The Spanish Armada (52 page)

1
Archer and Douglas,
English Historical Documents 1558–1603
, p.806.

2
Mary was the widow firstly of François II of France, then of the syphilitic Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and finally of dashing James
Hepburn, Fourth Earl of Bothwell whom she last saw after the defeat of her army at the Battle of Carberry Hill, near Musselburgh, East Lothian, on 15 June 1567. Bothwell fled to Scandinavia but was
imprisoned at Dragsholm Castle, Denmark, for ten years. He died there insane, on 14 April 1578, aged forty-four. His alleged mummified body reportedly could be seen in nearby Fårevejle church
until around twenty years ago.

3
Mary’s army lost more than four hundred killed. Its main body never entered the fray because her general, Archibald Campbell, Earl of
Argyle, with unfortunate timing, fell sick just as the battle began. She watched the fighting from Court Knowe, near Cathcart Castle, one mile (1.6 km) to the south. The site of the battlefield is
marked by a monument erected in 1887 at National Grid reference: NS 57869 61716.

4
James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was the bastard son of Mary’s father James V by Lady Mary Erskine, wife of Sir Robert Douglas of
Lochleven. A leader of the Scottish Reformation, in June 1559 Moray had cleansed churches in Perth of ‘idolatrous’ imagery and in September 1561 he disrupted Masses conducted by
Mary’s priests at Holyrood. He was assassinated on 23 January 1570 in Linlithgow, West Lothian, by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, a supporter of Mary’s. In one of the earliest cases
of assassination using a firearm, Hamilton fired from an upper window, fatally wounding the regent as he passed in procession. The location for the attack was significant; Mary was born in
Linlithgow Palace, now a roofless ruin alongside a small inland loch. Moray was buried in St Giles’ Kirk, Edinburgh,
and is commemorated by a monumental brass, showing
the seated figures of Religion and Justice, engraved by the royal goldsmith, James Gray.

5
Margaret, who died on 18 October 1541, was grandmother to Mary Queen of Scots, having married James IV of Scotland in 1503.

6
Haigh,
Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire
, p.49.

7
The rood screen separated nave and chancel in Pre-Reformation churches. On top of the screen stood the crucified Christ, flanked by figures
of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John. These were favourite targets for Protestant reformers during the reign of Edward VI, were reinstated under Mary I but were ordered to be dismantled by
Elizabeth in 1561. One must feel some sympathy at the plight of local churchwardens, faced with frequent weathercock changes in government policies on religion which they had to implement at the
expense of the parish.

8
McCann, ‘The Clergy and the Elizabethan Settlement at Chichester’, pp.100–1; Birt,
Elizabethan Religious
Settlement
, pp.427–30; Duffy,
Stripping of the Altars
, pp.494 and 577.

9
Cox, ‘Ecclesiastical History’, pp.74–5.

10
See my
House of Treason
for an account of the vicissitudes of the ambitious Howard family under the Tudors.

11
Dickens, ‘The first stages of Romish Recusancy in Yorkshire’, pp.163 and 166.

12
Prudently, Mary had been moved further south to Tutbury from Bolton Castle, North Yorkshire, in late January 1569 to forestall any
attempt to free her by Catholic supporters in northern England.

13
Elizabeth was surprised that Sussex doubted the fidelity of her people as she believed she had ‘many faithful and loyal subjects
in that country’. However, if any person incited mutiny within the royalist ranks she recommended ‘the speedy executions of two or three’ as a salutary example. Sharp,
Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569
, p.50.

14
Sharp, ibid., p.189; Fletcher & MacCulloch,
Tudor Rebellions
, p.151.

15
BL Harleian MS 6,990, f.44. Printed in Sharp, op. cit., pp.42–3. The proclamation was also published at Staindrop, Co. Durham, and
Richmond, north Yorkshire.

16
Fletcher & MacCulloch, op. cit., p.98.

17
De Spes to the Duke of Alba; London, 1 December 1569.
CSP Spain (Simancas)
, vol. 2, p.213.

18
The removal of Northumberland’s accoutrements was intended ‘that all others, by his example, for evermore hereafter beware
how they
commit or do like crime or fall in shame or rebuke’. BL Cotton MS Vespasian C, xiv, f.583.

19
De Spes to Philip II; London, 3 December 1569.
CSP Spain (Simancas)
, vol. 2, p.213. More than two weeks later, he reported the
unruly return home of the London levies – ‘miserable fellows’ – who had ‘slashed and cudgelled Captain Leighton, one of [their] leaders who has come [back] to court
badly wounded to complain of his own soldiers’. Ibid., p.218.

20
Philip II to the Duke of Alba; Madrid, 16 December 1569.
CSP Spain (Simancas)
, vol. 2, p.217.

21
Aside from the deserters, Bowes lost only five killed and sixty-seven wounded during the siege.

22
Sharp, op. cit., p.119.

23
Contarini to the Doge and Signory; Angers, 17 January 1570.
CSP Venice
, vol. 7, p.439.

24
De Spes to Philip II; London, 9 January 1570.
CSP Spain (Simancas)
, vol. 2, p.225.

25
Northumberland was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in May 1895. William Tessimond appeared before a court in York in 1572 for possessing the
relic of hair from Northumberland’s beard which he cut off while the head was displayed in the tollbooth. See: Walsham, ‘Miracles and the Counter-Reformation . . .’, p.794.

26
Westmorland died at Nieuport in the Netherlands on 16 November 1601.

27
Contarini to the Doge and Signory; Angers, 17 January 1570.
CSP Venice
, vol. 7, p.439.

28
These included a Durham alderman, a priest called Plumtree, forty constables and fifty serving men in Durham. BL Harleian MS 6,991,
ff.31–3. Three hundred and twenty were executed in that county.

29
McCall, ‘Executions after the Northern Rebellion’, pp.85 and 87.

30
Sharp, op. cit., p.170. Henry Carey, First Baron Hunsdon (1526–96), was the son of Elizabeth’s aunt, Mary Boleyn, and
William Carey, an esquire of the body to Henry VIII. Mary, of course, was Henry’s mistress before Anne Boleyn and there has been persistent speculation that Carey and his sister Catherine
were the king’s illegitimate children.

31
CSP Venice
, vol. 7, pp.448–51.

32
Felton was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

33
13 Elizabeth
cap.
1. This was repealed on 28 July 1863 but until as late as 1967, it remained treason under the Succession to
the Crown Act
1707 to maintain that Parliament could not control the succession. The first Treason Act of Elizabeth’s reign was in 1558 (1 Elizabeth
cap.
5).

34
13 Elizabeth
cap.
2.

35
Parmiter, ‘The Imprisonment of Papists in Private Castles’, p.16.

36
BL Harleian MS 290, f.88.

37
Williams,
A Tudor Tragedy
, pp.199–200. Bailly (1542–1625) was released from the Marshalsea prison, probably in
1573, and died in Belgium.

38
Robinson,
The Dukes of Norfolk
, p.63; Williams, op. cit., pp.200–2.

39
Hutchinson,
House of Treason
, p.192.

40
CSP Domestic Elizabeth 1581–90
, p.48. On 3 May 1581 the Privy Council had ordered Norton to examine ‘a Jesuit
naming himself Briant and if he refuses to confess the truth, then to put him to torture and by the pain and terror of the same, to wring from him the knowledge of such things as shall
appertain’.

41
See: Merriman,
American Historical Review
, vol. 13, fn. p.484.

42
HMC Salisbury, vol. 1, p.526.

43
BL Add. MS 48,027, ff.80–125
v
; Hutchinson,
House of Treason
, p.201.

44
Merriman, op. cit., p.481.

45
Parmiter, op. cit., p.16.

46
APC
, vol. 8, p.73. Wisbech Castle, originally constructed by William the Conqueror, was largely rebuilt in brick in
1478–83 and was surrounded by a moat. It was later demolished and a house built on the site in 1816. Other castles identified by Sir Francis Walsingham probably in the spring of 1579 as
locations to imprison recusants were: Banbury, Oxfordshire; Framlingham, Suffolk; Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire (where Katherine of Aragon died); Portchester in Portsmouth harbour; Devizes, Wiltshire;
Melbourne, Derbyshire; Halton, Cheshire; Wigmore, Herefordshire and Barnard Castle, Co. Durham. See: BL Harleian MS 360, art. 38 (ff.65
r
and
v
).

47
Fénelon,
Correspondance Diplomatique
, vol. 3, p.27.

48
Ibid., p.27.

49
Brennan, ‘Papists and Patriotism . . .’, p.6.

50
Meyer,
England and the Catholic Church . . .
, p.242.

51
Carini,
Mons. Niccolò Ormaneto, nunzio alla corte di Filippo II
, pp.84
et seq.

52
Queen Mary I, Elizabeth’s predecessor.

53
Elizabeth was implicated in the conspiracy that led to Wyatt’s
Rebellion in 1554 because of her
relationship with two of the ringleaders, Sir William Pickering and Sir James Crofts. The treason case against her was dropped through the intervention and influence of her great-uncle, William
Howard. See Somerset,
Elizabeth I
, pp.47–55.

54
CSP Vatican
, vol. 2, p.551.

55
Duffy,
Fires of Faith
, p.93.

56
Loomie,
Spanish Elizabethans
, p.8.

57
Marble Arch, on the edge of Hyde Park, is the site of Tyburn. Story was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

58
13 Elizabeth
cap.
3.

59
Meyer, op. cit., pp.239–40.

60
Elizabeth kept a crucifix and candles on the altar of the Chapel Royal to the fury of her chaplains and bishops who regarded these
objects as ‘dregs of popery’. See: Rex,
The Tudors
, p.186.

61
Stählin,
Sir Francis Walsingham und seine Zeit . . .
, fn. p.527.

62
CSP Vatican
, vol. 2, p.45.

63
Fénelon, op. cit., vol. 4, p.330.

64
Gregory had become Pope on 13 May 1572 on the death of Pius V, who was canonised by Pope Clement XI in May 1712. Gregory probably
believed that the Huguenots were involved in a
coup d’état
and was seemingly unaware of the extent of the massacre, so subsequent criticism of him may be a little harsh. He is
best remembered for introducing the Gregorian calendar into Catholic countries in 1578.

65
See E. Howe, ‘Architecture and Vasari’s Paintings of the Massacre of the Huguenots’,
Jnl Warburg & Courtauld
Institute
, vol. 39 (1976), pp.258–61.

66
Merriman, op. cit., p.484.

67
Walton,
Intelligence Analysis .
. ., p.50. These responsibilities span the activities of today’s Secret Intelligence
Service (MI6), Security Service (MI5) the police Special Branch and the electronic eavesdropping agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

68
More than 1,310 seminary priests landed in England between 1574 and 1588 but no more than 150 were active in any one year, even in the
peak year of 1585. See: McGrath & Rowe, ‘Anstruther Revisited’, pp.2 and 6–7.

69
See: Law, ‘Cuthbert Mayne and the Bull of Pius V’, pp.141–4. Mayne was executed at Launceston, Cornwall on 29 November
1577. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.

70
TNA, SP 12/114/22. See also: Parmiter, op. cit., p.18.

71
TNA, SP 12/141/29.

72
23 Elizabeth
cap.
1.

73
De Mendoza to Philip; London, 6 April 1581.
CSP Spain (Simancas)
, vol. 3, p.97.

74
Twelve seminary priests, headed by the Jesuit William Weston, staged exorcisms at Peckham’s home in Denham in 1585–6, when
several of his servants and adolescents were said to be possessed by demons. They used the girdle worn by the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion (executed in 1581) to cause the ‘devils excruciating
pain’. One witness believed that five hundred people were reconciled to the Catholic faith because of this incident; others estimated the number at three to four thousand. See: Walsham, op.
cit., pp.800 and 802–3.

75
Merriman, op. cit., p.497.

76
The Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) conquered the Aztec empire in present-day Mexico in
1519–21.

77
CSP Spain (Simancas)
, vol. 3, pp.384–5; Merriman,
op.cit.
, pp.492–9.

78
Soldiers armed with a harquebus, an early form of musket.

79
CSP Vatican
, vol. 2, p.19.

80
Ibid., p.54.

81
CSP Vatican
, vol. 3, p.208.

82
CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90
, p.130.

83
A Jesuit witness reported Throckmorton ‘made a very holy and edifying end. He would not ask pardon of the Queen . . . at the hour
of his death [he] said she ought to ask pardon of God for her heresy and misgovernment in allowing innocent men to be killed every day’ (Edwards,
Plots and Plotters
. . ., p.99).
Lord Hunsdon corroborated this account: ‘He died very stubbornly, never asking Her Majesty’s forgiveness nor would willingly have anybody to pray of them’ (TNA, SP Scot.
52/35/18).