within or deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics
listened to schemes of assassination, to which the murder of
William of Orange lent at the moment a terrible significance.
The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the
host before setting out for London 'to shoot the Queen with
his dagg,' was followed by measures of natural severity, by
the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry, by a vigourous
purification of the Inns of Court, where a few Catholics
lingered, and by the dispatch of fresh batches of priests to
the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the House
of Commons who had served in the Queen's household, on a
similar charge, brought the Parliament together in a transport
of horror and loyalty.
{842}
All Jesuits and seminary priests were banished from the realm
on pain of death. A bill for the security of the Queen
disqualified any claimant of the succession who had instigated
subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from ever
succeeding to the crown. The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart.
Weary of her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or
Scotland to aid her, of the baffled revolt of the English
Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, she bent
for a moment to submission. 'Let me go,' she wrote to
Elizabeth; 'let me retire from this island to some solitude
where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I will sign
away every right which either I or mine can claim.' But the
cry was useless, and her despair found a new and more terrible
hope in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew and
approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of young
Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal
household, to kill the Queen; but plot and approval alike
passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's
correspondence revealed her guilt. In spite of her protests, a
commission of peers sat as her judges at Fotheringay Castle;
and their verdict of 'guilty' annihilated, under the
provisions of the recent statute, her claim to the crown. The
streets of London blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out
from steeple to steeple, at the news of her condemnation; but,
in spite of the prayer of Parliament for her execution, and
the pressure of the Council, Elizabeth shrank from her death.
The force of public opinion, however, was now carrying all
before it, and the unanimous demand of her people wrested at
last a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung the warrant
signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves the
responsibility of executing it. Mary died [February 8, 1587]
on a scaffold which was erected in the castle hall at
Fotheringay, as dauntlessly as she had lived. 'Do not weep,'
she said to her ladies, 'I have given my word for you.' 'Tell
my friends,' she charged Melville, 'that I die a good
Catholic.'"
_J. R. Green,
Short History of the English People,
chapter 7, section 6._
"'Who now doubts,' writes an eloquent modern writer, 'that it
would have been wiser in Elizabeth to spare her life?' Rather,
the political wisdom of a critical and difficult act has never
in the world's history been more signally justified. It cut
away the only interest on which the Scotch and English
Catholics could possibly have combined. It determined Philip
upon the undisguised pursuit of the English throne, and it
enlisted against him and his projects the passionate
patriotism of the English nobility."
_J. A. Froude,
History of England,
volume 12, chapter 34._
ALSO IN:
_A. De Lamartine,
Mary Stuart,
chapter 31-34._
_L. S. F. Buckingham,
Memoirs of Mary Stuart,
volume 2, chapter 5-6._
_L. von Ranke,
History of England,
book 3, chapter 5._
_J. D. Leader,
Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity._
_C. Nau,
History of Mary Stuart._
_F. A. Mignet,
History of Mary Queen of Scots,
chapters 9-10._
England: A. D. 1587-1588.
The wrath of Catholic Europe.
Spanish vengeance and ambition astir.
"The death of Mary [Queen of Scots] may have preserved England
from the religious struggle which would have ensued upon her
accession to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth from only
one, and that the weakest of her enemies; and it exposed her
to a charge of injustice and cruelty, which, being itself well
founded, obtained belief for any other accusation, however
extravagantly false. It was not Philip [of Spain] alone who
prepared for making war upon her with a feeling of personal
hatred: throughout Romish Christendom she was represented as a
monster of iniquity; that representation was assiduously set
forth, not in ephemeral libels, but in histories, in dramas,
in poems, and in hawker's pamphlets; and when the king of
Spain equipped an armament for the invasion of England,
volunteers entered it with a passionate persuasion that they
were about to bear a part in a holy war against the wickedest
and most inhuman of tyrants. The Pope exhorted Philip to
engage in this great enterprize for the sake of the Roman
Catholic and apostolic church, which could not be more
effectually nor more meritoriously extended than by the
conquest of England; so should he avenge his own private and
public wrongs; so should he indeed prove himself most worthy
of the glorious title of Most Catholic King. And he promised,
as soon as his troops should have set foot in that island, to
supply him with a million of crowns of gold towards the
expenses of the expedition. ... Such exhortations accorded
with the ambition, the passions, and the rooted principles of
the king of Spain. The undertaking was resolved."
_R. Southey,
Lives of the British Admirals,
volume 2, page 319._
"The succours which Elizabeth had from time to time afforded
to the insurgents of the Netherlands was not the only cause of
Philip's resentment and of his desire for revenge. She had
fomented the disturbances in Portugal, ... and her captains,
among whom Sir Francis Drake was the most active, had for many
years committed unjustifiable depredations on the Spanish
possessions of South America, and more than once on the coasts
of the Peninsula itself. ... By Spanish historians, these
hostilities are represented as unprovoked in their origin, and
as barbarous in their execution, and candor must allow that
there is but too much justice in the complaint."
_S. A. Dunham,
History of Spain and Portugal,
book 4, section 1, chapter 1._
ALSO IN:
_J. A. Froude,
History of England,
volume 12, chapter 35._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1588.
The Spanish Armada.
"Perhaps in the history of mankind there has never been a vast
project of conquest conceived and matured in so protracted and
yet so desultory a manner, as was this famous Spanish
invasion. ... At last, on the 28th, 29th and 30th May, 1588,
the fleet, which had been waiting at Lisbon more than a month
for favourable weather, set sail from that port, after having
been duly blessed by the Cardinal Archduke Albert, viceroy of
Portugal. There were rather more than 130 ships in all,
divided into 10 squadrons. ... The total tonnage of the fleet
was 59,120: the number of guns was 3,165. Of Spanish troops
there were 19,295 on board: there were 8,252 sailors and 2,088
galley-slaves. Besides these, there was a force of noble
volunteers, belonging to the most illustrious houses of Spain,
with their attendants, amounting to nearly 2,000 in all. ...
The size of the ships ranged from 1,200 tons to 300. The
galleons, of which there were about 60, were huge
round-stemmed clumsy vessels, with bulwarks three or four feet
thick, and built up at stem and stern, like castles.
{843}
The galeasses--of which there were four--were a third larger
than the ordinary galley, and were rowed each by 300
galley-slaves. They consisted of an enormous towering fortress
at the stern, a castellated structure almost equally massive
in front, with seats for the rowers amidships. At stem and
stern and between each of the slaves' benches were heavy
cannon. These galeasses were floating edifices, very wonderful
to contemplate. They were gorgeously decorated. There were
splendid state-apartments, cabins, chapels, and pulpits in
each, and they were amply provided with awnings, cushions,
streamers, standards, gilded saints and bands of music. To
take part in an ostentatious pageant, nothing could be better
devised. To fulfil the great objects of a war-vessel--to sail
and to fight--they were the worst machines ever launched upon
the ocean. The four galleys were similar to the galeasses in
every respect except that of size, in which they were by
one-third inferior. All the ships of the fleet--galeasses,
galleys, galleons, and hulks--were so encumbered with
top-hamper, so over-weighted in proportion to their draught of
water, that they could bear but little canvas, even with
smooth seas and light and favourable winds. ... Such was the
machinery which Philip had at last set afloat, for the purpose
of dethroning Elizabeth and establishing the inquisition in
England. One hundred and forty ships, 11,000 Spanish veterans,
as many more recruits, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese, 2,000
grandees, as many galley slaves, and 300 barefooted friars and
inquisitors. The plan was simple. Medina Sidonia [the
captain-general of the Armada] was to proceed straight from
Lisbon to Calais roads: there he was to wait for the Duke of
Parma [Spanish commander in the Netherlands], who was to come
forth from Newport, Sluys, and Dunkirk, bringing with him his
17,000 veterans, and to assume the chief command of the whole
expedition. They were then to cross the channel to Dover, land
the army of Parma, reinforced with 6,000 Spaniards from the
fleet, and with these 23,000 men Alexander was to march at
once upon London. Medina Sidonia was to seize and fortify the
Isle of Wight, guard the entrance of the harbours against any
interference from the Dutch and English fleets, and--so soon
as the conquest of England had been effected--he was to
proceed to Ireland. ... A strange omission had however been
made in the plan from first to last. The commander of the
whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head was the
whole responsibility. Not a gun was to be fired--if it could
be avoided--until he had come forth with his veterans to make
his junction with the Invincible Armada off Calais. Yet there
was no arrangement whatever to enable him to come forth--not
the slightest provision to effect that junction. ... Medina
could not go to Farnese [Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma],
nor could Farnese come to Medina. The junction was likely to
be difficult, and yet it had never once entered the heads of
Philip or his counsellors to provide for that difficulty. ...
With as much sluggishness as might have been expected from
their clumsy architecture, the ships of the Armada consumed
nearly three weeks in sailing from Lisbon to the neighbourhood
of Cape Finisterre. Here they were overtaken by a tempest. ...
Of the squadron of galleys, one was already sunk in the sea,
and two of the others had been conquered by their own slaves.
The fourth rode out the gale with difficulty, and joined the
rest of the fleet, which ultimately reassembled at Coruña; the
ships having, in distress, put in first at Vivera, Ribadeo,
Gijon, and other northern ports of Spain. At the Groyne--as
the English of that day were accustomed to call Coruña--they
remained a month, repairing damages and recruiting; and on the
22d of July (N. S.) the Armada set sail. Six days later, the
Spaniards took soundings, thirty leagues from the Scilly
Islands, and on Friday, the 29th of July, off the Lizard, they
had the first glimpse of the land of promise presented them by
Sixtus V. of which they had at last come to take possession.
On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand
beacon-fires from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle
of Wight to Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that
the enemy was at last upon them."
_J. L. Motley,
History of the United Netherlands,
chapter 19._
ALSO IN:
_J. A. Froude,
History of England,
volume 12, chapter 36._
_J. A. Froude,
The Spanish Story of the Armada._
_R. Southey,
Lives of British Admirals,
volume 2, pages 327-334._
_C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
5th series, chapter 27._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1588.
The Destruction of the Armada.
"The great number of the English, the whole able-bodied
population being drilled, counterbalanced the advantage
possessed, from their universal use of firearms, by the
invaders. In all the towns there were trained bands (a civic
militia); and, either in regular service or as volunteers,
thousands of all ranks had received a military training on the
continent. The musters represented 100,000 men as ready to
assemble at their head-quarters at a day's notice. It was, as
nearly always, in its military administration that the
vulnerable point of England lay. The fitting-out and
victualling of the navy was disgraceful; and it is scarcely an
excuse for the councillors that they were powerless against
the parsimony of the Queen. The Government maintained its
hereditary character from the days of Ethelred the Unready,
and the arrangements for assembling the defensive forces were
not really completed by them until after the Armada was
destroyed. The defeat of the invaders, if they had landed,
must have been accomplished by the people. The flame of
patriotism never burnt purer: all Englishmen alike, Romanists,
Protestant Episcopalians, and Puritans, were banded together
to resist the invader. Every hamlet was on the alert for the
beacon-signal. Some 15,000 men were already under arms in
London; the compact Tilbury Fort was full, and a bridge of
boats from Tilbury to Gravesend blocked the Thames. Philip's
preparations had been commensurate with the grandeur of his
scheme. The dockyards in his ports in the Low Countries, the
rivers, the canals, and the harbours of Spain, Portugal,
Naples, and Italy, echoed the clang of the shipwrights'
hammers. A vast armament, named, as if to provoke Nemesis, the
'Invincible Armada,' on which for three years the treasures of
the American mines had been lavished, at length rode the seas,
blessed with Papal benedictions and under the patronage of the
saints. It comprised 65 huge galleons, of from 700 to 1,300
tons, with sides of enormous thickness, and built high like
castles; four great galleys, each carrying 50 guns and 450
men, and rowed by 300 slaves; 56 armed merchantmen, and 20
pinnaces. These 129 vessels were armed with 2,430 brass and
iron guns of the best manufacture, but each gun was furnished
only with 50 rounds.
{844}
They carried 5,000 seamen: Parma's army amounted to 30,000
men--Spaniards, Germans, Italians and Walloons; and 19,000
Castilians and Portuguese, with 1,000 gentlemen volunteers,
were coming to join him. To maintain this army after it had
effected a landing, a great store of provisions--sufficient
for 40,000 men for six months--was placed on board. The
overthrow of this armament was effected by the navy and the
elements. From the Queen's parsimony the State had only 36
ships in the fleet; but the City of London furnished 33
vessels; 18 were supplied by the liberality of private
individuals; and nearly 100 smaller ships were obtained on
hire; so that the fleet was eventually brought up to nearly
30,000 tons, carrying 16,000 men, and equipped with 837 guns.
But there was sufficient ammunition for only a single day's
fighting. Fortunately for Elizabeth's Government, the
Spaniards, having been long driven from the channel by
privateers, were now unacquainted with its currents; and they
could procure, as the Dutch were in revolt, only two or three
competent pilots. The Spanish commander was the Duke of
Medina-Sidonia, an incapable man, but he had under him some of
the ablest of Philip's officers. When the ships set out from
the Tagus, on the 29th May, 1588, a storm came on, and the
Armada had to put into Coruña to refit. From that port the
Armada set out at the beginning of July, in lovely weather,
with just enough wind to wave from the mastheads the red
crosses which they bore as symbols of their crusade. The Duke
of Medina entered the Channel on the 18th July, and the rear
of his fleet was immediately harassed by a cannonade from the
puny ships of England, commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham
(Lord High Admiral), with Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Winter,
Fenner, and other famous captains. With the loss of three
galleons from fire or boarding, the Spanish commander, who was
making for Flanders to embark Parma's army, anchored in Calais
roads. In the night fire-ships--an ancient mode of warfare
which had just been reintroduced by the Dutch--passed in among
the Armada, a fierce gale completed their work, and morning
revealed the remnant of the Invincible Armada scattered along
the coast from Calais to Ostend. Eighty vessels remained to
Medina, and with these he sailed up the North Sea, to round
the British Isles. But the treacherous currents of the Orkneys
and the Hebrides were unknown to his officers, and only a few
ships escaped the tempests of the late autumn. More than
two-thirds of the expedition perished, and of the remnant that
again viewed the hills of Spain all but a few hundreds
returned only to die."
_H. R. Clinton,
From Crécy to Assye,
chapter 7._
In the fighting on the 23d of July, "the Spaniards' shot flew
for the most part over the heads of the English, without doing
execution, Cock being the only Englishman that died bravely in
the midst of his enemies in a ship of his own. The reason of
this was, that the English ships, being far less than the
enemy's, made the attack with more quickness and agility; and
when they had given a broadside, they presently sheered off to
a convenient distance, and levelled their shot so directly at
the bigger and more unwieldy ships of the Spaniards, as seldom
to miss their aim; though the Lord Admiral did not think it
safe or proper to grapple with them, as some advised, with
much more heat than discretion, because that the enemy's fleet
carried a considerable army within their sides, whereas ours had
no such advantage. Besides their ships far exceeded ours in
number and bulk, and were much stronger and higher built;
insomuch that their men, having the opportunity to ply us from
such lofty hatches, must inevitably destroy those that were
obliged, as it were, to fight beneath them. ... On the 24th
day of the month there was a cessation on both sides, and the
Lord Admiral sent some of his smaller vessels to the nearest
of the English harbours, to fetch a supply of powder and
ammunition; then he divided the fleet into four squadrons, the
first of which he commanded himself, the second he committed
to Drake, the third to Hawkins, and the fourth to Frobisher.
He likewise singled out of the main fleet some smaller vessels
to begin the attack on all sides at once, in the very dead of
the night; but a calm happening spoiled his design." On the
26th "the Spanish fleet sailed forward with a fair and soft
gale at southwest and by south; and the English chased them
close at the heels; but so far was this Invincible Armada from
alarming the sea-coasts with any frightful apprehensions, that
the English gentry of the younger sort entered themselves
volunteers, and taking leave of their parents, wives, and
children, did, with incredible cheerfulness, hire ships at
their own charge; and, in pure love to their country, joined
the grand fleet in vast numbers. ... On the 27th of this month
the Spanish Fleet came to an anchor before Calais, their
pilots having acquainted them that if they ventured any
farther there was some danger that the force of the current
might drive them away into the Northern Channel. Not far from
them came likewise the English Admiral to an anchor, and lay
within shot of their ships. The English fleet consisted by
this time of 140 sail; all of them ships of force, and very
tight and nimble sailors, and easily manageable upon a tack.
But, however, the main brunt of the engagement lay not upon
more than 15 or 16 of them. ... The Lord Admiral got ready
eight of his worst ships the very day after the Spaniards came
to an anchor; and having bestowed upon them a good plenty of
pitch, tar, and rosin, and lined them well with brimstone and
other combustible matter, they sent them before the wind, in
the dead time of the night, under the conduct of Young and
Prowse, into the midst of the Spanish fleet. ... The Spaniards
reported that the duke, upon the approach of the fire-ships,
ordered the whole fleet to weigh anchor and stand to sea, but
that when the danger was over every ship should return to her
station. This is what he did himself, and he likewise
discharged a great gun as a signal to the rest to do as he
did; the report, however, was heard but by very few, by reason
their fears had dispersed them at that rate that some of them
ventured out of the main ocean, and others sailed up the
shallows of Flanders. In the meantime Drake and Fenner played
briskly with their cannon upon the Spanish fleet, as it was
rendezvousing over against Graveling. ... On the last day of
the month the wind blew hard at north-west early in the
morning, and the Spanish fleet attempting to get back again to
the Straits of Calais, was driven toward Zealand.
{845}
The English then gave over the chase, because, in the
Spaniards' opinion, they perceived them making haste enough to
their own destruction. For the wind, lying at the W. N. W.
point, could not choose but force them on the shoals and sands
on the coast of Zealand. But the wind happening to come about
in a little time to Southwest and by West they went before the
wind. ... Being now, therefore, clear of danger in the main
ocean, they steered northward, and the English fleet renewed
the chase after them. ... The Spaniards having now laid aside
all the thoughts and hopes of returning to attempt the
English, and perceiving their main safety lay in their flight,
made no stay or stop at any port whatever. And thus this
mighty armada, which had been three whole years fitting out,
and at a vast expense, met in one month's time with several
attacks, and was at last routed, with a vast slaughter on
their side, and but a very few of the English missing, and not
one ship lost, except that small vessel of Cock's. ... When,
therefore, the Spanish fleet had taken a large compass round
Britain, by the coasts of Scotland, the Orcades, and Ireland,
and had weathered many storms, and suffered as many wrecks and
blows, and all the inconveniences of war and weather, it made
a shift to get home again, laden with nothing but shame and
dishonour. ... Certain it is that several of their ships
perished in their flight, being cast away on the coasts of
Scotland and Ireland, and that above 700 soldiers were cast on
shore in Scotland. ... As for those who had the ill fortune to
be drove upon the Irish shore, they met with the most
barbarous treatment; for some of them were butchered by the
wild Irish, and the rest put to the sword by the Lord Deputy."
_W. Camden,
History of Queen Elizabeth._
ALSO IN:
_S. R. Gardiner,
Historical Biographies: Drake._
_E. S. Creasy,
Fifteen Decisive Battles,
chapter 10._
_C. Kingsley,
Westward Ho!
chapter 31._
_R. Hakluyt,
Principal Navigations, &C.
(E. Goldsmid's ed.), volume 7._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1596.
Alliance with Henry IV. of France against Spain.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1593--1598.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1596.
Dutch and English expedition against Cadiz.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1596.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1597.
Abolition of the privileges of the Hanse merchants.
See HANSA TOWNS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1600.
The first charter to the East India Company.
See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1601.
The first Poor Law.
See POOR LAWS, THE ENGLISH.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1603.
Accession of King James I.
The Stuart family.