The Spanish Armada

by Hutchinson, Robert

  Therein lies the clue to the cause of Elizabeth’s robust response. She had been caught out secretly seeking peace with Spain. Beneath her bluster and regal indignation was a tacit acknowledgement that she sought negotiations to avert the threat of invasion and to end her costly war in the Low Countries. The Dutch States may have issued an edict forbidding the discussion of peace but, after all, compared to princes, they were just ordinary people: ‘Princes can discuss matters together as private persons cannot do.’ But she did promise they would not suffer: ‘Let princes act as they think fit . . .’ Whatever else she may do for them in future, she expected to be better treated in return.36

  Elizabeth’s efforts to find a peaceful solution arose from a letter from Parma the previous November. Walsingham believed it a trick to lower England’s guard and told Leicester that the letter ‘has bred in her such a dangerous security as all advertisements of perils and danger are neglected’. Plainly depressed by developments, he added:

  The manner of our cold and careless proceeding, in this time of peril and danger, makes me take no comfort [from] my recovery of health.37

  Unless it shall please God, in mercy, and miraculously, to save us, we cannot long stand.38

  A well-placed Spanish spy in London heard that Elizabeth was ‘determined to make peace at any cost, it being most important for her to be sure of Spain, now that France is in so disturbed state’. Walsingham and Leicester, whilst vehemently arguing against any peace negotiations, insisted, as a fallback, that any treaty terms should be honourable.

  At eleven o’clock at night, after the queen had heard a comedy, she flew into a passion with the Earl of Leicester and told him that it behoved her at any cost to be friendly with the king of Spain ‘because I see that he has great preparations made on all sides. My ships have put to sea and if any evil fortune should befall them, all would be lost for I shall have lost the walls of my realm.’39

  At the end of January, Parma informed Philip that intelligence he had received ‘seems to prove that the Queen of England really desires to conclude peace and that her alarm and the expense that she is incurring are grieving her greatly . . . It cannot be believed that she is turning good except under the stress of necessity . . . If the negotiations are opened at once, we shall at least be able to see what they are up to.’40

  Unbeknown to Elizabeth, the peace process had turned into a meaningless charade. Philip, unswervingly committed to invasion, instructed Parma not to agree a treaty on any terms. The five English commissioners to the negotiations crossed from Dover to Ostend that March and began the plenary discussions at Bourbourg, near Dunkirk, on 23 May. In the weary weeks ahead, they faced constant and deliberate delaying tactics by the Spanish.41 But the queen’s fervour for peace remained undiminished, her fears doubly increased by events in France.

  On 12 May, the largely Catholic population in Paris rose in rebellion after the French king Henri III deployed his Swiss Guard to preserve order in the capital. Barricades were thrown up on street corners and by nightfall the king had fled, defiantly vowing his revenge on the city: ‘When next I enter you, it shall be through a breach in your walls.’ The Duke of Guise, with his Spanish-subsidised Catholic League – Philip had recently handed over 100,000 ducats (£25,000) – was left in control and afterwards the damaged monarch was forced unwillingly to appoint him lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The French ambassador in Madrid warned Henri that June: ‘The corruption of these times and Spanish money will make a scar on the subjects of your majesty that will not easily be effaced and a wound in your kingdom that will not heal.’42

  In March, Sixtus boldly voiced his sneaking admiration for the Queen of England. He had heard that Elizabeth had promised the Turks a bribe of 300,000 ducats (£75,000) to send their fleet out into the Mediterranean as a diversionary tactic against the Spanish. ‘She is a great woman,’ he announced, ‘and were she only Catholic she would be without her match and we would esteem her highly. She omits nothing in the government of her kingdom and is now endeavouring, by way of Constantinople, to divert the King of Spain from his enterprise.’43 Later that month, the Pope learned that the English were fully ready to repel any Spanish invasion. Embarrassingly, he then launched into another bout of panegyric praise of Elizabeth. ‘She certainly is a great queen,’ he told his increasingly disconcerted audience. ‘Were she only a Catholic, she would be our dearly beloved.’ His eulogy became ever more enthusiastic:

  Just look how well she governs. She is only a woman – only mistress of half an island – and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the [Holy Roman] Empire,44 by all. She enriches her kingdom by Spanish booty, besides depriving Spain of Holland and Zeeland.

  The Pope, reported Giovanni Gritti, the Venetian ambassador to the Holy See, went on ‘with pleasure to dwell on the praises and valour of the queen’, much to the astonishment and confusion of his listeners.45

  In July 1588, Sixtus acknowledged to several cardinals that he had done all that he could to persuade Elizabeth to return to the Catholic faith. He had offered a new ‘investiture of her kingdom, in spite of the deprivation pronounced by Pope Pius V and to give her the bishops she might approve’. It all came to nothing: the queen characteristically replied that ‘the Pope would do well to give her some of his money’.46 Therefore Sixtus (perhaps regretfully) renewed her excommunication and transferred all her titles to Philip, who now became King of England and Ireland and protector of the Catholic faith in those countries, according to the Vatican, at least.47

  This new declaration of anathema against the queen was not the sole weapon in the Church’s campaign of words against Elizabeth. Cardinal Allen published a pamphlet in Antwerp that was extraordinarily vituperative. His Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland Concerning the Present Wars repeated Sixtus’s confirmation of excommunication ‘concerning her illegitimation and usurpation and deprivation in respect of her heresy, sacrilege and abominable life’. No one in England could obey or defend Elizabeth but should be ready ‘at the arrival of his Catholic majesty’s forces . . . to join the said army . . . to help towards his restoring of the Catholic faith and deposing the usurper . . . as by the General of this holy war shall be appointed’. The queen was ‘an incestuous bastard, begotten and born in sin of an infamous courtesan’. Her kingdom was ‘a place of refuge and sanctuary of all atheists, Anabaptists,48 heretics and rebellious of all nations’.

  Oozing malice, Allen went on to describe Elizabeth’s crimes against God and mankind and denounced both her public and private life. English Catholics, he urged, must now show whether they will endure ‘an infamous, depraved, accursed excommunicate heretic; the very shame of her sex and princely name; the chief spectacle of sin and abomination in this our age and the only poison, calamity and destruction of our noble church and country’. They should not fight the Spanish invaders:

  Fight not, for God’s love. Fight not in that quarrel, in which, if you die, you are sure to be damned.

  Fight not against all your ancestors’ souls and faith, nor against the salvation of all our dearest wives [and] children.

  This is the hour of God’s wrath against her and all her partakers.

  Forsake her therefore . . . that you be not enwrapped in all her sins, punishment and damnation.49

  Vitriolic stuff! Olivares sent a copy to Parma, who planned to have it printed ‘and spread all over England at the time of the invasion’.50 As the peace negotiations dragged on, Dr Valentine Dale, one of the English commissioners – ‘an old man, very stout and heavy’ – formally complained about Allen’s pamphlet to Parma. The duke ‘excused it as well as I could by saying I did not understand the language, nor was I acquainted with the secret information which might justify [Allen’s] statements’.51 He was of course dissembling.

  If Walsingham worked long and hard to build a network of spies to monitor the Armada’s progress, the Spanish too had agents in London who produced remarkably accurate reports on Elizabeth�
�s defences. A Portuguese spy, Antonio de Vega, was one of the most energetic and possessed good contacts at court, but in late April he heard of inquiries being made about him by Walsingham and begged permission to leave England before the spymaster’s net closed on him.

  Other agents fed intelligence through Bernardino Mendoza in Paris, who may have coloured his digests with some wishful thinking, or in the hope of providing the news that his master would be pleased to read. On 23 February he told Philip that every gun had been taken out of the Tower of London to arm the queen’s ships ‘and they even brought down the pieces which were mounted in the White Tower, as they call it. The queen’s arsenals and all the country is very short of [gun]powder.’ On 5 April, Mendoza reported a cannon exploding on board Drake’s flagship, the Revenge, killing thirty-five men and wounding seven; the English, he said, looked upon this as ‘an evil omen’.52 Another spy’s report at the end of March claimed that Plymouth was ‘badly defended at present as the [crews] have been landed to save the victuals in the ships . . . Colonel Norris exercises and drills his troops every day in London. They are not very handy yet but will really become so in time. There is therefore danger in delay.’ The agent went on to report some of the government propaganda that was being distributed in England:

  The ministers of the false religion in their preaching frequently repeat that the King of Spain exercises great tyranny in all his dominions and swear that if he enters England by force of arms he will leave no English person alive between the ages of seven and seventy.53

  The contents of these intelligence reports did not always cover the bustle and clamour of military activity. On 1 April (a significant date perhaps?), one Spanish agent could not resist reporting that ‘a vast number of fleas collected’ on the window of the queen’s presence chamber and ‘thirty great fish, commonly called porpoises, came up the river [Thames] to the Watergate of the queen’s court’. This dispatch was read and annotated by Philip himself.54

  Questioned about what he had seen in England, Francisco de Valverde, a released Spanish prisoner, reported new bulwarks being raised at Portsmouth ‘made of sun-dried bricks and faggots [of wood] to serve for defence’ and estimated that the fort there had a garrison of about two hundred men. But would the English Catholics rise up in support of an invasion?

  He replied that a large proportion of the country would join the Spaniards and King Philip.

  It was a common saying amongst the people that in this year 1588, by God’s grace, England would be brought to obedience to the Roman Catholic Church and they were anxious to see the day.55

  All potential invaders try to identify those citizens who would collaborate in their efforts to conquer the target country. They also build a list of enemy leaders who should be arrested on sight. Philip had two such lists delivered to him by Jacob Stuart, formerly employed by Mary Queen of Scots. The names of ‘the heretics and schismatics’ who faced a sticky end if Spain was victorious unsurprisingly included Leicester, his brother the Earl of Warwick and brother-in-law the Earl of Huntingdon; Burghley, ‘Secretary Walsingham’, the Earl of Bedford, Sir Christopher Hatton, and the queen’s cousin, Lord Hunsdon. These, Philip read, were ‘the principal devils that rule the court and are the leaders of the [Privy] Council’. Other names on this list included William Headon ‘the principal man in Norfolk, a great enemy of his majesty’; Sir Thomas and Sir William Fairfax in Yorkshire ‘and all the rest of the Council of York’.

  Clearly Philip’s informant was status conscious. The list of ‘Catholics and friends of his majesty in England’ was headed by ‘the Earl of Surrey, son and heir of the Duke of Norfolk, now a prisoner in the Tower’ and ‘Lord Vaux of Harrowden, a good Catholic, a prisoner in the Fleet’.56 One of the four names under the county of Norfolk was Sir Henry Bedingfield, ‘formerly the guardian of Queen Elizabeth57 the pretended queen of England, during the whole time that his majesty was in England’. The author added: ‘I wish to God they had burnt her then, as she deserved, with the rest of the heretics who were justly executed. If this had been done we should be living now in peace and quietness.’ The document reported that ‘the greater part of Lancashire is Catholic, the common people particularly, with the exception of the Earl of Derby58 and the town of Liverpool’. The counties of Westmorland and Northumberland remained ‘really faithful to his majesty’.59

  An assessment of Catholic loyalties in August 1586 estimated that five members of gentry could raise two thousand men in Lincolnshire, which was ‘well affected to the Catholic religion’. Twelve gentlemen could raise three thousand soldiers in Norfolk, while Hampshire was ‘full of Catholics. There are four gentlemen strongly Catholic and very powerful. The ports are good and victuals very abundant.’ In Sussex ‘there are six Catholics of good repute but I have been unable to discover their strength for fear of discovery’.60

  At last, the ‘most fortunate’ Armada was ready for action.

  It now comprised one hundred and twenty-nine vessels, displacing a grand total of more than 61,000 tons, of which thirty-five were major warships. Sixty-eight were armed merchantmen or cargo ships. Two had been converted into hospital ships with eighty-five staff embarked between them, including five physicians and the same number of doctors. There were also four Portuguese oar-propelled galleys. The fleet, divided into ten squadrons, was armed with 2,485 guns, of which 1,497 were cast in bronze, and it carried 123,790 cannonballs and 5,175 quintals61 of gunpowder. Provisions, estimated to last six months, comprised 110,000 quintals of biscuit; 6,000 quintals of bacon; 3,433 of cheese, 8,000 quintals of various species of fish; 3,000 quintals of rice and 6,320 fanegas62 of beans and chickpeas. For cooking, there were 11,398 arrobas63 of oil and 23,870 of vinegar. The ships carried more wine than water for drinking: 14,170 pipes64 of wine compared with 11,870 of water.

  Warlike stores included 7,000 harquebuses, 1,000 muskets, 6,170 hand grenades, 11,128 pikes; 8,000 leather water bottles; 5,000 pairs of shoes and 11,000 pairs of sandals. The siege artillery train had twenty gun carriages; 3,500 cannonballs; wagons, limbers and harness for the forty mules that were to drag the guns.

  There were 26,170 soldiers and sailors on board the ships, made up of 16,232 Spanish soldiers; 2,000 Portuguese and 124 volunteers, or ‘gentlemen adventurers’, motivated by religious fervour – or the alluring scent of plunder and riches – plus their 465 servants. The troops were organised into seven regiments, or tercios, of about twenty-five companies, each comprising one hundred men. Only about 10,000 were experienced soldiers – the remainder were recruited untrained from the countryside and were ‘vine-growers, shepherds and farm labourers’.65 The ships were manned by 7,700 sailors and the ordnance served by only 167 gunners. Medina Sidonia’s personal staff and administrators totalled 158. For the spiritual comfort of the Armada, 180 preaching friars were embarked, plus Thomas Vitres, an Irish priest.66

  There were also English, Irish and Dutch amongst the Armada crews. At least four of the ‘gentlemen adventurers’ appear to be English, and among the salaried officers there were eighteen who had English or Irish names such as Sir Maurice Geraldine, Edmond and William Stacey, Sir Charles O’Connor, Tristram Winslade, Richard Burley, Sir Peter Marley, Patrick Kinford, Robert and Edward Riford, Richard Seton, Sir Robert Daniell, Frederick Patrick and Henry Mitchell.67

  Life on board lacked privacy and must have been noisy, apart from the frequent periods of prayer. There were no fixed sleeping quarters, except for the very high-ranking, and hammocks were rare. The upper deck, with its batteries of guns, was the favoured place to sleep and some nailed truckle beds to the deck and erected low partitions to stake their claim to places out of the prevailing wind. Before going into action, these would have to be thrown overboard. No wonder those on board the Armada ships prayed for good weather.68

  Medina Sidonia, always a man for detail, laid down strict instructions governing the rations supplied to the Armada. Each man would receive one and a half pounds (680 grams) of bread per day (or two pounds o
n days when biscuit was served instead) and could drink the equivalent of a bottle of wine – sherry or Lisbon wine – except when the more alcoholic Candia wine from the island of Crete was dished out, when only a pint was supplied per man, diluted with water. The water ration itself was three pints a day for all purposes. On Sundays and Thursdays, six ounces (170.1 grams) of bacon and three ounces (85.1 grams) of rice were available and six ounces of Sardinian cheese and three ounces of beans or chickpeas on Mondays and Wednesdays. On ‘fish days’ – Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays – six ounces of tuna or cod per man were on the menu, or when these ran out, six ounces of squid or five sardines from Galicia and Andalusia with three ounces of Sicilian beans or chickpeas.

  This was rather a meagre diet compared to that served up on the queen’s ships. English sailors were allowed one pound (450 grams) of biscuit on fish days, together with a quarter of a ‘stock-fish’ or the eighth part of a ling, together with four ounces of cheese, two ounces of butter and a gallon (4.55 litres) of ‘small’, or low alcohol beer. This liquor, however, frequently soured. On ‘flesh days’ they had the same rations of beer and biscuit plus one pound of salt beef. Monday was ‘bacon day’ with a pound of bacon per man and a pint container of peas.69

  In Flanders, Parma’s army totalled 17,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, after being depleted by disease and desertion, but his cooks were still baking 50,000 loaves a day. He hurriedly levied more recruits so (in addition to the horsemen) his final expeditionary force amounted to 26,000 infantry, of whom 4,000 were Spanish, 1,000 Irish and Scottish,70 8,000 Walloons, 1,000 Burgundians, 3,000 Italians and 9,000 Germans.71 Among them was an Englishman named Barnes.

  Building the barges proved so problematic that the Spanish believed they were victims of deliberate sabotage. Green unseasoned timber was used, making the hulls unserviceable. In the end, most of the three hundred flat-bottomed vessels had to be commandeered or hired from owners of canal fleets, together with ‘a great number of little galleys and skiffs’ and thirty or forty hoys.72