The Spanish Armada (18 page)

The contents of these intelligence reports did not always cover the bustle and clamour of military activity. On 1 April (a significant date perhaps?), one Spanish agent could
not resist reporting that ‘a vast number of fleas collected’ on the window of the queen’s presence chamber and ‘thirty great fish, commonly called porpoises, came up the
river [Thames] to the Watergate of the queen’s court’. This dispatch was read and annotated by Philip himself.
⁵⁴

Questioned about what he had seen in England, Francisco de Valverde, a released Spanish prisoner, reported new bulwarks being raised at Portsmouth ‘made of sun-dried bricks and faggots [of
wood] to serve for defence’ and estimated that the fort there had a garrison
of about two hundred men. But would the English Catholics rise up in support of an
invasion?

All potential invaders try to identify those citizens who would collaborate in their efforts to conquer the target country. They also build a list of enemy leaders who should be
arrested on sight. Philip had two such lists delivered to him by Jacob Stuart, formerly employed by Mary Queen of Scots. The names of ‘the heretics and schismatics’ who faced a sticky
end if Spain was victorious unsurprisingly included Leicester, his brother the Earl of Warwick and brother-in-law the Earl of Huntingdon; Burghley, ‘Secretary Walsingham’, the Earl of
Bedford, Sir Christopher Hatton, and the queen’s cousin, Lord Hunsdon. These, Philip read, were ‘the principal devils that rule the court and are the leaders of the [Privy]
Council’. Other names on this list included William Headon ‘the principal man in Norfolk, a great enemy of his majesty’; Sir Thomas and Sir William Fairfax in Yorkshire ‘and
all the rest of the Council of York’.

Clearly Philip’s informant was status conscious. The list of ‘Catholics and friends of his majesty in England’ was headed by ‘the Earl of Surrey, son and heir of the Duke
of Norfolk, now a prisoner in the Tower’ and ‘Lord Vaux of Harrowden, a good Catholic, a prisoner in the Fleet’.
⁵⁶
One of the four
names under the county of Norfolk was Sir Henry Bedingfield, ‘formerly the guardian of Queen Elizabeth
⁵⁷
the pretended queen of England,
during the whole time that his majesty was in England’. The author added: ‘I wish to God they had burnt her then, as she deserved, with the rest of the heretics who were justly
executed. If this had been done we should be living now in peace and quietness.’ The document reported that ‘the greater part of Lancashire is Catholic, the common people particularly,
with the exception of the Earl of Derby
⁵⁸
and the town of Liverpool’. The counties of Westmorland and Northumberland remained ‘really
faithful to his majesty’.
⁵⁹

An assessment of Catholic loyalties in August 1586 estimated that
five members of gentry could raise two thousand men in Lincolnshire, which was ‘well affected to the
Catholic religion’. Twelve gentlemen could raise three thousand soldiers in Norfolk, while Hampshire was ‘full of Catholics. There are four gentlemen strongly Catholic and very
powerful. The ports are good and victuals very abundant.’ In Sussex ‘there are six Catholics of good repute but I have been unable to discover their strength for fear of
discovery’.
⁶⁰

At last, the ‘most fortunate’ Armada was ready for action.

It now comprised one hundred and twenty-nine vessels, displacing a grand total of more than 61,000 tons, of which thirty-five were major warships. Sixty-eight were armed merchantmen or cargo
ships. Two had been converted into hospital ships with eighty-five staff embarked between them, including five physicians and the same number of doctors. There were also four Portuguese
oar-propelled galleys. The fleet, divided into ten squadrons, was armed with 2,485 guns, of which 1,497 were cast in bronze, and it carried 123,790 cannonballs and 5,175 quintals
⁶¹
of gunpowder. Provisions, estimated to last six months, comprised 110,000 quintals of biscuit; 6,000 quintals of bacon; 3,433 of cheese, 8,000 quintals of
various species of fish; 3,000 quintals of rice and 6,320 fanegas
⁶²
of beans and chickpeas. For cooking, there were 11,398 arrobas
⁶³
of oil and 23,870 of vinegar. The ships carried more wine than water for drinking: 14,170 pipes
⁶⁴
of wine
compared with 11,870 of water.

Warlike stores included 7,000 harquebuses, 1,000 muskets, 6,170 hand grenades, 11,128 pikes; 8,000 leather water bottles; 5,000 pairs of shoes and 11,000 pairs of sandals. The siege artillery
train had twenty gun carriages; 3,500 cannonballs; wagons, limbers and harness for the forty mules that were to drag the guns.

There were 26,170 soldiers and sailors on board the ships, made up of 16,232 Spanish soldiers; 2,000 Portuguese and 124 volunteers, or ‘gentlemen adventurers’, motivated by religious
fervour – or the alluring scent of plunder and riches – plus their 465 servants. The troops were organised into seven regiments, or
tercios
, of about twenty-five companies,
each comprising one hundred men. Only about 10,000 were experienced soldiers – the remainder were recruited untrained from the countryside and were ‘vine-growers, shepherds and farm
labourers’.
⁶⁵
The ships were manned by 7,700 sailors and the ordnance served by only 167 gunners. Medina Sidonia’s personal staff
and administrators totalled 158. For the spiritual comfort of the Armada, 180 preaching friars were embarked, plus Thomas Vitres, an Irish priest.
⁶⁶

There were also English, Irish and Dutch amongst the Armada crews. At least four of the ‘gentlemen adventurers’ appear to be English, and among the salaried officers there were
eighteen who had English or Irish names such as Sir Maurice Geraldine, Edmond and William Stacey, Sir Charles O’Connor, Tristram Winslade, Richard Burley, Sir Peter Marley, Patrick Kinford,
Robert and Edward Riford, Richard Seton, Sir Robert Daniell, Frederick Patrick and Henry Mitchell.
⁶⁷

Life on board lacked privacy and must have been noisy, apart from the frequent periods of prayer. There were no fixed sleeping quarters, except for the very high-ranking, and hammocks were rare.
The upper deck, with its batteries of guns, was the favoured place to sleep and some nailed truckle beds to the deck and erected low partitions to stake their claim to places out of the prevailing
wind. Before going into action, these would have to be thrown overboard. No wonder those on board the Armada ships prayed for good weather.
⁶⁸

Medina Sidonia, always a man for detail, laid down strict instructions governing the rations supplied to the Armada. Each man would receive one and a half pounds (680 grams) of bread per day (or
two pounds on days when biscuit was served instead) and could drink the equivalent of a bottle of wine – sherry or Lisbon wine – except when the more alcoholic Candia wine from the
island of Crete was dished out, when only a pint was supplied per man, diluted with water. The water ration itself was three pints a day for all purposes. On Sundays and Thursdays, six ounces
(170.1 grams) of bacon and three ounces (85.1 grams) of rice were available and six ounces of Sardinian cheese and three ounces of beans or chickpeas on Mondays and Wednesdays. On ‘fish
days’ – Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays – six ounces of tuna or cod per man were on the menu, or when these ran out, six ounces of squid or five sardines from Galicia and
Andalusia with three ounces of Sicilian beans or chickpeas.

This was rather a meagre diet compared to that served up on the queen’s ships. English sailors were allowed one pound (450 grams) of biscuit on fish days, together with a quarter of a
‘stock-fish’ or the eighth part of a ling, together with four ounces of cheese, two ounces
of butter and a gallon (4.55 litres) of ‘small’, or low
alcohol beer. This liquor, however, frequently soured. On ‘flesh days’ they had the same rations of beer and biscuit plus one pound of salt beef. Monday was ‘bacon day’ with
a pound of bacon per man and a pint container of peas.
⁶⁹

In Flanders, Parma’s army totalled 17,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, after being depleted by disease and desertion, but his cooks were still baking 50,000 loaves a day. He hurriedly
levied more recruits so (in addition to the horsemen) his final expeditionary force amounted to 26,000 infantry, of whom 4,000 were Spanish, 1,000 Irish and Scottish,
⁷⁰
8,000 Walloons, 1,000 Burgundians, 3,000 Italians and 9,000 Germans.
⁷¹
Among them was an Englishman named Barnes.

Building the barges proved so problematic that the Spanish believed they were victims of deliberate sabotage. Green unseasoned timber was used, making the hulls unserviceable. In the end, most
of the three hundred flat-bottomed vessels had to be commandeered or hired from owners of canal fleets, together with ‘a great number of little galleys and skiffs’ and thirty or forty
hoys.
⁷²

On 5 April, Parma sent a somewhat barbed valedictory message about the start of naval operations to the king: ‘Since God has been pleased to defer for so long the sailing of the Armada . .
. we are bound to conclude that it is for His greater glory and the more perfect success of the business, since the object is so exclusively for the promotion of His holy cause.’ Then the
duke returned to his fears that his plans were compromised: ‘The enemy have been . . . forewarned and acquainted with our plans and have made preparations for their defence. It is manifest
that the enterprise, which at one time was so easy and safe, can only now be carried out with infinitely greater difficulty and at a much larger expenditure of blood and trouble.’ Parma
refused to be a hostage to fortune, as his next comment indicated:

On St Mark’s Day (25 April) Medina Sidonia went piously to Lisbon Cathedral to receive the blessed standard of the Armada, which was laid up on the
high altar. The banner was decorated with the arms of Spain, flanked by Christ crucified and the Blessed Virgin Mary and a scroll proclaiming:
Exurge, domine et vindica causam tuam
–
‘Arise O Lord and give judgment on thy cause’. It was carried solemnly between lines of kneeling soldiers and sailors down to the harbour where the admiral boarded his flagship. Her
mainsail bore another image of the Virgin Mary.

Pope Sixtus declared a special indulgence to all who sailed with the Armada and to those who prayed for its victory. In Spain, there were constant prayers for the success of the invasion of
England, with processions on holy days and Sundays ‘so that more people might attend’. In the Escorial Palace, the royal family shared their nation’s supplications, organised in
three-hour relays.
⁷⁴
‘The king himself is on his knees two or three hours every day before the Sacrament,’ reported Lippomano.
‘Those in waiting on his majesty declare that he rises in the night to pray to God to grant him a happy issue out of this struggle.’ The Venetian envoy was philosophical, if not stoic:
‘Everyone hopes that the greater the difficulties, humanly speaking, the greater will be the favour of God.’
⁷⁵

Not everyone was so optimistic. The experienced admiral Martin de Bertendona, commander of the Levant squadron, warned a papal emissary in May that the English had ‘faster and handier
ships than ours and many more long-range guns’. They would avoid, at all costs, battling it out hull-to-hull with the Armada, but ‘stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their
culverins, without our being able to do them any serious hurt’. He added with more than a touch of sarcasm: ‘We are sailing against England in the confident hope of a
miracle.’
⁷⁶

In fighting such a holy war, the Armada was going to be a godly fleet. Medina Sidonia, in his sailing orders, emphasised that as the principal purpose of the mission was to ‘serve God and
to return to his church a great many of contrite souls that are oppressed by the heretics, enemies of our holy Catholic church’, every soldier and sailor should be shriven and receive the
Holy Sacrament before they departed. Furthermore, none should ‘blaspheme or rage against God or Our Lady or any of the saints upon pain that he shall therefore
sharply
be corrected and very well chastened’. Each morning ‘at the break of day’ each ship’s company ‘shall give the good morrow to the mainmast’.
⁷⁷
At nightfall, the ship’s boys would sing the
Ave Maria
; some days the
Salve Regina
was added to the religious repertoire, along with
the litany of Our Lady on Saturdays. Even the nominated passwords for each day of the week had sacred derivations. ‘Jesus’ was the chosen word for Sunday; ‘Holy Ghost’ on
Monday; ‘Holy Trinity’ for Tuesday; ‘Saint James’ for Wednesday; ‘The Angels’ for Thursday; ‘All Saints’ for Friday; and ‘Our Lady’ for
Saturday.

‘Common women’ – including prostitutes – were forbidden to sail with the Armada and the crews were warned that uttering oaths of ‘less quality’ would incur
withdrawal of their wine allowance. What’s more, gambling would be forbidden. Any ‘quarrels, angers, defiances, and injuries that are and have been before this day, of all
persons’ were to be ‘suppressed and suspended’; those who transgressed ‘directly or indirectly, upon pain of disobedience’ would be deemed guilty of treason ‘and
die therefore’. Soldiers and sailors should live together in the ships in ‘confirmed friendship’. To ensure ‘amity’, Medina Sidonia prohibited the carrying of daggers
as personal weapons.