17 CSP Venice, vol. 8, p.319.
18 Oria et al., La armada Invencible, vol. 1, p.148; Thompson, op. cit., p.213; Martin & Parker, Spanish Armada, p.125.
19 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.209.
20 Mattingly, op. cit., p.196.
21 He took over command of the English forces after Leicester’s return to England.
22 Lincolnshire Archives – 8ANC/58. ?March 1588.
23 Fernandez-Armesto, Spanish Armada, the Experience of War, p.15.
24 CSP Venice, vol. 8, p.341.
25 See: de Courcy Ireland, ‘Ragusa and the Spanish Armada’. Some historians believe that as many as twenty-three Ragusan ships served with the Armada of which twelve were galleons; ibid., pp.254–5.
26 CSP Venice, vol. 8, p. 332.
27 Ibid., p. 340.
28 Ibid., p.351.
29 Oria et al., op. cit., pp.112, 124, 125, 136; Duro, op. cit., vol. 1, p.385; Thompson, op. cit., p.207.
30 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.225–6.
31 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.232–3 and 239.
32 CSP Venice, vol. 8, pp.331 and 336.
33 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.201.
34 CSP Venice, vol. 8, pp.329 and 331. The threat of an English invasion to put the pretender Dom Antonio on the Portuguese throne may have been one of the chief motivations behind the Armada. See: Armstrong, ‘Venetian Dispatches’, pp.673–4 and Thompson, op. cit., p.203.
35 CSP Venice, vol. 8, pp.332 and 335.
36 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.202.
37 Walsingham had been suffering from a recurrent fever which left him so weak: ‘as that neither my hand or arm can endure the use of my pen’.
38 Hardwick Papers, vol. 1, pp.360–1.
39 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.191.
40 Ibid., p.201. Elizabeth’s instructions to her chief negotiator, Dr Valentine Dale, are in Hatfield House CP 17/2.
41 Mattingly, op. cit., p.180.
42 Mattingly, op. cit., p.223; Mousset, Dépêches diplomatiques, p.380.
43 CSP Venice, vol. 8, p.344. Later Gritti reported the bribe amounted to 500,000 crowns.
44 The Holy Roman Empire, ruled by Rudolf II from 1576, encompassed Germany, Austria, the present-day Czech Republic, northern Italy, western Poland and Switzerland.
45 CSP Venice, vol. 8, p.345.
46 Ibid., p.363.
47 Fugger Newsletters, (1924), p.122.
48 Anabaptists only recognised the baptism of adult believers.
49 William Allen, Admonition, p.xi. It was signed: ‘From my lodging in the palace of St Peter, Rome, the 28th of April 1588’. An Italian translation was made solely for the information of the Pope and the Duke of Parma. A Spanish agent in London had warned at the end of March of an English plot to poison Allen, ‘I can assure you the matter is being arranged.’ CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.239.
50 Ibid., p.289; Meyer, England and the Catholic Church . . ., fn. p.326.
51 Parma to Philip II; Bruges, 21 July 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.351.
52 Mendoza to Philip II; Paris, 5 April 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.258.
53 Ibid., pp.240–1.
54 Ibid., p.252.
55 Ibid., p.265.
56 The ‘Earl of Surrey’ was Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. William Vaux, Third Baron Vaux of Harrowden (1535–95) was convicted for recusancy and committed to the Fleet by the Privy Council. He was tried in the Star Chamber in February 1581 on charges of harbouring the priest Edmund Campion, together with his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Tresham. Vaux was gaoled and fined £1,000. The Fleet prison was located in Farringdon Street, on the eastern banks of the Fleet River, outside the western walls of the City of London. It was built in 1197 but was destroyed three times: during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and during the Gordon Riots of 1780. It was finally demolished in 1846.
57 Bedingfield held Elizabeth under house arrest during her time at Woodstock.
58 Although the earl’s brother, Sir William Stanley, listed under Lancashire, ‘is a good Catholic’.
59 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.184–6. The document ends: ‘I wish to God my old own bones were of any service to his majesty in the cause for I would willingly die in service of the Catholic faith under the protection of his majesty, whom God bless.’
60 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 3, pp.80–6.
61 A quintal is a measurement of dry weight, equal to 102 lb or 46.28 kg.
62 A fanega of beans is equivalent to two bushels (70.48 litres).
63 An arroba is a measurement of liquid volume equal to 3.5 gallons (15.91 litres).
64 A pipe was a large wooden cask holding 105 gallons (477 litres).
65 Hatfield House CP 17/23.
66 In contrast, in the English fleet, preachers were recorded in the ship’s companies of the Ark Royal, Elizabeth Jonas, Revenge, Lion, Bear and Rainbow.
67 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.284–5.
68 Fernandez-Armesto, op. cit., p.52.
69 Fernandez-Armesto, op. cit., pp.8–10; CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.269–70 and 284–6; CSP Domestic, Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.16. In March 1588, Burghley, alarmed at the cost of the fleet’s provisions, reduced the beef ration at two pennies the pound and introduced alternate fish days. CSP Domestic, Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.468.
70 In April 1588, Parma had just over nine hundred Irish soldiers under Sir William Stanley, who had defected and handed over the town of Deventer to the Spanish, and eight hundred and four Scots, commanded by Archibald Peyton. An intelligence report from Flanders claimed the brutality and ill-conduct of Irish soldiers in Parma’s army was so bad that the Spanish had nicknamed them los savages perdidos – the ‘evil savages’. CSP Domestic, Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.446.
71 H. O’Donnell, ‘The Requirements of the Duke of Parma for the Conquest of England’ in Gallagher & Cruickshank (eds), God’s Obvious Design, pp.96–7.
72 BL Cotton MS Vespasian cviii, f.105v.
73 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.261–2.
74 Whitehead, Brags and Boasts, pp.58–78.
75 CSP Venice, vol. 8, pp.351–2.
76 Mattingly, op. cit., pp.202–3; Martin & Parker, op. cit., p.128.
77 A naval custom, observed in the sixteenth century in Spain and other Catholic countries. Boys would say the Pater Noster before a bell was tolled three times, a process repeated twice more.
78 Harleian Miscellany, vol. 1, pp.111–14.
79 TNA, SP 94/3, f.227r.
80 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.245–52.
81 Naish, ‘Documents Illustrating the History of the Spanish Amada’, pp.21–2.
82 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.273.
83 BL Harleian MS 288, f.187; Read, Secretary Walsingham, vol. 2, p.423.
84 Gómez-Centurión, La Invencible . . ., p.70.
85 CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90, pp.483 and 486.
CHAPTER 5: First Sighting
1 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.357.
2 AGS CS 2a/278, f.167 and AGS CMC 2a/772.
3 It was later found to be ‘unserviceable’.
4 Medina Sidonia to Philip II; San Martin, 10 June 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.309.
5 CSP Venice, vol. 8, p.362.
6 Medina Sidonia to Philip II; San Martin, Corunna, 24 June 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.316.
7 Ibid., pp.328–9.
8 Ibid., pp.330–2. The hulks returned safely to Corunna on 6 July. The two prizes that sank had both sailed from Dublin; one with a cargo of wheat and tanned hides, bound for Biscay, and the other was carrying charcoal to France, together with two friars, one a Bernardin and the other a Franciscan.
9 Maura, El designio de Felipe II . . ., pp.258–61.
10 AGS Estado 455/320–1.
11 Memorandum from Juan de Idiáquez to Philip II; 2 July 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.332.
12 Bodleian Library – Douce Prints
a.48; McGrath, Papists and Puritans, p.200.
13 This is a reference to Philip’s landing at Southampton to marry Mary on 20 July 1554. Olivares was a member of his entourage.
14 Olivares to Philip II; Rome, 8 July 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.333–4.
15 Ibid., pp.321–4. Don Pedro de Valdés complained to Philip a few days later that after expressing his opinions at the council of war, Medina Sidonia was ‘looking upon him with an unfriendly eye and had used expressions towards him which had greatly grieved him’.
16 Oria et al., La armada Invencible, pp.210–14; Naish, ‘Documents illustrating the History of the Spanish Armada’, p.23; Martin & Parker, Spanish Armada, pp.143 and 163.
17 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.327–8.
18 Ibid., pp.329–30.
19 Duro, La armada Invencible, vol. 2, pp.169–70.
20 Ibid., p.199.
21 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.334–5.
22 Martin & Parker, op. cit., p.145.
23 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, fn. p.338.
24 Building operations began in 1587. The fortress is now joined to the mainland by a breakwater and houses the Museo Arqueológico e Histórico.
25 AGS GA 225/55–6.
26 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, p.176.
27 England had a total of 1,392 merchant ships in 1588, of which 183 displaced more than one hundred tons. (Revd J. Silvester Davies, History of Southampton (Southampton, 1883), p.481.) On 31 March 1588, an embargo was placed on shipping of every county, not so much to obtain ships but to prevent their crews departing on voyages. The Royal Navy still has contingency plans to hire civilian ships for various logistic roles in time of hostilities, known by the acronym STUFT, or Ships Taken Up From Trade.
28 A list of Seymour’s ships on 23 July includes ‘a ship of Romney [the John Young] sent to seize by order touching Brasbridge, pirate, his prize’. TNA, SP 12/213/14.
29 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.189–90. On 13 June, the lord admiral told Walsingham that his crews ‘behaved admirably; none have mutinied though all know they are short of rations. Kindly handled they will bear want and run through fire and water but their want of victuals is distressing.’ (CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.488.) Howard commandeered a cargo of rice, almonds and other goods from the Mary of Hamburg at Plymouth to help meet the shortfall in provisions.
30 Lincolnshire archives, 8ANC10/114; The Hague, 5 April 1588.
31 It was then called ‘the Hermitage Bulwark’ as it was built on the site of a monastic house dissolved three years before.
32 A.D. Saunders, ‘Tilbury Fort and the Development of Artillery Fortifications in the Thames Estuary’, Antiquaries’ Jnl, vol. 28 (1960), pp.155–6. Costs at Tilbury amounted to £247 8s 4d for timber for the drawbridges, gates and palisades and three hundred labourers at eight pence a day. CSP Domestic, Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.550. Additional expenditure was requested on 8 October.
33 William Page (ed.), Victoria County History of Kent, vol. 2 (London, 1926), p.296.
34 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.206–7.
35 The Nore is located midway between Havengore Creek in Essex and Warden Point in Kent.
36 Borough based his successful defence on a chart of Cadiz that amply demonstrated the perils of the Golden Lion’s station assigned by Drake. See: Baldwin, ‘William Borough’, ODNB, vol. 6, p.671. Borough died in November 1598, having become one of the Brethren of Trinity House. In his will, he left £10 towards a dinner for them to be held in remembrance of him. (TNA, PROB 11/92, ff.229–30.)
37 HMC Foljambe, p.43.
38 CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90, pp.489–90.
39 CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.488.
40 TNA, SP 12/211/56.
41 Strype, Annals, vol. 3, pt 2, p.544 and HMC Bath p.28.
42 CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.487; Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.192–3.
43 CSP Domestic Elizabeth, 1581–90, p.489; Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.195–7. Howard was frustrated by the weather: ‘We can do [no] good as this wind is, for its holds here at west and south-west and blows up so hard that no ship here but her majesty’s great ships dare ride in this sound but are fain to go into the haven . . . We are not able by any means to get the weather [get to windward] of this harbour . . .’
44 TNA, SP 12/211/47.
45 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.221–2.
46 TNA, SP 9/210/34. Seymour dictated this letter, to Walsingham, as he had ‘strained his hand with hauling a rope whereby I cannot write so much as I would’.
47 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp.278–4.
48 Palavicino was a Genoese banker who settled in England where he accumulated a large fortune and was employed in the financial business of Elizabeth’s government. He was knighted in 1587.
49 Stade was a prominent port of the Hanseatic League until eclipsed by Hamburg.
50 TNA, SP 12/212/66, f.139.
51 The crew and guns from Diana were saved but her hull was broken up. One of her slaves, the Welshman David Gwynn, later boasted how he freed his fellow slaves, killed the Spanish crew and captured the other three galleys. History has unfortunately refuted his tall tale. See: Mattingly, Defeat of the Spanish Armada, p.247.
52 Martin & Parker, op. cit., p.146.
CHAPTER 6: Action This Day
1 Laughton, Defeat of the Spanish Armada, vol. 1, p.289.
2 It was the thirty-fourth anniversary of Philip’s landing at Southampton to marry Mary I of England.
3 Graham, The Spanish Armadas, p.98.
4 Fugger Newsletters, 1926, pp.165, 169.
5 Mendoza to Philip II; Paris, 24 July 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.353.
6 Medina Sidonia to Philip; San Martin, ‘in sight of the Lizard’, 30 July 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, pp.357–8.
7 Parker, ‘El Testamento politico’, pp.22–4 and 29.
8 Gentlemen and members of the aristocracy were apparently exempt from the ban on playing bowls.
9 Barratt, Armada 1588, p.47. In the second part of a 1624 tract entitled Vox Populi (which deals with Prince Charles Stuart’s escapades in Spain), there is a report of a sitting of the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), which was discussing policy towards England. The Duke of Braganza said: ‘Did we not in 1588 carry our business to England so secretly . . . as in bringing our navy to their shores, while their commanders were at bowls upon the Hoe at Plymouth?’ The story of the bowls game was therefore then current and was within living memory.
10 Warping is an agonisingly slow method of moving a becalmed ship by hauling on the anchor cable, usually assisted by a capstan. The anchor is then taken forward by the ship’s boat, dropped ahead and the process repeated ad nauseam. Some ships may also have been simply towed out by their boats.
11 A position to windward to other ships, advantageous in battle.
12 Martin & Parker, The Spanish Armada, pp.146 and 149.
13 Graham, op. cit., p.100.
14 In contrast, King Philip had been advised by a bloodthirsty Italian, Cavaliere Fra Tiburtio Spanocchi, to take ‘the honourable decision to declare war’ but perhaps it only ‘sufficed to set foot on the enemy’s territory’. See: Fugger Newsletters, 1926, p.152.
15 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.440.
16 To ‘luff’ is to steer a ship’s bows round to the wind.
17 Parker, op. cit., p.29.
18 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, p.302.
19 Duro, La armada Invencible, vol. 2, p.230.
20 Martin & Parker, op. cit., p.149.
21 CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.441.
22 Mattingly, Defeat of the Spanish Armada, p.259.
23 Harleian Miscellany, vol. 1, p.120.
24 Barratt, op. cit., p.57.
25 Calderón listed those remaining on the San Salvador: sixty-four seamen; Captain Pedro de Priego, ‘who was badly burnt and had ninety-four soldiers; Captain Don Francisco de Chaves, who was unhurt and had one hundred and thi
rty-three soldiers; Captain Geronimo de Valderrama, with ninety-two soldiers . . . also unhurt’. See: CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.441. English accounts put the dead at about one hundred and twenty in the explosion (Laughton, op. cit., vol. 2, p.56).
26 Martin & Parker, op. cit., p.151.
27 Oria et al., La armada Invencible, pp.352–3; Martin & Parker, op. cit., p.152; fn. p.164.
28 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 2, p.135.
29 Lord Admiral Howard to Walsingham; Ark Royal, Plymouth, 31 July 1588. TNA, SP 12/212, f.167.
30 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 1, p.290.
31 Medina Sidonia to Parma; on board San Martin, two leagues off Plymouth, 31 July 1588. CSP Spain (Simancas), vol. 4, p.358.
32 Mattingly, op. cit., pp.263–4.
33 A private ship belonging to Sir Walter Raleigh.
34 Laughton, op. cit., vol. 2, p.136.
35 James A. Froude, English Seamen of the Sixteenth-century (London, 1896), p.264.
36 Amazingly Winslade survived the queen’s justice and is recorded as fighting for Spain in 1600 in a regiment of foreign pensioners in the Netherlands under the command of the renegade English soldier Sir William Stanley (Loomie, Spanish Elizabethans, p.203). His interrogation is described in Surrey Local History Centre, Loseley MS LM/1339/370. The Spanish saw Winslade as a loyal ‘well-born gentleman [who] has endured much suffering’ (McDermott, England and Spain: The Necessary Quarrel, p.369).
37 Two barques landed the Spanish prisoners ashore at Dartmouth. The prize survey of the Rosario listed twenty-six brass cannon and two of iron mounted on carriages. Costs associated with the prize at Torbay included £2 ‘to a man of my lord admiral’s that came for the powder of the Spaniard and so came by post to Portsmouth’; £5 for dried fish to feed the prisoners and £1 10 for ‘guarding and watching of the Spaniards two days and a night at their landing’. See: Laughton, op. cit., vol. 2, pp.190–4. The Rosario was later taken to Plymouth and committed to the charge of George Cary and Sir John Gilbert, the latter unfortunately responsible for filching some of the eighty-five casks of wine on board. The more honest Cary wrote to Walsingham in despair over the thefts of the prize’s goods: ‘Watch and look never so narrowly they will steal and pilfer’. See: APC, vol. 16, pp.xxiv–v.
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