by Neil Hanson
On 3 June his fleet was hit by a violent storm. It raged for forty-eight hours and when at last it cleared and the fleet re-formed, only seven galleons and their pinnaces remained. Drake claimed that the London ships had simply deserted him in mid-ocean. The perennial shipboard malaises—scurvy, dysentery and typhus—were beginning to affect the fleet and some captains would have harboured serious concerns about shortages of food and water if the voyage was further prolonged, but it seems implausible that, had they known of it, they would have turned their back on the prospect of a prize as rich as the San Felipe. The captains of the London ships had no idea of Drake’s objective and no rendezvous point where the fleet could reassemble; if they lost touch with him, they had no alternative but to make for home. On the next day one of the missing ships was sighted and the Golden Lion and the pinnace Spy were sent in pursuit of it. Some time later the Spy returned alone, with Captain Marchant of the Golden Lion aboard. His crew had mutinied, reinstated William Borough as captain and set sail for home. A furious Drake at once convened a court martial and passed a sentence of death for high treason on Borough in his absence, but the sentence was never carried out. A Court of Inquiry sitting in London later exonerated him, and Borough and his crew claimed their full share of pay and prize money from the expedition.
On 18 June the San Felipe was duly sighted near São Miguel in the Azores. It repeatedly dipped the flag at the masthead, inviting the unknown ships to show their colours, but Drake’s fleet “would put out no flag until we were within shot of her, when we hanged out flags, streamers and pennants that she might be out of doubt what we were. Which done, we hailed her with cannon shot and shot her through several times.” Owned by Philip and trading in the East Indies for his sole benefit, the San Felipe was a huge ship, towering above the English galleons and outweighing any three of them together, but its crew was weakened and depleted by the privations of the long sea voyage from Goa. In addition to its own goods, it was also bringing home the cargo from another Spanish carrack “which was not fit to proceed on the voyage” and was so heavy laden that its gun-ports could not even be used. Its bow and stern chasers were the only guns that could be fired and they were no match for the English cannons and culverins. Drake’s six galleons and accompanying pinnaces were amply strong enough to overpower the San Felipe and after a brief resistance, “six of her men being slain and several sore hurt, they yielded unto us.” 13
Drake gave the captain and his crew a boat with which to make for São Miguel and he also released 240 Africans “whom they had taken to make slaves in Spain and Portugal.” He gave them a boat, allowing them to sail “whither they list, and further dealt most favourably with them.” He then set sail for Plymouth with his prize, “the greatest ship in all Portugal,” laden with precious metals, jewels, ivory, silks, taffetas, velvets, calico, carpets, porcelain, ebony, gum, indigo, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mace and pepper. Such was its value that the cargo was almost literally worth its weight in gold, “so richly loaded that every man in the fleet counted his fortune made.” It would have been folly for Drake to have returned to Cape St. Vincent and risked such a prize being recaptured by a Spanish fleet lying in wait for his return, and in any event he had already caused enough disruption to ensure that the Spanish Armada would not sail in 1587.
Even before Drake’s raid, a crucial hiatus had occurred in the Spanish preparations because of the illness of the King. Philip complained of a cold in early February 1587, and, exacerbated by his spartan living conditions in his cold stone palace and by the stresses of his self-imposed work regime, it worsened and developed into an illness, possibly pneumonia, that lasted well into the summer. His insistence that all business of the state should still be transacted by him alone threw the Spanish government into near-paralysis for most of that time. His secretary Don Juan de Idiaquez did what he could to keep the Armada preparations moving forward and had canvassed the Duke of Medina-Sidonia for his opinions on augmenting the Armada by keeping that year’s outward-bound Indies fleet and the escorts of the treasure fleet in Spanish waters. Medina-Sidonia dismissed the idea. “On the communication between the two worlds depends the wealth and power we need here . . . Rather than halt the sailing of the flota, its prompt dispatch should be encouraged.” 14
On the question of Drake’s latest raids, Idiaquez had consulted his master who, even in the depths of his illness, left him in no doubt as to the right response. “Defensive measures will no longer suffice. He [Philip] must set fire to their house . . . to draw them home.” By so doing, he would solve the problem not only of England, but of The Netherlands too, “that voracious monster that devours the men and treasure of Spain.” Uncertainties about Drake’s whereabouts and intentions and fears that he would again return to ravage Spanish harbours and shipping or intercept the flota, carrying “more than sixteen million, the greatest treasure that has ever entered these kingdoms in one sum from the Indies,” now caused further delays to the Armada preparations. Many great ships and galleys skulked in port and Philip was forced to divert troops to defend the coast. Meanwhile, having at last received troops and armaments for his ships, Santa Cruz departed for the Azores with thirty-seven of the Armada’s best fighting ships “to ensure the safety of the Indian flotillas [the treasure fleet] and sweep the corsairs from the seas, and if God should allow him to encounter Drake, I trust he will give him what he deserves.” Santa Cruz sailed on 16 July 1587 and rendezvoused with the treasure fleet on 26 August, bringing it safely to the Guadalquivir River, where it was towed upstream to Seville, beyond the reach of even the most adventurous corsair. As soon as he received word of its arrival, Philip sent an envoy to Seville to levy an immediate tax of 5 per cent of the value to subsidize the Enterprise of England, but his joy at the receipt of his treasure was marred by his knowledge that the Armada would once more be delayed.
Don Alonso de Leiva had led a fleet of ships into Lisbon in early August to reinforce the Armada and such a volley was fired in celebration that the gun smoke lay like fog across the entire harbour. The crews remained aboard, ready to sail for England as soon as Santa Cruz and the remainder of the Armada’s great ships returned from escorting the flota, but he did not drop anchor back in Lisbon until the end of September. He then announced that he could not possibly depart before November at the earliest. The ships needed careening and refitting, the men were sick and in need of rest and food, and the autumn storms were already breaking. De Leiva dismissed Santa Cruz’s comments and claimed that the Armada was ready to sail at once, but when asked his opinion, Medina-Sidonia sided with Santa Cruz, arguing that to set sail so late in the year was a recipe for disaster. Once more the departure was postponed.
The source of many of Philip’s problems had already set his course for home. A pinnace sailed ahead, carrying news of the prize he had captured, and when Drake himself made harbour in Plymouth, people dressed in their Sunday clothes streamed into the town from many miles around to see the San Felipe and join the celebrations of their countrymen’s good fortune. So many guns were fired in salute that the town accounts included an “item paid for powder spent at the coming in of Sir Francis Drake.” The San Felipe and its cargo raised a total of £114,000 when sold. The riches obtained from this single ship, coupled with the plunder that Drake had brought back from his circumnavigation in the previous decade, awakened English merchant adventurers to the phenomenal value of trade with the East Indies, and led directly to attempts by the Muscovy Company to develop trade with the Far East and to the foundation of the East India Company. Even after the London investors had received their handsome dividend and the crews had taken their share of the prize money, Drake still received £17,000 and the Queen £40,000, in addition to the chest of gold and jewels that he was careful to donate to her in an attempt to defuse any criticism of his provocations to Philip of Spain. The Queen’s stupendous share was enough to build twenty galleons from scratch. Mendoza warned Philip that “this would set all the mariners in England agog to g
o out and plunder. For this reason he [Stafford] says it is important that . . . the armaments might be pushed forward and the Queen of England attacked, which would end it all.” 15
Drake must have expected a rapturous welcome at Court, but in his absence the unpredictable Elizabeth had lurched back towards the faction—some of whom were in receipt of covert payments from Spain—arguing for an accommodation with Philip. Despite her share of the proceeds of Drake’s voyage and the casket of jewels “garnished with gold” that he had “taken charge to deliver to her Majesty with his own hands,” Elizabeth spurned him. Dismissed from Court, he returned to Plymouth to await a further royal change of mind, while Elizabeth made proposals for an end to hostilities and conducted negotiations with the Duke of Parma through a ransomed prisoner of Sir Walter Ralegh. She also found more money to reassure her Dutch allies, sent additional funds to Henri of Navarre in France and raised a further £100,000 to recruit German mercenaries to strengthen his embattled forces.
As with the money lavished on Elizabeth’s summer progresses through the southern counties, Drake and her other admirals and sea-captains could only look in horror at this vast expenditure on questionable military adventures on the continent when even a fraction of those huge sums would have yielded far greater dividends had it been used to arm, supply and provision her fleet, immeasurably strengthening her first, indeed her only realistic line of defence against Spain. But “in her handling of the navy she showed the same hesitation, indecision and fitfulness that she displayed in the wider field of general politics . . . to her the fleet was . . . a personal property to be preserved as a family possession or a trading capital which was not to be hazarded, but all the same was to produce great profits.”
Sir Walter Ralegh had long argued that England’s best defence was its ships. “An army transported over the sea and the landing place left to the choice of the invader, cannot be resisted on the coast of England without a fleet to impeach it; except that every creek, port or sandy bay had a powerful army in them . . . I take it to be the wisest way, to employ good ships upon the sea, and not trust to any entrenchment upon the shore.” Even Burghley, no supporter of expenditure on the navy, called the fleet “the wall of England,” but “from first to last, she [Elizabeth] never understood that the sea was her sole salvation,” nor “what the fleets could or could not do . . . [She] never recognised that she was especially fortunate in being able to fight Spain where it was weakest, and chose, in preference, to make her greatest efforts where it was strongest—on land. On her navy and her naval expeditions between 1585 and 1603 she may have expended £1 million; her wars by land cost £4.5 million and the proportions fairly represent the confidence she placed in the two arms respectively, for she spent most where she hoped most.”16
The English fear of a Spanish alliance with France against England was as great if not greater than Philip’s fear of his two historic enemies uniting against him. With de Guise and the Catholic League in the ascendant in France, the English nightmare seemed a strong possibility. Coupled with the danger of a Spanish reconquest of The Netherlands, it would have left England facing a uniformly hostile coastline, punctuated by half a dozen deep-water ports from any of which an invasion force might emerge. Whether Elizabeth truly believed that negotiations with Parma could achieve peace or whether, like the Spaniards, she was content to use talks as a diversion from her true purpose, she sent peace commissioners to The Netherlands to begin formal negotiations with Parma’s representatives. Her commissioners were led by the most prominent advocate of peace with Spain, the Controller of the Household, Sir James Croft, “a long grey beard, with a white head witless,” and a man who was in Philip of Spain’s pay. As he awaited a wind to carry his ship to Flanders, Croft wrote to warn Elizabeth that “those that recommend war, recommend it for sundry respects; some for war’s sake, as I should do perhaps if I were young and a soldier; others for religion; others for spoil and robbery, whereof Your Majesty feels too much. They are all inclined to their particular interests, caring nothing for the Prince’s treasure.”
The professional soldier, Sir John Norris, hardly a young man himself, was at once prompted to give Elizabeth “in writing many reasons against entering into peace negotiations,” and the Lord Admiral to state that “there was never, since England was England, such a stratagem and mask made to deceive England as this treaty of peace.” Sir John Hawkins was even more emphatic. “We might have peace, but not with God.” If the Queen would give him a dozen ships, he promised to sail for the coast of Spain and “distress anything that goes through the seas.” The cost would be no more than “£2,700 a month for wages and victuals and it will be a very bad and unlucky month that will not bring in treble that charge.” Elizabeth ignored the advice, leading Sir Walter Ralegh to complain that if the Queen had “believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire [of Philip’s] in pieces and made their kings kings of figs and oranges as in old times.”17
Horatio Palavacino, a Genoese banker resident in England, wrote to Mendoza that Elizabeth was “so sick of the war in The Netherlands that to judge from the hurry she is in to send the peace commissioners to Holland, if the Duke of Parma was willing to come to terms, she would refuse no conditions that were not absolutely degrading.” But her position was not entirely supine, for “John Herbert, one of the commissioners,” was charged with “the secret mission of saying to the Duke of Parma that he ought to recollect who it was that allowed his grandfather to be murdered and that your Majesty [Philip] was now usurping the throne of Portugal from his [Parma’s] son, which was not a thing lightly to be forgotten.” If Parma were to break with Philip, “win the favour of the people of the country and garrison the towns with men entirely devoted to him,” Elizabeth would surrender the deep-water ports of Brill and Flushing [now Brielle and Vlissingen] to him and “both the Queen and France would help him with all their strength.” She even held out the possibility that Parma’s son might succeed her on the English throne—“it would be better for his son to possess the throne” than Philip—but Parma knew enough of Elizabeth’s fickle nature, and the long and deadly reach of Philip’s assassins, not to entertain her proposals for a moment.
Throughout the winter and spring Elizabeth continued to show a stubborn faith in the peace negotiations with Parma that was not shared by a single member of her council. Parma himself reported that “the Intelligence which I receive from all quarters seems to prove that the Queen of England really desires to conclude peace . . . her alarm and the expense she is incurring are grieving her greatly. But after all, it cannot be believed that she is turning except under the stress of necessity.” The price of war was undoubtedly huge, for apart from the direct costs of maintaining ships at sea and training and equipping troops on land, the cloth trade, England’s prime source of wealth, had already been crippled by the simmering hostilities with Spain, and open warfare might be its death knell. As a result, Elizabeth was apparently prepared to be persuaded that if she handed Brill and Flushing to Philip’s forces—she said she would only be restoring them to their rightful owner—and allowed English Catholics some measure of freedom of worship, he would be willing to conclude a lasting peace with her.
Philip needed a resolution to the Dutch conflict and, despite his claim that “I would sacrifice all my lands and lose 100 lives, if I had them, rather than be a sovereign of heretics,” it was easy for Elizabeth to persuade herself that he might accept a settlement rather than face the unpredictability of war. But Philip’s correspondence shows that he gave not the slightest thought to any compromise. He could have had peace in The Netherlands on several occasions, but every attempt at mediation foundered on the rock of his insistence that toleration of the Protestant religion was inconceivable. “With regard to Holland and Zealand or any other province or towns, the first step must be for them to receive and maintain alone the exercise of the Catholic religion and to subject themselves to the Roman church, without tol
erating the exercise of any other religion . . . There is to be no flaw, no change, no concession by convention or otherwise of liberty of conscience or religious peace, or anything of that sort. They are all to embrace the Catholic religion, and the exercise of that alone is to be permitted.” The Dutch rebels would either have to accept the mother church, or choose exile or death; there were no other alternatives. The Enterprise of England must be seen in the same dogmatic light. It was partly about money—an attempt to end raids by English privateers on Spain’s fleets and possessions—partly about political and dynastic imperatives, and partly about the loss of face that Philip had suffered through attacks on his own coast, but it was also genuinely driven by religious fundamentalism and Philip’s obsession with leading the restoration of Europe to the Catholic faith. A flexible and pragmatic ruler in his youth, he was now a stubborn and dogmatic old man, brooding alone in the Escorial. The only solution that would satisfy him would be the overthrow of Elizabeth and the total destruction of the Dutch rebellion.18
Had the decision been Parma’s to make, Elizabeth’s trust might have been justified, at least until he had completed the subjugation of The Netherlands, for as late as 20 March 1588 he was urging Philip to “conclude peace . . . by this means we should end the misery and calamity of these afflicted States, the Catholic religion would be established in them and your ancient dominion restored, besides which we should not jeopardise the Armada . . . and we should escape the danger of some disaster, causing you to fail to conquer England whilst losing your hold here.” It was wise, even prescient advice, but Philip had no intention of being turned aside from his chosen path, even when Parma pointed out that the Enterprise of England could still proceed, with much greater ease, once The Netherlands had been returned to his control. Philip’s reply closed the door on any possibility of peace. “To you only I declare that my intention is that these negotiations shall never lead to any result, whatever conditions the English may offer. On the contrary, the only object is to deceive them and to cool them in their preparations for defence, by making them believe such preparations will not be necessary.” Philip had many other advisers, and they warned him that English Catholics feared that “if peace be made, they will be totally ruined.” The faction led by Leicester and Walsingham at Court had “only one objective, namely to disperse the forces gathered in Flanders,” and Philip was warned that Walsingham’s agents were actively seeking the leading English exiles abroad. “Let the Cardinal [the English exile William Allen] and Sir William Stanley take care that they are not poisoned, as I can assure you that the matter is being arranged.”