Robert found that in his absence, his political influence in the Council had waned. It was Hatton who was the rising star and, in April 1587, he was appointed Lord Chancellor, despite having no legal training and being opposed by the legal fraternity. Robert and Burghley escorted him from Ely Place to Westminster to be sworn in.1 Members of the Whitgift/Hatton group had now joined the Council and Robert had lost some of his former supporters. Without his presence, it had become easier to gain access to Elizabeth. No longer was royal approval dependent on his role as an intermediary.
In November 1587, Sidney’s embalmed body was carried back to Harwich on his ship, the Black Pinnace, which was draped in black with black sails. From there it was brought to London to be landed at Tower Wharf and conveyed to a house in the Minories. Uncharacteristically, Robert fell out with Walsingham over the settlement of Sidney’s known debts, which exceeded his assets by three times, and there were legal difficulties over selling land to satisfy his creditors. As an executor, Walsingham was under considerable pressure, and Sidney’s body lay unburied for three months for lack of funds for an appropriate funeral. Walsingham contributed £6,000, telling Robert ‘that it hath brought me into a most desperate and hard state’.2 Although he appealed to Robert to do the same, he concluded that Robert lacked the will to assist. Admittedly Robert’s finances were in some disarray after his expenditure in the Netherlands, but it might have been expected that the sale of a piece of land would have contributed to the funeral of his nephew and heir. This was not the amenable Robert of old. When Walsingham appealed to the Queen for help, Robert refused to support his request. He also failed to back his application to become Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, even opposing him with a rival candidate. It was Burghley who came to Walsingham’s rescue, persuading the Queen to provide a substantial grant of land with the Chancellorship in the following April.
Although Robert attended Sidney’s elaborate funeral at St Paul’s, and sent his heartfelt sympathy to Frances Sidney, his attitude must have presented a ‘disagreeable air’.3 A procession of seven hundred persons bore Sidney’s body to the cathedral, preceded by officers, pipers, drummers and trumpeters of Sidney’s regiment of horse and a train of his friends, including Drake.
His war horse caparisoned in black was ridden by a little page who trailed a broken lance. Heralds bore his arms, his helmet, shield, tabard, spurs and gloves. The coffin covered in black velvet, was slung between two poles, each supported by seven yeomen, robed and hooded in black. The chief mourner, his brother and heir, Robert Sidney, walked alone after the coffin; then, riding on horseback two and two, came the Earl of Leicester and Earl of Huntingdon, the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Warwick, Lord Willoughby and Lord North. Seven gentlemen of the Netherlands followed, representing the United Provinces. After these came the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, the Sheriffs and the Recorder of London. Four hundred citizens brought up the rear.4
Robert seemed to be tiring of public life, disillusioned by the frustration and anxiety of his role in the Netherlands. Elizabeth was unhappy at his failure to implement her objectives, or to marshal the Dutch into a coherent fighting force to challenge the might of Spain. She continued to bicker with him over accounting for the funds expended. He took umbrage that Burghley supported the Queen, despite her requests being entirely reasonable. On 7 February, he told Burghley that he was being asked to do work ‘more the province of an auditor or clerk, than one in high position’.5 Burghley replied:
I never did say or mean to say that your Lordship ought to be blamed for ‘the [auditors’] imperfections in their accounts. I did say, and do still say, that their accounts are obscure, confused and without credit … And I find in truth that they ought to have been commanded by your Lordship’s authority to have reformed the same and made your Lordship more privy to their doings, for which not doing, I condemn them and not your Lordship.6
Robert retired to Wanstead from where he wrote to Elizabeth, beseeching her ‘to behold with the eyes of your princely clemency at my wretched and depressed estate’.7 Noting his estrangement with Elizabeth, Buckhurst attempted to call Robert to account for his mismanagement of Netherlands’ affairs. It was the general view that he should submit to an investigation by the Council, during which it was normal practice for those being investigated to kneel. Robert appealed to the Queen to prevent this indignity. Elizabeth’s ‘heart was wrung’ and she promised that he would suffer ‘no abasement’.8 During his investigation, he sat down among them and ‘would answer only that he had proceeded on secret instructions from the Queen, which he was not at liberty to disclose to them’.9 He arranged for a medal to be struck with his image on one side and a dog turning away from sheep, saying: ‘I forsake, to my grief.’ Elizabeth remained loyal to a fault. She scotched any criticism as soon as she heard of it.
Robert was suffering from a stomach complaint, thought to have been gall stones, and he resigned as Master of the Horse, handing the role over to his stepson, Essex. This was not a sudden decision. It had been discussed in the previous May. Essex was already firmly positioned in the Queen’s affections and, while Robert was absent abroad, had used his position to provide wholehearted support for his stepfather’s interests. It was now he who sat up late playing cards with Elizabeth, or riding with her in Windsor Great Park. He became Elizabeth’s constant companion, a position that he was careful not to abuse. When she suggested that he should occupy Robert’s lodgings at court, he immediately wrote to seek Robert’s approval. In April 1588, Essex again followed in his stepfather’s footsteps by being granted the Order of the Garter. There were no signs then of the later jealousy and greed that were to bring about his downfall.
In retrospect, the Netherlands expedition was not a complete failure. It had prevented Spain from gaining control of the United Provinces after the fall of Antwerp, and it had stopped Parma from gaining the coastline of Zeeland and Holland other than Sluis, where navigation through the surrounding sandbanks was difficult. This was to be the Armada’s undoing. When the mighty fleet of Philip II needed to regroup after its buffeting in the Channel, it had no safe haven in which to undertake repairs.
There were already rumours that Philip II was amassing a huge fleet to form his Armada for an invasion of England. Drake offered to lead a second raid to damage shipping along the Spanish coast and Elizabeth gave him command of a flotilla, which included four naval galleons and a further twenty armed merchantmen and pinnaces, financed by a group of London merchants. She was to receive a half of any profit.
Drake set sail from Plymouth on 12 April 1587. Although he faced a storm off Galicia, two Dutch vessels provided him with intelligence that a huge war fleet was being readied to move from Cadiz to Lisbon. Drake’s ships entered the bay of Cadiz at dusk on 29 April. There were sixty Spanish carracks and various smaller boats in the harbour. Although the Spanish fleet came out to face the English, it had been caught by surprise and was soon forced back into port where many ships were abandoned by their crews. Drake’s men cut their cables and set them on fire. By dawn on 1 May, at least twenty-seven Spanish men-of-war had been destroyed and a further four captured, laden with provisions. As Drake returned north he destroyed any shipping he encountered, including fishing vessels. He landed at Lagos, near Cape St Vincent, in southern Portugal, storming local fortresses and establishing it as a base to disrupt the Armada fleet being assembled at Lisbon. He now made for Lisbon, which was well protected by shore batteries. Although there was an exchange of fire, it was fairly ineffectual; he rode at anchor, ‘defying the Spanish with calm insolence’.10 He then weighed anchor and returned to Lagos to take on water before setting out for the Azores. This last project was undertaken against the advice of Borough, his second-in-command, who had instructions to curb Drake from exceeding Elizabeth’s orders. Nothing daunted, Drake relieved Borough – a naval admiral – of his command and sent him back to England with the four royal navy vessels, leaving himself with only nine ships. On 8 June, he sighted the S
ão Filipe, a Portuguese treasure ship, returning from the East Indies. After a brief exchange of fire, it surrendered and Drake returned with it to England, bringing its cargo of gold, spices and silk valued at £108,000. He received a hero’s welcome for having ‘singed the King of Spain’s beard’, but knew he had not destroyed the Armada. Nevertheless, his action delayed it by a year. He returned in time to travel to the Netherlands to escort Robert back to England after his attack on Sluis.
When it came to the defence of the realm, Elizabeth would always turn to Robert to lead her land forces. During the winter of 1587–8, he frequently attended Council meetings to discuss the imminent Spanish threat. As late as January 1588, Elizabeth was still holding out hope for a negotiated settlement, sending a delegation led by Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby, to Ostend. This included the devious Sir James Croft, who retained her confidence, despite being suspected of Catholic intrigue at various stages in his career. On 17 April, Croft made a secret approach to Parma in Bruges without the knowledge of his colleagues. He proposed that, if the Spanish gave an undertaking not to set up a Spanish inquisition anywhere in the Netherlands, withdrew all their troops and conceded a degree of religious toleration, Holland and Zeeland should be restored to Spanish control. If they gave up all hostile preparations against England, Elizabeth would hand over the garrisoned towns of Brill, Flushing and Ostend. When Elizabeth heard this, she wrote to ask why he had made any such unauthorised proposals and told the other commissioners to disavow his actions. Despite his impropriety, Croft was permitted to remain in post. Meanwhile, Walsingham and Robert continued to argue against diplomacy, preferring to place their reliance on the English navy and army. However, the Council faced the perennial problem of Elizabeth’s ambivalence and a shortage of money. There was also a lack of civilian enthusiasm to take up arms. Robert was left struggling to put the nation in readiness for the conflict that was upon them. Although, on paper, local musters raised 50,000 foot and 10,000 horse, those reporting for duty fell far short of this. Veterans of the Irish and Dutch campaigns had to be engaged to knock recruits into some semblance of order. On 24 July, Robert was formally appointed Lieutenant and Captain General of the Queen’s armies and companies, the position he had held in the Netherlands, and he took personal responsibility for the defence of the Thames estuary. Even before this he was ‘issuing commands, ordering supplies and enquiring into the state of coastal defences’.11
On 20 March 1588, Philip wrote to Parma that the Armada was fully equipped and ready to sail from Lisbon with 8,000 sailors and 18,000 troops. The fleet consisted of 130 ships, of which twenty-eight were purpose-built men-of-war, supported by sixty-eight armed carracks and thirty-four light ships. It was under the command of Alonzo Pérez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia. Parma was to pick 6,000 of the troops on board to add to his invasion force being prepared in the Netherlands, with the remainder being left to guard the subjugated Netherland provinces. Parma had initially wanted 30,000 men for the invasion, but with England now being readied he considered even 50,000 to be insufficient and predicted disaster. His only hope was to put the English off their guard by promising peace negotiations. Elizabeth alone was taking these seriously, and even Burghley considered war to be inevitable.
Although the Armada fleet set out on 28 May, it took two days to leave Lisbon and was scattered by bad weather in the Bay of Biscay. Although it regrouped at Corunna, only about 123 ships reached the English Channel. News of its departure reached England in early June, but the cumbersome fleet made slow progress. It only passed the Lizard on 19 July, spread out in an undulating crescent seven miles across. The English fleet was well prepared. Although Elizabeth had done little to ready land-based forces for war, she had spent huge sums, like her father before her, on shipbuilding at the dockyards at Chatham. Howard of Effingham wrote to Burghley, who had taken control of the fleet’s administration: ‘I do thank God that they be in the state that they be in; there is never one of them that knows what a leak means.’12 Howard had 197 ships under his command, of which thirty-four formed part of the royal fleet. Fifty-one vessels were galleons of between 200 and 400 tons carrying at least forty-two guns each, of which Howard, Sir John Hawkins, and Drake had provided a total of twelve privateers. The English were prevented from making an early attack after a southerly wind held them locked in harbour, but on 19 July, with remarkable daring, they extricated a flotilla of fifty-five ships from Plymouth and, two days later, confronted the enemy off the Eddystone rocks. They used their superior speed and manoeuvrability to gain the weather station while keeping their distance. Although no ships were lost on either side, two Spanish vessels were abandoned after colliding. Drake turned back to loot them, gaining supplies of much needed gunpowder and gold. Without his navigational skills, the rest of the English fleet became scattered and took a full day to regroup. Despite this, it caught up with the Armada within a day and re-engaged it off Portland, but again to little effect. Medina Sidonia had been hoping to create a temporary base for the Armada on the Isle of Wight, but with the English threatening a full-scale attack, he gave orders to return to the open sea from where it headed up the Channel.
On 27 July, the Armada anchored in a tightly packed defensive formation off Calais to await the arrival of Parma’s invasion force. This had been reduced by disease to 16,000 men. Parma’s land-based forces were expecting to be transported along the coast in a fleet of barges from the Netherlands’ coastal ports for embarkation at Dunkirk. Poor communication meant that he needed at least a further six days to deliver them. The ports were being blockaded by thirty flyboats able to negotiate the shallow waters under the command of Justin of Nassau. With the Spanish invasion barges being pinned down in Nieuport and Dunkirk, Parma’s men never left dry land. Meanwhile, the Armada fleet remained sitting at anchor. Without access to Netherlands’ harbours, Medina Sidonia hoped to revictual at Gravelines in Flanders, close to the French border. He was reluctant to move further east as the Dutch had removed the sea marks from the sand shoals. The fleet was left extremely vulnerable, particularly at night. On 28 July, the English cast downwind eight fireships filled with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder and tar. Although the Spanish towed two of them out of the way and the principal warships held their positions, the remainder cut their anchor cables, scattering in confusion. They were now too far to leeward to regroup.
The English needed to close to a range of less than 100 yards for their guns to penetrate the oak hulls of the Spanish ships and they were short of gunpowder. Nevertheless, they had ‘an overwhelming preponderance of gun-power [and] their vessels were altogether superior in sailing qualities’.13 Reloading of Spanish guns was hampered by the storage of supplies on the gundecks. It had always been Spanish practice for ships to fire once, after which the gun crews jumped to the rigging to prepare for grapple boarding. They were given no opportunity. With their superior manoeuvrability, the English were able to provoke Spanish fire while remaining out of range. They could then close while firing repeated damaging broadsides into the enemy. By keeping to windward, they holed the heeling Spanish hulls below the waterline. With many Spanish gunners having been killed, the guns were manned by foot soldiers, who did not know how to operate them, but the ships moved close enough to exchange musket fire.
By 4.00 pm the English fleet was out of ammunition and forced to pull back, but it had established complete mastery.14 The mighty Armada was reduced to ‘a rabble of battered ships’.15 The Spanish had lost 2,000 men, but the English suffered only fifty casualties.16 Five Spanish vessels were lost, often after being forced to beach on the coastal shoals. Many others were severely damaged and faced a storm in the North Sea. Although the English attack had ended any hope of loading Parma’s invasion force, the Armada’s presence as it moved north along the English east coast still seemed to threaten a landing. Despite their shortage of ammunition, the English fleet continued in pursuit to prevent the Armada from returning south. It only pulled back when the Spanish ships passed the
Firth of Forth.
Sightings of the Armada had resulted in levies being mustered along the south coast. A great chain of beacons established on headlands and hills carried the alarm and summoned the militia to their posts. Shore-based preparations were nothing like so well advanced as those of the navy. It was recognised that Parma’s first objective would be to gain control of London, so Robert focused his attention on entrenching the camp at Tilbury, guarding the north bank of the Thames, opposite Gravesend. He considered it an entirely suitable location to station the main English force protecting London’s approaches. His main concern was the delay in recruitment. The train bands due to arrive from London were not yet ready. On 22 July, he was still doubting whether Tilbury and Gravesend could be made impregnable in time, complaining at a shortage of powder, ordnance, implements and victuals. He supervised the construction of a boom across the Thames but was worried about its adequacy. He complained that most men of substance were moving with their retainers to serve under Hunsdon, who was in command of the bodyguard to protect the Queen and the capital. The men of Essex arrived at Tilbury only slowly and, by 25 July, there were only 4,000 at the camp. By then the Spanish fleet had already passed the Isle of Wight. Robert went about trying to stir up patriotism but maintained an uneasy relationship with his subordinates, Norreys and Sir Roger Williams. He was short of veterans to train his troops and complained when Norreys was sent by the Council to supervise the camp at Dover. A shortage of victuals forced him to stay 1,000 reinforcements in London, until they could bring their own provisions with them. He ordered beer at his own expense and had to send town criers into the surrounding area to appeal for food from local farmers.17
By 27 July, Robert had established some semblance of order at Tilbury and he urged Elizabeth to make a personal appearance. She asked his advice on her protection. He recommended that she should move to Havering, about ten miles from Tilbury, with a small bodyguard. In the end she did not decamp from Westminster. Nevertheless, on 8 August, she was rowed down the Thames to Tilbury in her barge by forty men to review Robert’s troops, now numbering 11,500 men. This may have created an illusion of military might, but it was another piece of Robert’s masterful stage management with tents and pavilions in orderly rows and breastplates gleaming. Elizabeth knew exactly how to react. She was dressed all in white, wearing a polished steel cuirass and mounted on a grey gelding with a page bearing her polished helmet with its white plume on a cushion. Robert was mounted on her right, Essex on her left, and Norreys behind. When she reached the cheering soldiers, she confirmed that she came among them as: ‘Your general, judge and rewarder’, ready to ‘lay down for my God and my Kingdom and for my people, my honour and my blood’.
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