The Spanish Armada

by Hutchinson, Robert

  In Paris, Stafford, the English ambassador, spent five crowns on printing four hundred copies of a pamphlet denying Spanish claims of the Armada’s success which had been ‘cried so lively around the town’. Mendoza said the Catholic Parisians would not allow ‘this fancy news to be sold, saying it is all lies. One of the ambassador’s secretaries began to read in the [royal] palace [an account] . . . sent from England but the people were so enraged that he was obliged to fly for his life.’ The Spanish ambassador, now half blind, still stuck to his guns, insisting that reports from Rouen indicated that ‘the English lost heavily in the engagement’ and were ‘very sad as it was said that Drake had been wounded in the legs by a cannonball’.55

  There were further optimistic reports from Spanish sources. Juan de Gamarra, in Rouen, had heard that the English fleet had lost forty ships in a battle off Newcastle: ‘Our Armada attacked them so stoutly that we sank twenty of their ships and captured twenty-six in perfectly good condition. The rest of the English fleet, seeing only ruin before them, escaped with great damage and their ships are now all in bits and without crews.’ The Armada then entered the port of Newcastle ‘where they are very well, as all affirm’. He concluded: ‘The English here are very sulky.’56 Other rumours had the English panic-stricken at their naval losses. Drake had been captured trying to board the San Martin (news of this emboldened Mendoza to light a celebratory bonfire in front of his house in Paris); Elizabeth’s government had prohibited the publication of any news about the fate of the English fleet and fears were growing daily of a dangerous uprising by English Catholics.

  Then a Hansa ship’s captain reported sailing through a sea filled with swimming mules and horses.57

  On 15 August a delighted Leicester wrote to the queen, having heard that she planned to visit her army in its ‘Camp Royal’ atop the steep hill at West Tilbury, Essex. The troops were now ready ‘to die for her. Good sweet queen! Alter not your purpose if God give you good health. Your usher58 likes the lodging prepared for you. It is a properly sweet clean house within a little mile’ of his encampment ‘and your person will be as sure as at St James’.59 It was about time that Leicester had received good news. He had found it difficult to muster his men; their equipment was poor, and cavalry and dray horses were hard to find. Sir Henry Cocke and Sir Philip Boteler had ‘dealt with the gentlemen of Hertfordshire, suspected of having acting fraudulently and undutifully with her majesty in retaining back their best horses and sending inferior horses to the camp’.60

  Detailed arrangements had been made to feed and house Leicester’s 16,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, with provisions merchants within 20 miles (32.19 km) of Tilbury threatened with ‘the most grievous imprisonment or fine’ if they withheld or hid ‘any grain or other victuals’. Prices were fixed for sixty-three items of food for the troops, regulated by clerks at the markets: twenty shillings was the price for a quarter (28 pounds or 12.7 kg) of ‘best wheat, clean and sweet’; three pennies (1.67 pence) for a pound (0.45 kg) of butter ‘sweet and new, the best in the market’; one penny for a pound ‘of good Essex cheese’ and one shilling (5 pence) for a stone (6.35 kg) of ‘the best beef at the butchers’.61 Even so there were cheats and profiteers.

  Leicester wrote to the queen fussing about her planned route – warning her to avoid the coast where her sacred person could be captured by a marauding Spanish landing party:

  This far, if it please, you may dare – to draw yourself to your house at Havering [Essex] and your army being about London . . . [there] shall be always a defence.

  If it please you, spend two or three days to see both the camp and the forts. It is not about thirteen miles [20.92 km] from Havering and a very convenient place for your majesty to lye in by the way and rest you at the camp.

  I trust you will be pleased by your lieutenant’s cabin62 and within a mile there is a gentleman’s house where your majesty may lye.

  Thus far but no further can I consent to adventure your person and, by the grace of God, there can be no danger in this.63

  Howard arrived back with his ships and starving crews at Harwich and Margate Roads early on Thursday 18 August.

  That same morning, Elizabeth joined her royal barge at Westminster for the journey to Tilbury. Her gentlemen pensioners, bravely kitted out in brightly polished half-armours and gaily feathered morion helmets, escorted her in nine oared boats as the royal procession slipped down the Thames on the ebb tide, to the sweet sound of silver trumpets. She arrived at Tilbury, greeted by joyous peals of bells from nearby church towers. The tented camp, enclosing around five acres (2.02 hectares) was surrounded by hastily excavated defensive earthworks. A raised causeway ran from the river across flat marshland up to the hill.

  Elizabeth was met by an escort of two thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry under the command of Sir Roger Williams. With Leicester at her side, the red-haired queen, wearing a plumed hat, rode onwards, pausing only when some soldiers fell to their knees at the roadside, crying out their blessings upon her. So says the official account, but one suspects they may also have been seeking their pay arrears from the queen. Certainly, Elizabeth felt it necessary to send messengers ahead to modestly bid the soldiers ‘not to pay her such idolatrous reverence’.64

  The queen spent that night, not in her ‘lieutenant’s cabin’, but in ‘Mr Ritchie’s house’65 – probably Arderne House, on Horndon-on-the-Hill – the building surrounded by a bodyguard of two thousand men. She returned to the ‘Camp Royal’ the following morning, carrying a marshal’s baton (or ‘truncheon’) and rather incongruously wearing a man’s breastplate and backplate over her gown as ‘armed Pallas’. She then reviewed her troops, four footmen walking each side of her horse, her ladies behind, with her bodyguard riding at the rear. Her army, with colours flying and drums beating, marched past in gallant array. Thomas Deloney described the scene in a loyal ballad:

  Then came the Queen on prancing steed attired like an angel bright

  And eight brave footmen at her feet whose jerkins were most rich in sight

  Her ladies, likewise of great honour most sumptuously did wait upon her

  With pearls and diamonds brave adorned and in costly cauls of gold

  Her guards, in scarlet, then rode after, with bows and arrows, stout and bold.66

  Still mounted on her plump white gelding, Elizabeth delivered the speech of her life, her words noted down by Leicester’s chaplain, Dr Lionel Sharpe.67

  My loving people: I have been persuaded by some that are careful of my safety to take heed I committed myself to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery.

  But I tell you that I would not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people.

  Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects.

  Wherefore I am come among you at this time not for my recreation and pleasure, but being resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live and die amongst you all to lay down, for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust.

  I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king. And of a king of England too – and take foul scorn that Parma or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

  To the which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will venture my royal blood; I myself shall be your general, judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

  I know that already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns and I assure you in the word of a prince, you shall not fail of them.

  In the meantime, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject.

  Not doubting but by your concord in the camp and valour in the field and your obedience to myself and my general, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God and of my kingdom.68


  The troops responded ‘all at once [with] a mighty shout or cry’ – a patriotic ‘huzza’ – and Leicester believed that her speech had ‘so inflamed the hearts of her good subjects as I think the weakest person among them is able to match the proudest Spaniard that dared to land in England’.69

  Afterwards, the queen received favoured visitors in Leicester’s tent. One was Sir Edward Radcliffe, who described the scene for his kinsman, the ill-tempered Earl of Sussex:

  Her majesty has honoured our camp with her presence and comforted many of us with her most gracious usage.

  It pleased her to send for me into my lord general’s tent and to make me kiss her hand, giving me many thanks for my forwardness in the service, telling me I showed from what house I descended with many gracious words of your lordship’s good service, assuring me that before it wear long, she would make me better able to serve her.

  But while she was dining with Leicester, ‘there came a post [which] brought intelligence that the duke [of Parma] with all his forces was embarked for England and that he would be here with as much speed as possibly he could’.

  The news was published throughout the camp, to what end I know not, but no preparation is made for the sending of more men, which makes us think the news untrue.70

  Leicester urged her to return to St James’ Palace for her safety but the queen was enjoying her taste of martial glory and refused to leave: she ‘would not think of deserting her army at a time of danger’. Another memorable quotation for posterity! It was only when night had fallen that Elizabeth was graciously pleased to quit the Tilbury fortifications.

  The next day her troops kept a public fast for victory.

  Fortified by the Armada’s flight, the queen found time to reply to James VI of Scotland’s kind offer of assistance:

  Now may appear, my dear brother, how malice joined with might strives to make a shameful end of a villainous beginning.

  For by God’s singular favour, having this fleet well beaten in our narrow seas and press with all violence to achieve some watering place to continue their pretended invasions, the wind has carried them to your coasts where, I doubt not, they shall receive small succour and less welcome . . .

  You may assure yourself that I doubt [not] but all this tyrannical proud and brainsick attempt will be the beginning, though not the end, of the ruin of that king [Philip] . . .

  He had procured my greatest glory that meant my furthest wrack and has dimmed the light of his sunshine.71

  With the cost of her forces in Essex and Kent amounting to £783 14s 8d per day, the queen ordered an immediate demobilisation.72

  As the Armada rounded the north of Scotland, an Italian friend of Lippomano’s, serving in a Spanish ship, wrote him a letter brimming with despair. ‘Our route outside Scotland is long – pray God we come safe home. I am very hungry and thirsty for no one has more than half a pint of wine and a whole one of water each day. The water you cannot drink for it smells worse than musk; it is more than ten days since I drank any. They say we are to go straight to Corunna.’73

  Many hundreds of Spanish sailors and soldiers would never see their homes again, their dreams of return blown away by Atlantic storms.

  – 9 –

  SHIPWRECKED UPON AN ALIEN SHORE

  I numbered on one strand [of Sligo] of less than five miles in length, above 1,100 dead corpses of men which the sea had driven upon the shore . . . and as the country people told me, the like was in other places, though not of like number.

  Geoffrey Fenton, secretary of the Irish Council, to Lord Burghley, Dublin, 28 October 1588.1

  Unwittingly, Medina Sidonia’s sailing orders to the Armada for its voyage, via Cape Finisterre, to its home ports of Corunna or Ferrol, became darkly prophetic. His laconic instructions, written on a quarter of a sheet of paper, were distributed on 13 August as the fleet laboured through a bewildering mix of weather – squalls, rain, fog and heavy seas – in the northern reaches of the North Sea. His directions warned his captains ‘to take great heed lest you fall upon the island of Ireland, for fear of the harm that may happen unto you upon that coast’.2

  The battle damage sustained by the Armada at Gravelines was still taking its toll on progress and two days later, despite Recalde’s voluble protests, the captain-general ordered the fleet to put on full sail. Coldly rational, he had decided that those ships whose damage slowed them down would be left to make shift for themselves, as he had with the Rosario at the start of the long fight up the English Channel. After the dank drizzle cleared to reveal the grey horizon on the morning of 19 August, Don Diego Enriquez Tellez’s Levanter San Juan de Sicilia, with barely serviceable sails, was missing. That night, thirteen slower vessels also disappeared from sight, reducing Medina Sidonia’s fleet to only 110 ships. One, the 600-ton hulk Santiago (the so-called ‘ship of the women’), was wrecked on the Norwegian coast and thirty-two survivors, soldiers and their wives, ended up in Hamburg. A second ship may also have been lost on the same shore.3

  In the absence of any sea charts of Scotland and Ireland, both chief purser Calderón and his French pilot urged Medina Sidonia to ‘give a wide berth to the coast of Ireland’ but the naval adviser Diego Flores opposed this view and his fateful advice was adopted.4 One of the consequential navigation errors proved particularly lethal: confusion between Cape Clear on Ireland’s southern coast and numerous headlands on its western seaboard, such as Erris Head.

  The captain-general wrote to Philip on 21 August in an anxious attempt to explain the failure of his mission:

  The Armada was so completely crippled and scattered that my first duty to your majesty seemed to [be to] save it, even at the risk which we are running in undertaking this voyage which is so long and in such high latitudes.

  Ammunition and the best of our vessels were lacking and experience had shown how little we could depend upon the ships that remained, the queen’s fleet being so superior to ours in this sort of fighting, in consequence of the strength of their artillery and the fast sailing of their ships.

  What followed in his letter was surprising: ‘Your majesty’s ships depended entirely on harquebuses and musketry which were of little service unless we could come to close quarters.’

  With the concurrence of the officers . . . appointed as counsellors, and the generals, we have adopted the course we are now following . . . rendered necessary by the weather, the wind having continued to blow from the south and south-west.

  We have therefore run through the Norwegian Channel and between the Scottish islands [Orkney and Shetland] so as to make the voyage as short as possible.

  Our provisions are so scanty that in order to make them and the water last a month the rations of every person, without exception, have been reduced.5

  Your majesty may well imagine what suffering this entails . . . we have consequently over three thousand sick, without counting the wounded (who are numerous) in the fleet.

  God send us fair weather, so that we may soon reach port, for upon that depends the salvation of this army and navy.

  Somewhat lamely, Medina Sidonia expressed his fervent hope that ‘during your majesty’s time [I may] yet see your holy plans completed successfully to the greater glory of almighty God’.6 He gave the letter to one of his staff, Don Balthazar de Zúñiga, before landing him at Scalloway, on the Atlantic coast of ‘mainland’ Shetland,7 with orders to sail to Spain and to arrange for provisions to await the Armada’s return to Galicia.8 Fish and fresh water were also seized from Scottish and Dutch fishing boats to augment the fleet’s ever-declining stocks and pilots engaged ‘to carry them for the coast of Ireland and so into Spain’.9

  From 24 August to 4 September, the Spanish fleet struggled around the north of Scotland, beset by fogs, storms and squalls.10 Given the difficult weather conditions and the poor repair of the ships, contact was unavoidably lost with a number of vessels. Calderón’s hulk, San Salvador, last saw the Armada on the twenty-fourth and found herself alone near a large island
on Ireland’s west coast.

  The sea [was] running strongly towards the land, to the great danger of the [ship]. The purser ordered her to tack to the north-west which took her thirty leagues (166.68 km) distant and it is believed that the rest of the Armada would have done the same. If not, they would certainly have lost some of the ships, as the coast is rough, the sea heavy and the winds strong from seaward.11

  His forebodings were wholly warranted. At least twenty-seven Spanish ships came to be wrecked in what became the graveyard of the Armada (and Philip’s grandiose military ambitions) off the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland.12

  The transport squadron’s flagship, the 650-ton El Gran Grifón; her sister hulks Barca de Amberg and Castillo Negro and Don Alonso de Luzón’s 1,100-ton Levanter La Trinidad Valencera were four which became separated from the Armada. They sailed south-west in company for almost two weeks before the Barca began to founder on 1 September. Her surviving crew, numbering 256, were transferred to the Valencera and Grifón before the Barca disappeared beneath the waves.

  The converted Venetian grain ship Valencera carried siege guns – weighing two and a half tonnes apiece and firing 40-pound (18.14 kg) roundshot as cargo – in addition to her own battery of forty-two guns. She had sailed from Corunna with 335 soldiers and 75 crew, but sickness and enemy action had depleted their numbers. Though some battle damage had been patched up, her pumps could not cope with the leaks in her hull. With his water and food stocks being consumed by the additional men from the Barca and with one hundred sick on board, Don Alonso de Luzón decided to head for land to seek fresh sustenance. On 16 September, Valencera suddenly grounded on a reef a short distance off the shingle beach at the western end of Kinnagoe Bay, Co. Donegal, between Malin Head and Lough Foyle.