The Spanish Armada (7 page)

Perhaps religious indoctrination would stem this Romish tide flooding across England? A group of recusants were taken to York Cathedral in August 1580 where they were exhorted to ‘forsake
your vain and erroneous opinions of Popery and conform yourself with all dutiful obedience to [the] true religion now established’. This appeal was rudely ignored and the prisoners tried to
avoid listening by holding their hands over their ears and coughing loudly. After refusing to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English, they were packed off to York Castle.
⁷¹

It was increasingly apparent that measures to counter Catholicism were failing signally. On 18 March 1581, an Act to ‘retain the Queen’s Majesty’s subjects in their due
Obedience’
⁷²
was passed that imposed punitive fines of £20 per month on those not attending divine service, limits on their travel and
on communicating with other Catholics. Stunned and traumatised Catholics offered Elizabeth the gigantic bribe of 150,000 crowns (£37,500, or more than £95 million in 2013 spending
power) to drop the legislation. She refused. The new Spanish ambassador in London, Bernardino de Mendoza, warned that ‘it was evident to them that God is about to punish them with greater
calamities and persecutions than ever’. He feared the legislation would ‘root out the Catholic religion in this country’ and passed on their pleas to Philip ‘as buttress and
defender of the Catholic Church, humbly beseeching you to turn your eyes upon their affliction and to succour them until God should complete their liberation’. Specifically, they wanted the
Spanish king to use his good offices to ensure the appointment of an English Cardinal in Rome:

In the spring of 1582, Walsingham considered a novel plan to transport recusants to a new colony in North America, thousands of miles away from the dangers they posed to England
or the welcoming arms of a Catholic Europe. In our terms, this seems almost as outlandish as sending Catholics to the moon, given just how little known the American continent was then. But for
Walsingham, the plan was the ideal solution to many of Elizabethan England’s domestic and international ills. Doubtless, he cynically believed that if they did not drown during the perilous
transatlantic voyage, it would be only a matter of time before native Americans, disease or starvation would kill them all off.

Paradoxically, this proposal for a Catholic homeland in Florida seemingly emanated from Sir George Peckham,
⁷⁴
a Buckinghamshire squire who had
been imprisoned in the winter of 1580–1 for distributing alms to jailed Catholics in London, and Sir Thomas Gerard, a notorious papist who had been an unhappy guest of her majesty for a
botched attempt to free Mary Queen of Scots. However, Walsingham undoubtedly masterminded the plan. It can surely be no coincidence that Sir Philip Sidney, who sought to marry Walsingham’s
sixteen-year-old daughter Frances, had valuable rights to lands in America and Sidney sold these to Peckham in July 1583, providing the cash to pay off some of his debts and allow the marriage to
go ahead that September.
⁷⁵
The acceptable face of the expedition was supplied by the forty-four-year-old adventurer Sir Humphrey Gilbert
(half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh), who had earlier requested a royal licence for a voyage of discovery to the other side of the Atlantic.

Petitions were presented to Elizabeth and she generously granted them a patent under the Great Seal of England to colonise nine million acres (36,000 km
²
) in Florida on the banks of
the ‘River Norumbega’. Unknown to its organisers, there were inherent problems with the expedition. Firstly, the river belonged to legend, and today can be identified with the mighty
Penobscot in Maine, rather than in Florida. Secondly, Gilbert had some unfortunate personality traits, verging on mental instability. Thirdly, Florida was claimed by Philip and was occupied by
Spanish troops. Those issues aside,
the promoters also had not reckoned with the machinations of the Spanish ambassador Mendoza, who argued that establishing such a colony
would weaken Catholic resolve to fight against the Protestant state. He reported to Philip on 11 July 1582 that as Peckham and Gerard

The ambassador fumed:

Mendoza went to great pains to reveal the stark truth behind Elizabeth’s generosity. Florida belonged to Spain and was defended by fortresses – ‘so directly
they landed they would be slaughtered’. As a result, some withdrew from the expedition but others ‘persist in their intentions, believing it is not really against your majesty because
on the map the country is called “New France” which, they say, proves it was discovered by Frenchmen and that since Cortés
⁷⁶
fitted out ships . . . to go and conquer countries for the Catholic church, they could do the same’.
⁷⁷

Despite Mendoza’s best efforts, the plan failed for other reasons.
Eleven months later Gilbert sailed from Plymouth with five ships on a reconnaissance mission that
proved disastrous, mainly due to him capriciously ignoring wise advice in seamanship. One vessel returned home early because it ran out of supplies. Then, instead of sunny Florida, Gilbert found
himself off Newfoundland and he lost two ships during the voyage home.
Delight
ran aground and sank, drowning all but one of her crew of sixteen. The brand-new
Squirrel
disappeared in mountainous seas with all hands, including Gilbert himself. It is not hard to imagine the scale of Walsingham’s wrath that his adroit plan to dump recusants in the New World
had failed.

Plots to invade England meanwhile continued to be hatched with varying degrees of credibility. In July 1572, the madcap adventurer and privateer Sir Thomas Stukeley suggested a hopelessly
optimistic scheme to Philip of Spain to overthrow Elizabeth:

This plan was conceived in a fantasy world. Stukeley was either unaware of the depredations inflicted upon the northern counties following the 1569 rebellion, or his sanguinity
was unconnected with reality. Could he really believe that Elizabeth’s ministers would allow part of her realm to be hived off to become a safe haven for her Catholic subjects? Would they
permit it to survive as a secure base from which the rest of England could be conquered? His confidence was astonishing: if Philip entertained any doubts about this plan, Stukeley could capture and
occupy the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton instead ‘because these places are in that part of England where there are many Catholics’. These three objectives could be seized
‘at a stroke, in a single night and in less than twelve hours. From thence to London is not a two days’ journey and one can march straight upon the city.’ Not for nothing was
Philip nicknamed ‘the Prudent’ by his subjects. He ignored Stukeley.

The adventurer was not discouraged. Moving from Madrid to Louvain, Stukeley drew up proposals for a new papal policy on military action against England, urging Gregory to
promote an attack, when, he pledged, ‘a vast number [of Catholics] will join the invader and very few will oppose him’. He emphasised: ‘His Holiness should not desert the cause of
the Queen of Scots, who after suffering much and sorely for so many years for the Catholic faith ought now not [to] be deprived of her realm.’
⁸⁰

In 1575–6, another scheme for invasion was proposed by English exiles in Rome, amongst them the peripatetic Stukeley; Sir Richard Shelley, prior of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in
England; and Sir Francis Englefield, Mary Queen of Scots’ agent in Spain. They craved papal blessing and support for their enterprise and Gregory graciously provided them with special
crucifixes and ten separate indulgences to those who treated the conspirators ‘with reverence or devotion’. These graces included:

Like the others, this plan came to nought.

Two that did get off the ground were successive attempts to raise Ireland against Elizabeth’s rule. The exiled priest Nicholas Sanders won papal support for an invasion involving the Irish
noble James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald of Desmond in Munster and Stukeley in 1578. Unfortunately, the tiny force was unexpectedly diverted to Morocco to support the campaign by King Sebastian of
Portugal against the infidel Turks, and Stukeley was killed at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir that year, when a cannonball tore off his legs.

Another expedition with just fifty soldiers landed in Ireland the following year, accompanied by Sanders as papal commissary. Gregory had already named his own illegitimate son, Giacomo
Boncampagni, as King of Ireland if the invasion and a rebellion by Irish feudal lords succeeded. Reinforcements of six hundred papal troops – Irish, Italian and Spanish mercenaries under
Sebastiano di San Guiseppe
– landed in Smerwick harbour (now called Ard na Caithne) on Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula on 10 September 1580. However, William
Wynter’s English naval squadron captured the papal ships and blocked the invaders’ escape by sea. Undaunted, they refortified the nearby Iron Age earthwork, Dún an Óir
(‘Fort of Gold’) and Sanders proudly unfurled the papal banner abo ve the earth ramparts.

It took some time for the English authorities in Dublin to react, but when their vengeance came, it was predictably brutal. After a ten-day siege that October, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur
Grey, Fourteenth Baron Grey of Wilton, courteously accepted the invaders’ surrender and then beheaded every one of the garrison and their women. The rebellion collapsed after the English
burnt crops and laid waste most of Munster. Subsequently, famine and disease killed up to a third of the county’s population. Sanders escaped and spent months as a fugitive in the wilds of
south-west Ireland before dying of dysentery and starvation in the spring of 1581.

Walsingham uncovered a plot in 1583 involving Mendoza, his French counterpart Michel Castelnau, and twenty-nine-year-old Francis Throckmorton to land French troops at the port of Arundel in West
Sussex, liberate Mary Queen of Scots and return England to Catholicism. Throckmorton was arrested on 4 November and papers found at his home identified a number of Catholic noblemen and an illegal
pedigree of the descent of the crown of England, demonstrating the justice of Mary’s claim to the throne. The invasion had been delayed only by lack of funding, despite the promises of Pope
Gregory and Philip to underwrite the costs of the expedition.

Mendoza was given fifteen days to leave England and he angrily retorted: ‘Bernardino Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms but to conquer them.’
⁸²
For all his bluster, he departed quietly. The following November he took up a new position as the Spanish ambassador in Paris.

Throckmorton was executed at Tyburn on 11 July 1584
⁸³
and there was a general round-up of the usual suspects. Henry Percy, Eighth Earl of
Northumberland (brother of the leader of the 1569 rebellion), was arrested but committed suicide in the Tower on 20 June 1585 by shooting himself with a pistol loaded with three bullets for good
measure.

There is little doubt that Elizabeth’s life was frequently endangered
by Catholic fanatics. On 17 July 1579, William Appletree, a serving man at court, fired a gun
during Elizabeth’s stately progress by barge up the Thames, hitting one of her watermen in both arms. ‘She saw him hurt; she saw him fall, yet shrank not at the same. Neither made she
any fearful show to seem dismayed,’ according to a contemporary ballad. The queen dramatically exercised her prerogative of mercy at the last minute as Appletree stood on the ladder of the
gallows.
⁸⁴

Despite a rash of assassination conspiracies, Elizabeth developed an obstinate dislike of security precautions to protect her sacred person – much to Walsingham’s fury.