All was not lost, though. On 19 September, Sir John Norris proposed a modified plan with three objectives. First, English ships should attack any Armada vessels under repair in the northern Spanish ports. Second, an English army, supported by the queen’s ships, should capture Lisbon and set Dom Antonio, the Portuguese pretender, on the throne. Third, the fleet and its troops should sail on to the Azores and capture the islands, which would allow plenty of time before the Spanish treasure fleet was due to arrive there.
Sir Francis Drake was a fervent supporter of Norris’s strategy and both men – these ‘warriors of the Lord’ – were comforted by the corporate opinion of a group of London Puritan ministers, who after protracted and tedious disputation, decided that there was no incongruity in restoring a Catholic pretender to the Portuguese throne if it would grievously damage God’s greater enemy, Philip II of Spain.5
Elizabeth, in her fiscally embarrassed state, could not fund the expedition and was anyway distracted by the expense of having to hastily organise the defences of Ireland to round up the Spanish shipwreck survivors. So it was decided to follow the example of Drake’s financially successful raid on Cadiz and make it a private enterprise operation, with the queen providing only £20,000 towards the costs. Backers in the City of London and other ‘adventurers’ would provide funding of £43,000 and pay the operating costs of six ‘second-class’ queen’s ships (Revenge, Nonpareil, Dreadnought, Swiftsure, Foresight, Aid) and two pinnaces (Advice and Merlin), as well as providing armed merchantmen. Her commissioners would raise eight thousand troops and one thousand pioneers for the army. Half the soldiers would be volunteers and the rest would be armed only with swords and daggers to save money. Elizabeth would supply two captured Spanish prizes, ten siege cannon and six field guns, together with twenty lasts of gunpowder and tools for the pioneers. The Dutch rebels would be asked to contribute four thousand harquebusiers and to provide the weapons for the troops: a thousand halberds, three thousand muskets, four thousand calivers, two thousand breastplates, six siege guns and forty lasts of powder. Food and other provisions, enough for four months, would also be supplied from Holland. The Dutch contribution would amount to £10,000 in kind. It looked, initially at least, a cut-price invasion.
The queen did not demur even when Norris asked for £5,000 in advance, promising that they would not ask for the remainder until the full £43,000 of private cash was raised.6 On 11 October at Westminster, she issued a commission to Drake and Norris, granting them authority for the ‘whole charge and direction’ of the enterprise; allowing them to choose their officers and levy troops ‘to invade and destroy the powers and forces of all such persons as have this last year, with their hostile powers and armadas, sought and attempted the invasion of the realm of England’.7 They also obtained royal permission for any person to volunteer for the expedition.
It had taken just over three weeks for the plan to be formulated, discussed and approved – an astonishing achievement, given Elizabeth’s habitual procrastination and havering. Was she being uncharacteristically bold – or was she desperate to find some solution to her worries?
In Paris, Mendoza was quick to pick up rumours of the expedition. One of his spies in London, Manuel de Andrada, codenamed ‘David’, was a handily placed member of Dom Antonio’s household. His reports led the ambassador to believe there were plans ‘of sending forty or fifty sail’ to assist the pretender, ‘but no preparations to that effect are visible’.8 Two weeks later, Mendoza was convinced that the pretender would sail for Portugal, but considered this merely a diversionary tactic, as the real target was the Azores: ‘Fifty ships [are] being fitted out [and] are now being hurried forward furiously. A great number of bullocks have been slaughtered to provision them. Most of them are being fitted out by private persons in the hope of gain, as they see that the many ships that go out to pillage come back laden with booty.’9 In early November, he reported Elizabeth’s tart riposte when she heard that the Spanish king was repairing and reinforcing his fleet: ‘I will give Philip plenty to do before he can repair damages or turn round [the ships].’
Parma had begun to besiege Bergen-op-Zoom on 12 September and on 20 October. Norris, who had taken across an extra 1,500 English troops to help relieve the town, laid the plans before the rebel Dutch Council of States.10 Two months later, they agreed to most of the English requests for the expedition. They would provide ten warships for five months, plus 1,500 infantry, and Norris would be allowed to purchase weapons, armour, ammunition and provisions free of any tax or customs duty.
The paramount need for the expedition was underlined by intelligence that around forty Armada ships remained at Santander and another twelve at San Sebastián. There were few sailors to man these warships and repairs were proceeding slowly because of a shortage of dockyard workers. The soldiers were in winter quarters 20 miles (32.19 km) inland.11 Walsingham warned Stafford in Paris that Elizabeth was determined ‘to use advantage of the late victory . . . by keeping the King of Spain unable to redress and set up [again] the like forces to the disquiet of his neighbours’. Therefore Stafford should urge Henri III to ban all exports of cereals and naval stores from France.12 The German Hansa merchants were also warned that their ships would be stopped on the high seas and if their cargoes were found to be provisions or munitions destined for Spain, these would be seized.13
In February 1589, the queen issued orders to Drake and Norris, emphasising that their mission had two overriding objectives: ‘the one to distress the King of Spain’s ships, the other to win possession of the islands of Azores thereby to intercept the convoys of treasure that yearly pass that way to and from the West and East Indies’. Only after the destruction of the surviving Armada ships could they move on to restore Dom Antonio to the Portuguese throne. But this phase carried the stern proviso that ‘nothing can be attempted without very great hazard’ should local Spanish forces prove too strong. If popular support for the pretender was overwhelming, the English army should stay long enough merely to ensure that Dom Antonio’s frontiers with Spain were protected and the English army’s costs of the operation repaid by the new king.14 Her orders could not have been clearer or more insistent.
Elizabeth demanded that Drake and Norris swore solemn oaths, promising to obey these operational priorities. If they failed to fulfil their vows, they fully acknowledged they would be ‘reputed as traitors’. The queen must have suffered nagging doubts that Drake would resort to his old tricks and become distracted by the prospects of lucrative plunder. She decided to send a ‘trusty servant of her own’, Anthony Ashley, one of the clerks of the Privy Council, to be her ‘eyes and ears’ on the expedition. He was granted authority ‘for the observation of their actions and for writing of their common letters . . . and to assist them with good counsel and advice’. He was also told to ‘keep a true journal in writing of all public actions and proceedings’.15
Many of the discharged soldiers were swept up in this new call to arms against Spain. Other recruits were found among the much-despised vagabonds, ‘the scum and dregs’ of English society, and the Privy Council noted with alarm the ‘ragged condition and debauched condition’ of many volunteers. The Spanish spy codenamed ‘David’ reported they were recruited ‘under the impression that they have only to land and load themselves with gold and silver . . . They also say that they have been promised by Dom Antonio the sack of all towns which do not submit to him and that when they enter Castile they shall sack every place and carry war with blood and fire through the country.’16
War is not always such fun. Some recruits were seriously wounded during training when they fired gunpowder contaminated by ‘small hailshot’ either put in the mix by ‘the lewdness of those who sold the same [to make it heavier] or by other negligence’.17 In Southampton, justices and ‘other gentlemen dwelling near the sea coast’ were instructed to issue proclamations to enrol all ‘mariners and fishermen to the end there may be a good choice had of apt and sufficient men for her majesty’s
service’.18
Periods of national crisis often throw up the more eccentric among us. John Trew wrote to the queen in December offering his services for ‘her preservation and salvation . . . Though an old man, I desire to be employed in the wars.’ Like those unfortunates who, in later centuries, scurry between newspaper offices carrying tattered brown paper packages containing incontrovertible evidence of a world secretly governed by aliens, Trew’s fixation soon became apparent in his letter: ‘I have an invention which would do as much service as five thousand men in times of extremity and also an engine which can be driven before men to defend them from the shot of the enemy,’ he boasted. Like others of his ilk, his offer was politely declined and we shall never know whether John Trew was the earliest inventor of the main battle tank.19
Predictably the expedition’s plans soon went awry and the costs began to climb, rendering the original budget set by the commanders hopelessly inadequate. Promises were not kept. There was no siege train of artillery. No Dutch warships ever hove into sight. Around half of the military stores which Norris bought in the Netherlands never arrived. No cavalry came from the Low Countries and only twelve experienced infantry companies were sent over from Flanders – 1,800 trained men rather than the 3,500 expected. The Minion of Fowey, laden with biscuit, beef and beer, sank within Dover harbour during a storm, but was later raised.20 There were too few ships to transport what had become a 19,000-strong army gathering there in March 1589.
Then, over the horizon, sailed a rare piece of good fortune. Sixty Dutch flyboats displacing 150–200 tons each, passed through the Straits in ballast, en route for France to collect cargoes of sea salt. Drake immediately commandeered every one, citing the passports from Parma found in some of the vessels as justification for this act of war.21
The fleet sailed on to Plymouth but were delayed there by ‘unusually stormy’ weather, with the ‘wind continuing contrary’. Finding provisions for the fleet proved increasingly problematic. William Hawkins, mayor of Plymouth, could not purchase more than twelve tons of oil ‘and by reason it is now seed time, we cannot both in peas and beans furnish above four hundred quarters’ [5,080.24 kg]. No more than two thousand new landed fish could be bought from the fishermen, but beef supplies were abundant and there was plenty of butter and cheese ‘which the country yielded readily’.22
The expedition was turning into a financial disaster before it had even sailed. Stuck in harbour for longer than planned, they had no option but to raid the provisions earmarked for the voyage to feed the army as well as the four thousand sailors in the fleet. Drake and Norris had already spent in excess of £96,000 – 18 per cent more than their latest budget for the entire expedition. After the fleet was forced back to Plymouth by adverse winds on 17 April, Norris told Burghley the next day:
We are utterly unable to supply ourselves and, the voyage breaking, we cannot think what to do with the army.
Upon failing of the voyage, every man will call for pay from her majesty, being levied by her highness’s commission.
And if they have it not, the country will be utterly spoiled, robberies and outrages committed in every place, the arms and furnitures23 lost, beside the dishonour of the matter.24
Burghley saw through this piece of thinly disguised blackmail, but the project had progressed too far to pull back now. The Council authorised the mayor of Plymouth to victual the fleet for one month more. The sum of £10,000 was to be sent down in carts from London and a further £4,000 supplied by Cornwall and Somerset tax collectors. In the event, there were economies imposed by sleight of hand: fish and peas were substituted for beef, and there were no supplies of beer, saving nearly £7,000 in the cost of provisions. Moreover, the final cost to the exchequer of this latest contribution was £11,000 rather than the £14,000 promised, as not all the money left London.25
Elizabeth’s new court favourite was the red-haired Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, Leicester’s twenty-two-year-old stepson. This tall, handsome, vain and quarrelsome young man had first come to court four years earlier, burdened with the huge debts inherited from his imprudent father’s abortive attempts to subdue the Irish province of Ulster. The son’s wilful and extravagant lifestyle soon augmented his army of creditors. Faced with massive debts amounting to £23,000 (£70,000,000 at 2013 spending power), Essex became disenchanted with the fripperies of court life and decided to seek military glory (and profitable plunder) from the expedition to Spain and Portugal, both to brighten his aimless life and appease his twitchy creditors. Without the queen’s permission, he recklessly left St James’ Palace late on the afternoon of 13 April and headed off to the West Country.
He wrote to the Privy Council from Plymouth, itching to fight but seeking pardon ‘of her majesty’. He appealed to ‘your lordships to mediate . . . for me, [as] I was carried with this zeal so fast that I forgot those reverend forms which I should have used. Yet I had rather have had my heart cut out of my body than this zeal out of my heart.’26 In another letter, he was frank about his need to earn some cash:
My debts [are] at the least two or three and twenty thousand pounds. Her majesty’s goodness has been so great as I could not ask more of her. [There is] no way left to repair myself but my own adventure which I had much rather undertake than offend her majesty with suits [requests for money] as I have done heretofore. If I speed well, I will adventure to be rich. If not, I will not see the end of my poverty.27
Elizabeth was incensed at his unauthorised absence and concerned that his life would be endangered by this foreign military adventure. The next day she sent off his uncle, Sir Francis Knollys, to find Essex and bring him back to court like a naughty schoolboy truant.
It was too late. Essex sneaked on board Henry Noel’s Swiftsure and hid there until that evening, when she departed Plymouth. A panting and dishevelled Knollys was given use of a pinnace by Drake and Norris to pursue the errant favourite, but the vessel could not clear nearby Rame Head before the wind veered southerly and he was forced back into harbour.
The actions triggered by the queen’s infatuation with the unruly earl were fast assuming the comedy, chaos and confusion of a Keystone Cops’ chase. The Earl of Huntingdon was dispatched to Plymouth hard on Knollys’s heels with fresh commands from Elizabeth, so the expedition commanders sent Knollys off again in another pinnace. Unknown to all, the change in wind direction had forced Swiftsure back into port – at Falmouth, 60 miles (96.56 km) west of Plymouth – and there Essex remained for more than ten days, spending his time carousing with army officers, particularly ‘my faithful friend’ Sir Roger Williams, colonel general of the infantry. Drake told Burghley: ‘The matter of the Earl of Essex has been a great trouble to us but we have as yet been unable to discover him.’28 Despite his blandishment, there seems little doubt that Drake colluded in his escapade.
The expedition finally sailed on 28 April 1589. It numbered around one hundred ships, formed into five squadrons, including eleven hired armed merchantmen, some of them veterans of the Armada campaign – Merchant Royal, Edward Bonaventure, Toby, Centurion, Golden Noble, Tiger and Vineyard. Essex was in Swiftsure when she departed Falmouth the same day.
Instead of making for Santander and the damaged Armada ships, Drake steered for Corunna, blaming contrary winds. Besides, in a strange echo of those phantom Hansa ships that unwittingly led him to the plunder of the Rosario, he and Norris claimed to have received reports of two hundred ships ‘of diverse nations at The Groyne [Corunna] and other ports of Galicia and Portugal with a store of munition, masts, cables and other provisions for the enemy’. As the queen rightly feared, the lure of plunder aplenty had distracted Drake from his agreed tactical objectives before a shot had even been fired.
The English fleet anchored a mile (1.61 km) off Corunna at three o’clock on the afternoon of 4 May. Their arrival took the Spanish completely by surprise. The new Venetian ambassador to Madrid, Tomaso Contarini, reported:
The [marqués of Seralva] governor of Galicia was a
ttending to private matters. The courts were sitting. The soldiers had left their quarters and their arms and were scattered all over the country.
Everyone was so far from expecting an attack that they had no time to turn the useless out of the town or put their dearest possessions in safety.
[The governor’s] wife and daughter fled in their terror six miles [9.66 km] on foot.
The marqués did all that he was able and the troops performed their duty but the forces of the enemy, their sudden arrival, the weakness of the fortress and the want of proper munitions, place the city in danger of falling.29
There was no sign of Drake’s two hundred ships. The only vessels within the quiet harbour were the battered San Juan, a 600-ton Flemish hulk, another ship loaded with pikes and firearms, and two oared galleys.
Despite the wet and stormy weather, seven thousand soldiers were landed within three hours on the narrow isthmus that connects Corunna to the mainland and their fire drove back the few enemy forces to shelter behind the walls of the lower or ‘base town’. Norris landed two demi-culverins on 5 May and opened fire on the two galleys (which promptly rowed off to the safety of Ferrol) and the San Juan, silencing her few remaining operational guns.
Another two thousand English soldiers landed before dawn on 6 May and attacked the lower suburbs of Corunna, swiftly winning control of the streets. The San Juan was set ablaze by the defenders and the two hulks abandoned to the English who set about looting the town. Many soldiers were soon lying insensible from drinking the copious supplies of wine they had ‘liberated’. The alcohol certainly did not help, but epidemics further decimated the troops, possibly caused by typhus picked up from ‘the old clothes and baggage of those which returned with the Duke of Medina Sidonia’, as Sir Roger Williams suggested.30 During the subsequent interrogation of prisoners, Norris and Drake heard there was a ‘good store of munitions and victuals’ within the upper part of Corunna. Rather than consuming their own stores, they decided on its capture. After a four-day siege of the upper city, they reported:
The Spanish Armada Page 30