The Spanish Armada (15 page)

Roger Walton reported that English priests would enter England and ‘raise a Catholic party’ at the invasion. The chief agent for the plan was said to be Thomas Hole, the tutor in the
Earl of Northumberland’s household. Walton talked darkly of a plan to capture a blockhouse between Rye and Winchelsea. The papist Thomas Dence also warned of ‘great rejoicings and
preparations’ by Catholics in advance of the Armada’s arrival.
⁷³
Perhaps of more concern were reports of disaffection below decks in
Elizabeth’s warships. After a scare on board Lord Edmund Sheffield’s
Bear
, the ‘barber and three or four others have taken the oath [of allegiance] and renounced the
Pope’s authority’.
⁷⁴

Following Walsingham’s old internment plan, dangerous recusants and priests were now confined in a number of fortresses. Quarrels over living conditions broke out between the Jesuit and
other seminary priests imprisoned in Wisbech Castle. The Jesuit leader William Weston demanded that the internees should follow a stricter discipline as more fitting to their vocation and accused
the others of loose living and immorality. Relations were not improved by the Jesuits receiving the lion’s share of alms sent in by the faithful outside the walls.
⁷⁵
Security was so lax that one prisoner was able to secretly celebrate Mass within the castle:

Under the slipshod regime of Thomas Gray, keeper of the recusants, matters had grown so lax that Wisbech became a kind of unofficial ecclesiastical college, a forum for debating
theological issues, as well as a place of pilgrimage for the Catholic laity. What was worse, the priests could unlock each other’s doors, and they interrupted Gray’s own evangelical
prayers by whistling and stamping on the floorboards of the room above. His daughter, Ursula, had even become a Catholic convert. Furthermore, two of the recusants, Charles Borne and Nicholas
Scroope, had beaten Gray’s wife and servants while he was away. Enough was enough. A commission of local justices recommended that ‘trustworthy townsmen’ should be selected to
assist the keeper, who was not permitted to absent himself without written permission. Visits were stopped; letters censored and no communication between prisoners was allowed except at meal times.
The only snippet of good news for Walsingham in this sorry tale was that one of the prisoners, Thomas Travers, who had complained of his ‘hard treatment’ at Gray’s hands, now
submitted to Elizabeth’s government and promised to attend Protestant church services.
⁷⁷

Throughout England, recusants were being ‘restrained’. In Norfolk, Sir Edward Clere and Sir William Heydon complained that many had ominously ‘absented themselves from their
houses’. In Bedfordshire, the Earl of Kent asked innocently how he was to proceed with female recusants ‘married to husbands that are conformable in religion’.
⁷⁸
Godfrey Foljambe arrested his own grandmother, Lady Constance, ‘and now have her in my custody whom . . . I shall safely keep and have forthcoming when
she will be called for’.
⁷⁹

Sensibly, the armour and weapons held by recusants had been collected and confiscated for use by the queen’s militia. With nice English respect for the rights of property, money from those
items sold would be handed back to the original owners.

First warning of the enemy’s arrival was to come from a number of pinnaces or fishing smacks patrolling far out to sea. On land,
a complex network of warning beacons
had been located on high points throughout the southern counties of England since at least the early fourteenth century and the system was now overhauled.
⁸⁰
These beacons consisted of iron fire baskets mounted atop a tall wooden structure, normally positioned on an earth mound, situated some fifteen miles (24.14 km) apart. Kent had
forty-three beacon sites, as did Devon; Essex twenty-six; Norfolk sixteen.
⁸¹
There were twenty-four in and around the coastal region of Sussex and a
similar number in Hampshire, the latter positioned so that Somerset, Oxfordshire and Berkshire could spot the warning signals. News of a landing on the south coast could, with luck, reach London
within the hour, with fuller details following on, carried by a string of post horses.

The beacons were normally manned during the more clement weather of March to October by two ‘wise, vigilant and discreet’ men in twelve-hour shifts (nearby villages taking it in
turns to provide the watchers), although at times of crisis this could be extended.
⁸²
Each man received eight pence (just over 3p) per day for his
pains. The watchers were subject to surprise inspections to ensure their diligence, and were sternly prohibited from having dogs with them, for fear of distraction.

It was a tedious and uncomfortable patriotic duty. A new shelter was built near one Kent beacon when the old wooden hut fell down. This was only intended to protect the sentinels from bad
weather and had no ‘seats or place of ease lest they should fall asleep. [They] should stand upright in . . . a hole [looking] towards the beacon.’ Not everyone spent their time
scanning the horizon: two watchers at Stanway beacon in north-east Essex preferred catching partridges in a cornfield and were hauled up in court.
⁸³
There were other cases of opportunism. In July 1586, five men were accused of plotting to maliciously fire the Hampshire beacons ‘upon a [false] report of the appearance of the Spanish
fleet’ and in the ensuing tumult, to steal food ‘to redress the current dearth of corn’, engage in a little light burglary of gentlemen’s houses and liberate imprisoned
recusants at Winchester. Most were gaoled, but some were sent to London for further interrogation, in case there was a wider conspiracy.
⁸⁴

Instructions on what to do once ships were sighted varied from county to county. No beacon could be lit without the presence of local justices. On the Isle of Wight, if up to twenty vessels were
seen
heading towards the coast, one of the watchmen had to pant down the steep hill to the nearest church and ring the bells. Surrey justices were instructed in ‘a
certain and direct’ method to spot beacons at night or in misty weather that enabled them to decide ‘whether the beacon in which [they] have regard . . . be on fire or not and how we
may discern that fire from any other fire’.
⁸⁵
Naturally, there were false alarms. In 1579, the Portsdown beacon, high above Portsmouth, was
lit and in response the local militia were quickly mobilised. However it transpired that the watchers had reacted to smoke caused by huntsmen trying to flush out a badger from its
sett.
⁸⁶

The first line of defence was naturally the queen’s navy, augmented by ships taken up from trade or hired for the duration of the war. Obtaining these vessels sometimes proved
difficult.

Sir John Gilbert, brother to the petulant Sir Humphrey, refused permission for his ships to join Drake’s western squadron and allowed them to sail on their planned voyage in March 1588 in
defiance of naval orders.
⁸⁷
At the same time, there was also corporate reluctance to furnish ships to serve alongside the navy, and a litany of
excuses began to flow from coastal town councils. William Bray, mayor of Hull, pleaded with the Privy Council ‘that they were unable to furnish the two ships and a pinnace’, as
directed, as ‘all their best ships are at present on distant voyages abroad’ and their mariners had been pressed into naval service. (Later, after some ships returned from Newcastle and
London, they contributed two ships and a pinnace.) John Harris, mayor of the north Devon town of Barnstaple, could not supply the required two ships and ‘a handsome pinnace in warlike
manner’ having ‘suffered so much from the prohibitions of the King of Spain’ – the Spanish embargoes on English shipping.

John Berryman, mayor of Poole in Dorset, asked to be excused from paying for ‘one great ship and a pinnace’ because of their ‘inability’ to raise the money.
⁸⁸
In mitigation he reported that they had detained the
Primrose
of Poole, bound for Newfoundland (Peter Cox, one of the ship’s owners, was
imprisoned after she sailed to avoid joining the English fleet) and the pinnace
Elephant
, which when ‘fitted up’ could be employed in naval service.
⁸⁹
The good burghers of Southampton were also unable to supply ships ‘on account of the decay of their town and commerce and the great charges they had [paid] for
providing the powder, repairs and fortifications’ of the
town. In addition there was a shortage of sailors – more than one hundred had already been pressed into
the queen’s service.
⁹⁰
In East Anglia, the inhabitants of East Bergholt asked to be excused their payment towards the cost of
Colchester’s ship ‘by reason of the prohibition of the exportation of Suffolk cloth’.
⁹¹
Coggeshall and Dedham also sought
exemption. Meanwhile the villages of Blackney, Wiston and Cley in Norfolk complained bitterly that they had been overcharged in their contribution by the corporation of [King’s]
Lynn.
⁹²

The thirty-eight ships and pinnaces in Elizabeth’s navy, displacing a total of 12,990 tons, were mobilised on 5 October 1587
⁹³
in response
to reports that the Armada was ready to sail. Fifty-one-year-old Charles Howard, Second Baron Effingham, was appointed Lord High Admiral on 21 December with Drake as his vice-admiral. On board the
queen’s ship
Bear
the next day, Howard found his sailors in rags. He told Burghley:

Although four ships dated from the reign of Henry VIII, eleven had been built since 1584 and a further twelve had been rebuilt to modern standards.
⁹⁵
The new-builds and refits were to an innovative English design of warship, called ‘race-built’, which lowered the raised platforms or ‘castles’ at
the bows and stern, lengthened the gun-deck and produced a sleeker hull. This made them faster and more manoeuvrable and enabled them to bring a heavier armament to bear upon the
enemy.
⁹⁶
It was to prove a decisive factor in the battles to come.

Several warships were designed specifically for naval operations in the shoaled waters of the narrow seas between England and Flanders.
Rainbow
and
Vanguard
both had shallow
draughts, drawing only twelve to thirteen feet (3.66–3.96 metres) and this made them roll alarmingly in heavy seas. Sir Henry Seymour, who flew his flag in
Rainbow
, acknowledged that
‘my summer ship . . . will not be able to go to the North, Irish or Spanish seas without harm and spoil of our people by sickness’.
⁹⁷

But thanks to the maintenance programme developed by the navy treasurer John Hawkins, the major ships were in good fettle. Howard was delighted at their condition. He told
Burghley:

He was particularly pleased with his newly built flagship,
Ark Royal.

Drake, in Plymouth, was chafing at the bit, desperate to strike at the Armada before it reached the shores of England. On 30 March 1588, he wrote to the Privy Council, urging
another pre-emptive strike on the Spanish fleet. Striking a first blow would

He was also indignant at a report that the Biscayan warships had red crosses on their sails like the English flag, ‘which is a great presumption,
proceeding from the haughtiness and pride of the Spaniard and not to be tolerated’.
¹⁰¹

He would soon have his chance to cut the Armada down to size.

THE GREAT AND MOST FORTUNATE NAVY