On top of all this, she had lost her favourite, Essex, who was clumsily beheaded with three strokes of the axe in February 1601, following a typically botched attempted coup d’état in London. Treason was an unforgivable offence to a Tudor monarch and overwhelmed even her affection for this ambitious and spendthrift courtier.
The queen spent the melancholy Christmas and New Year of 1602 at the Palace of Whitehall, but soon caught a severe cold and developed a painful boil on her face, which damaged both her rampant vanity and her regal dignity. On 21 January the court travelled to Richmond Palace in dank, cold and wet weather and Elizabeth fell ill again, experiencing difficulty in swallowing, possibly through the severe dental sepsis she was suffering from.
Almost exactly two months later she collapsed as she was processing into chapel and was carried, limp and barely conscious, into her bedchamber. She refused to be put to bed but sat on a spread of cushions on the floor, silent and brooding, one finger in her mouth, while her attendants watched anxiously, fearing to disturb her. More by force than by persuasion, the queen was finally got into bed. Despite her refusal to take nourishment, Howard, her cousin, brought her a small bowl of soup. She complained to him that she was tied with an iron collar about her neck. He tried to reason with her, but she replied firmly: ‘No, I am tied, and the case is altered with me.’
Soon afterwards, she entirely lost the power of speech. On the evening of 23 March 1603 Archbishop Whitgift sat with her, praying at the bedside until she fell asleep. She died about three o’clock the following morning, aged sixty-nine, probably from broncho-pneumonia brought on by oral sepsis and suppurative parotitis.31 A Londoner with friends at court reported Elizabeth’s death:
This morning Her Majesty departed this life, mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree, cum leve quadam fibre, abseque gemitu (with a slight shiver, without a groan). I doubt not but she is amongst the royal saints in Heaven in eternal joys.32
At ten that morning, James VI of Scotland was proclaimed her successor, becoming James I of England. On the night of 23 April, Elizabeth’s corpse was taken downriver in a black-draped barge lit by flaring torches to Westminster. She was buried in the Abbey five days later and in one of history’s little ironies, she rests side by side with her half-sister Mary in a tomb paid for by the new king. An inscription reads: REGNO CONSORTES ET VRNA, HIC OBDORMIMUS ELIZABETHA ET MARIA SORORES IN SPE RESVRRECTIONIS: ‘Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters in hope of resurrection.’ They were unlikely friends in life and are equally so in death.
Nearby, on the south aisle of Henry VII’s chapel, is the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots, erected there in 1613 by her son, James I. Its iconography includes the figure of Victory.
James I moved quickly to end the cripplingly expensive nine-teen-year-old war with Spain. Burghley’s son, Sir Robert Cecil and Howard were among the English negotiators hammering out a peace treaty with the Spanish and Habsburg delegations, the latter representatives of the rulers of the Habsburg Netherlands. The Treaty of London, signed on 28 August 1604, finally ended the conflict, ironically granting the Spanish much of what Philip II had demanded if only partial conquest of England had been achieved by the Armada. England ended its support of the Dutch rebellion and renounced its privateers’ attacks on Spanish shipping.33 On Spain’s part, the treaty acknowledged that its hopes of restoring Catholicism in England were over for ever.
The accession of James I had marked a change in official policy towards Catholics. The new king seemed more moderate, promising not to persecute any ‘that will be quiet and give an outward obedience to the law’.
At last some measure of religious tolerance had arrived in England, but not sufficient or speedily enough for some. Around midnight on 4 November 1605, a search of the undercroft below the House of Lords revealed Guy Fawkes guarding thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, hidden under piles of firewood and coal. He was waiting to blow up James, his nobility and his Parliament during the state opening ceremony the next day as a precursor to a revolt by Catholic gentry in the Midlands.
They planned to kidnap the king’s nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth and put her on the throne as a Catholic queen.
APPENDIX I
ORDER OF BATTLE OF ENGLISH FLEET
APPENDIX II
ORDER OF BATTLE OF SPANISH FLEET
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 lord
s; 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 cr
own 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.
1587: 21 December Charles Howard appointed to command English naval forces against the expected Spanish invasion of England. Dutch station their ships to blockade Dunkirk.
1588: 9 February Santa Cruz dies at Lisbon, aged sixty-one.
1588: 11 February Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, Seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, succeeds Santa Cruz as commander of the Armada, despite his lack of naval experience and his reluctance: ‘But sir, I have not health for the sea, for I know by the small experience that I have had afloat that I soon become sea-sick and have many humours [fevers].’
1588: 8 March English and Spanish commissioners begin peace negotiations in Ostend, moving to Bourbourg, near Dunkirk, on 23 May.
1588: 6 April Elizabeth orders the lord lieutenants to arm their counties.
The Spanish Armada Page 33
