The Spanish Armada (43 page)

F
or all the assignment of blame and frenetic finger-pointing in Madrid after Medina Sidonia’s return with the tattered remains of the
Armada, one single factor stands out as a significant influence on the outcome of the 1588 campaign: the storms.

A weather cycle, characterised by very wet summers, began in north-west Europe in the late third century and continued for almost fifteen hundred years, with a brief interlude of drier
conditions in the fourteenth century. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the pattern had reverted to soggy, unsettled summers, stormy autumns and colder winters – the so-called
‘Little Ice Age’. We have anecdotal evidence to support this contention. The River Thames was not infrequently frozen over in London, indicated by accounts of fairs sometimes staged on
the ice. A Venetian diplomat complained in the early sixteenth century that in England, the ‘rain falls almost every day during the months of June, July and August. They never have any spring
here.’
²
Then we have the oft-repeated refrain ‘For the rain it raineth every day’ in the fool’s song from act five, scene one
of William Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
, written in 1601 and known to have been performed at a lawyers’ feast in the Middle Temple, London, the following February. The line
resonated so much with Shakespeare’s audience that he used it again in
King Lear
, act three,
scene two, written between 1603 and 1606. Doubtless it resonates
still among the bedraggled British today.

On top of this high rainfall, the shift to unsettled summers and stormy autumns occurred during the lifetimes of those who fought in the ships of the English fleet, but the change evolved so
subtly that it had not yet become part of the canon of seafarer’s weather lore. Walsingham, however, may have been aware of it when his uncannily prophetic black propaganda predicting
disaster for the Armada was compiled. The prolonged period of very stormy weather in August–September 1588 was probably caused by the cold air of the Atlantic Polar Front drifting southerly
to an almost permanent position very close to Ireland and Scotland. The subsequent series of intense depressions, 310–620 miles (500–1000 km) wide, may have been deepened by warm and
moist air from across the Atlantic, possibly exacerbated yet more by a decaying tropical cyclone moving northwards. All this would not have been understood or foreseen by the Spanish, who were
unfamiliar with such changes in weather patterns in the more northerly latitudes.
³

The Spaniards’ first taste of their unfortunate fate came on 26–27 July when the Armada ran into a full north-westerly gale, with wind speeds gusting above forty knots, as a number
of depressions passed over their route as they were leaving the Bay of Biscay and entering the south-west approaches. On 6 August, an anticyclone with light winds that had dominated the weather
during the fighting up the English Channel moved south-east into France, permitting another batch of depressions to push in from the Atlantic. These brought the strong north-westerlies that swept
the Armada so close to the sandbanks off Zeeland on 8 August, but the arrival of a ridge of high pressure caused the wind to suddenly veer through ninety degrees, allowing the Spanish to narrowly
escape shipwreck and pass into the North Sea. By the time the Armada had sailed around Scotland and down into the North Atlantic, a succession of vigorous depressions swept in, bringing gales on
12–13 and 15–16 September. One deepened dramatically, triggering storm-force north-westerly winds that ravaged the west coast of Ireland five days later. This storm of 21 September took
the heaviest toll of the Armada ships, followed by strong south-easterly winds on 25 September.
⁴

On the evidence of this forensic reconstruction of the weather patterns during those crucial ten weeks by the UK Meteorological Office and the Climatic Research Unit at
the University of East Anglia,
⁵
it seems very plausible that it was climate change that defeated the unlucky Armada rather than the popular
misconception that the triumph was brought about by Drake’s derring-do or the plucky ‘little’ ships of the English fleet.

Many of the Spanish prisoners captured by the English and Dutch suffered a terrible fate. Some of less exalted rank were thrown into London’s Bridewell gaol and left to rot. In September
1588, a Spanish spy reported that ‘last week there died Alonso de Serna and there are many of them ill. They suffer much, especially as winter is coming on and they have not enough clothes to
cover their nakedness. My heart aches for them but I have not the power to help them.’
⁶
Six days later, another of Madrid’s agents, Marco
Antonio Messia, said the Italians in London ‘have given them alms freely, but there are so many of them that a very small sum falls to each one’. He had visited the prisoners and found
that a Sardinian and an Andalusian
⁷
had been released after converting to Protestantism. ‘Those who refused to listen to the preaching of a
Sicilian they have there, are not allowed any share in the alms.’
⁸
‘David’, another spy, managed, doubtless through bribery, to
rescue nine imprisoned Spaniards and Italians. He provided them with false passports and, in July 1589, shipped them from ‘a rough beach near Plymouth’ to land later on the Brittany
coast from whence they made their way home.
⁹

Eventually, in May 1589, Elizabeth’s government accepted ransoms of £10 a head from the Duke of Parma for five hundred prisoners. The same deal was struck to release those held by
the Dutch. For those of real status, the ransoms naturally came much higher – lending a sinister new meaning to the saying ‘every man has his price’. Vasco de Mendoza and Alonso
de Zayas were freed on payments of £900 apiece; Alonso de Luzón, captain of the ill-fated Levantine
La Trinidad Valencera
(lost on the reef in Kinnagoe Bay, Northern Ireland)
and Diego Pimentel of the Portugal squadron’s
San Mateo
(which had been captured by the Dutch after running aground off Nieuport) attracted ransoms of £1,650 each in March
1591.
¹⁰

In contrast, Pedro de Valdés was treated well, even though he was disliked by his English captors because of his habitual haughty
and arrogant speech and manner.
Elizabeth wanted him imprisoned in the Tower. Drake managed to prevent this as the admiral was his personal prisoner, if not his own trophy of war. Valdés was not released until 1593, when
his freedom was secured by payment of£1,500. In happier times, he succeeded to the estates owned by his despised cousin, Diego Flores Valdés, and died in 1615, aged seventy, leaving
four bastard children and one legitimate heir.
¹¹

For the poor sailors of both fleets, there was no such happy ending. More than half who had sailed with Howard and Medina Sidonia were dead from disease or starvation by the end of 1588.

But attitudes to the sailors’ role in Tudor society were slowly changing. In 1590, Howard, Hawkins and Drake established the so-called ‘Chatham Chest’ as a mutual benefit fund
for seamen suffering poverty after being disabled on active service. This was funded by deducting six pennies per month from the pay of each seaman serving in the royal ships.
¹²
Four years later, Hawkins was licensed to build a hospital for ‘the relief of ten or more poor mariners and shipwrights’. (The Hawkins Hospital
still exists today in Chatham’s High Street, providing eight flats for needy or disabled men or women who have served in the Royal Navy or Royal Marines – the oldest surviving naval
charity.) Elizabeth’s government continued to shy away from taking any responsibility for caring for those injured in her service. In 1595, her council directed the mayor and corporation of
Bristol to enforce the collection of dues from ships because of ‘the great number of mariners who of late have been maimed in her majesty’s service . . . who may have relief
there’.
¹³

In Madrid, after the initial devastating shock over the disaster that befell his Armada, Philip overcame his crisis of confidence and refused to be diverted from his personal crusade against the
heretics who governed England. On 12 November 1588, his council of state unanimously recommended that the war with Elizabeth should continue, and so the long, painful process of rebuilding a new
fleet began. That same month, four cities from the northern province of Asturias loyally offered the king ten galleasses displacing 120 tons apiece and six ships of between 400 and 500 tons.
Similarly, neighbouring Biscay offered him the lease of fourteen galleons and Guipúzcoa, fourteen or fifteen ‘great ships’ with a
zabra
attached to each vessel. The
Venetian envoy reported: ‘This fleet is to be ready
by April 1589 or May at the latest, fully fitted out except for bronze cannon.’
¹⁴
His prediction, no doubt based on the king’s own deadlines, was hopelessly optimistic.

Twelve new 1,000-ton warships, nicknamed the ‘Twelve Apostles’, were laid down in the shipyards of Cantabria and money was spent on refitting those Armada ships judged still capable
of active service.

In June 1596, a forty-eight-strong English fleet under Howard and Essex attacked Cadiz again, sinking two of the new ‘Twelve Apostles’, the
San Felipe
and
San
Tomas
,
¹⁵
and capturing
San Andrea
and
San Mateo
. They also held the city for two weeks before leaving it ruinous. Medina
Sidonia, as local governor, faced criticism for his slow military response to the assault, which allowed time for the city to be sacked.
¹⁶
He still
had some supporters. One drew attention to his years of loyalty to the Spanish crown, ‘much to his cost and those occasions that have met with misfortune have been the heaviest burden for him
because of the care he has always put into royal service’.
¹⁷
In 1606, Medina Sidonia’s obstinacy caused the loss of a Spanish squadron
of ships in an action against the Dutch fleet off Gibraltar. He died in 1615 at San Lúcar, his reputation tarnished beyond repair.

Philip’s new Armada sailed against the West Country or Ireland in October 1596, armed with an edict pledging that he was answering the ‘universal demand of the oppressed
Catholics’ and was seeking ‘to release them from the yoke that oppresses them without punishing the great majority of the [English] people whose innocence he recognises’. Times
had clearly changed. The Spanish king promised that he had ‘no quarrel with the English people as a whole and will punish with the utmost severity any man in the Catholic army who molests,
injures or attacks the lands or people of the country, other than those who resist’.
¹⁸

But his fleet of one hundred and twenty ships, commanded by Don Martin de Padilla Manrique, were caught in a fierce storm off the Galician coast which sank thirty. The remainder headed back for
their home ports.

Philip tried his luck again a year later, while the English fleet was preoccupied off the Azores. A total of 136 ships, with nine thousand soldiers embarked, sailed with the objective of
establishing a bridgehead at Falmouth, seizing Pendennis Castle, and marching
on Plymouth. Nine days into the voyage, a three-day north-easterly storm sank twenty-eight
vessels when they were only 30 miles (50.7 km) south-west of the Cornish port and Padilla reluctantly ordered a return to northern Spain. It was
déjà vu
: the
‘Protestant Wind’ had come to England’s rescue yet again.

But the Spanish did manage to land twice in Elizabeth’s dominions. In July 1595, four galleys –
Capitana, Patrona, Peregrina
and
Bazana
– sailed from southern
Brittany under the command of Carlos de Amésquita, with four hundred harquebusiers embarked. Richard Burley of Weymouth, a Catholic exile and salaried officer with the Armada in 1588, acted
as their guide. The ships arrived at dawn on 23 July off the Cornish fishing village of Mousehole and landed two hundred troops who torched the settlement and the parish church of St Paul before
the flotilla set off again. The galleys then sailed two miles (3.2 km) to Newlyn, near Penzance, and landed four hundred men. A small force of the Cornish militia fled in blind panic at their first
sight of the Spanish troops and Penzance was then bombarded, destroying houses and sinking three ships in its harbour. Newlyn was also burnt. Fear of the imminent arrival of a fleet commanded by
Drake and Hawkins forced the Spaniards to depart on 4 August – but not before a Catholic Mass was celebrated openly on English soil. Three Cornishmen were killed during the raid.
¹⁹

The second landing came in 1601, when three thousand Spanish troops disembarked at Kinsale in south-west Ireland, in support of another Irish rebellion, this time by Hugh O’Neill, Earl of
Tyrone. However, English forces eventually defeated Tyrone’s followers and forced a Spanish surrender.

The English privateers continued the war against Spain. In the decade after the Armada, English ships made 236 attacks on Spanish ships in Caribbean or Atlantic waters. An attempt to ambush
treasure ships in August 1591 ended in disaster when a small English squadron was attacked by fifteen warships under Don Pedro Alonso de Bazán. Five ships escaped, but Sir Richard Grenville
in
Revenge
(Drake’s old flagship) fought on alone off Flores in the Azores for twelve hours before finally surrendering with most of her crew dead. A week-long storm later sank
fifteen of the Spanish ships and the captured
Revenge
off the island of Terceira.

Although the feared Catholic uprising in support of the Armada
never happened, the continued threat of invasion ensured that government pressure was maintained on the
recusant community and the seminary priests sent secretly to support them.

The number of priests smuggled into England declined after the defeat of the Armada, perhaps in response to the high proportion (possibly as high as 62 per cent) that were apprehended by
Elizabeth’s pursuivants throughout her reign. But the numbers secretly entering her realm stepped up again after 1591.
²⁰
That year, a network
of commissioners was set up in every county, town and port, to hunt down suspects, and in 1592 obdurate recusants were ordered to be imprisoned once more.
²¹
Yet, strong anti-Spanish feelings remained amongst English Catholics, as nationalism slowly became a more compelling force than religion. The Jesuit Robert Southwell declared
her Catholic subjects’ loyalty to the queen and assured her ‘that whatever army . . . should come against you, we would rather yield our breasts to be broached by our country’s
swords than use our own swords to the effusion of our country’s blood’. Another priest, Anthony Copley, warned pruriently that if the Jesuits were allowed to establish Spanish influence
over the realm, Englishmen could expect ‘the rape of your daughter, the buggery of your son or the sodomising of your sow’.
²²