1588: 12 May Henri III of France flees Paris after Catholic citizens riot; Guise in control of the French capital.
1588: 30 May Armada sails from Lisbon.
1588: 3 June Howard and Drake concentrate their naval forces at Plymouth, leaving Sir Henry Seymour’s squadron to guard the Dover Straits.
1588: 19 June Armada puts into Corunna in north Spain after its supplies are found to be rotting and storms scatter the fleet off Cape Finisterre. Some stragglers are driven north and are sighted off the Scilly Isles, southwest of Cornwall.
1588: 27 June Armada council of war at Corunna advises Philip to delay sailing because of provisions shortage.
1588: 1 July Philip orders the invasion to be launched as soon as possible, brushing aside Sidonia’s doubts and objections: ‘I have dedicated this enterprise to God . . . Pull yourself together then and do your part.’
1588: 4 July English fleet departs Plymouth for a pre-emptive strike on the Armada in Corunna but adverse winds and fears that the Spanish ships might escape them, force Howard to return to Plymouth for resupply after two weeks at sea.
1588: 21 July Armada sails from Corunna. Storms force four galleys to flee to the French coast; Bazana is wrecked near Bayonne. The carrack Santa Ana seeks shelter in Le Havre, where she remains.
1588: 23 July Elizabeth orders militia in England’s southern counties to mobilise.
1588: 26 July Forty ships of the Armada separated from main force by gales; the last straggler rejoins on 30 July.
1588: 29 July Armada sights Cornwall’s Lizard peninsula.
1588: 30 July Sidonia sends his flagship’s tender to reconnoitre the Cornish coast as the Armada enters the English Channel: a Falmouth fishing boat is captured. Howard’s fleet is warped out of Plymouth.
1588: 31 July English fleet sighted by the Armada: Sidonia hoists his holy banner as a signal for his fleet to prepare for battle. First shots are fired as Howard attacks the centre and rear of the Armada. Fighting continues for four hours before the English fleet breaks off. Nuestra Senõra del Rosario, flagship of the Andalusian squadron, later collides with the San Salvador which suffers an explosion, killing two hundred of her crew and badly damaging her after-decks and steering. She is taken in tow, but the Rosario is involved in a second collision, with the Santa Catalina. Rosario, unable to steer, is abandoned.
Sidonia sends a message to Parma that arrives in Dunkirk on 6 August.
1588: 1 August Drake captures the Rosario. Sidonia sends another message to Parma.
1588: 2 August Fighting off Portland Bill.
1588: 3 August Howard divides his fleet into four squadrons of around twenty-five ships each, commanded by himself, Frobisher, Hawkins and Drake.
1588: 4 August Fighting off the southern tip of the Isle of Wight. Sidonia writes again to Parma seeking supplies of small-calibre shot.
1588: 5 August Both Spanish and English fleets becalmed.
1588: 6 August Armada anchors in Calais Roads, four miles (6.44 km) off the French town and twenty-four (38.62 km) from Dunkirk, where Parma, still in Bruges, had not begun embarkation of his invasion army.
Anglo-Spanish peace talks at Bourbourg broken off.
1588: 7–8 August English send in eight fireships at midnight – scattering the Armada. The galleass San Lorenzo runs aground outside Calais harbour after colliding with the Rata Encoronada.
Parma begins to embark his invasion army; 16,000 men join their vessels at Nieuport.
1588: 8 August Battle of Gravelines. During the nine-hour action, María Juan sinks. The badly damaged galleons San Felipe and San Mateo are run aground off Ostend and are captured by Dutch ships but San Felipe later sinks.
The Armada is in danger of wrecking on shoals off the coast of Flanders.
Parma completes embarkation of troops at Dunkirk.
1588: 9 August Council of war aboard Armada flagship San Martin decides to re-enter English Channel to escort Parma’s invasion force. If winds are contrary, however, it would head around the north coast of Scotland to return to Spain.
1588: 10 August Sidonia tells Armada crews they are returning to Spain. Seymour’s squadron remains in English Channel; remainder of English fleet pursue Armada northwards.
1588: 12 August Short of ammunition and food, the English fleet abandons the chase as the Armada passes the Firth of Forth in Scotland.
1588: 19 August Elizabeth makes her speech of defiance at Tilbury Fort overlooking the Thames estuary.
1588: 20 August Elizabeth orders the disbanding of her army.
1588: 21 August Armada rounds the northern coast of Scotland and enters North Atlantic.
1588: 31 August Parma stands down his invasion fleet.
1588: 1 September–5 November At least twenty-seven Armada ships founder on the north and west coasts of Ireland and Scotland. San Juan de Sicilia blown up in Tobermory Bay, by John Smollett, one of Walsingham’s agents.
1588: 21 September Sidonia returns to Santander in northern Spain. He reports to Philip: ‘The misfortunes and miseries that have befallen us . . . are the worst that have been known on any voyage.’ Of the 129-strong Armada that had departed for England, at least fifty had been wrecked or sunk, with 12,500 casualties.
1588: 22 September Sir William Fitzwilliam, lord deputy of Ireland, orders the arrest and execution of all Spanish survivors from the shipwrecks on the west coast of Ireland.
1588: 6 November Hospital ship San Pedro Mayor wrecked on Bolt Tail, Devon.
1588: 12 November Spanish Council of State urges the continuation of the war with England. Philip told them: ‘I, for my part, shall never fail to strive for the cause of God and the good of these kingdoms, as much as I can.’
1588: 24 November Service of thanksgiving for victory over Armada in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
1589: 14 April Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, tried in Westminster Hall for arranging a secret Mass inside the Tower for the success of the Armada. He is attainted and condemned to death for treason. Elizabeth I does not sign his death warrant.
1589: 28 April Privately funded English expedition of 126 vessels and 23,000 men under Drake and Sir John Norris departs for attack on Armada survivors in Santander and to instigate a Portuguese rebellion to put the pretender Dom Antonio on the Portuguese throne.
1589: 4 May English fleet arrives off Corunna and attacks the town.
1589: 26 May English forces land at Peniche, forty-five miles north of Lisbon, arriving in the suburbs of the Portuguese capital on 2 June. After an ineffective attempt at a siege, they retreat to Cascaes.
1589: 29 June English troops sack Vigo and set it ablaze. Drake fails to find the Spanish treasure fleet.
1589: 8 July–September English expedition returns to Plymouth almost empty-handed. Eleven thousand soldiers and sailors had died of disease or had been killed in action.
1589: Late October Court of Inquiry into Drake’s and Norris’s expedition.
1590: 6 April Death of Walsingham at his London home in Seething Lane, near the Tower of London, probably from testicular cancer, leaving debts of £27,000. He is buried the following night in Old St Paul’s Cathedral.
1594: 15 November Death of Sir Martin Frobisher in Plymouth after he received a gunshot wound at the siege of the Spanish-held Fort Crozon during the battle for Brest, in western France. His heart is interred in St Andrew’s Church, Plymouth the same day and his body later buried in St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London.
1595: 19 October Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, dies from malnutrition – some claim poison – in the Tower. His body is buried in the church of St Peter ad Vincula, within the fortress, but it is exhumed and reburied in 1624 in the Fitzalan Chapel at Arundel Castle and again in the Catholic cathedral in Arundel in 1971. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929 and canonised by Paul VI on 25 October 1970.
1596: 12 January Death of Sir John Hawkins from dysentery off Puerto Rico.
1596: 28 January Death of Sir Francis Drake from dysentery: buried
at sea near Puerto Bello, Colón, Panama.
1596: 20 June Howard and Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, attack Spanish naval forces at Cadiz. Sidonia’s slow response was blamed for creating the opportunity for the English to sack the city.
1597: 22 October Lord High Admiral Charles Howard created First Earl of Nottingham.
1598: 4 August Death of Burghley at his London house, Burghley House in The Strand. Buried in St Martin’s Church, Stamford, Lincolnshire, on 29 August.
1598: 13 September Death of Philip in El Escorial, near Madrid, following severe attacks of gout, dropsy and fever, aged seventy-one after reigning as king of Spain for forty-two years and two hundred and forty days.
1603: 24 March Death of Elizabeth I at Richmond Palace, from bronchopneumonia and septicaemia caused by her rotten teeth, aged sixty-nine after reigning for forty-five years and one hundred and twenty-seven days.
1604: 28 August James I of England ratifies the Treaty of London ending the nineteen-year-old Anglo-Spanish war. The Treaty halts English support for the rebellion in the Spanish Netherlands and stops further English attacks on Spanish trading vessels.
1624: 14 December Death of Charles Howard, Second Baron Effingham and first Earl of Nottingham, at Haling House, Croydon, Surrey.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
ENGLAND
Edward VI (1537–53). Long-awaited legitimate heir of Henry VIII by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Proclaimed king, 31 January 1547. His govern- ments imposed Protestant policies upon state and church, including the use of prayer books in English. Died of tuberculosis after an attack of measles; Greenwich Palace, 6 July 1553.
Mary I (1516–58). Fourth and only surviving child (from at least six preg- nancies) of Henry VIII and his first wife, the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon, widow of Henry’s elder brother Arthur, who died in 1502. Proclaimed queen, 18 July 1553. Returned England to Catholicism and married Philip, son of Charles V of Spain, at Winchester on 25 July 1554. Died childless from ovarian or stomach cancer, St James’ Palace, London, 17 November 1558.
Elizabeth I (1533–1603). Daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Succeeded her half-sister Mary I as Queen, 17 November 1558. Catholic Europe saw her as an illegitimate usurper and heretic. Re-established Protestantism as state religion; privately encouraged English privateers to attack Spanish assets and provided military and financial assistance to the Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands. She was mercurial, sometimes unable to decide key issues, and notoriously penny-pinching. Died unmarried, probably from broncho-pneumonia and dental sepsis, Richmond Palace, 24 March 1603.
ELIZABETH’S GOVERNMENT AND COURT
Cecil, William, Baron Burghley (1520–98). Statesman and chief minister to Queen Elizabeth. Secretary to Lord Protector Somerset and imprisoned in the Tower on Somerset’s fall, 1549. One of two Secretaries of State to Edward VI, 1550–3 and administrator of Princess Elizabeth’s lands. Knighted 11 October 1551. On accession of Elizabeth, again Secretary of State. Created Baron Burghley, 25 February 1571 and appointed Lord High Treasurer, July 1572. Deaf from 1590 and a martyr to gout. Died 4 August 1598, after collapsing, probably from a stroke or a heart attack, at his London house, Burghley House in The Strand. Robert Cecil, his only surviving son by his second wife, became the queen’s principal adviser.
Devereux, Robert, Second Earl of Essex (1566–1601). Created a knight banneret for his bravery at the battle of Zutphen in 1586 and became a favourite of Elizabeth I. He joined Drake’s and Norris’s expedition to Spain and Portugal in 1589 without the queen’s consent and was forced to obey her letter ordering him ‘at his uttermost peril’ to return home imme- diately. The following year he married Walsingham’s daughter Frances, widow of Sir Philip Sidney, enraging Elizabeth. In 1596, he commanded the successful English raid on Cadiz with Lord Howard of Effingham and Sir Walter Raleigh. Three years later, Essex was appointed lieutenant and governor-general of Ireland but his attempts to suppress the rebellion led by Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in Ulster were disastrous, and he was deprived of his offices. In 1601 he tried to raise a rebellion in London and was executed on 25 February on Tower Green.
Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester (1533–88), fifth son of the executed John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Proclaimed Lady Jane Grey (his sister-in-law) queen at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, in 1553 but later pardoned by Mary I. Became favourite of Elizabeth I and was suspected of murder- ing his first wife, Amy Robsart, at Cumnor, Berkshire, in 1560. Leicester launched the association for the protection of Elizabeth in 1584 and the next year was appointed commander of the English forces sent to the Low Countries to assist the rebels against the Spanish. In January 1586, he became governor of the Dutch United Provinces. After being recalled, he was appointed lieutenant general of the land forces mustered at Tilbury, Essex, to repel the Spanish invasion. He died of a ‘continual burning fever’ at his house at Cornbury, Oxfordshire, on 4 September 1588.
Fitzwilliam, Sir William (1526–99). Administrator; lord deputy of Ireland, 1571–5 and 17 February 1588–11 August 1594. Vice-treasurer and treasurer-at-war, Ireland. Ordered the arrest and execution of all Spanish survivors of the Armada ships wrecked on the west coast of Ireland on 22 September 1588. Punitive expedition in counties Westmeath, Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim and Tyrone against Spanish fugitives and those Irish hiding them, 4 November–23 December 1588. Died at Milton, Northamptonshire, 22 June 1599 and buried at Marham, Norfolk.
Radcliffe, Henry, Fourth Earl of Sussex (?1530–93). Constable of Portchester Castle, Hampshire, 1560, and warden and captain of Portsmouth, 1571. Succeeded his brother as earl 1583 and was heavily involved in the defences of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, for which he was rewarded by being made a Knight of the Garter in April 1589.
Radcliffe, Thomas, Third Earl of Sussex (c.1525–83). Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1559–64. Appointed Lord President of the North in 1569 and put down the rebellion of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, pursuing the rebels into Scotland.
Walsingham, Sir Francis (c.1532–90). Elizabeth’s Minister and spy- master. Ambassador in Paris, 1570–3; witnessed the massacre of the Huguenots in Paris on St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1572. Privy Councillor and joint Secretary of State 20 December 1573 and knighted on 1 December 1577. Elizabeth starved him of funds for his network of spies in England and across Europe. Died at his home in Seething Lane, London, with debts of £27,000, on 6 April 1590. Buried the following night in Old St Paul’s Cathedral.
NAVAL AND MILITARY COMMANDERS
Bingham, Sir Richard (1528–99). Soldier; from 1584, governor of the Irish province of Connacht with his brothers George and John serving as assistant commissioners. He fought for the Dutch rebels as a volunteer in the Low Countries in 1578. Sent to Ireland in 1579 to assist in the sup- pression of the second Desmond Rebellion. Presided over Galway Assizes early in 1584 when he declared more than seventy death sentences on rebels. Later the same year he successfully besieged Castle Cloonoan, in Clare, afterwards slaughtering the garrison. Died, Dublin, 19 January 1599 and buried in Westminster Abbey.
Borough, William (1536–99). Naval commander. Appointed Comptroller of the Queen’s ships in 1580. Hanged ten masters of captured pirate ves- sels at Wapping on the River Thames in June 1583. Vice-admiral during Sir Francis Drake’s raid on Cadiz in April 1587 and afterwards acquitted of charges of mutiny and cowardice. Commanded the galley Bonavolia in the Thames estuary during the Armada campaign.
Drake, Sir Francis (1540–96). Vice-admiral and second-in-command of English fleet during the Armada campaign; swashbuckling privateer and navigator. Called ‘El Draque’ by the Spanish. Born in Tavistock, Devon, the eldest of twelve sons of the Protestant farmer Edmund Drake. Second cousin of Sir John Hawkins and accompanied him in selling African slaves to the Spanish in the Caribbean. Knighted by Elizabeth on board his ship Golden Hind at Deptford, 4 April 1581 after his circumnavigation of the world in 1577–80. In 1585 Drake sacked the Spanish ports of Santo
Domingo in Hispaniola and Cartagena in today’s Columbia and captured the Spanish fort of San Augustine in Florida. Sacked Cadiz and destroyed some of the Armada shipping, 1587. Together with Sir John Norris, led a privately funded English expedition 1589 to attack surviving Armada warships in Spain and to instigate a Portuguese uprising in support of the pretender Dom Antonio. This proved unsuccessful and Drake fell out of favour for some years. Died of dysentery during expedition to West Indies and was buried at sea near Puerto Bello, Colón, Panama, 28 January 1596.
Frobisher, Sir Martin (1539–94). Navigator and naval commander. Undertook three voyages to New World, landing in north-east Canada, 1576–8. Commanded the Triumph in campaign against Armada and led one of Howards’ squadrons. Knighted and appointed commander of squadron in Narrow Seas 1588–9. In November 1594, he was involved in the siege and relief of Brest, France and received a gunshot wound during the siege of the Spanish-held Fort Crozon. He died at Plymouth on 15 November.
Hawkins, Sir John (1532–96). Naval commander, privateer and slaver. Undertook three slaving voyages to Sierra Leone 1562–8; during last, most of his ships were destroyed by a Spanish fleet and Hawkins had to land some of his crews in Mexico because of lack of food. Appointed Treasurer of the Navy 1 January 1578 and introduced new designs for faster, more manoeuvrable warships. Commanded Victory in Armada campaign and the rear squadron during fighting in the English Channel. Knighted by Howard after the action off the Isle of Wight. Died at sea off Puerto Rico in 1596 while serving with Drake on an expedition to the West Indies.
Howard, Charles, Second Baron Effingham and later Earl of Nottingham (1536–1624). Eldest son of William Howard, first son of Thomas Howard, Second Duke of Norfolk and his second wife, Agnes Tilney. Married Katherine Carey, eldest daughter of Elizabeth’s second cousin, Lord Hunsdon, in 1563. Commanded cavalry during the 1569 northern rebellion. Lord Chamberlain 1574–85. Appointed Lord High Admiral of England in May 1585. Commissioner at trial of Mary Queen of Scots. Commanded the English fleet during skirmishes against the Armada up the English Channel in 1588; fought Battle of Gravelines and chased the survivors into Scottish waters. Created Earl of Nottingham in 1596 after his successful raid that year on shipping in Cadiz and appointed lieuten- ant general of all England in 1599. Commissioner at Essex’s trial, 1601. Commissioner for union with Scotland, 1604 and at trial of gunpowder plot conspirators, 1606.
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