The Confident Hope of a Miracle

by Neil Hanson

  Elizabeth’s Privy Council also bickered with the county and town councils throughout the country over who should bear the burden of seamen’s wages. Every port and coastal town had been charged with the provision, manning and equipping of ships to join the Grand Fleet. Almost without exception, they pleaded poverty, argued that they had been more harshly treated than their neighbours and petitioned for part or all of the cost to be met by the Treasury rather than themselves. It was not a course of action that was ever likely to appeal to Elizabeth or her Lord Treasurer, but while the petty wrangles over money continued Howard could only make another desperate appeal for help in the face of the suffering he was daily witnessing.25

  “Sickness and mortality begins wonderfully to grow amongst us, and it is a most pitiful sight to see, here at Margate, how the men, having no place to receive them, die in the streets. I am driven myself of force to come a-land, to see them bestowed in some lodging, and the best I can get is barns and such outhouses, and the relief is small that I can provide for them here. It would grieve any man’s heart to see them that have served so valiantly to die so miserably. The Elizabeth Jonas, which has done as well ever any ship did in any service, has had a great infection in her from the beginning, so as of the 500 men which she carried out, by the time we had been in Plymouth three weeks or a month, there were dead of them 200 or above. So I was driven to take out her ballast and to make fires in her of wet broom, three or four days together, and so hoped thereby to have cleaned her of infection, and thereupon got new men, as tall and able as ever I saw and put them into her. Now the infection is broken out in greater extremity than ever it did before and [they] die and sicken faster than ever they did . . . Sir Roger Townshend, of all the men he brought out with him, has but one left alive, and my son Southwell likewise has many dead. It is like enough that the like infection will grow throughout the most part of our fleet; for they have been so long at sea and have so little shift of apparel . . . and no money wherewith to buy it, for some have been— yea the most part—these eight months at sea. My Lords, I would think it a marvellous good way that there were a thousand pounds worth . . . of hose, doublet, shirts, shoes and such like sent down . . . for else in very short time I look to see most of the mariners go naked. Good my Lord, let mariners be pressed and sent down as soon as may be and money to discharge those that be sick here.”

  His attempts to fumigate the ships were almost pointless. The filthy rags the men wore, in the majority of cases the only clothing they possessed, were riddled with lice and fleas, carriers of the typhus that was killing them in hundreds and thousands. Others were still falling victim to scurvy and dysentery, and sour beer was widely regarded as the most likely source of infection and disaffection among the men. “The mariners have a conceit (and I think it true, and so do all the captains here) that sour drink has been a great cause of this infection among us . . . I know not which way to deal with the mariners to make them rest contented with sour beer, for nothing does displease them more.” The belief may have been correct, as far as dysentery was concerned, for the European habit of flavouring beer with hops, which also acted as a preservative, had not crossed the Channel at this time and beer rapidly deteriorated, especially in the heat of summer.

  Howard’s pleas to the Crown once more went unanswered, and he next called a council of war attended by Seymour, Wynter, Drake, Hawkins, Fenner and Sir Henry Palmer, to discuss how the fleet was to be maintained in the face of the epidemics of disease. As soon as the discussions were over, he wrote to the Queen and the council. “My most gracious Lady, with what grief I must write unto you in what state I find your fleet here. The infection is grown very great and in many ships . . . it requires speed, [and] the resolution of Your Majesty.” “The most part of the fleet is grievously infected and [men] die daily, falling sick in the ships by numbers; and . . . the ships of themselves be so infectious and so corrupted as is thought to be a very plague; and we find that the fresh men that we draw into our ships are infected one day and die the next, so as many of the ships have hardly men enough to weigh their anchors . . . The extremity being so great, the one touching the service of the realm, the other concerning the mortality and sickness . . . [that] fittest to be done is to divide our fleet into two parts, the one to ride in the Downs, the other at Margate or Gore-End, to bring our men . . . ashore and there to relieve them with fresh victuals and to supply such other their wants as we can . . . We do not see amongst us all by what other means to continue this service, for the loss of mariners will be so great as . . . it will be greater offence to us than the enemy was able to lay upon us.”26

  Howard’s prediction proved correct. John Hawkins’s report on ten of the fleet’s great ships, written on 14 September, showed that only 2,195 of the original 3,325 men aboard them remained alive. That loss alone would be bad enough, but fresh men had already been pressed to serve aboard those ships and the figures also concealed those already dead for whom their officers were still drawing pay, and those so ill that they would not recover. Over the course of that summer, the total loss of men on those ten ships and throughout the fleet as a whole cannot have been less than half its original complement and may well have exceeded it. The needless loss of so many seamen of such irreplaceable experience was keenly felt throughout the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign and must have contributed to the failure to achieve further successes against Spain in the wake of the Armada’s defeat.

  In theory a seaman wounded in action—by which was meant an injury of such seriousness that the man was permanently disabled—was the responsibility of his home parish. However, few were willing to meet the expense of feeding and housing such men. Some were given a dispensation to beg for a limited period; Lord Howard issued a permit for William Browne, whose arm was severed in the Armada campaign, to beg “in all churches” for a period of a year. Another man, who lost a leg in the fighting, was paid £1 13s 4d in full and final settlement—just over three months’ wages. It is a shocking indictment of Elizabeth’s government that, in some ways, these crippled men were the lucky ones. Starving, unpaid, disease-ridden seamen still littered the streets of the east coast seaports where their ships had docked, and any soldiers or seamen who complained about the Crown’s treatment of them or agitated for reform were subject to draconian punishment. The Queen “does straightly charge and command as well soldiers as mariners upon pain of imprisonment and such further punishment as shall be thought meet to be inflicted upon such disordered and undutiful subjects to forbear from henceforth to make any such disordered assemblies . . . Her Majesty commands them to repair out of hand to the counties and places where they were last abiding and there to employ themselves in dutiful sort according to their several vocations and callings.”

  In the continuing absence of any positive action from the Queen or her counsellors, Howard, Hawkins and Drake all drew on their own resources to pay their men a pittance. Hawkins wrote a bitter letter to Walsingham. “I would to God I were delivered of the dealing for money . . . my pain and misery in this service is infinite . . . God I trust will deliver me of it ’ere it be long, for there is no other hell.” He was forced to resign his post as Treasurer to the Navy in order to concentrate on salvaging his finances and laid the blame on “the last extraordinary accidents and charges about the late sea services . . . many great and unlooked for charges are thereby grown.” His son, Sir Richard Hawkins, who commanded the Swallow against the Armada, faced the same problems during his own long service with the navy and it was said that his anger at delays in paying his men caused his death.27

  Having exhausted his own funds, Howard used the only money to hand, the loot from the Rosario, to ease the distress of his mariners, but Elizabeth expected her full measure of any booty from the Armada and he was then forced to defend himself against accusations of profiteering at Her Majesty’s expense. “I send you here enclosed a note of the money that Sir Francis Drake had aboard Don Pedro. I did take . . . 3000 pistolets as I told you I would; f
or by Jesus, I had not three pounds besides in the world and had not anything could get money in London; and I do assure you my plate was gone before. But I will repay it within ten days after my coming home. And by the Lord God of Heaven I had not one crown more, and had it not been mere necessity, I would not have touched one; but if I had not some to have bestowed upon such poor and miserable men, I should have wished myself out of the world.”

  Howard continued to display a concern for the welfare of his men that was not matched by Elizabeth and her Privy Counsellors. In December he brought Burghley the unwelcome news of a fresh “surcharge unto Her Majesty of £623 10s 11d, by reason of certain extraordinary kinds of victuals, as wine, cider, sugar, oil and certain fish provided and distributed among the ships at Plymouth by my order, and Sir Francis Drake’s . . . to relieve such men as by reason of sickness or being hurt in fight should not be able to digest the salt meats at sea . . . these provisions were used for the relief and encouragement of such upon whose forwardness and valours the good success of the service did much rest . . . There was also a further supply of beer and wine distributed amongst the fleet by my order, which I have now caused to be stricken out of the book and for which I will make myself satisfaction as well I may, so that Her Majesty shall not be charged withal.”

  There is no record of Howard, Hawkins or Drake ever being reimbursed by the Queen for the considerable sums of money they spent from their own pockets to keep their starving seamen alive; as ever, the Queen was happy to see them and others absorb part of the cost of the nation’s defence. The Earl of Cumberland, another who had emptied his pockets on her behalf, was still trying to obtain some recompense eleven years later. Adopting the guise of “a pensive and discontented knight at one of those romantic spectacles so fashionable in the reign of Elizabeth,” he made a speech to the Queen bemoaning his misfortunes. “Is it not, as I have often told you, that after he had thrown his land into the sea [i.e., bankrupted his estates by equipping ships and even squadrons for the battle against the Armada and for a series of disastrous privateering voyages], the sea would cast him on land for a wanderer? . . . Has he not taken his fall where others have taken their rising, he having the Spanish proverb at his back that should be sticked to his heart ‘Adelante los Abenstados’—‘Let them hold the purses with the mouth downward, that have filled them with mouth upwards.’ ” 28

  Howard had received little popular credit for the victory. “They are speaking rather ill of the Lord Admiral, who they say did not do his duty. All the credit is given to Drake and there is a considerable amount of ill-feeling between them.” Perhaps as a result of the criticisms, Howard had fallen out with his Vice-Admiral soon after the defeat of the Armada and became a powerful enemy of Drake at the Court, but despite their differences they did co-operate with Hawkins in ameliorating the immediate plight of Elizabeth’s seamen and in taking steps to provide better care in the future. Hospitals and almshouses to aid “sore vexed, troubled, diseased and distressed” mariners had existed from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, but had disappeared at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In addition to their individual acts of charity, Howard, Drake and Hawkins now set up a fund for the “perpetual relief of such mariners, shipwrights and seafaring men as by reason of hurts or maim received in the service, are driven to great distress and want.”

  Established in 1590, the “Chatham Chest,” named after the locked iron chest in Chatham dockyard where its money was kept, became a rudimentary health insurance and pension scheme—the first in the world—funded by deducting a small proportion of the wages paid to serving seamen and disbursed as cash payments for the maimed or wounded, pensions and even burial expenses. It continued to operate until 1802, when its funds were merged with those of the Greenwich Hospital. Sir John Hawkins also built a “hospital” (almshouse) for destitute seamen; it still stands in Chatham High Street. The hospital and the Chatham Chest established by Hawkins, Howard and Drake are far more fitting memorials to the brave men who lost their lives in Elizabeth’s service than her own shabby treatment of them; “there can be no doubt that very many of those who fought the Armada died in misery, or were thrown penniless upon the tender mercies of the contemporary vagrancy laws.”29

  Elizabeth’s indifference to the fate of her soldiers and seamen continued well beyond the Armada year. In November 1589 the Queen authorized “Lord Lieutenants of the several shires” to appoint provost marshals “for the apprehension and punishment of soldiers, mariners, and other vagrant and masterless persons and sturdy vagabonds,” “these ragged rabblements of rakehells, that under the pretence of great misery . . . do win great alms,” and Richard Williams of Plymouth was soon claiming payment “for a man whipped and sent away.” Those who failed to enforce Elizabeth’s commands were themselves punished. E. Langridge, Constable of East Grinstead, and H. Browne, Bailiff of East Grinstead, were indicted for “allowing some rogues or idle wandering people to walk and wander up and down,” and by 9 December it was reported from Hertfordshire that “the county being cleared of many idle and vagrant persons, the provost marshals need only ride together three days every fortnight. Special sessions to be held for the trial of disbanded soldiers and vagrants.”

  Gangs of beggars and vagabonds were a common feature of both the country and the city throughout the Tudor era. Legislation specifically referred to “discharged soldiers or sailors” and sought to confine them to their own parish and punish those who refused to seek honest work, usually by “whipping at the cart-arse” (a phrase changed to “the cart-tail” by sensitive Victorian historians). Under Elizabeth, such vagabonds were “to be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron.” In 1591 more provost marshals were appointed “for the arrest and punishment of wandering soldiers, mariners, and other vagrant persons,” and the Manor of Richmond issued a proclamation that “there is a wandering abroad of a multitude of people, the most part pretending that they have served in the wars, though many have not served at all, or have run away, and therefore ought to be punished instead of relieved. All such vagrants as have not been brought to sickness or lameness in the service, and cannot show sufficient passports, are to be apprehended and punished as vagabonds, and if they shall allege that they have been in Her Majesty’s pay, and cannot show a passport from the Lord General or some officer, they are to be committed to prison, and indicted as runaways. Those that have served as soldiers, and can show their passports, ought to be relieved by some charitable means; but if they be found wandering abroad out of the ordinary ways mentioned in their passports, they are to be punished as vagabonds.”30

  Not until 1593 was any form of state aid proposed for those who had “adventured their lives and lost their limbs or disabled their bodies” in fighting for their country, with a bill “for relieving of poor soldiers and maimed mariners,” but it had a difficult passage through Parliament. Robert Cecil reported on 28 March that no conclusions had been reached about how to proceed with the bill and it had been committed “to prison” rather than returned to the House, and he made an impassioned plea for its resurrection.

  “I do not greatly marvel, though I am not a little grieved, that the good and Christian motion which has been made for the relief of poor, maimed soldiers has not taken such good effect as was both wished and expected . . . when we hear round about us so great a rumour of wars at home and are told of so great a preparation for war abroad, can there be a more seasonable time . . . for the maintenance and relief of such as, by the event of the wars, are deprived of means to relieve themselves? You have already and very dutifully yielded three subsidies for the maintenance of the wars. I pray and beseech you do not forget, nor neglect to make some kind of provision for the poor soldiers that shall return maimed out of the wars. Consider, I pray you, that we shall not provide for such as lose their limbs, for such as ventured their lives for their prince and country; for such as shall fare hard and lie hardly upon the boards or bare ground, whilst we, drin
king wine, lying upon beds of down, sleep soundly and safely in whole skins . . . The poor soldiers you hear cry upon us daily in the street for relief. Assure yourselves they will cry out upon us, yea curse us, if we do nothing for them . . . It is to be feared if we give them no better encouragement, they will hide themselves hereafter when they shall be pressed or when they are pressed, slip or run away from their captains and leaders.”

  This last concern may have weighed more heavily on the legislators than previous appeals to their compassion, for within a week a new bill had been produced. “An Act for the Necessary Relief of Soldiers and Mariners” was voted into law on 3 April 1593. “A new bill for maimed soldiers came in this day . . . Every soldier maimed to repair into the county where he was pressed and to bring with him a certificate of his hurts and services, and every of these certificates to be first allowed by the General Mustermaster of England.”31 Every parish was charged with a sum weekly for the relief of sick, “maimed and sore hurt” soldiers and seamen, “which act is the first of its kind for this charitable and necessary purpose.” 32