Chapter One
â⊠as the waves of the sea, without stay, do one rise and overtake another, so the Pope and his ⊠ministers be never at rest, but as fast as one enterprise faileth they take another in hand ⊠hoping at last to prevail.â Sir Walter Mildmay MP, October 1586
ARMADA YEAR, 1588, swept in on a flood tide of historical prophecies and dire predictions. For the numerologists, who divided the Christian calendar into vast, looping cycles of time, constructed in multiples of seven and ten and based on the Revelation of St John and the bloodier parts of the Book of Isaiah, the year offered nothing less than the opening of the Seventh Seal, the overthrow of Antichrist and the sounding of the trumpets for the Last Judgement.1
For the fifteenth century mathematician Regiomontanus, although he had not been quite so specific about the yearâs unfolding, still the promise of a solar eclipse in February, and not one but two lunar eclipses in March and August had not, he had thought, augured well.* will be great lamentation.â As the year began, in Prague the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, himself a keen astrologer, scanned the heavens for signs that his was not the empire to which Regiomontanus referred. He could discover little more than that the weather that year would be unseasonably bad.2
The printers of Amsterdam rang in the year with a special edition of their annual almanac, detailing in lurid prose the coming disasters: tempests and floods, midsummer snowstorms, darkness at midday, rain clouds of blood, monstrous births, and strange convulsions of the earth. On a more positive note, they suggested that things would calm down a bit after August and that late autumn might even be lucky for some, but this was not a January horoscope many read with pleasure.
In Spain and Portugal the sailors assembling along the western seaboard talked of little else, no matter that their King, His Most Catholic Majesty Philip II of Spain, regarded all attempts to divine the future as impious. In Lisbon a fortune-teller was arrested for âmaking false and discouraging predictionsâ, but the arrest came too late: the year had already begun with a flurry of naval desertions. In the Basque ports Philipâs recruiting drive slowed and halted âbecause of many strange and frightening portents that are rumouredâ.3
In Rome it was brought to the attention of Pope Sixtus V that a recent earth tremor in England had just disgorged an ancient marble slab, concealed for centuries beneath the crypt of Glastonbury Abbey, on which were written in letters of fire the opening words of Regiomontanusâ prediction. It was felt by the papal agent who delivered this report that the mathematician could not, therefore, be the original author of the verses and that the prophecy could stem from one source only: from the magician Merlin. It was the first hint that God might be on the side of the English.4
But in England no one mentioned Merlinâs intervention in international affairs and the English almanacs that year were strangely muted affairs, proffering the general observation that âHere and in the quarters following might be noted ⊠manystrange events to happen which purposely are omitted in good consideration.â With their fellow printers in Amsterdam working round the clock to meet the publicâs demand for gruesome predictions, it seems odd the English press were grown so coy, particularly when the editor of Holinshedâs Chronicles had written the year before that Regiomontanusâ prophecy was ârife in every manâs mouthâ. But it was not in the Governmentâs interest that England should be flooded with stories of death and destruction, for it was all too likely that any day now it would be visited by the real thing.*5
Ranged against England were the combined forces of Spain, Portugal, the Italian States, and the Spanish Netherlands, with France, though as yet undecided, also likely to join the Catholic crusade. The English troops, in comparison with Spainâs professional, battle-hardened soldiers, were an ill-trained rabble of amateur militiamen, drafted into service at county-wide musters and required to pay for their own gunpowder for the duration of combat. The officers were no better. Most refused to take orders from anyone lower in social standing than themselves. Had it not been for the remodelling of the Queenâs Navy by Drakeâs fellow sea-dog, John Hawkins, the outcome of the Armada conflict might well have been very different. Still, Hawkinsâs fleet of twenty-three warships and eighteen smaller pinnaces was heavily outnumberedby the massive, some hundred-and-thirty-strong Spanish and Portuguese Navy. And his belief that the success of Elizabethâs ships lay in long-range gunnery rather than traditional short-range grappling was not helped by those English gunmakers still busily selling cannons to the Spanish as late as 1587.7
So at the beginning of 1588 the odds on the Deity being a Spaniard were temptingly short. âPray to Godâ, wrote one member of the Armada force, âthat in England he doth give me a house of some very rich merchant, where I may place my ensign.â Indeed, for all those about to embark with the Armada, England was a place of lucrative spoils and members of the fleet were delighted by how easy it was to obtain credit on the eve of sailing. Many spent their money on fine clothes for the occasion and one returning Englishman reported that âthe soldiers and gentlemen that come on this voyage are very richly appointedâ. If the hard-headed bankers of Europe were putting their money on an easy victory for Spain, it was small wonder that in December 1587 a false rumour that the Spanish were coming sent the population of Englandâs coastal towns flying inland for protection.8
Now, after many months of uncertainty, the orders were finally given for all army officers to remain on call and for all troops to be ready to move at an hourâs notice. The better-trained soldiers were positioned near the most likely landing sites, to attack the invasionforce while it was disembarking and at its most vulnerable. Barriers of logs and chains were brought in to seal off main roads and all routes into towns and cities. Militia groups were instructed in the scorched-earth policy they were to employ should the Spanish once get a foothold on land. Strategic points such as bridges and fording places were put under guard and instructions were given that in the coastal towns and villages no one was allowed to leave once the warning beacons had been lit, under pain of death. Then the nation waited.10
For now the bad weather Emperor Rudolf had seen written in the night skies and that had blown and sobbed its way through Europe for the better part of the year began to play its part in the conflict, breathing new life into the spectres of Regiomontanusâ prophecy. By the end of June the Spanish fleet was still holed up in the port of Corunna as storms swept the Iberian coastline. A month later it was the English Navyâs turn to suffer the high winds and heavy seas as it carried out its daily patrol of the western reaches of the English Channel. âI know not what weather you have had there,â wrote Admiral Lord Howard of Effingham, commander of the fleet, to Sir Francis Walsingham, Principal Secretary of State, at court, âbut there never was any such summer seen here on the sea.â With the waiting came the whispering. âThere has been a rumour at Court, which has spread all over London,â reported Philip IIâs eyes and ears in the English capital, âthat the Spaniards have orders from their King to slaughter all English people, men and women, over the age of seven years.â11
Finally on Friday, 29 July the Armada was sighted off the Cornish coastline, and for Howard, Hawkins, and Drake, and the men of the English Navy, battle commenced. Throughout the following week, between contrary winds and dead calms, the smaller, more mobile English vessels harried their larger, cumbersome Spanish counterparts the length of the Channel, trying at every turn to disrupt the tightly packed crescent formation adopted by the Armada fleet. Shrouded in a heavy pall of gunsmoke it was hard enough for those in the thick of each encounter to know whatwas going on about them, but for those onshore and far inland the desperate clawing into wind to gain the advantage, the agonizing and hypnotic slowness of the combatants closing on each other, the silence broken by the roar of gunfire, was all a distant, disconnected dream. In mainland Europe rumour had the Armada safely landed in a defeated, humbled England, with a captive Queen Elizabeth on her way to Rome, to appear, barefoot and penitent, before Pope Sixtus. In England they kept on waiting.12
On Saturday, 6 August at 5 p.m. the Spanish fleet dropped anchor off Calais to make contact with the Duke of Parma. About midnight on the following day the tide turned, bringing with it, blazing out of the darkness, English fireships, packed with explosives, and in panic the Spaniards cut their cables and fled. The last chapter in the Armadaâs story had begun. âFrom this piece of industry,â wrote one Spanish officer, âthey dislodged us with eight vessels, an exploit which with [our] one hundred and thirty they had not been able to do nor dared to attempt.â What the fireships started, the storm-force winds now continued, sweeping the scattered Spanish fleet first towards the shoals of the Zeeland banks and then helplessly northwards up the English coast. For another Spanish officer this had become âthe most fearful day in the worldâ. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Armadaâs ill-fated and much maligned commander, now placed himself squarely in the hands of âGod and His Blessed Mother to bring him to a port of safetyâ.*13
The report of the Armadaâs inadvertent flight north reached Queen Elizabeth as she was addressing her troops at Tilbury camp on 18 August, more than a week after the event. But even this good news did not come rumour-free, for now the Duke of Parma and his army were said to be on their way across the Channel. It was not until the end of August that the Dean of St Paulâs was ordered to announce officially that the Armada had been defeatedand Philip IIâs agent in London was able to write home to Spain on 7 September that âthe Lords of the Council went to St Paulâs to give thanks to God for having rescued the realm from its recent dangerâ. Just three days later, though, another alarm was spread that the Armada was on its way back. By the beginning of November, after ten weeks of continued uncertainty, the publicâs nerves were frayed to unravelling point. Parliament, which was to have met on 12 November, was prorogued until February âas it was seen that both people and nobles were weary of so much troubleâ, wrote Marco Antonio Micea, a Genoese resident in London. âWe are in such alarm and terror here that there is no sign of rejoicing amongst the Councillors at the victories they have gained. They look rather like men who have a heavy burden to bear.â Even Elizabeth, who was not normally chary when it came to her own personal safety, was persuaded by her Council to stay away from St Paulâs âfor fear that a harquebuss might be fired at herâ. Micea noted that the fifty-five-year-old Queen looked âmuch aged and spentâ. Perhaps the Spanish fleet had made for Scotland and had succeeded in persuading King James VI to avenge his mother, Mary, Queen of Scotsâ execution of the year before; or perhaps they had rounded Scotland and were now in Ireland, stirring up trouble among the rebels there. In response to this new fear the Queen âsent Sir Thomas Perrot to raise 2,000 men in Wales, and take them over [to Ireland] with all speedâ. The extent of Elizabethâs anxiety may be measured by her willingness to throw yet more money at the conflict.14
But if in England no one could quite believe they had won, on the Continent no one could believe that the Spanish had lost. The French ambassador in London had spent his summer merrily reporting stories of heavy English casualties, so when the English ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford, produced 400 pamphlets giving the English version of events, he was met with frank incredulity. âThe English ambassador here had some fancy news printed stating that the English had been victorious,â wrote Don Bernadino Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, âbutthe people would not allow it to be sold, as they say it is all lies. One of the ambassadorâs secretaries began to read in the palace a [report] which he said had been sent from England, but the people were so enraged that he was obliged to fly for his life.â ...