The Confident Hope of a Miracle

by Neil Hanson

  Elizabeth’s commanders remained equally sceptical of Spanish intentions. Drake warned that “the promise of peace from the Prince of Parma and these mighty preparations in Spain agree not well together,” and Lord Howard found a diplomatic form of words in which to express his own profound unease. “If the Commissioners bring peace it is the happiest thing that can be; but if they come without it, look for great matters to ensue . . . for the charge is so great that the King is at, both in Spain and here in the Low Countries, that it cannot continue long, if he had five times the treasure he has.”19

  Elizabeth did not respond to the warnings. Only in late June 1588, when one of Walsingham’s agents intercepted letters from Count de Olivares to Philip, “by which the Queen had learnt that his Holiness had granted the investiture of England to whomsoever might be the consort of the Infanta Isabella,” did Elizabeth realize the futility of the peace negotiations. It “quite banished any hope she had of peace and greatly angered her.” Ten days later, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were sent to Westminster to claim to the assembled lords that the Queen had been well aware of the charade being played by Parma, but had “dissembled as she then lacked many things with which she was now well supplied. Conditions had [now] been submitted to her so injurious to her dignity” that she hoped “with the help of God and the co-operation of her subjects to overthrow her enemies.” Her argument that she was fully aware of the true situation and was herself using the peace negotiations to buy time for further defensive preparations would have carried more weight if there had been greater evidence of an increased urgency in such preparations or any sign that, for example, she had tried to replenish her supplies of gunpowder, which had been allowed to fall to critical levels. However, the evidence suggests that her belief in the peace process was genuine, even though her optimism was not shared by the vast majority of her courtiers and officials.

  None of these developments interfered with her continued efforts to “spare her purse” from the cost of defending her realm, by attempting to make individual towns and seaports liable for fitting out and supplying the ships requisitioned to fight the Armada. The cost of supplying and training the militia was also placed upon the counties rather than the Exchequer, and since the army to defend the Queen was drawn mainly from the retinues of courtiers and nobles—at their expense—another huge saving to the Treasury was achieved. Even Elizabeth’s chief ally in this frugality, her Lord Treasurer Burghley, recognized that the huge burden of “ship money” on the towns and the “unsupportable charges towards musters, powder and new weapons” in the counties, particularly when “demanded of the poor in towns,” would lead to “a general murmur of peevish, malcontented people [and] increase the ill-feeling, to the comfort of the enemy.”

  War was popular with the people, taxes much less so, but monarchs could ask for a “voluntary contribution” in time of war, and failure to pay could have severe consequences. One London alderman refused to contribute to Henry VIII’s war with the Scots in 1542. He was immediately conscripted into the army and the orders from the Privy Council required his commanders to place him in the most exposed and perilous situations during battles. Elizabeth’s Counsellors were ordered to demand such “voluntary contributions,” but her attempts to persuade or compel her citizens to assume even more of the financial burden of fighting the Armada than their taxes had already met were often unsuccessful. The Council’s suggestion that those merchants who had gained by reprisal raids against Spanish shipping should contribute most to the cost of supplying ships to Her Majesty’s fleet was met by affirmations from the merchants “that they have thereby rather sustained loss than gain,” and refusals to contribute. A request, unsanctioned by Parliament, that all the major seaports and coastal towns should supply at their own expense one or more “warlike ship and pinnace, fit and able for service, furnished for two months with victuals, mariners, munitions and other necessary provisions,” was often met with evasion or flat refusal. It was unsurprising that this should be so; local taxation had increased fourfold in some towns as a result of the Queen’s relentless demands upon them.20

  “Some principal justices and men of the best living” in Cambridgeshire were reported to Walsingham for using every possible means to evade their obligations, and the Privy Council issued an order for the “best and wealthiest men” of Aldeburgh, Orford, Dunwich and Southwold to pay their share of the cost of fitting out a ship “according to their estates and wealth, no longer leaving the burden to several mean men of small wealth,” nor indeed to the Crown. The Mayor of Exeter was more obliging than most of his peers, embargoing two ships “bound for Newfoundland which . . . are now stayed for this purpose,” but the Mayor of Poole bemoaned “the great decay and disability of this poor town by reason of embargoes, loss at sea and by pirates,” the Captain of the Isle of Wight cited the “great poverty of the merchants of Newport,” and the Mayor of Southampton bemoaned “the disability and poverty of the town.” All claimed that they could not meet their sovereign’s demands. The Mayor of Hull promised to be more obliging, but only once the town’s ships had returned to port. “All the best ships . . . belonging to this port be abroad beyond the seas or at London and the town destitute of mariners.” The Mayor of Lyme Regis also pleaded poverty. He furnished a pinnace for the fleet, the Revenge of Lyme, but failed to produce a larger ship, and the Mayor of King’s Lynn reported that his town was “unwilling to be at any charge near the furnishing of a ship,” and that Wells, though “well furnished with shipping, within which there be many rich men inhabiting, but they have denied altogether to contribute to our charge.”

  Philip commanded far greater wealth and income than Elizabeth. English trade had been hard hit by hostilities with Spain, and the disruption to the banking system based on Antwerp, coupled with the widespread belief that England was doomed to defeat against the Armada, made it hard for her to borrow money except at the most penal rates of interest. Yet she continued to ignore the most effective means of raising additional money. War was never formally declared with Spain. Had she done so and summoned Parliament, an extraordinary grant in aid could have been raised to subsidize the cost of the fleet, but Elizabeth had no intention of allowing her Parliament any voice in the conduct of foreign affairs, any more than she would in the other areas that she considered the sole prerogative of the Crown. Matters of “diplomacy and sensitive issues such as dynastic marriage negotiations and the succession were arcana imperii —mysteries of state—reserved for Elizabeth’s own decision—or more often indecision,” and whatever decisions she eventually reached, however capricious or illogical they may have been, were never accompanied by any word of explanation; any public justification of the Royal will was taken as a sign of weakness. She also reacted with ferocity to any attempts at interference. In 1579, the author and the publisher of a pamphlet criticizing her proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou both had their right hands cut off.

  Parliament was not summoned until 22 November, long after the Armada campaign was over, but the Queen’s close-fistedness also ensured that the gap in funding of the navy left by the absence of subsidy from Parliament was not met from her own or any other resources. Had Philip been able to launch the Armada early in the New Year, as he had planned, England’s coast would have been barely defended. In her insatiable drive to save money whenever and wherever she could, “never had a Queen of England brought herself and her country so near to ruin.”21

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Floating Forest

  While Elizabeth’s actions—or lack of them—suggested that she at least adhered resolutely to Philip’s famous dictum of moving with leaden feet, he had now become frantic with impatience. As soon as Santa Cruz returned from the Azores, the King, now restored to full health, was urging him to action. “Success depends mostly upon speed. Be quick.” Ignoring the unanimous advice of his council of war, he ordered Santa Cruz to put to sea with the Armada and whatever forces he had assembled as soon as the victua
llers from Andalusia had arrived, and make directly for “the Cape of Margate.” He was to do this even in the worst of the winter weather, with the attendant risks that either the Armada would be unable to reach its destination or the invasion force would be cut off and left without resupply. In the winter of 1559, French forces in Scotland had been stranded and forced to surrender after reinforcements came within sight of the coast but were then driven back by storms to France. An attacking English fleet under William Wynter also took twenty-seven days to make the short voyage to Edinburgh from the Medway and lost three of its fourteen ships in the process. Citing such precedents, Parma questioned Philip’s determination to launch the Armada at that time of year, but the King replied that he was well aware of the dangers of sending out a fleet in winter but “since it is all for His cause, God will send good weather.” In an acid reply, Parma warned Philip, “God will tire of working miracles for us.”

  Only when Santa Cruz outlined the damage his ships had suffered on the voyage to the Azores was Philip persuaded to grant a delay, but so desperate was he for the attack on England to begin that he even suggested to Parma that, if opportunity presented itself, he should seize the chance to launch a surprise attack across the Channel without waiting for the Armada to arrive. Having sent the order, he was stricken with fear of the consequences if Parma’s forces were trapped on the wrong side of the Channel, leaving The Netherlands undefended, and he then became even more frenzied in his demands that the Armada should sail without further delay. The old admiral won extensions week by grudging week until by late December Philip had so lost patience that he insisted that the fleet, even if it numbered no more than thirtyfive ships, should at once put to sea under Santa Cruz’s command or that of another officer.

  Having earlier boasted of his readiness to comply with Philip’s request for an unaided surprise attack on England, Parma was also now back-pedalling, even going so far as to berate the King for urging “what Your Majesty emphatically ordered me not to do until the arrival of . . . the Armada.” Shaken by the ferocity of his complaints, Philip’s resolve was then further weakened by disturbing intelligence collected by Mendoza on English naval strength. As a result he changed his mind again; Parma was now to await the rendezvous with the Armada and make no attempt to invade England before it arrived. But Philip’s impatience with Santa Cruz had not been allayed. Fuming at the delays and the spiralling costs of maintaining his huge fleet, he now set a new deadline of 15 February for the Armada’s departure and sent a brusque young soldier, the Count of Fuentes, to Lisbon to reinforce his orders. Fuentes’ instructions were to sack Santa Cruz if he showed the least unwillingness to comply and he treated the ailing war hero with undisguised contempt. The Venetian ambassador, Hieronimo Lippomano, expressed his astonishment that Philip should so wilfully ignore the advice and opinions of his most experienced commander, and blamed Philip’s mule-headed nature and his naive faith that acts performed in the name of God would be rewarded with success. Now sixty years old and in failing health, Philip was desperate to resolve the problems with England and The Netherlands that were blighting his reign and clouding the future of his nine-year-old heir. His desperation to see the Armada at sea reflects his belief that it offered him the chance to settle both problems at one stroke.1

  News received from Paris in early February can only have increased Philip’s impatience. Elizabeth and Henri III were conducting secret negotiations, with Henri urging her to use her influence with Henri of Navarre to persuade him to adopt Catholicism and submit to the King’s authority, cutting the ground from under the Catholic League. Elizabeth countered by offering her financial support if the King would publicly disown the League and arrest de Guise and his leading supporters as traitors, but both courses of action were equally implausible. Navarre would have lost his leadership of the Huguenots, his only power base, and probably also his life if he abjured his religion and, much as he hated de Guise, the King was far too wary of the power of the League and the fury of the Paris mob to consider such extreme action against him yet. The “secret” negotiations came to nothing and, since they were conducted through Sir Edward Stafford, full details of them were immediately passed to Mendoza and Philip.

  Faced with Philip’s implacable, almost frenzied demands, Santa Cruz, victor of Lepanto and Terceira, and once famous for his ruthless speed and decisiveness, had become more and more mired in the task of preparing the Armada. He was an old and sick man, and his dispatches reflect his weariness and despair at ever readying his battle fleet for its task. He had made what efforts he could to obey the King’s commands, but the Armada he had managed to assemble looked woefully unequal to the task it had been set. When the Enterprise of England had first been proposed, Santa Cruz had requested 50 galleons, another 100 great ships, six galleasses, 40 galleys, 40 hulks and 150 other craft. By February 1588 he had only 13 galleons, one so decrepit that he doubted it could even put to sea, four galleasses and 60 or 70 other ships. Many of them were embargoed foreign merchantmen, armed and provisioned in chaos, confusion and frantic haste, and even the finest galleons were under-armed and under-manned. Men had fallen ill or deserted in droves—they had not been paid for three months— and replacement crewmen and soldiers had to be pressed from fields and villages for miles around Lisbon, while the prisons and hospitals were emptied to provide further unwilling recruits.

  On 9 February, less than a week before the final deadline Philip had given him, Don Alvaro de Bazan, Marquis de Santa Cruz and Captain-General for the Ocean Seas, “thunderbolt in war, father of his troops, the unconquered,” gave up the struggle and died aged sixty-two, his end undoubtedly hastened by the relentless demands of his monarch. If much feared, he was little loved—it was reported that only four men accompanied his coffin to its final resting place—but as a commander on the high seas, he had no equal anywhere in the Spanish dominions. “The loss to Spain was incalculable, for he was the only man who by birth was entitled, and by experience was competent, to command such an expedition.” Within days, Santa Cruz’s vice-admiral, the Duke of Paliano, had also died, but the loss of his most experienced naval commanders did not deter Philip, who even contrived to see it as further evidence of divine encouragement for the Enterprise of England. “God has shown me a favour by removing the Marquis now, rather than when the Armada is at sea.”

  The same day that the King heard the news, he sent instructions, prepared three days earlier, appointing as Santa Cruz’s replacement Philip’s thirty-seven-year-old cousin, Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, Seventh Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Count of Niebla, Marquis of Cazaza in Africa, Lord of the City of St. Lucar de Barrameda, Captain General of Andalusia and Knight of the Honourable Order of the Golden Fleece. “I am sure you will know how to serve me well in it, as you have done in all things.” At first sight it was a quixotic choice ahead of experienced commanders like Don Juan Martinez de Recalde, Don Hugo de Moncada and Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva, who all put themselves forward as soon as they heard the news of Santa Cruz’s death. Medina-Sidonia’s duchy was the oldest in Spain and he was one of the greatest landowners in Europe. His vast estates stretching from the Algarve to the Mediterranean coast yielded rich crops of grain, citrus fruits, olives, figs and the grapes for the wines of Jerez that were blended and shipped from the port of San Lucar. There Medina-Sidonia’s white-walled palace stood near the heart of the town, looking out over the estuary of the Guadalquivir and the Gulf of Cadiz. His wealth had been further increased by the monopoly of tunny-fishing granted to him by the Crown, and by the trade that had flowed through San Lucar, much of it with English ships and merchants, before it was stifled by the growing hostilities between the countries.2

  Medina-Sidonia had inherited the family estates as a boy and at the age of twenty-one he was married in a dynastic alliance to the ten-year-old daughter of the Princess of Eboli, rumoured to be the illegitimate daughter of Philip II. Her tender age necessitated a special dispensation from the Pope before the marriage could take
place. At what point it was consummated is perhaps mercifully undocumented, but she bore him a total of sixteen children over the ensuing years. Medina-Sidonia appears to have cared little for the traditional pastimes of rich noblemen; he was not a courtier, a warrior or a huntsman, but he was bound by an unshakeable sense of duty to his family, his estates, his religion and his King.