The Spanish Armada (25 page)

Most ships prudently hove to. The admiral was summoned from his cabin, but his fears were soon eased by the lookout’s call that a light could be seen again dead ahead. It was further away
than expected, but it must be Drake’s lantern. In Howard’s anxious haste to catch up, most of the English fleet were left behind and scattered. Dawn on Monday 1 August revealed them
only as topmasts low on the western horizon, beating before a moderate westerly wind.
³²

More worryingly, there was no sign of Drake’s
Revenge
.

Instead,
Ark Royal
and her two companion ships found themselves hard up against the rearguard of the Armada, now approaching
Berry Head, near Brixham in Devon.
The light they had been following was not Drake’s but a lantern mounted on the poop deck of an enemy warship.

Immediately recognising
Ark Royal
as the English flagship, Admiral Hugo de Moncada, commander of the Neapolitan squadron of four galleasses, begged Medina Sidonia to allow him to engage
the three isolated English ships. His oar-powered ships, with powerful guns mounted in the bows, could ignore the vagaries of the wind and achieve considerable speeds for short distances. These, he
argued forcibly, were the best vessels to attack the English warships, cut off any chance of their escape, and blow them out of the water. But for some reason, ‘this liberty the duke thought
not good to permit unto him’. What was the captain-general’s motivation? Was he, like Howard, convinced that only admirals should fight admirals? Or was he yet again obeying
Philip’s instructions to avoid battle if possible?

While this debate was raging in the Spanish fleet, Howard and his two ships heeled round and escaped.

The lord admiral’s great fear now was that the enemy intended to land in nearby Torbay. It would be many hours before the remainder of the English fleet could catch up, leaving the Devon
coast vulnerable and unprotected.

Where was Drake? As dawn broke,
Revenge
was spotted hove to near the damaged Spanish squadron flagship
Rosario
, in company with Captain Jacob Whitton’s 300-ton Plymouth
privateer
Roebuck
³³
and two of Drake’s pinnaces.

Sometime during the night five of those seven English Catholics on board the Spaniard had slipped away by boat, only too cognisant of their fate if captured by the queen’s navy.

Valdés initially rejected Drake’s call to surrender. Later, flattered by the reputation of his adversary, he agreed to come aboard
Revenge
to discuss the terms of
capitulation. These were generous. He was granted time to consider the offer alone, after which he yielded. His ship became Drake’s prize, but Valdés was royally entertained to dinner
as Drake’s guest and his men treated as prisoners of war, possibly to be exchanged at a future date. Valdés reported afterwards: ‘He gave us his hand and word of a gentleman and
promised he would use us better than any others who would come to his hands.’
³⁴

Drake could not believe his good fortune when he discovered the
50,000 gold ducats, which were immediately transferred in canvas bags to
Revenge
. With them went a
box of jewel-hilted swords that Philip had sent as gifts to England’s noble Catholic families.
³⁵
Whitton towed the prize into Dartmouth and
the ship was stripped of its ordnance, munitions and gunpowder to help alleviate the shortages in the English fleet. Most of the four hundred prisoners were sent to rot in prison. The two English
captives were taken by a Captain Cely to the Tower of London as ‘rebels and traitors to their country’. One, named as Tristram Winslade, was handed to Walsingham’s officers, who
were told to interrogate him ‘using torture . . . at their pleasure’.
³⁶
Forty Spaniards were held in the Bridewell gaol, ‘there to
be entertained with such diet as English prisoners have in Spain’.
³⁷

On rejoining the fleet, Drake soon bluffed his way out of what could have been an awkward situation. His disingenuous version of events was quite straightforward: shortly after midnight,
sighting strange sails to starboard and believing them to be Spanish, he doused his lantern and set off in hot pursuit. Later he discovered they were merely German
Hansa
merchant hulks and
Revenge
was set back on a course to rejoin the lord admiral as soon as possible. Imagine Drake’s surprise when, at dawn, he found himself ‘within two or three cables of the
Rosario
’.

Doubtless Howard deemed it impolitic to court-martial one of England’s naval heroes at a time of national emergency – even though, through his actions, the English fleet had lost
both time and distance in chasing the Armada. Had the Spanish successfully landed in Torbay, the fault would have been entirely down to Drake and his lust for ducats.

Most of Drake’s contemporaries seemed more inclined to envy him than castigate his dereliction of duty, with the exception of Martin Frobisher, captain of the
Triumph
, who
seethed: ‘[Drake’s] light we looked for but there was no light to be seen . . . like a coward [Drake had] kept by her [the
Rosario
] all night because he would have the spoil.
He thinks to cozen [cheat] us out of our share of 50,000 ducats. But we will have our shares or I will make him spend the best blood in his belly.’
³⁸

A second, less valuable prize fell into English hands sometime after one o’clock that day. Believing the
San Salvador
, crippled in the previous day’s explosion, to be in
danger of sinking, Medina Sidonia
gave the order for her surviving crewmen to abandon ship. Within her forward magazine were 130 barrels of gunpowder and her hold contained
2,246 rounds of cannon shot; a naval commander of more experience would have ordered her to be scuttled to prevent these munitions falling into enemy hands, but the captain-general merely cast her
adrift.

Late that evening, the English fleet found the
San Salvador
still afloat. Howard dispatched his cousin Lord Thomas Howard in
Lion
and John Hawkins in
Victory
to claim
her as a prize. On boarding the wreck, they discovered

Captain Fleming, who had brought news of the Armada’s arrival to Howard, was deputed to tow the
San Salvador
into Weymouth on the Dorset coast. There she was
stripped of her gunpowder and munitions, which were ferried to the English ships out at sea by a fleet of small coasters.

Some of the Cornish militia, ordered to march eastwards to reinforce the neighbouring counties, thought they had done more than enough to serve their queen. The Spanish fleet had passed their
coast and now it was someone else’s problem. Their minds were on the harvest back home and these reluctant soldiers decided to slink away from their commanders and their colours.
³⁹

FIRESTORM

O
n 23 July 1588, the Privy Council instructed the lords lieutenants of the English counties to mobilise their forces and, within six days, to send
those earmarked to repel the invasion to Stratford by Bow in Essex as ‘the Spanish fleet has now of late been discovered again on the seas’. In addition, a further six thousand men were
based in Kent, facing Parma’s threatening forces in Flanders. As English military planners remained uncertain exactly where the invaders might splash ashore, the remaining local militia
should be ready ‘upon the firing of the beacons to . . . impeach such attempt as the enemy may make to land his forces in any place’. In addition, the lieutenants were told to ensure
good order in every town and ‘to stay and apprehend all vagabonds, rogues and suspected persons that are like to plod up and down to [cause] disorders and if any such be found . . . tending
to stir trouble or rebellion, to cause such to be executed by martial law’.
²

During that month filled with apprehension and anxiety, Leicester was commissioned lieutenant and captain-general of Elizabeth’s armies ‘in the south parts’ to fight not only
the invaders but any ‘rebels and traitors and other offenders and their adherents attempting anything against us, our crown and dignity’ and to ‘repress and
subdue, slay or kill and put to death by all ways and means’ any such insurgents ‘for the conservation of our person and peace’.
³
A Captain Cripps was appointed provost marshal to execute these draconian legal sanctions. To avoid the danger of the militia having fifth-columnist recusants in their ranks,
each officer and soldier had to swear an oath of loyalty to Elizabeth before their muster-masters.
⁴
The nightmare spectre of large-scale Catholic
support for a Spanish invasion was still seen as a clear and present danger to the English throne.

Richard Rogers, pastor of the parish of Westerfield, near Ipswich in Suffolk, recorded in his diary: ‘We are now in peril of goods, liberty [and] life by our enemies the Spaniards and at
home, papists in multitudes ready to come upon us [as] usurpers.’ His parishioners marked the departure of their local militia by fasting for their success.
⁵

A proclamation warned against the ‘wicked and traitorous lies’ that suggested the Spanish were merely trying to defend English Catholics. The truth, according to the English
government, was that a defeated England would be ‘subject to the Pope’s will and the crown . . . translated to . . . a foreign potentate as he shall name . . .’ There would be
‘a tyrannical conquest . . . by depriving of her majesty and by slaughter of all her subjects, both noble and others, as shall, for their conscience towards Almighty God, persist in the true
profession of Christian religion . . . and their allegiance towards her majesty’. This ‘crown, kingdom, country and ancient liberty, wherein it has remained and been inhabited with
kings and people of . . . English blood more than this five hundred years’ was now facing its gravest threat.
⁶

The Tudor propaganda machine grew more strident as the Spanish fleet appeared on England’s southern doorstep, delivering a terrifying message of genocide and ethnic cleansing to stiffen a
fearful population’s resistance. Mendoza’s spies reported that Elizabeth’s ministers, ‘being in great alarm, made the people believe that the Spaniards [are] bringing a
shipload of halters in the Armada to hang all Englishmen and another shipload of scourges to whip women, with 3,000 or 4,000 wet nurses to suckle the infants. It is said that all children between
the ages of seven and twelve would be branded in the face so that they might always be known. These and other
things of the same sort greatly irritated the people.’ A
rumour at court claimed ‘the Spaniards have orders from their king to slaughter all English people, men and women, over the age of seven years’ – a story that later spread
throughout London. ‘We know that the only object of this is to incense the people against the Spaniards,’ one spy commented.
⁷

While the Armada sailed up the English Channel, all foreigners were forbidden to leave their houses and their shops were closed up.
⁸
If all of this
was less than subtle misinformation, it served to fuel existing rampant xenophobia, always a prominent attribute of the English character during the Tudor period (if not now, more than four
centuries later).
⁹
Petruccio Ubaldini, chronicler of the Armada campaign, was continually harassed in the London streets and asserted ruefully that it
was easier ‘to find flocks of white crows than one Englishman who loves a foreigner’.
¹⁰

There were indications that the prospect of a Spanish invasion aroused unexpected patriotism even among the most hardened recusants. Some of those interned in Wisbech Castle petitioned Burghley
to be allowed to fight as ordinary soldiers alongside their Protestant countrymen. Their offer was politely rebuffed by the lord treasurer, who pointed out that shutting them up would be more
helpful to the queen ‘than the help of many hands’.
¹¹

Such loyalty did not always burn brightly in the hearts of Elizabeth’s untrained and ill-armed soldiers. Later, as the Armada anchored off Calais, the four thousand militia based in
frontline Dover deserted in large numbers, possibly because of their lack of pay, but more probably through abject fear at what was happening immediately across the English Channel. Philip’s
agents observed that they could only muster twenty-two companies of one hundred men each and were ‘in very poor condition’.
¹²
The
port’s defences were stiffened by importing a contingent of eight hundred Dutch musketeers.
¹³
There were also disquieting uncertainties about
the faithfulness of the inhabitants of Kent. Walsingham’s omnipresent informers reported that some publicly rejoiced ‘when any report was [made] of [the Spaniards’] good success
and sorrowed for the contrary’ whilst others contended that the Spanish ‘were better than the people of this land’.
¹⁴

Ministers were meeting in almost permanent and frenetic session at Richmond Palace, upriver from London, as the running battle
unfolded off the south coast. Previous sins
of omission and procrastination over expenditure were dreadfully revealed. Defensive works which should have been finished weeks ago had to be rushed through. Sir Robert Constable, lieutenant of
the ordnance, was ordered to send ‘as many wheelbarrows as he can conveniently provide, or in lieu, twenty dozen baskets or more’ to the uncompleted fort at Gravesend, to enable the
sweating labour force to complete its earth and timber fortifications.
¹⁵
Lord Buckhurst was urged not to dismiss his forces in Sussex just yet
‘though their lordships do not think the Spanish Navy will or dare attempt to land on that coast, being followed by the lord admiral’. Five lasts of gunpowder were dispatched to
Portsmouth for Howard’s fleet and a similar amount to Brentwood in Essex, for Leicester’s army.