The Spanish Armada (47 page)

CHRONOLOGY

1527: 21 May
Philip II of Spain born in Valladolid, son of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, and his consort, Isabella of Portugal.

1533: 25 January
Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn secretly at Westminster. Obviously pregnant, she is crowned queen on
1 June
, nine days after
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, had divorced Henry from his first wife, the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon.

1533: 7 September
Elizabeth born at Greenwich Palace, only child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

1534: November
Act of Supremacy passed (26 Henry VIII
cap
. 1), making Henry VIII supreme head, on earth, of the Church in England.

1542: 8 December
Mary Queen of Scots born at Linlithgow, daughter of James V of Scotland and his second wife, Mary of Guise. She succeeds her father to the
throne of Scotland on his sudden death on
14 December
. Her mother is regent until she dies on
11 June 1560
in Edinburgh.

1550: 15 September
William Cecil appointed a principal Secretary of State to Edward VI and sworn one of the king’s Privy Council. He becomes surveyor of
Princess Elizabeth’s estates and is knighted on
11 October 1551.

1554: 25 July
Philip of Spain marries Elizabeth’s half-sister, the Catholic Mary I, at Winchester Cathedral, two days after their first meeting. He
shares her title and honours during their marriage.

1555: 7 June
Mary obtains a papal bull from Paul IV confirming that she and Philip are monarchs of Ireland.

1556: 16 January
Philip becomes King of Spain after his father, Charles V, abdicates. His wife Mary is his consort in Spain and
Queen of the Spanish East
and West Indies and of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea
. Their joint style and title now is:
Philip and Mary, by the
Grace of God, King and Queen of
England, Spain, France, Jerusalem, both the Scillies and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and
Tyrol
.

1558: 24 April
Mary Queen of Scots marries François, Dauphin of France, son of Henri II, in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.

1558: 17 November
Elizabeth I succeeds Mary as queen on her death. Cecil is appointed Privy Councillor and Secretary of State. Philip offers to marry her
– but Elizabeth delays her reply and instead, he marries Elizabeth of Valois, eldest daughter of Henri II of France in 1559. (She dies after a miscarriage in 1568 and he takes as his fourth
wife, his niece, Anne of Austria.)

1559: 16 January
Mary Queen of Scots and her husband assume the style and title:
François and Mary, by the Grace of God, of Scotland, England and
Ireland, King and Queen
and include the arms of England in her heraldry.

1559: 10 July
Mary Queen of Scots’ husband ascends the French throne as François II.

1560: 5 December
Mary Queen of Scots widowed. She returns to Scotland on
19 August 1561
, landing at Leith, near Edinburgh.

1565: 29 July
Mary Queen of Scots marries her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, son and heir of the Earl of Lennox. He is proclaimed ‘King of
Scots’.

1566: 19 June
Mary’s only child James (later James VI of Scotland and from
1603
, James I of England) born in Edinburgh Castle.

1567: 10 February
Henry, Lord Darnley, syphilitic husband of Mary Queen of Scots, murdered at Kirk o’ Field, Edinburgh.

1567: 13 March
Battle of Oosterweal – traditionally seen as the beginning of the Dutch revolt in the Spanish Netherlands. Between 700 and 800 Protestant
rebels killed by a 1,000-strong Spanish force.

1567: 15 May
Mary Queen of Scots marries James, Earl of Bothwell, according to Protestant rites at Holyrood House, Edinburgh.

1567: 15 June
Mary Queen of Scots surrenders to the Scottish Protestant lords; Bothwell flees to Denmark where he dies, insane, eleven years later.

1567: 24 July
Mary Queen of Scots forced to abdicate in favour of her baby son, who is crowned James VI at Stirling five days later. Her
half-brother, the Earl of Moray, becomes regent of Scotland on
22 August
.

1568: 13 May
After Mary Queen of Scots escapes from imprisonment, her forces are defeated at the Battle of Langside, near Glasgow, by Moray’s army. Three
days later she escapes across the Solway Firth and enters England, becoming the guest (and prisoner) of Elizabeth for the next eighteen years.

1569: 14 November
Catholic Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, with 300 armed horsemen, break into Durham Cathedral and destroy English prayer books
there, later marching south in an uprising against Elizabeth. The rebellion is put down ruthlessly by Elizabeth’s forces.

1570: 25 February
Pope Pius V excommunicates Elizabeth by the papal bull
Regnans in Excelsis,
thereby depriving ‘the pretended queen’ of
her throne and absolving her Catholic subjects of any allegiance to her.

1570: April
Second Treasons Act (13 Elizabeth
cap
. 1) of Elizabeth’s reign, makes it treason to ‘imagine, invent, devise, or intend the
death or destruction, or any bodily harm’ to the queen ‘or to deprive or depose her’ from the ‘style, honour or kingly name of the imperial crown of this realm’. It
also becomes treason to claim that Elizabeth is ‘a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or a usurper of the crown’.

Another Act, passed in this Parliamentary session, criminalises the importation of papal bulls or ‘writings, instruments and other superstitious things from the See of
Rome’ (13 Elizabeth
cap.
2).

1570: autumn
Francis Walsingham appointed English ambassador to France.

1571: 25 February
Cecil raised to peerage as Lord Burghley and is appointed Lord Treasurer of England in
1572
.

1572: 2 June
Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, executed for treason on Tower Hill.

1572: 24 August
St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestant Huguenots in Paris and elsewhere in France.

1573: 20 December
Francis Walsingham made a Privy Councillor and appointed a joint Principal Secretary of State, becoming Elizabeth’s spymaster. He is
knighted on
1 December 1577
.

1578: 1 January
John Hawkins appointed Treasurer of the Navy on the death of his father-in-law Benjamin Gonson.

1578:
Philip reinforces his army in Flanders and appoints his nephew, Alexander Farnese (later Duke of Parma), as its commander.

1579: 18 July
Desmond Rebellion begins in Ireland with invasion of a small force of Irish, Spanish and Italian troops landing at Smerwick Harbour on the west
coast (now Ard na Caithne). James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald proclaims a holy war sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII. The rebellion is finally snuffed out in
1583
.

1580: 25 August
Spanish forces capture Lisbon. Portugal is annexed. Philip thus acquires an important Atlantic naval base and the small but well-equipped
Portuguese fleet.

1580: 10 September
Six hundred papal troops land at Smerwick as reinforcements for Desmond Rebellion. They are besieged by English forces and surrender on
10 October
. With the exception of their commander, all are killed and their bodies thrown into the sea.

1581: 22 July
Dutch States General issues a declaration of independence from Spanish rule.

1582: 26 July
Álvaro de Bazán, First Marquis of Santa Cruz, defeats a largely French mercenary fleet supporting Dom Antonio, Prior of Crato and
pretender to the Portuguese crown, at the battle of São Miguel, in the Portuguese Azores.

1583: 9 August
Santa Cruz proposes the invasion of England to Philip after his defeat of Portuguese, French and English adventurers at the naval battle of
Terceira in the Azores.

1584: 19 January
Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza expelled from England following Throckmorton plot against Elizabeth.

1584: 23 June
Santa Cruz appointed ‘Captain general of the Ocean Sea’ by Philip.

1584: 10 July
Dutch Protestant leader William of Orange (‘William the Silent’) assassinated in Delft in the Netherlands by Balthazar Gérard,
a French Catholic.

1584: 30 September
Philip Howard, eldest son of Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk (beheaded 1572 for treason) is received into the Catholic Church by the
fugitive priest William Weston at Arundel Castle, Sussex.

1584: 19 October
Walsingham’s and Burghley’s ‘Bond of Association’ obliges all its signatories to kill anyone
who attempts to usurp the crown or tries to assassinate Elizabeth.

1584: 31 December
Treaty of Joinville signed secretly between Spain, Henri, Third Duke of Guise (cousin of Mary Queen of Scots) and the French ‘Catholic
League’ promising support for the Catholic cause in France.

1585: March
Act for the Surety of the Queen’s Person (27 Elizabeth
cap.
1) outlaws any attempt to assassinate Elizabeth I in the interests of
any pretended successor and permits legally ‘the pursuing and taking revenge’ on such a pretender.

1585: 24 April
Cardinal Felice Peretti di Montalto succeeds Gregory XIII as Pope Sixtus V.

1585: May
Charles Howard, Second Baron Effingham, appointed Lord High Admiral of England.

1585: 10 August
Elizabeth signs the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of Nonsuch, pledging to assist the rebel Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands. As well as
providing an annual subsidy of 600,000 florins, a 7,000-strong English army is sent to the Low Countries under Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

1585: 7–17 October
Sir Francis Drake occupies ports in Galicia in northwest Spain, sacking churches. He later raids the Canary Islands, pillages Spanish
towns in the Caribbean, and returns to Portsmouth with loot valued at almost £9,000,000 at today’s prices.

1585: 24 October
Philip decides to invade England and overthrow Elizabeth and in
December
requests Parma to draw up invasion plans.

1586: January
Philip agrees that Santa Cruz should also draw up an invasion strategy. The admiral submits his requirements on
12 March
, asking
for 156 ships with 55,000 troops to land in England, supported by 400 auxiliary vessels. His plans are rejected as too expensive.

1586: 24 March
Walsingham writes to Leicester claiming that the Spanish threat to England ‘will prove nothing this year and I hope less the
next’.

1586: 15 May
Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, is arraigned in the Star Chamber at Westminster on charges that he tried to flee England without
royal permission; that he had been converted to the Church of Rome and was conspiring to be restored as Duke of Norfolk. He is fined £10,000 and is imprisoned in the Tower of
London ‘during the Queen’s pleasure’.

1586: 20 June
Parma’s proposals for an invasion arrive in Madrid, suggesting that 30,000 infantry and 500 cavalry should be ferried in flat-bottomed
barges from Flanders to England, landing between Dover and Margate, Kent.

1586: 20–21 September
Anthony Babington and fourteen others executed for high treason.

1586: 11 October
Elizabeth’s commissioners arrive at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, to try Mary Queen of Scots for high treason. The trial
continues in the Star Chamber Court, Westminster and Mary is condemned on
25 October
.

1586: 17 November
Philip orders his kingdoms of Naples and Sicily to dispatch ships and munitions to Spain.

1587: 1 February
Elizabeth signs Mary’s death warrant. Hawkins proposes, unsuccessfully, that six English warships should be stationed off the Spanish
coast to warn of Armada preparations.

1587: 8 February
Mary Queen of Scots beheaded at Fotheringay.

1587: 29 April–1 May
Drake raids Cadiz in a pre-emptive strike against Armada ships, and destroys about 10,000 tons of Spanish shipping.

1587: 18 June
Drake captures the Portuguese carrack
São Felipe
off the Azores with her cargo of spices, ivory and silks from the East Indies,
valued at £18,000,000 at today’s prices.

1587: 16 July
Santa Cruz’s Armada sails to Azores to rendezvous with the Spanish treasure fleet and escort it safely home in
September
.

1587: 29 July
Pope Sixtus V signs a treaty with Philip for governing a Catholic England, allowing him to bestow the English crown on anyone he chooses. Sixtus
deposits 1,000,000 ducats in a Rome bank to help fund the ‘Enterprise of England’ – but stipulates that 50 per cent is payable only after the Spanish land and the remainder in
equal instalments every two months thereafter.

1587: 4 August
English garrison of the port of Sluis in the Low Countries surrender to Parma’s forces after a siege of fifty-three days.