth’s government and promised to attend Protestant church services.77

  Throughout England, recusants were being ‘restrained’. In Norfolk, Sir Edward Clere and Sir William Heydon complained that many had ominously ‘absented themselves from their houses’. In Bedfordshire, t
he Earl of Kent asked innocently how he was to proceed with female recusants ‘married to husbands that are conformable in religion’.78 Godfrey Foljambe arrested his own grandmother, Lady Constance, ‘and now have her in my custody whom . . . I shall safely keep and have forthcoming when she will be called for’.79

  Sensibly, the armour and weapons held by recusants had been collected and confiscated for use by the queen’s militia. With nice English respect for the rights of property, money from those items sold would be handed back to the original owners.

  First warning of the enemy’s arrival was to come from a number of pinnaces or fishing smacks patrolling far out to sea. On land, a complex network of warning beacons had been located on high points throughout the southern counties of England since at least the early fourteenth century and the system was now overhauled.80 These beacons consisted of iron fire baskets mounted atop a tall wooden structure, normally positioned on an earth mound, situated some fifteen miles (24.14 km) apart. Kent had forty-three beacon sites, as did Devon; Essex twenty-six; Norfolk sixteen.81 There were twenty-four in and around the coastal region of Sussex and a similar number in Hampshire, the latter positioned so that Somerset, Oxfordshire and Berkshire could spot the warning signals. News of a landing on the south coast could, with luck, reach London within the hour, with fuller details following on, carried by a string of post horses.

  The beacons were normally manned during the more clement weather of March to October by two ‘wise, vigilant and discreet’ men in twelve-hour shifts (nearby villages taking it in turns to provide the watchers), although at times of crisis this could be extended.82 Each man received eight pence (just over 3p) per day for his pains. The watchers were subject to surprise inspections to ensure their diligence, and were sternly prohibited from having dogs with them, for fear of distraction.

  It was a tedious and uncomfortable patriotic duty. A new shelter was built near one Kent beacon when the old wooden hut fell down. This was only intended to protect the sentinels from bad weather and had no ‘seats or place of ease lest they should fall asleep. [They] should stand upright in . . . a hole [looking] towards the beacon.’ Not everyone spent their time scanning the horizon: two watchers at Stanway beacon in north-east Essex preferred catching partridges in a cornfield and were hauled up in court.83 There were other cases of opportunism. In July 1586, five men were accused of plotting to maliciously fire the Hampshire beacons ‘upon a [false] report of the appearance of the Spanish fleet’ and in the ensuing tumult, to steal food ‘to redress the current dearth of corn’, engage in a little light burglary of gentlemen’s houses and liberate imprisoned recusants at Winchester. Most were gaoled, but some were sent to London for further interrogation, in case there was a wider conspiracy.84

  Instructions on what to do once ships were sighted varied from county to county. No beacon could be lit without the presence of local justices. On the Isle of Wight, if up to twenty vessels were seen heading towards the coast, one of the watchmen had to pant down the steep hill to the nearest church and ring the bells. Surrey justices were instructed in ‘a certain and direct’ method to spot beacons at night or in misty weather that enabled them to decide ‘whether the beacon in which [they] have regard . . . be on fire or not and how we may discern that fire from any other fire’.85 Naturally, there were false alarms. In 1579, the Portsdown beacon, high above Portsmouth, was lit and in response the local militia were quickly mobilised. However it transpired that the watchers had reacted to smoke caused by huntsmen trying to flush out a badger from its sett.86

  The first line of defence was naturally the queen’s navy, augmented by ships taken up from trade or hired for the duration of the war. Obtaining these vessels sometimes proved difficult.

  Sir John Gilbert, brother to the petulant Sir Humphrey, refused permission for his ships to join Drake’s western squadron and allowed them to sail on their planned voyage in March 1588 in defiance of naval orders.87 At the same time, there was also corporate reluctance to furnish ships to serve alongside the navy, and a litany of excuses began to flow from coastal town councils. William Bray, mayor of Hull, pleaded with the Privy Council ‘that they were unable to furnish the two ships and a pinnace’, as directed, as ‘all their best ships are at present on distant voyages abroad’ and their mariners had been pressed into naval service. (Later, after some ships returned from Newcastle and London, they contributed two ships and a pinnace.) John Harris, mayor of the north Devon town of Barnstaple, could not supply the required two ships and ‘a handsome pinnace in warlike manner’ having ‘suffered so much from the prohibitions of the King of Spain’ – the Spanish embargoes on English shipping.

  John Berryman, mayor of Poole in Dorset, asked to be excused from paying for ‘one great ship and a pinnace’ because of their ‘inability’ to raise the money.88 In mitigation he reported that they had detained the Primrose of Poole, bound for Newfoundland (Peter Cox, one of the ship’s owners, was imprisoned after she sailed to avoid joining the English fleet) and the pinnace Elephant, which when ‘fitted up’ could be employed in naval service.89 The good burghers of Southampton were also unable to supply ships ‘on account of the decay of their town and commerce and the great charges they had [paid] for providing the powder, repairs and fortifications’ of the town. In addition there was a shortage of sailors – more than one hundred had already been pressed into the queen’s service.90 In East Anglia, the inhabitants of East Bergholt asked to be excused their payment towards the cost of Colchester’s ship ‘by reason of the prohibition of the exportation of Suffolk cloth’.91 Coggeshall and Dedham also sought exemption. Meanwhile the villages of Blackney, Wiston and Cley in Norfolk complained bitterly that they had been overcharged in their contribution by the corporation of [King’s] Lynn.92

  The thirty-eight ships and pinnaces in Elizabeth’s navy, displacing a total of 12,990 tons, were mobilised on 5 October 158793 in response to reports that the Armada was ready to sail. Fifty-one-year-old Charles Howard, Second Baron Effingham, was appointed Lord High Admiral on 21 December with Drake as his vice-admiral. On board the queen’s ship Bear the next day, Howard found his sailors in rags. He told Burghley:

  Here is a very sufficient and able company of sailors as ever were seen and because of their long journeys out of all places in this realm and this bad season makes them unprovided of apparel and such necessaries, it were good for their relief to pay them one month’s wages before hand.94

  Although four ships dated from the reign of Henry VIII, eleven had been built since 1584 and a further twelve had been rebuilt to modern standards.95 The new-builds and refits were to an innovative English design of warship, called ‘race-built’, which lowered the raised platforms or ‘castles’ at the bows and stern, lengthened the gun-deck and produced a sleeker hull. This made them faster and more manoeuvrable and enabled them to bring a heavier armament to bear upon the enemy.96 It was to prove a decisive factor in the battles to come.

  Several warships were designed specifically for naval operations in the shoaled waters of the narrow seas between England and Flanders. Rainbow and Vanguard both had shallow draughts, drawing only twelve to thirteen feet (3.66–3.96 metres) and this made them roll alarmingly in heavy seas. Sir Henry Seymour, who flew his flag in Rainbow, acknowledged that ‘my summer ship . . . will not be able to go to the North, Irish or Spanish seas without harm and spoil of our people by sickness’.97

  But thanks to the maintenance programme developed by the navy treasurer John Hawkins, the major ships were in good fettle. Howard was delighted at their condition. He told Burghley:

  I have been aboard every ship that goes out with me and in every place where any may creep and I do thank God that they be in the estate they be in.

  There is never one of them that knows what a leak means.

  Therefore I dare presume greatly that those that have been made [built] in her majesty’s time be very good and serviceable and shall prove them arrant liars that have reported the contrary.98

&
nbsp; He was particularly pleased with his newly built flagship, Ark Royal.

  I think there were never in any place in the world worthier ships than these are for so many.

  And as few as we are, if the King of Spain forces be not hundreds, we will make good sport with them.

  I pray your lordship, tell her majesty from me that her money was well given for the Ark Royal 99 for I think her the [best] ship in the world for all conditions and truly I think there can be no great ship make me change and go out of her.100

  Drake, in Plymouth, was chafing at the bit, desperate to strike at the Armada before it reached the shores of England. On 30 March 1588, he wrote to the Privy Council, urging another pre-emptive strike on the Spanish fleet. Striking a first blow would

  put great heart into her majesty’s loving subjects, both abroad and home for they will be persuaded in conscience that the Lord of all strengths will put into her majesty and her people, courage and boldness, not to fear any invasion in her own country but to seek God’s enemies and her majesty’s where they may be found.

  For the Lord is on our side, whereby we may assure ourselves, our numbers are greater than theirs . . .

  With fifty sail of shipping, we shall do more good upon their own coast than a great many more will do here at home.

  The sooner we are gone, the better we shall be able to impeach them.

  He was also indignant at a report that the Biscayan warships had red crosses on their sails like the English flag, ‘which is a great presumption, proceeding from the haughtiness and pride of the Spaniard and not to be tolerated’.101

  He would soon have his chance to cut the Armada down to size.