The Spanish Armada (10 page)

Then, just in one brief paragraph, comes a fleeting glimpse of
Philip’s hidden agenda: ‘The possession of these dominions is of the most vital importance for
the maintenance of the States of Flanders in union with the crown of Spain and also for the preservation of the Spanish Indies.’ It ends piously:

An unexpected and unlikely complication to Philip’s plans for the crown of England arose that June with the appearance in Madrid of a twenty-seven-year-old Catholic youth
named Arthur Dudley, who claimed sensationally to be the illegitimate child of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. He was interrogated by another exile, Sir Francis Englefield, now the
king’s English secretary, and the story superficially rang true, or at least was carefully constructed. Dudley recounted how he was brought up by Robert Southern, a servant of the
queen’s old governess Catherine (‘Kat’) Ashley, after he was asked by a lady of Elizabeth’s court to obtain a nurse for a ‘new-born child of a lady who had been so
careless of her honour that if it became known, it would bring great shame upon all the company and would highly displease the Queen if she knew of it’.

Dudley was well cared for and expensively educated, and Southern, on his death-bed, ‘told him secretly that he was the son of the Earl of Leicester and the queen . . . Arthur begged him to
give him the confession in writing but he could not write as his hand was paralysed.’ The youth later met Leicester, ‘whereby his tears, words and other demonstrations, he showed so
much affection for Arthur that the latter believed he understood the earl’s deep intentions towards him’. According to Dudley, Leicester had warned him: ‘You are like a ship under
full sail at sea, pretty to look upon but dangerous to deal with.’ After many adventures the young man was shipwrecked on the Biscayan coast, apprehended by the Spanish and taken to
Madrid.

Englefield was suspicious, advising Philip that the youth’s revelations ‘may originate in the Queen of England and her Council and possibly with an object that Arthur himself does
not yet understand
. . . They may be making use of him for their iniquitous ends.’ He urged that Arthur

The king noted in the margin: ‘It would be certainly safest to make sure of his [Dudley’s] person until we know more about it.’
³³
The youth was therefore confined in a monastery near Madrid and his subsequent fate is unknown.
³⁴

There was a further source of friction with the Vatican caused by Philip’s decision to unilaterally nominate Spaniards as new Catholic archbishops and bishops once England had been
subjugated. This was an intolerable infringement of papal powers and Sixtus wrote to the Spanish king – addressing him as ‘Dear Son in Christ’ – to object:

The ecclesiastical spoils from a Spanish victory over England caused other problems in Rome that year. Olivares complained to the king that the English priest Robert Parsons was
‘worrying me to death to get the Pope to make him Archbishop of Canterbury . . . He greatly exalts the dignity of the office and urges the desirability of the [cardinal’s] hat going
with it. I have not countenanced this
as it would divert the Pope from the matter of the cardinalate [for Allen].’
³⁶

Eventually Sixtus promised Philip 1,000,000 gold ducats (£662,000,000 in 2013 spending power) but cannily stipulated that the first half was only to be paid when Spanish forces actually
set foot in England with the remainder in equal instalments every two months thereafter. On 29 July 1587, the sum was transferred to two Roman bankers with strict instructions that it was only to
be paid once a public notary had verified that the invasion of England had taken place.
³⁷
Olivares reported: ‘Until the men are landed it will
be impossible to get anything out of His Holiness . . . Everybody believes that the real object is to make peace and nothing will shake the Pope’s belief in this respect. The small trust that
can be placed in him may be judged by the little trust he places in us.’
³⁸
In return, Philip could bestow the crown of England on whomever he
wished, providing that the new monarch pledged that the defeated realm would be immediately returned to the Catholic faith. The Church’s properties and rights, alienated since the time of
Henry VIII, were also to be restored.
³⁹
Allen was finally made a cardinal on 7 August.

With no advance on the papal subsidy forthcoming, Philip was still confronted by problems in paying for the Armada preparations. These were partially solved that September when the Spanish plate
fleet, escorted by Santa Cruz’s warships, arrived safely from the West Indies with 16,000,000 gold ducats on board, of which 25 per cent went straight into the king’s depleted
exchequer.

Olivares, whose patience in dealing with Sixtus approached saintlike proportions, was also worried that the Vatican’s institutional passion for gossip could compromise the Spanish invasion
plans: ‘I tremble at the Pope’s lack of secrecy,’ he confided to Philip. One probably apocryphal story, first written eighty years after Walsingham’s death, tells how the
spymaster learned of a letter from Philip to Sixtus, written in his own hand, briefing him on the Armada strategy. English agents in Rome were alerted and they bribed, threatened or somehow induced
one of the gentlemen of the pontiff’s bedchamber to copy the Spanish king’s letter, safely locked up in the Pope’s writing desk. This was achieved by stealing Sixtus’s keys
out of his robes while he slept.
⁴⁰

Certainly, confirmation of the extent of the ‘Enterprise of England’
did come from Rome immediately after the college of cardinals were told of Philip’s
plans in case the sixty-seven-year-old Pope suddenly died.
⁴¹
Moreover, a correspondent from the same city told Burghley that the Spanish plan was to
capture Elizabeth alive and send her as a prisoner to the Vatican:

In February and March 1587, fresh intelligence reached Walsingham about the extent of the Armada preparations. The first report came from Hans Frederick, a merchant from Danzig,
who counted three hundred ‘sail of shipping stayed in south Spain’. At Lisbon ‘they have taken up all the victuals in every ship that comes out of Holland or the [Baltic nations],
both bacon and beef, butter and cheese and whatsoever else. They encourage all strangers, affirming that the Catholics will yield up [England] unto the king without bloodshed.’
⁴³
The second was submitted by a Portuguese citizen in Nantes in France, who had a kinsman involved in provisioning the Spanish fleet. The report spoke of four
hundred ships and fifty galleys docked in and around Lisbon, with seventy-four thousand soldiers being recruited or mustered in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Flanders. The provisions already
accumulated included 184,557 quintals of biscuit, 23,000 quintals of bacon, 23,000 butts of wine, 11,000 quintals of beef and 43,000 quintals of hard cheese.
⁴⁴

In England, nerves were becoming frayed. In January, there was a false report of Spanish forces landing in Milford Haven in Wales, and the following month there were rumours of ‘foreign
preparations’ for an attack on the Isle of Wight.
⁴⁵
During the summer, a gentleman reported a fleet of one hundred and twenty ships off the
Scilly Isles and the Privy Council ordered an alert in the West Country ‘with as little bruit [rumour] and trouble to the people that shall be occupied in harvest’.
⁴⁶

The Tudor administrative machine creakily moved up a gear in preparation for war with much scurrying about by hard-pressed officials. In February and March alone, a census
was taken of all available civilian ships that could be pressed into the queen’s service. She herself examined a list of almost two hundred captains regarded as ‘fit for service’.
Calculations were made on how much powder, lead and match should be sent to the counties bordering the English Channel ‘at the rate of one pound (0.45 kg) each sort per man for six
days’ and what artillery was available for these vulnerable areas. The stores of dusty old armour and weapons in the armouries of the Tower of London, Woolwich, Greenwich, Hampton Court and
Windsor were carefully inventoried. Possible landing places on the Hampshire coast from Portsmouth to Bournemouth were surveyed and the cost estimated of arming and provisioning twenty-four of the
queen’s ships, together with their 6,200 crewmen.
⁴⁷

It was obvious that England could not afford to remain dangerously supine, waiting meekly like a sacrificial lamb for an easy slaughter by the invading Armada. John Hawkins, now Treasurer of the
Navy, wrote to Walsingham on 1 February calling for a naval reconnaissance expedition of six warships to Spain which could impede progress in Spanish preparations for war by imposing a
blockade.

Sir Francis Drake also argued vociferously for urgent action, maintaining that a pre-emptive strike on the Spanish fleet was vital to buy time for the defences of the realm to
be strengthened both on land and sea. Walsingham, Leicester and the Lord High Admiral, Howard
of Effingham, supported his plans for an immediate, decisive blow. Drake should
be sent with a squadron of warships, ostensibly to support Dom Antonio, the claimant to the usurped Portuguese crown, but in reality, to destroy as much enemy shipping as he could or, at worst,
disrupt the invasion plans to win England the precious commodity of time. Sir Walter Raleigh, if later reports by a Spanish spy are to be believed, was a covert but strident opponent of the
plan.
⁴⁹

After much characteristic havering, Elizabeth grudgingly agreed to Drake’s mission on 25 March, but would only allow four of her own warships –
Elizabeth Bonaventure, Golden
Lion, Dreadnought
and
Rainbow
⁵⁰
– and two fifty-ton pinnaces,
Spy
and
Makeshift
, to take part. This decision
was not driven by her natural frugality alone; the queen was understandably wary of risking too many of her precious ships, her first line of defence, on such a dangerous venture.

The remainder of Drake’s fleet of twenty-five vessels would be fitted out and paid for by nineteen London merchants as a speculative venture in the fond hope of rich pickings in
plunder.
⁵¹
The eager sponsors scenting profit from this venture included grocers, drapers, fishmongers, haberdashers and skinners. Drake’s
agreement with these ‘Merchant Adventurers’, signed three days later, laid down that ‘whatsoever commodity in goods, money, treasure, merchandise or other benefit . . . shall
happen to be taken by all or any of the aforesaid ships or their company either by land or sea, shall be equally proportioned, man for man and ton for ton, [and will] be divided at sea . . . as
soon as wind and weather will permit’.
⁵²
Some may define such an enterprise as an act of war. But there was no hiding behind the
lawyer’s formal turn of phrase; it was legalised pillage in the queen’s name.

The striking force included three ships owned by the Levant Company of London, displacing almost 500 tons each, and seven lesser vessels of up to 200 tons. The rest were smaller ships of lighter
draught, to be deployed for reconnaissance, conveying messages or undertaking shallow water operations close to shore.