Life of Elizabeth I (70 page)

By August, Lord Howard, having pursued the crippled remnants of the Armada as fir north as the Firth of Forth, gave up and returned south, leaving the scattered and broken ships to make their difficult way around the coasts of Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall. 'Many of them will never see Spain again,' wrote one English sailor.

Although false reports of victory had prompted premature rejoicing in Spain, by 3 August, when Medina-Sidonia ordered his remaining few ships to return home, it was clear that the Spanish had suffered the most humiliating naval defeat in their history. They had lost two thirds of their men (many dying stranded on remote beaches of wounds and sickness, or slaughtered in Ireland by the Lord Deputy's men) and forty- four ships, and many more were so badly damaged that they would no longer be seaworthy. The English, on the other hand, had lost only a hundred men, and none of their ships. But Elizabeth was cautious. This 'tyrannical, proud and brainsick attempt' would be, she observed in a letter to James VI, 'the beginning, though not the end, of the ruin of that King [Philip]'.

The Spanish fleet might have been crippled, but there remained a very real threat from Parma and his army, who were poised to cross the Channel, and awaited only a favourable wind.

Expecting an invasion at any moment, Elizabeth, 'with a masculine spirit', resolved to accept Leicester's invitation and go to Tilbury to rally her troops, and thither she was rowed in her state barge from St James's Palace on 8 August. Her councillors had pleaded with her not to go, fearing her proximity to the expected invaders and raising a host of other objections, but she overrode them, and when she wrote informing Leicester of her determination to visit the camp, he replied, 'Good, sweet Queen, alter not your purpose if God give you good health. The lodging prepared for Your Majesty is a proper, sweet, cleanly house, the camp within a little mile of it, and your person as sure as at St James's.'

Escorted by Leicester, who walked bare-headed holding her bridle, and riding a large white gelding 'attired like an angel bright', the Queen appeared before her troops in the guise of'some Amazonian empress' in a white velvet dress with a shining silver cuirass, and preceded by a page carrying her silver helmet on a white cushion and the Earl of Ormonde bearing the sword of state. Leicester had stage-managed the occasion brilliantly, incorporating much pageantry and spectacle. As the tent-flags and pennants fluttered in the breeze, and the drummers and pipers played, the Queen, with tears in her eyes, inspected the immaculate squadrons of foot soldiers, and the well-caparisoned, plumed cavalry, of which Essex was a commander, calling out 'God bless you all!' as many fell to their knees and cried aloud, 'Lord preserve our Queen!' As she 
passed, pikes and ensigns were lowered in respect. After a stirring service of intercession, she rode to Edward Ritchie's manor house at nearby Saffron Garden, where she stayed the night.

On the morning of 9 August, as she returned to the camp, there was a burst of spontaneous applause - 'the earth and air did sound like thunder' - and Elizabeth commented that she felt she was 'in the midst and heat of battle'. When the clamour had died down, the soldiers acted out a mock engagement, after which they paraded before her. Then, 'most bravely mounted on a most stately steed', and dressed as 'an armed Pallas' with her silver breastplate and a small silver and gold leader's truncheon in her hand, the Queen again touched their hearts by delivering the most rousing and famous speech of her reign.

'My loving people,' she cried,

we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I do assure you, I do 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, and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live or 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 of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think it foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues.

In the meantime, my Lieutenant General [Leicester] shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject, not doubting but, by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

At the close of this 'most excellent oration', the assembled soldiers 'all at once a mighty shout or cry did give'. Dr Lionel Sharp, one of the Queen's chaplains, was commissioned by Leicester to take down the text of her speech, and it was read aloud again the next day, after the 
Queen had left, to all those who had been out of earshot. Copies were widely circulated, and three decades later, Sharp gave the text to the Duke of Buckingham, whose son had it published in 1654. Leicester was convinced that Elizabeth's words 'had so inflamed the hearts of her good subjects, as I think the weakest among them is able to match the proudest Spaniard that dares land in England'.

At noon, as Elizabeth dined with Leicester in his tent, she received word that Parma was due to set sail. The Earl and his captains urged her to return to London for safety, but she protested that she could not in honour do so, having said she would fight and die with her people. Many were moved by her courage, but 'as night approached nigh' news arrived that the danger was past, for Parma had refused to venture his army without the backing of the Spanish navy, and Philip had, with a heavy heart, seen the wisdom of this.

He was, naturally, desolated by the defeat, and retreated into his palace of the Escorial near Madrid, seeking to find consolation and understanding in prayer. 'In spite of everything, His Majesty shows himself determined to carry on the war,' reported the Venetian ambassador. Philip told his confessor he would fight on and that he was hoping for a miracle from God, but if it was not forthcoming, 'I hope to die and go to him.' His people put on mourning clothes, and walked in the streets with heads bent in shame.

'The Duke of Parma is as a bear robbed of his whelps,' wrote Drake from Gravelines on 10 August. Making her way back to a triumphal welcome in London, secure in the knowledge that the Armada would not return, Elizabeth's first consideration was to decommission her ships and dismiss her forces, so that they could go home and bring in the harvest. Only when this had been done could she begin to celebrate England's great victory and her own triumph.

She had not 'lost her presence of mind for a single moment', reported the Venetian ambassador in Paris, 'nor neglected aught that was necessary for the occasion. Her acuteness in resolving the action, her courage in carrying it out, show her high-spirited desire of glory and her resolve to save her country and herself'

According to Camden, her gratitude towards Leicester led her to have Letters rjatent drawn up appointing him Lieutenant Governor of England and Ireland, a position that would invest him with more power than had ever been granted to an English subject. Burghley, Walsingham and Hatton, however, fearing the consequences of the favourite becoming a virtual viceroy, persuaded the Queen to change her mind, and it appears that Leicester never knew how well she wished to reward him.

Thanks to the thorough preparations made by the government, the intensive training and organisation of troops and resources, the skill of 
the English commanders, and of course the 'Protestant' wind, the mighty Armada had been vanquished, and England had achieved one of the greatest victories in her history.

The camp at Tilbury was disbanded on 17 August, when Leicester rode in triumph back to London 'with so many gentlemen as if he were a king', to be greeted by cheering crowds. On the 20th, the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London attended a packed service at St Paul's to give thanks for the victory.

At the beginning of September, most of the sailors were discharged; money was in desperately short supply and Elizabeth could not even afford to pay the remaining wages due to the men. Few had lost their lives during the fighting, but the poor provisioning of the ships and rations of sour beer had left thousands of sailors ill or dying of typhoid, scurvy or food poisoning in the streets of the Channel ports. Realising that no more money would be forthcoming from the Exchequer, Effingham, Drake and Sir John Hawkins themselves provided wine and arrowroot for their men. The Queen was furious to hear that other captains had squandered money apportioned for their men's wages, and was ever afterwards prejudiced against sea-captains, but the major blame for her sailors' plight was undoubtedly hers.

Great national celebrations of the victory were planned. On 26 August, Essex staged a triumphal military review at Whitehall, after which Elizabeth watched with Leicester from a window as the young Earl jousted against the Earl of Cumberland. Leicester, reported one of Mendoza's spies, had been dining every night with Elizabeth, and had fully regained his former position of power and prestige. But he was a sick man, exhausted by the stresses of the past weeks, and left immediately after the review for Buxton, hoping that the healing waters would restore him.

From Rycote in Oxfordshire, where they had often stayed together as guests of Lord and Lady Norris, he wrote to the Queen on 29 August:

I most humbly beseech Your Majesty to pardon your old servant to be thus bold in sending to know how my gracious lady doth, and what ease of her late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in the world I do pray for, for her to have good health and long life. For my own poor case, I continue still your medicine, and it amends much better than any other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find a perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance
of
my wonted prayer for Your Majesty's most happy preservation, I humbly kiss your foot.

From your old lodgings at Rycote this Thursday morning, by 
Your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant, R. Leicester.

P.S. Even as I had written this much, I received Your Majesty's token by young Tracy.

His plan was to proceed by slow stages towards Kenilworth, but on the way he was 'troubled with an ague' which turned into 'a continual burning fever', and was obliged to take to his bed at his hunting lodge in Cornbury Park, near Woodstock. Here he died at four o'clock in the morning on 4 September, with 'scarce any [one] left to close his eyelids'. Modern medical historians suggest the cause may have been stomach cancer. He was buried beside his little son in the Beauchamp Chapel in the Church of St Mary the Virgin at Warwick, where a fine effigy by Holtemans, portraying Leicester in a coronet and full armour, was later placed on his tomb.

'He was esteemed a most accomplished courtier, a cunning timeserver, and respecter of his own advantages,' observed Camden. 'But whilst he preferred power and greatness before solid virtue, his detracting emulators found large matter to speak reproachfully of him, and even when he was in his most flourishing condition, spared not disgracefully to defame him by libels, not without some untruths. People talked openly in his commendation, but privately he was ill spoke of by the greater part.'

Even after his death the slanders continued. Although a post mortem produced no evidence of foul play the malicious Ben Jonson claimed, without any foundation, that Lettice had poisoned her husband with one of his own deadly potions in order to marry her lover, a tale that many believed, for few mourned his passing, not even the poet Spenser, his former protege, who wrote dismissively:

He now is dead, and all his glories gone. And all his greatness vapoured to nought. His name is worn already out of thought, Ne any poet seeks him to revive, Yet many poets honoured him alive.

'All men, so far as they durst, rejoiced no less outwardly at his death than for the victory lately obtained against the Spaniard,' wrote John Stow the antiquarian.

Elizabeth was griefstricken by the loss of Leicester, the man who for thirty years had been closer to her than any other, whom she called 'her brother and best friend'. In her hour of greatness, she was now plunged into personal sorrow. Walsingham wrote that she was unable to attend to state affairs 'by reason that she will not suffer anybody to have access 
unto her, being very much grieved with the death of the Lord Steward'. Mendoza's agent reported on 17 September, 'The Queen is sorry for his death, but no other person in the country. She was so grieved that for some days she shut herself in her chamber alone and refused to speak to anyone until the Treasurer and other councillors had the door broken open and entered to see her.' After that, according to Camden, she 'either patiently endured or politely dissembled' her grief.

When the Earl of Shrewsbury wrote congratulating her on her victory and condoling with her on her sad loss, she confided to this 'very good old man' that, 'Although we do accept and acknowledge your careful mind and good will, yet we desire rather to forbear the remembrance thereof as a thing whereof we can admit no comfort, otherwise by submitting our will to God's inevitable appointment, Who, notwithstanding His goodness by the former prosperous news, hath nevertheless been pleased to keep us in exercise by the loss of a personage so dear unto us.'