Read The Spanish Armada Online
Authors: Robert Hutchinson
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval, #General
The Spanish Armada (32 page)
These slightly intimidating words of persuasion failed to sway the Pope. Sixtus merely shrugged his shoulders for, as Olivares commented, ‘when it comes to getting money
out of him, it is like squeezing his lifeblood. [All] our efforts availed nothing.’
Eleven days later the envoy reported again on his hopeless mission. When the question of the cash was raised
the only effect is that the moment my back is turned, he babbles the most ridiculous nonsense at table as . . . would not be said by a baby of two years old.
He possesses no sort of charity, kindliness or consideration and his behaviour attributed by everyone to the repulsion and chagrin that he feels as the hour approaches to drag this money
from his heart.
Sixtus insisted on the strict letter of the agreement: no landing, no money. Then he tried some brazen bluster, alleging
that the Armada business is nothing but a trick and that your majesty has not raised the fleet for the English enterprise at all, but for brag and to frighten the Queen of
England into making peace . . . He shows reports he has received to this effect . . . however unlikely a report may be, it matters not to his Holiness if it serves his purpose.
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As if to antagonise Philip even further, Sixtus, not famous for his empathy with the Spanish king, remained besotted with Elizabeth. He told an open-mouthed Giovanni Gritti, the
Venetian ambassador
to the Holy See, that the king ‘goes trifling with this Armada of his, but the queen acts in earnest. Were she a Catholic, she would be our best
beloved, for she is of great worth.’
Just look at Drake! Who is he? What forces has he? Yet he burned twenty-five of the king’s ships . . . and as many again at Lisbon. He had robbed the flotilla and
sacked San Domingo. His reputation is so great that his countrymen flock to him to share his booty.
We are sorry to say it, but we have a poor opinion of this Spanish Armada and fear some disaster.
The king should have sailed when we told him, in September of last year.
What can the king do? He has no money and has borrowed 300,000 ducats from Mantua and 200,000 from the Archbishop of Toledo.
Twenty thousand of his troops have been lost through this delay, some dead, some killed.
The queen has had time to arm.
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If the Vatican was an unreliable source of loans, there were always bankers. That August, Philip borrowed ‘one million of gold’ from Genoa at nearly 25 per cent
interest, having already pawned his wife’s jewellery.
First reports from any conflict frequently contain misleading information as a consequence of slow communications, wishful thinking, or just the impenetrable fog of war. The ever-optimistic
Mendoza in Paris excitedly informed Philip on 9 August of a great victory over the English fleet the week before, enclosing a letter from Isoardo Capello from Rouen claiming that the Armada had
‘sunk fifteen of the enemy’s ships, including the flagship’ and that the survivors had retreated towards Dover. The king replied: ‘As you consider the news to be true, I am
hopeful that it will prove to be so, particularly as the author claims to have been an eye witness.’ He wrote to Medina Sidonia:
This news is asserted in France to be true . . . I hope to God that it may be so and that you have known how to follow up the victory and make the most of it, pursuing the
enemy actively without giving him the opportunity of reforming and pushing on until you join hands with my nephew, the duke [of Parma]. This being done, it
may be hoped
that with God’s help, the enemy’s fear of us and our men’s courage, other victories will have followed.
Philip ended his letter: ‘I confidently look for God’s favour in a cause so entirely His own and expect your valour and activity will have accomplished all I could
desire. I anxiously await news.’
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Hieronimo Lippomano, Venetian envoy to Spain, was all too familiar with Mendoza’s unbridled optimism. ‘The report is so confused and that ambassador so accustomed to deceive himself
that they are awaiting confirmation of the news. No public rejoicings have taken place, nor have the ambassadors congratulated the king.’ Philip had ‘exclaimed that he trusted God would
favour his cause to the full, for he was moved by no desire to increase his possessions, but only to increase the faith and the Catholic religion’. The king added rather sorrowfully,
‘Even if I conquered England I would not in many years recover the expenses of the Armada for a single day.’
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In Paris, Stafford, the English ambassador, spent five crowns on printing four hundred copies of a pamphlet denying Spanish claims of the Armada’s success which had been ‘cried so
lively around the town’. Mendoza said the Catholic Parisians would not allow ‘this fancy news to be sold, saying it is all lies. One of the ambassador’s secretaries began to read
in the [royal] palace [an account] . . . sent from England but the people were so enraged that he was obliged to fly for his life.’ The Spanish ambassador, now half blind, still stuck to his
guns, insisting that reports from Rouen indicated that ‘the English lost heavily in the engagement’ and were ‘very sad as it was said that Drake had been wounded in the legs by a
cannonball’.
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There were further optimistic reports from Spanish sources. Juan de Gamarra, in Rouen, had heard that the English fleet had lost forty ships in a battle off Newcastle: ‘Our Armada attacked
them so stoutly that we sank twenty of their ships and captured twenty-six in perfectly good condition. The rest of the English fleet, seeing only ruin before them, escaped with great damage and
their ships are now all in bits and without crews.’ The Armada then entered the port of Newcastle ‘where they are very well, as all affirm’. He concluded: ‘The English here
are very sulky.’
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Other rumours had the English panic-stricken at their naval losses. Drake had been captured trying to board the
San
Martin
(news of this emboldened Mendoza to light
a celebratory bonfire in front of his house in Paris); Elizabeth’s government had prohibited the publication of
any news about the fate of the English fleet and fears were growing daily of a dangerous uprising by English Catholics.
Then a
Hansa
ship’s captain reported sailing through a sea filled with swimming mules and horses.
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On 15 August a delighted Leicester wrote to the queen, having heard that she planned to visit her army in its ‘Camp Royal’ atop the steep hill at West Tilbury, Essex. The troops were
now ready ‘to die for her. Good sweet queen! Alter not your purpose if God give you good health. Your usher
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likes the lodging prepared for
you. It is a properly sweet clean house within a little mile’ of his encampment ‘and your person will be as sure as at St James’.
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It was about time that Leicester had received good news. He had found it difficult to muster his men; their equipment was poor, and cavalry and dray horses were hard to find.
Sir Henry Cocke and Sir Philip Boteler had ‘dealt with the gentlemen of Hertfordshire, suspected of having acting fraudulently and undutifully with her majesty in retaining back their best
horses and sending inferior horses to the camp’.
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Detailed arrangements had been made to feed and house Leicester’s 16,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, with provisions merchants within 20 miles (32.19 km) of Tilbury threatened with
‘the most grievous imprisonment or fine’ if they withheld or hid ‘any grain or other victuals’. Prices were fixed for sixty-three items of food for the troops, regulated by
clerks at the markets: twenty shillings was the price for a quarter (28 pounds or 12.7 kg) of ‘best wheat, clean and sweet’; three pennies (1.67 pence) for a pound (0.45 kg) of butter
‘sweet and new, the best in the market’; one penny for a pound ‘of good Essex cheese’ and one shilling (5 pence) for a stone (6.35 kg) of ‘the best beef at the
butchers’.
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Even so there were cheats and profiteers.
Leicester wrote to the queen fussing about her planned route – warning her to avoid the coast where her sacred person could be captured by a marauding Spanish landing party:
This far, if it please, you may dare – to draw yourself to your house at Havering [Essex] and your army being about London . . . [there] shall be always a defence.
If it please you, spend two or three days to see both the camp and
the forts. It is not about thirteen miles [20.92 km] from Havering and a very convenient place for
your majesty to lye in by the way and rest you at the camp.
I trust you will be pleased by your lieutenant’s cabin
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and within a mile there is a gentleman’s house where your majesty may
lye.
Thus far but no further can I consent to adventure your person and, by the grace of God, there can be no danger in this.
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Howard arrived back with his ships and starving crews at Harwich and Margate Roads early on Thursday 18 August.
That same morning, Elizabeth joined her royal barge at Westminster for the journey to Tilbury. Her gentlemen pensioners, bravely kitted out in brightly polished half-armours and gaily feathered
morion helmets, escorted her in nine oared boats as the royal procession slipped down the Thames on the ebb tide, to the sweet sound of silver trumpets. She arrived at Tilbury, greeted by joyous
peals of bells from nearby church towers. The tented camp, enclosing around five acres (2.02 hectares) was surrounded by hastily excavated defensive earthworks. A raised causeway ran from the river
across flat marshland up to the hill.
Elizabeth was met by an escort of two thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry under the command of Sir Roger Williams. With Leicester at her side, the red-haired queen, wearing a plumed hat,
rode onwards, pausing only when some soldiers fell to their knees at the roadside, crying out their blessings upon her. So says the official account, but one suspects they may also have been
seeking their pay arrears from the queen. Certainly, Elizabeth felt it necessary to send messengers ahead to modestly bid the soldiers ‘not to pay her such idolatrous
reverence’.
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The queen spent that night, not in her ‘lieutenant’s cabin’, but in ‘Mr Ritchie’s house’
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– probably
Arderne House, on Horndon-on-the-Hill – the building surrounded by a bodyguard of two thousand men. She returned to the ‘Camp Royal’ the following morning, carrying a
marshal’s baton (or ‘truncheon’) and rather incongruously wearing a man’s breastplate and backplate over her gown as ‘armed Pallas’. She then reviewed her
troops, four footmen walking each side of her horse, her ladies behind, with her bodyguard riding at the rear. Her army, with colours flying and drums beating, marched
past
in gallant array. Thomas Deloney described the scene in a loyal ballad:
Then came the Queen on prancing steed attired like an angel bright
And eight brave footmen at her feet whose jerkins were most rich in sight
Her ladies, likewise of great honour most sumptuously did wait upon her
With pearls and diamonds brave adorned and in costly cauls of gold
Her guards, in scarlet, then rode after, with bows and arrows, stout and bold.
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Still mounted on her plump white gelding, Elizabeth delivered the speech of her life, her words noted down by Leicester’s chaplain, Dr Lionel Sharpe.
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My loving people: I have been persuaded by some that are careful of my safety to take heed I committed myself to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery.
But I tell you that I would 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.
Wherefore I am come among you at this time not for my recreation and pleasure, but being resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live and 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 but of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king. And of a king of England too – and take foul scorn that Parma or any prince of Europe
should dare to invade the borders of my realm.
To the which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will venture my royal blood; I myself shall be your general, judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the
field.
I know that already, for your forwardness, you have deserved
rewards and crowns and I assure you in the word of a prince, you shall not fail of them.
In the meantime, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject.
Not doubting but by your concord in the camp and valour in the field and your obedience to myself and my general, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God and of
my kingdom.
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The troops responded ‘all at once [with] a mighty shout or cry’ – a patriotic ‘huzza’ – and Leicester believed that her speech had ‘so
inflamed the hearts of her good subjects as I think the weakest person among them is able to match the proudest Spaniard that dared to land in England’.
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Afterwards, the queen received favoured visitors in Leicester’s tent. One was Sir Edward Radcliffe, who described the scene for his kinsman, the ill-tempered Earl of Sussex:
Her majesty has honoured our camp with her presence and comforted many of us with her most gracious usage.
It pleased her to send for me into my lord general’s tent and to make me kiss her hand, giving me many thanks for my forwardness in the service, telling me I showed from what house I
descended with many gracious words of your lordship’s good service, assuring me that before it wear long, she would make me better able to serve her.
