CHAPTER IX

1584-1588

English Catholics _versus_ Scottish—Santa Cruz’s proposal to

conquer England—Enlisting the Pope—Intrigues in Rome—Mary

Stuart and Philip—Drake’s raid on Galicia—Elizabeth assumes

the protectorate of the Netherlands—War at last inevitable—The

preliminaries of the Armada—The Babington plot—Philip’s

consent—His distrust—Discovery—Elizabeth’s fears of war—Her

approaches to Spain—Santa Cruz’s fresh proposals to invade

England—His great plan—The Scottish Catholics try again to

share the attack upon England—Failure of Huntly’s scheme—Guise

not allowed by Philip to interfere—Mendoza in favour of the

Scottish plan—Philip’s claims to the English crown—The peace

negotiations—Drake’s dash upon Cadiz—Parma and the Armada—Death

of Santa Cruz—Medina Sidonia—The Armada—The failure and its

causes—The end of the struggle to win England

When the news came of the arrest of Francis Throckmorton and his friends,

and the expulsion of Mendoza, in January, 1584, Allen and Parsons were at

Tournay busily discussing and arranging with Alexander Farnese, Philip’s

viceroy in Flanders, the details of the proposed invasion of England

in conjunction with Guise and a rising of English Catholics. At first

the English priests affected to believe that the arrests would have no

serious effects upon their plans. “If,” they wrote to Philip, “these

men had been cast into prison in consequence of our great business,

they would, as usual, have been put into the Tower of London; and we

feel sure, therefore, that up to the present our adversaries have not

discovered any particulars of our plans.”[255] On the contrary, they

continue, what has happened should only have the effect of encouraging

his Majesty to carry the matter through with greater celerity. “It is

nothing short of a miracle that a business known to so many friends for

two years past should have remained undiscovered so long; but it cannot

remain hidden much longer, so that unless aid comes from abroad at once

the Catholics in the island will be utterly ruined. We therefore cast

ourselves at the feet of his Majesty, and cry unto him for the love of

Jesus Christ that he will not abandon so many suffering souls, who with

their hands raised to heaven are looking eagerly for his help. The time

is favourable, and every day’s delay is filled with danger.”

Alas! the zealous Churchmen, who were still at this time acting in

concert with the Duke of Guise, did not even yet understand the character

and aims of Philip. The King, keener sighted than the priests, knew

full well that the arrest of the English Catholics and the expulsion of

Mendoza meant not only the failure of the loosely-knit plan of invasion

with Scottish-Guisan co-operation, but a remodelling of the whole scheme

for subduing England to his will. He faced the new problem cautiously

and speciously, as was his wont, for he could not afford to alienate

the Papacy by avowing political ends, nor dared he at first openly

to fly in the face of Guise. Mendoza was summoned to Spain to confer

with his master, for Mendoza was always haughtily oblivious to any

but purely Spanish means and ends, and to him was confided the entire

direction of the English enterprise from the Spanish embassy in Paris,

to which he was appointed. But ere he arrived at his post the English

Jesuits, recognising, at last, that the Scottish-Guisan plan was really

frustrated, had trimmed their sails in the direction most likely to

attain the ends they aimed at—namely, that which would best please their

Spanish paymaster.

The Vatican, always jealous of Spanish overreaching, still clung to

the inclusion of Guise and the attack upon England across the Scottish

border;[256] and Beton and other Scottish Catholics naturally followed

a lead which offered such prospects for the aggrandisement of their

country. But Allen and Parsons were already undeceived, for they had been

in close touch with Spanish feeling in Flanders; and when the former

was summoned to Paris by Beton and Guise in April, 1584, in order that

they might convince him that the Scottish plan was the best, they came

to high words, and Allen penned a vigorous defence of his own and the

Spanish view. The English Catholics, he said, would never rise and join a

force coming from Scotland, owing to the hatred and jealousy between the

peoples; the King of Scots’ religion being more than doubtful, moreover,

will make people believe that he is trying to conquer England for himself

rather than for the Church, and the very Catholics will fight against him

and his foreign Catholic allies. A landing in Scotland also, said Allen,

would give Elizabeth and her Government time to prepare and mass their

forces on the Border, whilst a descent on the Welsh or northern English

coasts would find the people ready to welcome their deliverers and secure

their footing before the Queen could organise resistance.[257]

Before he surrendered his post to his successor, Mendoza, Tassis, the

outgoing Spanish ambassador in Paris, also wrote a weighty memorandum to

Philip enforcing the same view, whilst recommending him to send money

to the King of Scots to keep him in hand;[258] and thus not many weeks

passed from the failure of the combined Guisan and Jesuit plan before the

English Jesuit and Spanish elements perfectly understood each other, and

agreed that Spain must act alone in England. In May, 1584, Tassis wrote

to Philip that Allen and Parsons were both in Paris: “Still of opinion

that the enterprise should be directed against England itself, and on no

account should it be attempted elsewhere.... Scotsmen here, impatient

at the delay, are discussing the possibility of carrying through the

business by other aid than that of your Majesty; and, although Allen

and Parsons are trying to keep in with them as much as possible, they

[_i.e._, Allen and Parsons] say that the English need no other patron

than your Majesty, and they not only look to you for a remedy, but they

say that even if you make the Queen of Scotland their Sovereign they

hope you will not leave them hastily, or until everything is settled

permanently. They also say they would be glad for your Majesty to keep

some [English] ports in your hands, the better to assure matters.”[259]

This was the thin end of the wedge; and, knowingly or not, the ideas of

Allen and Parsons must even thus early have agreed with Philip’s humour

at the time.

James Stuart, by his tergiversation, had made himself quite impossible,

from Philip’s point of view, as a successor to his mother on the

throne of Catholic England. Philip’s own descent from John of Gaunt

was undoubted, and already had been quietly mentioned as giving him a

claim to succeed to the Crown in default of other Catholic heirs. If

England had to be conquered by sheer force and by Spanish arms, Philip

was determined to make a complete job of it, and to suffer no more

backsliding such as had happened after the death of his wife Mary; so

that the suggestion of the Jesuits that the attack should be a frontal

one on England itself, and that the Spaniards should retain their

hold upon the country even after Mary Stuart had been substituted for

Elizabeth, met a ready but cautious echo from the King himself.

Some months before this, when, in August, 1583, the Marquis of Santa

Cruz, the great Alvaro de Bazan, had scattered off the Azores the

mercenary French and English fleet in the service of the unfortunate

Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio, and the Spanish squadrons, flushed

with victory, were ready for more fighting, the famous admiral wrote in

exalted strains to the King, praying for his permission to make him King

of England. “Your Majesty,” he wrote, “is now so well prepared, and with

an army so victorious, that I supplicate you not to miss this chance;

for believe me, sire, I have the will to make you King of England and of

other realms as well, whence you might with confidence hope to subdue

Flanders.” Philip was hardly ready for the step yet; for he had the hard

task before him of hoodwinking the Vatican as well as parrying French

opposition and Guisan interference, but he wrote to his great admiral:

“These are things of which we can hardly speak just yet, for they must

depend upon time and circumstances; but in any case I will order the

preparations you propose to be made, biscuits to be provided, the

building of galleons hastened, and men sent to Flanders to be ready.”[260]

The first necessary step was to secure the financial support of the

Pope without letting him know the real object of the proposed invasion.

Gregory XIII. was cautious and unambitious, though not unwilling to

signalise his pontificate by some great effort against heresy, but,

like most Italians, with no desire to aggrandise Spain politically. He

was surrounded by Cardinals representing different interests: Medici,

D’Este, Gonzaga, Rusticucci, Santorio, and others favouring the French

view, which looked with hope towards the conversion of James Stuart and

an arrangement with Elizabeth to recognise him as her heir, the real

object being, of course, the exclusion of Spanish influence from England.

Cardinal Sanzio watched the interests of the House of Guise, while the

Secretary of State, Caraffa, Sirleto, Como, Dr. Allen (somewhat later),

and the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Olivares, worked craftily and

incessantly to forward Philip’s wishes. It will be recollected that when

Father Parsons, under the name of Melino, went to Rome at the instance of

Guise in the autumn of 1583, to beg the Pope’s assistance in money for

the combined Anglo-Scottish project, Gregory XIII. had readily promised

what was asked of him, much to Philip’s annoyance. When, therefore,

Olivares, in Philip’s name in the spring of the following year, 1584,

sounded the Pope upon the much vaster project of invading England with a

great force direct, the Pontiff blandly replied that he would contribute

what he had promised to Guise through Parsons, and at the same time

recommended to Philip the Guisan plan of an invasion of Scotland as a

preliminary of the conquest of England for the faith.

It was not so easy, replied Philip, to liberate the King of Scotland, nor

was it safe for the Duke of Guise to stir from his house in France unless

in great force. If he were to try the Scottish plan he would probably be

lost, which would be an irreparable blow to the Catholic cause in France.

Then Philip gently pushed James Stuart into the background. He shall be

helped with money, of course, and the English Catholics shall be kept in

good heart, but the affair is a great one, and will take time and much

money if it is to be done with a certainty of success; above all, the

Pope must “contribute very largely, and must find ways and means, through

his holy zeal, to do much more than any one has yet imagined.”[261]

The stars seemed to favour the Spanish plan. Young Alençon died in June,

1584, and the next heir to the Crown of France was the Huguenot Henry

of Navarre. Guise, with his high hopes and the people of Paris at his

bidding, was thenceforward more easily brought into obedience to Philip;

for upon Spanish forces alone could he depend to aid the French Catholics

to resist the accession of a Protestant sovereign. Civil war, indeed,

loomed up in France, and from it the Duke of Guise might hope to emerge

a king; and in December, 1584, the Catholic league of Philip and Guise

was signed at Joinville, by which the King of Spain was left a free hand

in English affairs in return for his support of Guise in the rapidly

approaching struggle in France. Philip was thus assured, first, that the

Huguenots would be too busy to help Elizabeth in her hour of need, and,

secondly, that Guise would be too full of his own ambitions in France to

interfere with his in England.

The death of Gregory XIII. and the accession of Felice Peretti as Pope

Sixtus V. also seemed to favour the Spanish objects. Sixtus was full

of vast projects for the spread of orthodox Christianity; he was a man

of great ability and boundless ambition, who had waited long for his

chance and was determined to make the most of it now it had come, so

that Olivares had in future a more ready listener than before to his

exhortations on behalf of the Catholic King. But though Sixtus yearned to

do great things for the Church, he was determined, as his predecessor had

been, not to work for purely Spanish aims to the prejudice of France; and

for the next two years a keen war of wits was waged between Olivares and

the Pope, the Spaniard seeking to obtain the million ducats subsidy to

the English enterprise without pledging his master to any definite course

in England after the conquest.

In the meanwhile the long delay was driving Mary Stuart and the English

Catholics to desperation. The Queen had been taken from the mild custody

of Lord Shrewsbury, and was now kept a close prisoner in the hands of

very different gaolers. Her one hope was in Philip and Mendoza; but as

month followed month whilst her treatment became harsher and no succour

came—for the vast plans of Philip could only be carried out, if at all,

with infinite preliminaries—the unhappy woman became almost vehement in

her prayers that the movement should be made before it was too late.

In November, 1584, she wrote to Mendoza: “Let the end be what it may,

and whatever becomes of me, no matter what change may be made in my

condition, pray use all diligence in forwarding the execution of the

great enterprise without any regard for the personal danger I may incur.

I shall look upon my life as well spent if by its sacrifice I can help to

relieve the multitude of oppressed children of the Holy Catholic Church.”

Both she and Mendoza believed at this time that her life was in danger

unless the Spanish attack was delivered in time to avert the supposed

evil intention, and the ambassador, writing to Philip, added his own

supplications to those of the Queen that no more time should be lost.

What Mendoza dreaded even more than Mary’s murder by the English, was

the possibility of her escape by their means, as she would then owe her

life to heretics, and would thereafter presumably be an untrustworthy

instrument against them. “If, on the contrary, she perish, as may be

feared, it cannot fail to bring scandal and reproach upon your Majesty,

because as you are, after her, the nearest Catholic heir of the blood

royal of England, some false suspicion might be aroused at your having

abandoned the good Queen to be ruined by the heretics, in order to open

the door to your Majesty’s own advantage.”[262] This idea of Philip’s

claim to the English succession was industriously kept alive by Allen,

Parsons, and Hugh Owen, who had been appointed a committee to advise the

Duke of Parma in Flanders with regard to the English enterprise, until

the breaking out of the civil war in France, and the open support given

to the Dutch rebels and Huguenots by Elizabeth, changed the centre of

intrigue from Flanders to Rome; and Allen and Parsons were sent thither

to work in favour of the Spanish plans.

For the scheme was surely growing now into a vast expedition, ostensibly

to place Mary Stuart upon the throne of England, but really to make

Philip master of the country, with or without the nominal sovereignty.

Deeply though France was plunged in civil war, with Guise in arms

tyrannising over the King, the French interest was still strong, and,

both at Rome and elsewhere, would struggle its hardest against anything

like a Spanish domination of England. Nor were the Italians in love with

the idea of a conquest that would make Philip supreme in Europe, and

consequently all the skill, boldness, and cunning of Spanish diplomacy

was concentrated in Rome to obtain by false pretences from the Church the

vast sums required for the conquest of England. With the weak attempts

of the French Government itself to avert the danger Philip could easily

deal. The French ministers proposed to Mendoza in June, 1585, that Spain

and France jointly should invade England in favour of Mary Stuart.

Philip understood the object at once, and in his usual way, with much

sanctimonious verbiage, asked for a multitude of pledges and particulars,

as if he entertained the proposal, whilst he continued his own stealthy

preliminaries in Rome for the purely Spanish enterprise, for which

others might pay but he alone must direct.[263] When the leader of the

French party in the Vatican, Cardinal D’Este, soon after this tried to

persuade the Pope that the best and safest course for the Church would

be to aid Guise to direct the English enterprise and make James Stuart

King of Britain after his mother’s death, another line had to be taken

by Philip. Then Olivares boldly told the Pope that D’Este, like so many

of his house, was a bad Catholic, who sought to bring about the victory

of heresy in France and the consequent downfall of the Guises. Let the

Pope secure the triumph of Guise and the faith in France first, urged

Olivares, and the English enterprise could be undertaken afterwards.

Sixtus V. was willing, nay anxious, to allow the conquest to be

undertaken by Spain alone, recognising that the French Catholics could

not now safely be allowed to exhaust their strength in a foreign war; but

he always hoped that James’s constant assurances of Catholic sympathies

might be sincere, and that Mary Stuart might be duly succeeded by her son

under Catholic auspices. Guise also was constantly plied with arguments

by Mendoza on Philip’s orders, directed to divert him from all ideas

of England. “Warn him [Guise] against making any agreement with his

enemies,” wrote Philip, on the 17th August, 1585, “and open his eyes with

regard to the English enterprise. Point out to him the danger he runs

if he allows himself to be cajoled into leaving his home and country

before he has humbled his rivals and converted or expelled the heretics,

and how much deceived he might find himself when he wished to return to

France from such an attempt.... Tell the French first to put an end to

the heretics in their own country, and afterwards we can deal with them

elsewhere.”[264]

The sinister activity of Philip’s agents in Rome and the vapouring of

the English Catholic refugees in Spanish Flanders, had in the meanwhile

aroused the distrust of Elizabeth and her Government. Ever since Philip

had captured Portugal and obtained thus the command of the Atlantic, the

Puritan element in the English Court, led by Leicester and Walsingham,

had promoted attempts, through Don Antonio and otherwise, to strike a

crushing blow at the Spanish naval power in Europe. Drake’s depredations

in the Pacific had been a terrible loss to Spain, both in a moral and

material sense, and the English seamen were eager to return to the

charge, in order to anticipate and frustrate the evil which most of them

believed was being plotted against their country by the quiet, stealthy

little elderly man far away in the mountains of Castile. Elizabeth and

Cecil detested to face responsibility; and although the Queen was willing

to accept the benefit of accomplished facts, she usually set her face

against assuming an attitude of open hostility to Spain when she could

avoid it. Leicester had at last, in the autumn of 1585, induced her

to accept, with much misgiving, the practical protection of the rebel

Dutch States, and this was naturally assumed by Philip as an act of open

war. Thenceforward any means for injuring the English were considered

legitimate by the King of Spain.

In the spring of 1585 a large number of English ships had been induced,

on a promise of immunity from molestation, to carry cargoes of grain to

the northern ports of Spain, where famine was impending. One of these

ships, the _Primrose_, was discharging her cargo off Portugalete, near

Bilbao, when, as the English sailors averred, the Lieutenant-Governor

of Biscay and a force of men disguised as merchants boarded the ship

and suddenly called upon the Englishmen to surrender. Though taken

by surprise, the crew turned upon the intruders and threw them all

overboard, though some were subsequently rescued by the English, amongst

them the Lieutenant-Governor himself; whereupon the _Primrose_, carrying

her prisoners with her, immediately set sail to England, with the news

of the treachery, the official orders found upon the person of the

half-drowned Lieutenant-Governor being to the effect that the ships were

all to be captured to help the expedition contemplated for the invasion

of England. At all events, the rest of the English ships were captured,

Philip’s own pretext for the act being that it was in reprisal for the

daring abduction by the _Primrose_ of the Lieutenant-Governor.[265]

No sooner did the news reach England than the country burst into a chorus

of indignation, and the sailors and Puritans, who had so long urged

an active policy against Spain on the sea, found that all Englishmen

were now with them.[266] It was no longer to be a timid support of the

Portuguese Pretender, or a surreptitious sheltering of Dutch and Huguenot

privateers, but an avowed public movement, and London and the western

ports of England came openly with subscriptions, to which the Queen

contributed largely, for a joint-stock fleet under Drake, to avenge the

capture of English ships, and to injure Spanish shipping wherever it

could be found. This was open war; and through the summer and autumn of

1585 Philip’s spies in England continued to send him alarming news of the

great preparations for a naval expedition against him under the dreaded

Drake. Sometimes it was said to be another attempt to place Don Antonio

on the Portuguese throne, sometimes it was the Spanish silver fleet that

was to be met and plundered on its way home, and so forth; but whatever

it was it boded ill to Philip’s ships, with Drake in command of his

foes. Retaliatory embargoes were placed once more on Spanish property in

England, and the two countries thenceforward were practically at war.

The enthusiasm in England knew no bounds; and when Drake and his sea-dogs

Fenner, Wynter, and Frobisher sailed out of Plymouth with twenty-one

stout craft and many pinnaces well armed, on the 14th September, 1585,

every one in England knew that Philip’s secret plotting was to be met by

open action. Capturing the Spanish ships, they met, Drake and his company

in a few days, came to anchor off the Bayona Isles in Galicia, and landed

a force of men. “What want ye here,” asked the terrified townsmen, far

from succour. “We come,” said Drake, “for the Englishmen ye have in your

prisons, and for the English merchandise ye have stolen.” The people

could only give them fair words and presents of country produce, for

the English ships had not been captured there. Burning a chapel and its

contents, the English force then sailed to the great harbour of Vigo,

where they looted all they could lay their hands upon. Here again the

people came to parley, and Frobisher, who spoke good Spanish, was the

spokesman of the English. “We want our countrymen and our stolen goods

restored to us,” he said; and the Spaniards were ready to promise this

or anything if the valuables just seized by the English were returned.

Banquets and palavers followed, but they were full of distrust, and

nothing came of them; for Drake saw that his enemies were but delaying

until help should arrive. So, capturing all he could catch in Vigo

Bay, he sailed away on his West India voyage, intending to assail the

Spanish colonial power in its three principal western centres. Philip

was astounded at the boldness of the attack, the first upon Spanish

soil itself, not, as he was careful to explain, because of the material

damage suffered, which was small, but for the “insolence” of the thing;

but withal, it took six months of frenzied effort before Alvaro de Bazan

could muster a Spanish fleet fit to pursue the bold Devonshire sailor,

who was devastating the West Indies.

The departure of Leicester and a strong English army to Holland, at the

end of 1585, finally brought England and Spain nationally face to face

in the field. We have witnessed the slow process by which Philip and

Elizabeth, both haters of war, had been drawn into this position. For

the former it was vital that England should be amenable to his direction

in foreign policy, or the cause for which he lived was doomed, and the

decadence of Spain as a dominant power in Europe was certain; and, with

his patient, inflexible belief in the fated triumph of his methods, he

had striven through twenty-eight years to secure his object by peaceful

means. He had failed, and it was to be war after all. Not now against

a Queen whose throne was unstable, but against a popular sovereign and

a nation which, since he had seen it, had been born to a new sense of

power, a consciousness of potential grandeur, and a determination to

live its own life without interference from its neighbours. But though

Philip’s plans were thus changed late in the struggle and he saw himself

faced by new forces, he, at least, never doubted of the result. For him

the idea of failure, in a cause that in his eyes was that of God Himself,

was impossible. With a limited mental scope, which shut out all views

but one, he was incapable of understanding that there were two sides to

every question, or that Elizabeth was actuated in her resistance to his

advances by anything else than an impious desire to do evil for evil’s

sake. A small spice of imagination would have enabled him to see that she

was fighting for her own and her country’s life and greatness, as surely

as he was fighting for his; and perchance the knowledge might have made

harmony, or at least neutrality, possible. But, given Philip’s character

and Elizabeth’s circumstances, it was inevitable, after the autumn of

1585, that the antagonists should come to close grip, and that one or

the other should be reduced to impotence for harm.

Philip was convinced of this at last, and with his leaden-footed

deliberation he set about making success as certain as he knew how to

make it. He was laborious, unsparing of himself and others, a man of

great personal ability, sagacious and wise within his limitations; but

his ingrained distrust of other men—part of his father’s teaching—led

him to take upon himself the care of every detail in all his enterprises

and deprived his officers of initiative and independence. From his cell

in the Escorial, far away and difficult of access from the coast, he

insisted upon pulling the wires which controlled the smallest actions of

his subordinates, and we shall see how in the crowning effort of his life

these fatal characteristics cast a blight over the vast enterprise, upon

which depended the fate of Christendom for centuries.

[Illustration: CARDINAL ALLEN]

There were many difficulties to overcome before the material preparations

could even be commenced. First there was Sixtus to persuade, which was

not an easy task. Olivares and Allen worked hard in Rome to convince him

that Philip was moved solely by religious zeal, and not by a desire for

revenge or aggrandisement, in projecting the expedition. “I have plied

him,” wrote Olivares, “with every argument ... but in addition to his

natural tenacity and his buckler of precedents, I have been much hampered

with the news of your Majesty’s preparations which pour in from all

quarters.” The Guisan and Italian Cardinals, too, were for ever undoing

one day what Olivares and Allen with Caraffa had effected the day before.

The Scottish and Welsh Catholic clergy in Rome, too, especially Dr. Owen

Lewis, Bishop of Cassano, and even many of the English secular clergy,

were strongly opposed to what they feared would mean a Spanish domination

of the island; and between the opposing factions and his disinclination

to part with the vast sum of money demanded of him, Sixtus was not

easy to bend to Philip’s will. At length, after much friction and many

quarrels, Olivares was obliged to be content with the Pope’s promise of

a million ducats towards the subjection of England; but no persuasion or

pressure could move Sixtus to provide any part of this sum until after

the Spanish army had secured a footing on the island. A more delicate

matter even than this was the question of the sovereignty of England

after the death of Mary Stuart. Sixtus now usually agreed—though he

often wavered on the point—that James Stuart was not to be trusted; and

in compliance with Philip’s argument that a successor to Mary should be

chosen before she was placed upon the English throne, in order to prevent

her from forcing her son as her heir afterwards, the Pope was at length

brought to agree to leave the choice of the future Sovereign of England

to the King of Spain, though he pleaded hard that the person chosen

should be an Englishman.[267]

Whilst Olivares in Rome, with imperious boldness, was managing the Pope,

Mendoza in Paris, with equal skill, was keeping Guise in hand, pointing

out the great destiny that awaited him in France, and the shame of

allowing a heretic King to succeed to the “most Christian” Crown. At the

same time he maintained a close correspondence with Mary Stuart and the

disaffected section of English Catholics who were represented as yearning

for the coming of King Philip’s liberating fleet. Mary was sore and angry

at what she thought an unjustifiable delay on the part of Philip, and was

incessant in her prayers, through Mendoza, that she should be liberated

before it was too late. Most of her intermediaries were false, and her

secret correspondence was known to Walsingham and Elizabeth, but with

Mary’s unhappy trustfulness she never failed to seize upon any chance,

however dangerous, by which her great ambition might, perhaps, be served.

In the middle of May, 1586, Charles Paget, who was still one of Mary’s

agents in Paris, came to Mendoza, bringing with him an English priest

named Ballard, who had been sent by a number of Catholics, especially

in Lancashire and the North, to represent to him that: “God had infused

more courage than ever into them, and had convinced them that no time

was so opportune as the present to shake off the oppression of the Queen

and the yoke of heresy that weighs upon them, as most of the strongest

heretics are now absent in Zeeland. They say that I have never deceived

them, and they beg me to tell them whether your Majesty had determined

to help them to take up arms when they decided to do so.”[268] Mendoza

had but a general expression of sympathy to reply to this; for though

the great fleet of conquest projected in Spain was already the talk of

Europe, to Philip’s officers it was still supposed to be an inviolate

secret. This inquiry of the English Catholics, however, was not John

Ballard’s real reason for coming to see Mendoza. He handed him a letter

from four English Catholics who had access to Elizabeth’s Court, in which

they promised to kill the Queen either by poison or by steel if they were

assured of Philip’s help after the deed was done. Mendoza ciphered the

letter himself and sent it to Philip’s secretary, but as John Ballard

did not broach the subject verbally Mendoza’s disinclination to give any

pledges kept Ballard in Paris beating about the bush in doubt for many

weeks. Parsons, who was a good hater, asserted ten years afterwards[269]

that the whole scheme of Ballard and Gifford was promoted by Paget

and Morgan, Mary Stuart’s correspondents in Paris, for the purpose of

frustrating the purely Spanish attack upon England, to which they are

represented as being bitterly hostile, and that Walsingham was informed

of the plot with the same object. Paget was, and continued to be, a

pensioner of Spain, and Morgan, who was entirely trusted by Mary, was

also richly rewarded by Philip, at her request; but there is no reason

to doubt the positive assertions of Parsons that both of them belonged

to the anti-Jesuit party, to which, indeed, most English as well as

the Scottish and Welsh Catholics adhered; and that by every means they

endeavoured to frustrate what Allen and the Jesuits tried so hard to

promote—a Spanish domination of England.

Whilst Ballard waited in Paris the reply of Mendoza, the latter received

important letters from Mary Stuart, who at last had been able, by

Morgan’s contrivance, to reopen correspondence with the outer world,

little dreaming, poor soul, that the facilities provided were only a trap

of her enemies. This was the first time she had communicated with Mendoza

since his arrival in Paris a year before, and William Paget, the brother

of Charles, was her messenger. He was to make certain proposals to him

for Philip’s aid to “our designs”; but by far the most important part of

the message came afterwards. The continued heresy of her son James had,

she said, well-nigh broken her heart, and in order to secure the triumph

of the Church “I will cede and make over by will to the King your master

my right to the succession of the English Crown, and ask him to take me

in future entirely under his protection, and also the affairs of this

country. For the discharge of my own conscience I could not hope to place

them in the hands of a Prince more zealous in our Catholic faith or more

capable in all respects of re-establishing it in this country.... I am

obliged in this matter to prefer the public welfare of the Church to the

aggrandisement of my posterity.”

Thus Mary finally embraced the Jesuit view which looked forward to

a Spanish sovereignty over England to the detriment of her son and

Scotland, and in opposition to many of her friends and adherents in

England and France.[270] To the King of Spain this renunciation of her

son by Mary was of profound significance. His own English descent had

never been lost sight of, but here his claim was rendered legitimate

apart from his ancestry; and Mendoza, though when he received Mary’s

letter he had just been couched for cataract and was temporarily blind,

caused a reply to be written to the Queen warmly commending her saintly

resolution. She saw, he said, how evil her son was disposed, and the

French had done little enough for her, whereas Philip had always

befriended her. “Moreover,” he wrote to Philip, “failing the Queen of

Scots and her son, your Majesty is the direct legitimate heir to the

Crown of England. Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, was in the habit of saying

that the Duchy of Lancaster had been unlawfully usurped from your

Majesty.”[271] No wonder that Philip replied to this in what was for him

an unusually effusive strain: “She [Mary Stuart] has greatly risen in my

estimation in consequence of what she says, and has much increased the

devotion I have always felt for her interests, not so much because of

what she says in my favour, though I am very grateful for that also, as

because she postpones her love for her son, which might be expected to

lead her astray, for the service of our Lord, the good of Christendom,

and the salvation of England. Tell her all this from me, and assure her

that if she perseveres in the good path she has chosen I hope that God

will bless her by placing her in possession of her own. You will add that

I shall be happy to undertake the protection of her person and interests

as she requests.”[272]

This move of Mary’s made it necessary for Philip to handle the question

of the succession with more caution than ever in Rome, for if once the

French and Italian Churchmen thought that he meant to seize the Crown

of England for himself, half Europe would have been ready to oppose

him. So Olivares was ordered to “keep constantly before the eyes of his

Holiness the advisability of choosing some firm Catholic, who on the

exclusion of the King of Scots should take his place, and it is equally

important to keep his Holiness to the point, binding him to agree to my

nomination of a fit successor to the Queen of Scots in England.” The

reply from Philip gave Mary new hope. She had been deeply discouraged at

the repeated failures of attempts to rescue her and overthrow Elizabeth,

and the long delay of any effective aid from Philip had well-nigh driven

her to despair. But now, surely, a new era of success was opening to her.

Rumours reached even her in her prison of the great preparations being

made in the Spanish and Portuguese ports for some vast naval enterprise;

whilst the open war between Elizabeth’s troops and the Spaniards in

Zeeland seemed to Mary to make certain and near the hour when Philip’s

arms should avenge the injuries done to him by finally crushing the

heretic Queen and substituting Mary for her. Many times in the last six

months, she wrote to Mendoza, she had turned a deaf ear to proposals

of English Catholics for her deliverance: “But now that I hear of the

good intentions of the Catholic King towards us I have written to the

principal leaders of the Catholics here a full statement of my views

on all points of the execution of the enterprise. To save time I have

ordered them to send to you with all speed one of their number, fully

instructed to treat with you, in accordance with the promises given to

you in general terms, and to lay before you all the requests they wish to

make to the King. I assure you, on their faithful promise given to me,

that they will carry out their undertakings, even at the risk of their

lives. I therefore beg you to give full credit to their messenger as if I

had sent him myself. He will tell you the means they have for getting me

away from here, which I will attempt to effect on my own account if I am

assured of armed aid.”[273]

Almost simultaneously with this the group of English Catholics who had

sent Ballard to Mendoza in May were able to supply the ambassador with

the details and assurances he had requested to prove the seriousness

of their intention. Their envoy on this occasion was Gilbert Gifford,

brother of the Dean of Lille, and, according to Parsons, a strong

opponent of the Spanish-Jesuit party. He unfolded to Mendoza the

existence of a vast conspiracy in England, in which most of the Catholic

nobles were implicated. The Earl of Arundel, son of the late Duke of

Norfolk, and most of his kinsmen, with a score or so of other noblemen

and gentry whose names Mendoza sent to Philip, were ready to rise in

force whenever they were advised that the Spanish fleet was approaching.

Sir William Stanley, in command of a large body of Irishmen intended for

Flanders, would delay his departure if possible, revolt against the

Queen, and join the invaders; the English force in Ireland under Bele

would do likewise, whilst Claude Hamilton and a force of Scots would join

the Catholics of the North on the signal being given. The very heretics

themselves, they said, were ripe for revolution, tired of the burden

of taxation; but, above all, a young man named Babington and some six

confederates[274] had determined to kill Queen Elizabeth, in accordance

with the suggestion previously made by them through Ballard. They only

asked that Spain should support them when the deed was done. No Frenchmen

should be concerned in the business, but promptitude was now vital, for

every hour increased the risk of discovery; and they prayed Philip to let

them know at once what he would do to rescue England.

Mendoza jumped at all these proposals, for, according to Gifford,

the greatest men in England were pledged to the rising—as apart from

Babington’s murder plot; even the moderate Catholics being pledged to

it. Two letters went off at once from the Spaniard to the heads of

the enterprise, “praising the proposal as it deserved, as it was so

Christian, just, and advantageous to our holy faith and to your Majesty’s

service, worthy of spirits so Catholic as theirs and of the ancient

valour of Englishmen.” If they succeeded in killing the Queen, promised

Mendoza without authority, they should have the assistance they required

from the Netherlands, and the assurance that King Philip would succour

them. “I promised them this on my faith and word, urging them to hasten

the execution.” Directly they had despatched the Queen, wrote Mendoza to

them, let them seize Don Antonio and the Portuguese with him and lodge

him in the Tower; get Sir William Stanley to seize the Queen’s fleet,

unless Lord Admiral Howard was a trustworthy party to the plot, and let

them be sure to kill Cecil, Walsingham, Hunsdon, Knollys, and Beal at the

same time as the Queen.

Mendoza’s hatred of Elizabeth outran his discretion, and in conveying all

this to Philip he wrote: “Of all the plots they have hatched these many

years past none have been apparently so serious as this. They have never

before proposed to make away with the Queen, which is now the first step

they intend to take. As she so richly deserves her punishment, it may be

believed that God has heard the groans of the afflicted Catholics and

desires to bring it upon her thus swiftly. Let Him dispose as He will;

but if, for our sins, He shall ordain that it do not succeed there will

be much Catholic blood shed in England. Up to the present your Majesty is

pledged no further than the risk of 100,000 crowns, which have been given

to the priests sent thither, and if secrecy be kept we need only watch

what comes of it. If the Queen falls the country will submit without

bloodshed, and the Netherlands war will be at an end.”

Philip was horrified when he received this letter, and scribbled upon its

margin, in that appalling scrawl of his, scornful comments which showed

that his cold, secretive nature rebelled against the rash enthusiasm of

his usually discreet Mendoza. How could such a secret be kept, he asked,

if all these people were chattering about it? How could the schismatics,

or outwardly conforming Catholics, be trusted? They were mere heretics

and no better; and how imprudent of Mendoza, his ambassador, to send to

the conspirators two such compromising letters as those mentioned! Philip

had heard too often in the past of such plots as this, and he had thrown

away already too much money in subsidising such adventures. Nothing but

conquest, he was convinced, would serve his turn now; and to that end he

was bending all his energies night and day, penning the Pope closer into

the corner, inflaming more than ever the French ambitions of Guise, and

fomenting trouble in France; and, above all, collecting stores, arms, and

ships from all his vast dominions to crush Elizabeth for good and for all

in the interests of the Church and Spain.

But, withal, Philip was not a man to throw away a chance if he could

gain it with a minimum of responsibility, and he blended his somewhat

caustic remarks upon the lack of secrecy and caution displayed with

saintly approval of the plan to murder his sister-in-law. “As the affair

is so much in God’s service,” he wrote to Mendoza on the 5th September,

“it certainly deserves to be supported, and we hope that our Lord will

prosper it, unless our sins are an impediment thereto. It appears to be

based upon a solid foundation and to have the support of many Catholics,

but it is difficult to keep a secret entrusted to so many people, and it

causes me anxiety that it should be so widespread, and even schismatics

let into the secret.... But the importance of the matter is great, and

perhaps the time has arrived when God will strike for His own cause.”

Philip left in no doubt his own attitude with regard to the matter. The

Spanish aid should be ready, but should not be sent until the murder of

Elizabeth had been effected. Let the “principal executions” be done, he

urged, without a moment’s delay. “Everything depends upon the one act

which is to be the commencement. When this is done they may with one

voice acclaim it, and the way will be clear, whilst if the intention is

discovered before its execution each one will be destroyed separately and

union will be impossible. As all hangs upon this, and the cause is God’s

own, we must hope that He will prosper it.”

Gifford was sent on his way to England with the King’s message, and soon

the heavy hand of Walsingham fell upon the conspirators, who had all

through been living in a fool’s paradise, betrayed, as was Mary herself,

by the instruments they thought so trusty and faithful. Philip had

been right in his distrust; once more conspiracy subsidised by Spanish

intrigue and money had failed, more disastrously this time than ever

before; and the King of Spain, whilst deploring in conventional terms the

dire fate of most of those upon whom he had depended for an auxiliary

movement in England on the approach of his fleet, accepted the reverse

with stolid philosophy. In one respect, indeed, it was to some extent a

relief to him. There is no doubt that he greatly esteemed Mary Stuart for

her steadfast Catholicism, and would have placed her upon the throne of

England if his attempt at conquest had been successful during her life;

but there was always lurking in the background the fear that after her

accession she might be drawn by French intrigue or maternal solicitude

to adopt her son as her heir, in which case Philip’s vast efforts and

expenditure might have been in vain. But with Mary a condemned prisoner,

whose head might fall at any moment, it was the present rather than the

future sovereignty of England that was now to be decided, and slowly,

with the aid of Parsons and Allen, the claims of Philip to the English

succession were advanced tentatively even in England itself, though not,

as we shall presently see, with any intention of his personally assuming

the sovereignty after Elizabeth was disposed of.

The question of Mary Stuart’s complicity in Babington’s murder-project is

one that does not directly concern us here, but there can be but little

doubt that, even though it was not conveyed to her in so many words,

she was well aware of the whole plan.[275] At least Mendoza, who should

have known, believed that she was; for on the collapse of the conspiracy

he wrote to Philip: “I am of opinion that the Queen of Scotland must

be well acquainted with the whole affair, to judge by the contents of

a letter she has written to me.... Doubtless it is God’s will to give

England to your Majesty by the strong arm only, since He has allowed so

much Catholic blood to be lost, as will be shed by the discovery of this

business. Nothing has been said yet about my letters, but even if they

were discovered and printed they are so worded that another construction

could be placed upon them.” Mendoza was too sanguine in this respect. His

letters were read and his conversations with the messengers repeated.

There was no need on the part of Elizabeth and Walsingham to go out of

their way to put harmless constructions upon his words, which, indeed,

were plain enough, and a shout of execration went up all over England at

an ambassador who thus connived at the murder of a sovereign and a lady.

Already the alarming reports of spies had aroused the worst fears of

Elizabeth and her people. The Queen, particularly, dreaded the vengeance

which seemed hanging over her. For years she had defied Philip and had

beaten him in the game of diplomacy, depending for her immunity upon the

continued war in the Netherlands and upon Philip’s distrust of France.

But she saw that France could not help her now, whatever her extremity,

for the Guises were in arms and the wretched fribble upon the throne

was but a straw borne hither and thither upon the tempest, whilst the

Huguenots were grimly awaiting the hour when they themselves would

have to fight for freedom and for life. The war in Zeeland, moreover,

was now only maintained by English help, and when the dreaded Spanish

descent upon England was made Elizabeth would have to abandon the Dutch

Protestants to their fate, and the last bulwark of Reform would be

submerged by the flood of Spanish popery.

Once more Elizabeth played the outworn game that had served her turn

so often before. Andrea de Loo and many other intermediaries hurried

backwards and forwards at the instance of Burghley between London and

Flanders, impressing upon the Duke of Parma the English Queen’s earnest

desire to come to terms with her “good brother.” Let the Pacification of

Ghent, which had been accepted in the time of Don Juan, be re-enacted and

all might be settled; let a conference meet, in which mutual grievances

might be arranged, and England and Spain should live happy together ever

after. But Parma for a time gave stiff answers to all this, much as he

knew that Flanders needed peace, for Philip kept him in the dark as to

his real intentions, and he dared not act without precise instructions

from the King. Other attempts were made to reopen the trade negotiations

through Portuguese agents with a view to a general agreement, but Philip

was irresponsive now; for after half a lifetime of hesitation he had

finally made up his mind. England must be conquered by the sword wielded

by his hand alone; and although he might feign to talk of peace to suit

his purpose, there was in his slow-moving, inflexible mind thenceforward

no peace possible with England until Elizabeth and her Government had

been crushed.

Another spirited attempt was made by Elizabeth to reach Philip direct.

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, the famous explorer and Governor of Patagonia,

had been captured at sea by one of Raleigh’s ships. Usually such men

were held for heavy ransom, but Sarmiento was received by the Queen at

Windsor with every witchery she knew how to exert, and was impressed with

her sorrow that such unhappy relations existed—God knew from no fault

of hers—between her people and the Spaniards. Would Sarmiento convey a

letter to his King, accepting his liberation as a reward for his doing

so? Naturally nothing would suit Sarmiento better, and Raleigh carried

him with all distinction to Durham House as his honoured guest, plying

him with assurances of Sir Walter’s desire to serve the King of Spain by

putting a stop to all this piracy, of which the Queen herself and Lord

Treasurer Burghley disapproved. Besides this, he (Raleigh) would sell a

fine ship of his to Philip for 5,000 crowns, would prevent any more aid

being given to Don Antonio, and would, indeed, become Philip’s humble

servant in England. This was, doubtless, nothing but one of the usual

mystifications to divert Philip; but the Queen herself gave a cordial

verbal message to Sarmiento for the King, saying that she was really

anxious to let bygones be bygones and make a durable peace. Sarmiento

left London in November, 1586, and gave his message to Mendoza in Paris,

but on his way to Spain was unlucky enough to be captured again, by

Huguenots this time, near the Pyrenean frontier, and all Elizabeth’s and

Raleigh’s influence was exerted to secure his prompt release. By all

means accept Raleigh’s offer to prevent further aid being given to Don

Antonio and to stop piracy, wrote Philip; but to the suggestions for

direct peace negotiations he made no reply.

In the meanwhile the arsenals and harbours of Philip’s realms were

ringing with preparations for the great enterprise. The peace conference

so much desired by Elizabeth might meet in Flanders and talk, but no

pause was made in the feverish activity in the Spanish preliminaries for

war. Old Santa Cruz had waited patiently after the King’s gentle rebuff

to him in 1583,[276] until the circumstances detailed in the foregoing

pages had rendered war with England inevitable early in 1586, when he

wrote to the King from Lisbon a letter full of fiery zeal, recalling his

former offer to conquer England when his victorious fleet was ready, and

deploring the shame that had fallen upon Spain since by reason of the

continued insults and injuries inflicted upon it by the heretics, much

to the material gain and moral prestige of the Queen of England. They

had, he said, plundered a million and a half of ducats in the last five

months, and had defied the King of Spain successfully at all points.

Everything was now propitious, urged the admiral, for dealing a final

blow at these daring heretics, and he prayed the King to arise in his

wrath and smite his enemy before the occasion passed. “I am not moved to

this,” he proudly added, “by a desire for fresh battles or the ambition

for new victories, but by no other motive than the service of God and

your Majesty.”

This time the hero’s appeal found the King ready, for all his peaceful

diplomacy had failed to bring England to his side; and Santa Cruz was

requested to submit to the King a plan for carrying out the enterprise

he proposed. It took Santa Cruz two months, as he says, to draw up from

his papers and the experience of forty years at sea a complete scheme

for the irresistible descent upon England; and the estimate with which

he furnished Philip stands to-day, after three centuries and a quarter,

an unexampled monument of foresight, skill, and boldness. Nothing was

forgotten in this prodigious estimate: naval and military requisites,

arms, stores, clothing and material, down to the minutest detail, are

set forth, with estimates of price and with surprising clearness; the

salaries to be paid to men of every rank are given; the weight and bulk

of every article, the best place where it may be obtained, the rations

to be provided, and the discipline to be observed on land and sea,

are all written in due order, and to such a lover of formal papers as

Philip the estimate of Santa Cruz must have been a pure delight from the

bureaucratic point of view.

Not so, however, with regard to the concentrated magnitude of the

demands, greater than had ever been made for such an enterprise before.

Santa Cruz wanted for the invasion of England 150 great ships, 40

store hulks, 320 small craft of 50 to 80 tons burden, 40 galleys and 6

galleasses, or 556 sail in all, besides 40 skiffs and 200 landing rafts.

There were needed 30,000 sailors and nearly 64,000 soldiers, with 1,600

cavalry horses, all to be shipped from Spain, and this enormous multitude

was to be provisioned beforehand for eight months with food and water.

Deducting the ordinary cost of armaments in Spain, the extra estimated

expense to be incurred by the enterprise was placed by Santa Cruz at

3,800,000 ducats.[277] The sum in money was much greater than Philip had

ever had to provide in Spain for any one enterprise before, and it took

him aback now. The Pope, it is true, had promised a million ducats, but

not a soldo would he pay beforehand, and the Italian States might be

coerced into contributing; but the bulk of this vast sum in ready money

had to be wrung somehow out of already exhausted Castile, and, anxious

as Philip was to make assurance doubly sure, he knew that this was

impossible; so Santa Cruz’s estimates had to be modified.

The opportunity for the invasion, nevertheless, was one that could

hardly be expected to recur. The cup of Elizabeth’s provocations was

full to the brim, and her anxiety to open peace negotiations proved her

own apprehensions. France, for almost the first time, was paralysed and

could not interfere. Leicester’s ineptitude in Holland had even turned

the feeling of the Dutch against their protectors, whilst many of the

English troops and their leaders, such as Roland York, Sir W. Stanley,

and Colonel Semple had deserted to the Spanish side and had delivered

to Parma the fortresses occupied by them. The Turk, moreover, was for

the time harmless, and Don Antonio was already a discredited and waning

force. So, although Philip did not approve of Santa Cruz’s plan that

the whole army should be embarked in Spain, he gave orders that the

arsenals and dockyards should work night and day, and through Spain and

Portugal, Sicily, Naples, and Lombardy there rang the echoes of warlike

preparations such as they had never known before; whilst the recluse of

the Escorial, shutting himself away from all other tasks, took counsel

how he might effect his purpose with the means at his disposal.

It is not to be supposed that the French and Scottish faction would sit

tamely by and see without an effort the whole enterprise of England

fall into the hands of Spain. The conversion of James Stuart was still

a fervent hope with many who dreaded to see a Spanish king supreme in

Britain; and the English Jesuit faction had to fight hard against the

Welsh, Scottish, French, and many English Catholics at home and abroad.

James Stuart himself and the Scottish Catholic nobles were fully alive

to the danger that threatened. The Scottish nobles, with the secret

connivance of James, made a bold attempt to associate themselves with

Philip’s invasion, and to bring Guise again into the combination. Huntly,

Morton, Claude Hamilton, Crawford, and Montrose, in the summer of 1586,

sent one Robert Bruce with three blank signed papers to the Duke of

Guise in Paris, where the letters over the signatures were written at

Guise’s dictation and addressed to Philip,[278] begging him to listen to

the verbal proposals of their envoy, Bruce. Guise and Beton introduced

Bruce to Mendoza, and the gist of the proposals was that Philip should

send to the Scottish Catholics 150,000 crowns to raise and arm soldiers,

whom they would maintain for a year, and they also asked that a foreign

force of 6,000 men should be sent to Scotland to secure the triumph

of the Catholics, in consideration of which they promised to place at

his disposal one or more ports in the south of Scotland to serve as a

shelter and a base of operations against England. Mendoza understood, as

indeed did all experienced fighting-men, the immense importance of the

latter suggestion; for Santa Cruz from the first had insisted upon the

need of seizing harbours in the Channel in case of contrary weather; and

Bruce was sped on his way to see Philip with all the support that the

ambassador could give him.

But Philip had had enough of Guisan meddling, and he had no intention of

allowing the supreme effort he was making to be used for the benefit of

any one but himself, and least of all for that of shuffling James Stuart.

As usual, he did not say no plainly, for he had no wish to alienate the

Scottish Catholics, or to arouse suspicions of his motives anywhere.

So, gently suggesting doubts and difficulties, he referred the question

to Mendoza and Parma for report, sending Bruce back to Paris with “fair

words” and a letter to Guise “praising the zeal which moves you to strive

so sincerely for the promotion of our holy Catholic faith.” Mendoza was

directed to keep the Scots in hand, to suggest that they should ask

the Pope for the money they needed, and to flatter Guise as much as he

thought necessary; all of which meant that Philip would not bind himself

to Scot or Frenchman in the execution of his project, though, if on their

own account and at their own risk they cared to divert his enemy, he had,

of course, no objection to their doing so. But the offer of one or two

safe ports in Scotland near the English border was one not lightly to be

refused—its acceptance, indeed, might have changed the whole course of

history—and Mendoza, an experienced soldier, wrote in October, 1586, to

Parma strongly urging that the offer of the Scottish Catholics should

be sympathetically entertained, in order that a diversion might thus be

effected in the North simultaneously with the Spanish invasion of the

South of England; though here commended that full inquiries should be

first made to ascertain to what extent Huntly and his friends could carry

out their pledges.

Parma, however, was almost as cautious as his uncle. He was, in fact,

resentful that Philip was keeping him in the dark as to his ultimate

plans, and was determined not to move a step in any direction beyond his

written orders until he knew what the King was really aiming at; whether

to frighten Elizabeth into peace, which Parma more than suspected, or to

crush her finally by war. So to Mendoza’s almost vehement advocacy of

the Scottish diversion Parma replied coolly, saying that the proposal

would fail unless it formed part of the combined plan and was executed

in co-operation simultaneously with the invasion. Mendoza grew more

and more in love with Bruce’s proposal, which would, he said, give

harbours of refuge for the Spaniards in the North Sea and divide the

Queen of England’s forces; and here began the first whispers of Parma’s

half-hearted loyalty,[279] which amongst the vanquished officers of the

Armada afterwards swelled into a tempest of indignant recrimination.

Mendoza’s inquiries of Bruce had satisfied all his doubts, and to

Philip he wrote beseechingly on the 24th December, 1586, in favour of

the scheme. Some of the passages in his extremely able letter,[280]

read by the knowledge of the subsequent disaster of the Armada, sound

almost prophetic. “It is of advantage to the English,” he wrote, “that

they should be attacked by a force which needs great sea fleets for its

transport and maintenance, both on account of the immense sums of money

which must be spent upon such an expedition, and the vast quantities of

material and the length of time necessary for preparation, as well as

the many opportunities which occur during this delay for impeding the

progress of such armaments. Such expeditions, moreover, are liable to

much greater disasters than land armies, for in most cases the mere death

of the leader suffices to frustrate them ... and in the event of the loss

of a great fleet the owner is deprived at one blow of forces, ships,

and guns—things difficult to replace readily.” It is clear now, with

our later knowledge, that the old warrior-diplomatist—the last of the

disciples of Alba, as he calls himself—was right in his appreciations,

and that Philip made a fatal mistake in not following the advice of such

men, instead of indulging in his fatal itch for retaining in his own

hands all executive monopoly and all ultimate profit in his plans.

But the advances of Huntly were not entirely rejected, for not only

Mendoza, but Parma too, as time went on, saw their importance, and

although the idea of invading England over the Scottish border was

again vetoed, Bruce was sent back to Scotland after many months of

impatient waiting in France and Flanders, carrying with him ten thousand

crowns to freight ships in Scotland ostensibly for Dantzig, but really

for Flanders, to embark there an auxiliary force to aid the Scottish

Catholics in their intended rising.[281] Bruce went on his way late

in the summer of 1586, with his doublet padded with gold, but when he

arrived in Scotland the whole scheme was embroiled and frustrated with

the usual ineptitude. It was too late in the season for the ships to be

obtained. James Stuart was also consulted by the Scottish lords as to his

joining the Spanish attack upon England to avenge his mother, with the

result that was to be expected. Bruce and his companion, Foster, turned

traitors when the plan was seen to be impracticable, and once more, and

for the last time, Philip settled down to the inevitability of conquering

England by himself alone, and for himself alone.

It was more important now than ever it had been that he should succeed

in doing it, for Henry III. of France was without a son, and was in bad

health. If Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, became King, and France ceased

to be a Catholic country and in alliance with Protestant England, the

Catholic domination of Europe would be at an end, and the sun of Spain

must sink rapidly. The conquest of England, indeed, must be effected,

and the country made Catholic before Henry III. died, or all, it seemed,

would be lost; and Philip, after thirty years of paltering, was now in

a desperate hurry. There was still another reason why Philip’s zeal for

the conquest of England should be further inflamed at this time. Mary

Stuart was condemned to death, and in the bitterness of her heart she

wrote the beautiful letter[282] to Mendoza (23rd November, 1586), in

which she entrusted to Philip alone the task of avenging her and the

cause for which she died, of providing for her servants, and, above all,

of inheriting her rights to the succession of the Crown of England,

which bequest she afterwards confirmed by a formal will. There was no

longer any legal bar between Philip and the sovereignty, and no further

fear of a doubtfully Catholic successor being adopted by Mary after her

accession. With the fall of the head of the Queen of Scots the spirits

of the English Jesuit party rose, for they knew now that James and his

countrymen would not be allowed to lord over Englishmen if once Philip

held the country in his grasp.

The subtle web of intrigue that had been spun for so many years past, the

threads of which we have to some small extent endeavoured to unravel, had

so far been favourable to Philip. He had patiently suffered numberless

indignities and injuries at the hands of Elizabeth and her people; he

had seen England and his own Dutch provinces drift ever further away

from him; but he had never ceased to plot patiently in order to dispose

affairs aptly for his vengeance when the propitious hour should strike.

The Guises had been alternately flattered and frowned at, until their

great ambitions in France seemed to hang upon Philip’s will, and they

dared not stir without his countenance. Henry III. had been by the same

means rendered equally powerless to help England or to hinder Spain. The

Scottish Catholics had been subsidised and cajoled, as had James Stuart

himself, into a benevolent neutrality towards Philip with blended hopes

and fears of the English succession. Mary Stuart had been so handled as

to lead her to make Philip by will the heir to the English Crown; and

gradually all the strings which were intended to pull down the edifice of

the Reformation were gathered into the hands of the gouty old monastic

monarch in his granite cloister-palace on the bleak Castilian sierra.

Each interest, as we have seen, had been silently and separately dealt

with, and tricked into the position that best suited Philip’s ends;

for he would take no risks that he could avoid, and aspired to imitate

natural forces in the slow, insensible accumulation of power, which at

the supreme moment might be launched by the master with irresistible

effect.

When, at length, the stealthy plotting had reached fruition, and

Elizabeth saw herself isolated, with Henry III. and James VI. paralysed;

when the Pope and the Cardinals understood that the Church and its

cherished hoards were to be instruments of Spanish political ends; when

the Guises found that they and their kin were to be excluded from all

share in the great prize of England; and even the English Catholics of

the more patriotic and moderate sort awoke to the knowledge that their

religion and their scorn of the Scots were being used to forward a

conspiracy against the independence of their country; then each separate

interest struggled as best it might to free itself from the toils in

which the diplomacy of Philip had involved it. Allen, with his seminary,

and the English Jesuits under Parsons, had gone over to the Spanish side

bag and baggage, but the English Carthusians and seculars under Dr. Owen

Lewis, and the large Scottish Catholic element in Rome under the Bishop

of Dunblane, aided the Guisan Cardinals in combating the idea of a purely

Spanish domination of England, and the contest went on bitterly and

without cessation, especially after the death of Mary Stuart had made the

fears more imminent.

Before that had happened, Philip had instructed Olivares to sound the

Pope cautiously, and, if possible, to obtain a brief from him, declaring

Philip entitled to the throne of England after the Queen of Scots, “as

I cannot make war upon England for the purpose merely of placing upon

the throne a young heretic like the King of Scots.” The Pope’s fears

were to be lulled by the declaration that Philip had no intention of

annexing England to the Crown of Spain, but of passing the sovereignty to

some suitable Catholic candidate, perhaps to his daughter, the Infanta

Isabel. Olivares, Allen, and Parsons knew at this time (January, 1587)

that the Vatican was uneasy about the whole business, and they prayed

the King to say nothing about his own claim openly until the Armada had

been successful. But when, a month or two later, the news of Mary’s

death came, Philip was obliged to some extent to show his hand to the

Pope, and the brief was ordered to be secretly asked for as a measure of

precaution. Above all, Philip urged, not a word must be said about his

claims to Guise or the Frenchmen.

Unfortunately, much had already been said about them, even by Mendoza;

and Guise and Catharine de Medici, and James of Scotland himself, were

all trying their utmost to prove how very Catholic the latter was, and

what an excellent King of England he would make. Philip ordered that his

claims upon England were only to be broached with the utmost caution to

the English Catholics. In May, 1587, the King wrote to Mendoza: “You

must only speak of my rights to well-disposed native Englishmen in order

that they may be informed of the truth, and convey it to others of their

nationality, that it may thus spread and gain ground amongst them. But

do not mention the matter to Frenchmen and others, who will only take

it up for the purpose of frustrating it.”[283] To add to his authority

in the matter, Philip urged successfully that Allen should be made a

Cardinal, and he was well primed by instructions from Spain how to push

the succession question with the Pope. Religion, of course, was to be

the pretext. The King of Scots was a heretic, and unfit to succeed. For

the good of the Church a Catholic of unquestionable orthodoxy should be

chosen, and he must be powerful enough to keep England in the straight

path. All this, of course, could only tend to the conclusion that Philip

or his daughter alone would serve; and very gradually and cautiously this

view was made familiar to Catholics, to be struggled against fiercely by

all those who were not absolutely under the Jesuit and Spanish influence.

Parsons was indefatigable in writing letters, addresses, and memoranda in

favour of this view, and the absolute quiescence of the moderate English

Catholics when at last the Armada appeared in the Channel, and their

loyalty through the crisis, was largely due to the unwise forcing of the

idea of a Spanish Sovereign over England by the Jesuit propaganda.

Elizabeth was no less active than the other threatened interests in her

efforts to escape from the position in which she found herself. Still

hoping against hope that the old policy of advance and retire might again

be successful, she and Burghley strove heroically to arrange some form

of peace congress with Parma through Andrea de Loo. It was not easy, for

neither side was in a yielding mood in matters of procedure; but Philip

said that he saw no harm in entertaining the advances, which he knew

from the first he did not intend to have any result other than to lull

Elizabeth into a false security, whilst his preparations advanced. The

Burghley party in Elizabeth’s Court had all the Puritans against them,

and, more strongly still, the blue water school of sailors, who for years

past had shown by their deeds that the Spaniards were no match for them

at sea. “Why wait to be attacked on our own coasts,” was their constant

argument, “when we can go and crush our enemies before even they can

leave port?”

The English ships had finer lines and lower bows than the Spaniards. They

could sail several points nearer the wind; and the need for ocean attack

and defence had developed an entirely new school of seamanship, depending

upon celerity of movement, broadside armament low down, by which the

hulls of the enemy might be riddled between wind and water, whereas the

Spanish ships depended still largely upon bulk, needful for the carriage

of cargoes from the Indies, and the old tradition descended from the

Mediterranean galleys of heavy armaments fore and aft. The attack in

the Spanish system consisted only in grappling with the foe and pouring

soldiers on board of him, the vessel being less of a fighting entity than

a conveyance to bring the fighting-men on each side into contact, as

galleys had been. Under Drake the English sailors had developed an ideal

entirely distinct from this, namely, to avoid grappling, and by superior

handiness of the craft to cripple the hulls of the enemy, and make them

unseaworthy and incapable of manœuvring. Again and again the English

sailors had proved that the new methods were effective; and whenever

there was a chance of meeting the Spaniards at sea, they eagerly sought

it.

It was this combination of sailors and the Puritans or Liberals, led

by Leicester, that sought once more to force Elizabeth’s hand in the

midst of the negotiations for the peace conference with Parma early in

the spring of 1587. The Portuguese spies in England continued to report

to Mendoza the great preparations being made for a naval expedition,

by Drake, in Plymouth and the Thames. Elizabeth and Burghley deeply

distrusted a policy of daring aggression, and hesitated much to allow an

attack upon Spain, though Leicester’s influence and Drake’s confidence

ultimately carried the day. The secret of the destination of Drake’s

fleet was well kept. The pretence was cleverly maintained to the last

that it was one more attempt to aid Don Antonio—this time, it was said,

to go to the Indies; and Mendoza, who reported almost daily to Philip

what he heard, was hoodwinked all through. Drake arrived in Plymouth

from the Thames on the 23rd March, in a hurry to get away, for fear

the Queen would alter her mind and order him back. He had obtained her

commission—“to prevent or withstand any enterprise against her Highness’s

dominions, and especially to prevent the concentration of the King of

Spain’s squadrons”—and he was authorised to “distress the ships as

much as possible, both in the havens and on the high seas.” Drake knew

that as soon as he left Court attempts by the moderate party would be

made to spoil and hamper his plans, for his Vice-Admiral, Borough, a

Queen’s officer, had been sent with him only to serve as a clog upon his

actions, and Elizabeth was still full of faith in the insincere peace

negotiations. Sure enough, only a few hours after he hurriedly sailed

from Plymouth, a royal order came thither from London, happily too late,

“to forbear to enter forcibly any of the said King’s ports or havens, or

to offer any violence to his towns or ships in harbour, or to do any act

of hostility on land.” Drake took very good care that these timid orders

never reached him until too late to stay his hand, and went on his way as

usual, in defiance of Borough’s warning.

Slowly, and with infinite difficulty, stores, arms, and material were

being collected in Spain. The roads were bad, communications laborious,

and Philip’s centralising methods clogged the wheels of progress. Old

Santa Cruz was labouring early and late, in Lisbon, making ready such

great ships as could be collected in the Tagus; whilst in the ports of

Andalusia the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the great magnate of the Province,

had seized for the King all the merchant ships and stores; and was

actively getting ready to sail from Cadiz and join Santa Cruz in Lisbon

in the early summer, and, together with other vessels expected from Italy

and the Biscay ports, attempt the conquest of England. Thus matters stood

in April, 1587. Santa Cruz was almost in despair, for he profoundly

disliked the modification of his plans adopted by Philip, by which the

bulk of the army under Parma was to cross in small boats to England when

the Armada should arrive off the North Foreland to protect its passage

from Dunkirk to the Thames, and the command was to be divided, Santa

Cruz to be supreme at sea and Parma on land. The ships in Lisbon were

still unready, and the crews and soldiers were joining in mere driblets

from distant parts of Spain. The provisions, too, for all his host came

in slowly, and much of the stores rotted before they could be used. The

ships from the eastern ports of Spain and from Naples and Messina were

lagging; for delay was inevitable when every detail had to be directed by

one overworked old man far away.

Then suddenly, on the 18th April, 1587, the people of Cadiz saw in the

offing a fleet of thirty white sail. “Some contingent of the Armada,”

thought the Duke of Medina Sidonia, busy with his stores inside the

harbour. It was nothing so welcome as that; for it was the terrible

Drake himself, with his stout ships, bent upon mischief, notwithstanding

Elizabeth’s timid wavering and her Admiral Borough’s warning. Looking

up the harbour of Cadiz, Drake could see a forest of masts, many a tall

ship, he knew, that was intended for the subjugation of his country.

They were, for the most part, store ships, nearly a hundred of them

altogether; and though they were crammed with provisions and material,

neither their guns nor their crews were on board. Into the harbour

dashed Drake, sinking the big galleon at the entrance that served as a

guardship, and disdaining the fire of the protecting forts, and soon he

had all the harbour at his mercy. The very name of Drake appalled the

Spaniards, and without impeachment he turned adrift and set on fire some

twenty-five of the principal ships. Soon the great crowd of galleons was

a blazing ruin, and in the three weeks that followed Drake deliberately

annihilated in the harbour of Cadiz the results of a year’s work and vast

expenditure. Then, on the 1st May, 1587, he leisurely sailed away, secure

in the knowledge that, come what might, no invasion of England by Spanish

ships was possible for that summer.

In the Tagus, at Lisbon, there still lay the fifty great galleons,

under Santa Cruz, which were to form the principal fighting force of

the Armada, and as Drake stood off the mouth of the river, they looked

tempting. He was more than half inclined to sail in and serve them as he

had served the Cadiz ships; but he did not know whether they had their

great guns on board or not. Whilst he was ascertaining this by his spies

the peremptory orders came to him from the Queen that he was to provoke

the King of Spain no more: the great fighting ships of Spain, with no

crews or guns on board, were left unattacked, to Drake’s abiding regret,

and the chance of making the invasion of England by Spain impossible

altogether was missed through Elizabeth’s belief that by her usual

methods she might avoid war, even at this eleventh hour. The damage done

by Drake was in great part irreparable. Not only were many stores and

ships destroyed in Cadiz, but for weeks afterwards the English fleet lay

off the coast of Portugal, capturing great numbers of vessels loaded

with pipe staves,[284] for the water and wine casks of the Armada. These

could not be quickly replaced, and their loss led to the short and bad

water supply in the fleet, which was one of its worst calamities. When

Drake sailed away, Spain was crippled for a time; and the capture of the

rich Indies galleon, _San Felipe_, completed the discomfiture of King

Philip, who had no alternative now but to order Santa Cruz to make ready

his ships in Lisbon, in a hurry, not now to invade England, but to

prevent Drake from intercepting and plundering the silver fleet, whose

safe arrival in Spain would alone enable Philip to proceed with his plan

of invasion in the following year. The injury inflicted by Drake’s raid

was a terrible one to Philip, but he plodded on, still convinced of the

goodness of his methods and the ultimate certain victory of his cause.

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH

FROM THE PAINTING BY MARC GHEERAEDTS AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY]

To Parma, in Flanders, the news of Drake’s attack brought anguish and

discouragement beyond words, for he was less blinded by fervour than his

uncle was, and was brought nearer to his practical difficulties. He was

a great commander and saw plainly the weak points of Philip’s scheme for

the Armada, so far as it was communicated to him. A divided command and

strictly limited authority were repugnant to him, a sovereign Prince

and practically supreme in Spanish Flanders; and from the first he was

determined that no blame for the failure which he feared would attend

the attempt should be laid at his doors in consequence of his exceeding

the strict letter of the King’s written instructions. He had strained

every nerve to muster and equip his troops to be ready for the expected

arrival of Santa Cruz with his fleet in the summer of 1587, and now he

found himself with a large force of men, and short of money, provisions,

and stores for their maintenance. But he was a general of resource, and

utilised his army to capture the Sluys and invest Ostend and so improve

his position before the English Peace Commissioners, the Earls of Derby

and Hertford, Lord Cobham, Sir James Crofts, and Drs. Dale and Herbert,

went over in the autumn of 1587, in the chimerical hope of making peace

with Philip. Leicester, Walsingham, and the sailors wondered aloud how

her Majesty could be so blind as to believe that peace with Philip was

possible now. Exhortations and prayers reached Elizabeth, from those who

knew Philip’s intentions well, that she would allow another bold stroke

to be dealt upon the enemy’s heart; but her parsimony and belief in her

methods made her turn a deaf ear to all such urging, and England still

stood unready in the face of danger so imminent and dire.

Whilst Parma was still spinning matters out with the English Peace

Commissioners on fine-drawn points of etiquette and procedure, in order

to give time for really illuminating instructions to reach him from

Philip, and Elizabeth was living still in her fool’s paradise, the plan

of the Armada was finally settled; for Philip, dead against the advice

of his seamen, had determined to send out the expedition at all risks,

in the autumn of 1587, as soon as Santa Cruz returned from convoying the

silver fleet. The letter in which he conveyed his plan to Parma on the

4th September, 1587, is worth quoting at some length.[285] The Armada,

under Santa Cruz, was to sail up the Channel, avoiding, if possible,

any decisive engagement, until it had reached the Straits of Dover and

had joined hands with Parma. “We calculate that by the time you have

invested Ostend you will have 30,000 men ready for the main business,

whilst 16,000 Spanish infantry, a part of them veterans, will go in the

Armada from here, the whole force of soldiers and sailors in the fleet

reaching 22,000 men. I have decided that as soon as the Marquis of Santa

Cruz returns with the flotillas to Cape St. Vincent ... he shall leave

them in charge of the galleys, and himself go straight to Lisbon, where

he will take command of the fleet which will there await him, and, with

God’s blessing, sail direct for the English Channel. On his arrival

he will anchor off Margate, having given notice to you at Dunkirk of

his approach. You in the meanwhile will be quite ready, and when you

see the passage assured by the arrival of the fleet off Margate or at

the mouth of the Thames, you will, if the weather permits, immediately

cross over in the boats you will have ready. You and the Marquis will

then co-operate, you being in command on land, and he at sea; and, with

the help of God, will carry through the main business successfully.

Until you have crossed, the Marquis is not to be diverted by anything

from assuring your passage. His taking possession of Margate will cut

the communications of the enemy, and prevent him to some extent from

concentrating his forces. When you have landed (the Marquis giving you

six thousand selected Spanish infantry as ordered),[286] I am inclined

to leave to the Marquis’s discretion what he should do with the fleet,

whether to stay and ensure the passage of our people from Flanders to

England and intercept any foreign aid that might be sent to the English,

or to go and capture some port and divert the enemy’s strength; or else

he might go and seize English ships lying in various ports, to deprive

them of maritime forces, upon which their strength mainly depends. You

will settle this point between you, the Marquis carrying out your joint

decision, whilst you will hasten to the front to conduct the enterprise

on the lines laid down. I trust to God, in whose service it is done, that

success may attend the enterprise, and that yours may be the hand to

execute it.”

The advice of all his best soldiers and sailors had failed to move Philip

on one point because he knew that it meant delay, and he was ready now to

risk everything rather than wait any longer. “We are quite aware of the

risk incurred by sending a heavy fleet in the winter through the Channel

without a sure harbour; but the various reasons which render this course

necessary are sufficient to counterbalance the objections. As it is all

for His good cause, God send good weather. The most important of all

things is that you should be so completely ready when the Marquis arrives

at Margate that you may be able to do your part at once without delay.

You will see the danger of any tardiness, the Armada having to wait there

with you unready; as until your passage is effected they will have no

harbour for shelter, whereas when you have crossed he will have the safe,

spacious river Thames. Otherwise he will be at the mercy of the weather,

and if, which God forbid, any misfortune should happen to him you will

understand what a state it would put us into. All will be assured, please

God, by your good understanding; but do not forget that the forces

collected and the vast monetary responsibility incurred make it extremely

difficult for any such expedition to be organised again, if they [the

English] escape us this time; whilst the obstacles and divisions which

may, and certainly will, arise next summer, force us to carry through

the enterprise this year or fail altogether. I hope this will not occur,

but that great success may attend us by God’s grace, since you are to

be the instrument, and I have bountifully supplied you with money. I

have told you how all our prestige is now at stake, and how entirely my

tranquillity depends upon success being achieved, and I now once more

earnestly enjoin you to justify the trust I place in you. Pray send me

word that there shall be no shortcomings in this respect, as I shall be

full of anxiety till I hear from you.”

Thus, like a desperate gambler, Philip at last, after all these years

of waiting and planning, was ready to stake everything—fleet, army,

resources, prestige, and the cause for which he had lived—with the

chances of success and the warnings of experience dead against him. For

years past his expert advisers had been telling him how much superior in

staunchness and seaworthiness the English ships were to his, that the

new naval construction and armament, by which the artillery fire was

delivered low and from the broadside, gave an enormous advantage to the

handy English craft, which, by reason of their finer lines and weatherly

qualities, could avoid fighting at close quarters. Santa Cruz, Parma, and

Mendoza had pointed out to him the rashness of taking a vast, unwieldy

fleet in the late autumn, the worst period of the year, up the Channel

without a harbour of refuge in case of contrary winds or tempest; again

and again he had been told that his ships were still unready, his stores

and arms unconcentrated, and his army but partially mustered in various

provinces of Spain and Italy. All this he knew, and yet in the face of

disorganisation, incapacity, and corruption in his administration, of

almost insuperable material difficulties in collecting and supplying

such an enormous fleet as that contemplated, the growing alarm and the

opposition of all Christendom to his designs, he trusted, in the absence

of all the mundane elements of success, to the special intervention

of Providence in his favour. Patience and diplomacy had brought the

possibility of success within his reach, but patience and diplomacy can

be worked by the methods of a chess-player in a monastic cell, whilst

armies and fleets must be raised, organised, and led by practical men on

the spot, and this was where Philip failed. All power and initiative must

be his, whilst he sat upon his office chair, annotating, checking, and

dictating from morn till night, but never coming within hundreds of miles

of executive action.

In obedience to Philip’s fervent exhortations Parma did his best,

keeping his army of German, Italian, and Walloon mercenaries in good

heart and readiness whilst the sham peace preliminaries went on. Most of

the English Commissioners themselves were soon satisfied that nothing

would come of their mission, for months were wasted in discussing and

wrangling over such questions as the place of meeting, the sufficiency of

powers, and the points to be discussed, though Croft, representing the

moderate Catholic party in England, strained his loyalty to the utmost

to conciliate Parma.[287] But still the Armada came not, though the

winter of 1587 wore on and Parma’s painfully gathered thirty thousand

men-at-arms were rapidly melting away, demoralised by short commons and

dying by thousands of the plague. Not even Parma’s extremity could move

Santa Cruz to take a course that he knew would end in disaster. When

he returned to Lisbon from convoying the silver fleet, he told Philip

flatly that it would be certain disaster to take the Armada out at such

a season of the year, the ships and men, moreover, being unready. Scorn

and derision were poured upon the old admiral by the nobles and soldiers,

as well as by the bureaucrats who were at the King’s elbow, though the

sailors who had met the English on many seas knew that Santa Cruz was

right. “Once let us grapple with the heretics,” cried the vapouring

men-at-arms, “and all will be well; the sailorman’s task is but to bring

us face to face with the foe and we shall know how to deal with him.”

Philip rarely reproached those who served him, but even his almost

inexhaustible patience gave way, and his curt, cold words of reproach to

Santa Cruz for his tardiness in serving him broke the old hero’s heart,

and in February, 1588, there passed to his grave the one man in Spain who

perchance might have rescued from otherwise inevitable catastrophe the

Armada and the mighty freight of hopes it bore.

Philip was, indeed, nearly at his wits’ end, though personally he

never lost faith in ultimate success. Sixtus was growing more and

more sarcastic, and unwilling to pledge himself further to a policy

which he now understood was making religion the stalking-horse of

politics. Olivares might rail insolently at the Pontiff as a garrulous

old curmudgeon, Cardinal Allen and Father Parsons, by word and pen,

might, and did, urge with bland eloquence the saintliness of the

enterprise and the holy aims of the Catholic King; but all Europe now

was aware and apprehensive of Philip’s overwhelming schemes—not against

England alone, it was feared, but against all those who questioned the

political supremacy of Spain. By every courier went frantic appeals

and remonstrances from Parma to Philip, as week after week passed and

no Armada appeared in the Straits of Dover. The army was getting out

of hand, he said, and, what with plague and discontent, would soon

disappear altogether, whilst of money he had none, and even his credit

was exhausted.

In December, 1587, Philip, apparently in desperation, thought that

Parma, failing the coming of the Armada, might have made a dash

across the Straits on his own account, and have captured England by a

_coup-de-main_, whilst the peace preliminaries were being discussed.

Parma, who was a practical soldier, was furious at such a suggestion,

as well he might be. Writing to the King on the 31st January, 1588,

he asks how could he be expected to do what he had the King’s strict

orders to avoid doing. He had laid down clearly, he said, the necessary

conditions of success; namely, that the flat boats and skiffs, too small

for fighting and unfit to weather a freshet, much less a storm, should

be ensured an absolutely unimpeded passage across, whilst the French

should be kept busy at home, and the Dutch rebels rendered powerless

for harm. “Your Majesty ordered me to undertake this business, and be

fully prepared, though the time given to me was short and my resources

were limited. I have done my best to perform the impossible in order

to please you and carry out my duty.... Affairs have been unduly drawn

out, both men and money have been delayed beyond the time indicated, and

particularly the Spanish troops, who are the sinew of the whole business,

and who have, after all, come in less number than agreed upon, and so

dilapidated and maltreated as to look unfit for service for some time to

come. The Italians and Germans have dwindled in consequence of having to

march quickly in very bad weather, and they are so badly housed to keep

them near the ports that many are missing; and our men are dying and

falling away rapidly. I have strained every nerve to keep them near the

coast to be ready for the arrival of Santa Cruz with the Armada ... and

now I see that everything has turned out wrong and contrary to my hopes.

Secrecy, which was of the utmost importance, has not been maintained.

From Spain, Italy, and elsewhere come full details of the expedition.

The King of France, as well as the League, has raised enormous forces,

and they, being Frenchmen, are certainly not likely to be in our favour.

Holland and Zeeland have armed as promptly as usual, and have prevented

the few ships of our fleet in Antwerp from getting out, whilst the

English themselves are preparing for their defence with great energy....

If the Marquis had come in good time the crossing might then have been

easily effected, by God’s help, as neither the English nor the Hollanders

and Zeelanders were then ready.”

Then Parma passionately protests against Philip’s attitude. Let the King,

he says, tell him plainly what he wishes him to do. He will do it at

all risks and at any cost; but to give him orders to do one thing and

expect him to do another in quite impossible circumstances is unfair.

The position has changed, he continues, and the force brought by the

Armada must be an overwhelming one to clear the seas or the troops from

Flanders cannot cross. “The delay in the coming of the Armada is causing

the total ruin of Flanders, and is hardly less disastrous to the rest

of the States. The country can bear the burden but a short time longer.

The greatest trouble of all is my lack of money. The cost of maintaining

the boats, the keep of the soldiers, the subsidy to Guise and Lorraine,

and the contract with the German mercenaries, is all so great that your

Majesty must provide me with a great sum of money. If I run short, as

indeed I am doing, your Majesty may be certain that evil will befall and

all the past expenditure and effort will be wasted.”[288]

Two months after this, when the death of Santa Cruz had cast a still

deeper gloom over the prospects of the Armada, Parma, now quite

disillusioned, and convinced that the great enterprise would fail, urged

Philip earnestly to allow him to turn the feigned negotiations for peace

into real ones. “I should fail in my duty,” he wrote, “if I did not

tell your Majesty that the general opinion is that if the English are

proceeding straightforwardly, as they profess, and their alarm at your

Majesty’s preparations and great power really inclines them towards you,

it would be better to conclude peace with them. We should thus end the

misery and calamity of these afflicted States, the Catholic religion

would be established in them, and your ancient dominion restored. Besides

this, we should not jeopardise the great fleet which your Majesty

has raised, and we should escape the danger of some disaster causing

you to fail in the conquest of England whilst losing your hold of the

Netherlands. It is thought that it would be much best to try to settle

and pacify everything during your own happy reign, so that all might

prosper by the grace of God and your Majesty’s goodness. Nothing more

honourable and beneficent could happen to us, no step would be more

heartily welcomed by your vassals, or more effectually check your rivals,

especially the heretics, than a good and honourable peace. We should thus

avoid the danger of disaster. If the enterprise were in the condition

we expected it to be, and secrecy had been kept, we might, with God’s

blessing, have looked more confidently for a successful issue. But things

are not as we intended. The English have had time to arm by land and sea,

and form alliances with the Danes and the German Protestants.... They

are well aware of our plans, and we shall have plenty of work to do in

effecting a landing and advancing afterwards, especially if our force is

inadequate.”[289]

And thus, point by point, the greatest soldier of his time lays bare

in letter after letter the weakness of Philip’s position and the

hopelessness of success in the circumstances. But to all Parma’s

remonstrances and advice the King had but one cold, precise reply. The

expedition was to go in God’s own service, and it would be duly carried

through by His help. That being the case, Parma could only stand more

stiffly than ever upon the absolute fulfilment of his conditions, without

which he knew that failure and disgrace would befall him. The sea must be

kept clear of enemies before he would embark a man for England, and he

must have six thousand Spanish veterans from the Armada or he would not

undertake the conquest. To Philip’s embarrassments there seemed no end.

His greatest military officer thus predicted disaster, and would take no

responsibility beyond the letter of his instructions, and Santa Cruz, his

greatest seaman, had assumed the same attitude for similar reasons.

But the death of Santa Cruz in February plunged the King into deeper

difficulty than ever; for although it allowed him to control the details

of the command more completely than Santa Cruz would have allowed him

to do, he had no officer of sufficient rank, authority, and experience

to replace the dead admiral. Seamen he had, many of them fine mariners

from the Biscay coast, who had commanded the great flotillas from the

Indies, and had faced with varied fortune the English plundering craft

any time these twenty years; but the tradition lingered that the seaman

was a mere drudge to carry the nobler soldier into the fight, and the

quarrelsome, haughty soldier nobles scorned to serve under a man who

was a seaman only. The men in nominal command of the great ships were

nearly always military officers whose orders the shipmasters obeyed. So

although Oquendo, Bertondona, and Recalde, with a half score of others,

were as splendid sailors as ever ploughed the seas, the supreme command

of the Armada could not be given to such as they. The Spanish nobles were

jealous of each other, each standing upon his dignity in a way that to

modern men looks ridiculous, but which to them was a matter of the first

concern in life.

The man to be appointed to command, since the King himself could not go,

must be of rank so exalted as to overtop the rest, and yet so amenable

to Philip’s control as to allow the fleet to be commanded practically

by the King from his writing-table. The only man in Spain who seemed to

unite in himself these two qualities was appointed by Philip to lead the

fleet upon which depended the fate of Spain and Catholic Christendom,

and he was of all men the least fit to carry to success such a forlorn

hope as the Armada—the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the magnate and admiral

of Andalusia, who had been so busy collecting ships and stores in Cadiz

and his other ports. He was a dignified noble of early middle age, well

meaning and not without administrative ability in normal circumstances,

though utterly unequal to deal with critical conditions. His high rank

was sufficient to ensure the obedient respect of the other nobles and to

hold the sailor commanders in awe. But, as he plaintively protested to

the King, in dismay, when he was first informed of his appointment, he

was utterly inexperienced in practical warfare both on land and sea. He

knew nothing of navigation, he was always wretchedly seasick as soon as

he lost sight of land, and he was quite unable to bear the expense which

such a command entailed. His wife and friends were more emphatic still,

and ridiculed the idea that such a poor creature as this should assume

a responsibility so tremendous. Perhaps Philip was not sorry to have a

weak and timid commander who would not dare to depart a hair’s breadth

from his orders. At all events, his mind was made up; and Medina Sidonia,

with a shrinking heart and unwilling spirit, was forced to go to Lisbon

to replace the great Santa Cruz as the Captain-General of the Invincible

Armada.[290]

The Tagus was crowded with ships when, in March, 1588, Medina Sidonia

took command. Eleven huge galleons, contributed by Portugal, headed by

the flagship _San Martin_, was to be the squadron of the high admiral.

The Andalusian squadron of fifteen vessels was to be led by Don Pedro

de Valdés; and the famous Biscay seamen Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde

were to lead other squadrons, and Diego Flores yet another. There were

thirty-one armed store-ships, all carrying their quota of fighting-men

as well as sailors, seven-and-twenty pinnaces and sloops, and four

armed galleys, such as in the Mediterranean formed the Spanish fighting

force. In all 114 ships lay there before the white city of Lisbon on

its amphitheatre of hills. Gallant and strong they looked with their

carved and gilded prows, their fluttering silken banners, and the soaring

crucifix upon the highest pinnacle of their bows. But, alas! the dry-rot

of Philip’s system was at the very heart of the enterprise. The soldiers

came still in driblets and unwillingly. Arms were accumulating in one

part of Spain, whilst the men to bear them were mustered in another.

Stores went astray or remained bogged and derelict many miles from their

destination; wine ran short and water went bad upon the ships. The long

delay had caused the bottoms to foul and the seams to gape; and the

overburdened Duke of Medina Sidonia could but clamour more piteously

than Santa Cruz had done for more supplies, more men, more arms, more

money, more everything, unless disaster were to fall upon the expedition.

The Irish and English Catholics on the quays of Lisbon, and the priests

and friars who flocked everywhere, made light of difficulties. Was it

not God’s own fleet, going upon His errand, and could He be beaten? Was

not England tired to death of their heretic Queen and her ministers? and

was not a whole nation waiting with open arms to welcome those who came

as friends and deliverers? And the haughty, confident Spanish nobles,

courtiers, and soldiers, fretting in idleness, scoffed and reviled the

timid councils of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. But the sailormen shook

their heads sadly. They knew that Biscay storms and Channel gales could

not be controlled by swords and pikes, and that at sea Drake and the

West-country ships could sail several points closer to the wind than

could their lumbering round-bowed galleons that looked so mighty.

No day passed without some fresh demand from Medina Sidonia; and at

last Philip himself, long-suffering as he was, began to lose patience,

for the spring was wearing on, and Parma, in despair, was, as we have

seen, praying him either to abandon the enterprise or send him means

for keeping together his dwindling army. At length, in April, it was

impossible to hide any longer the open complaints of the soldier nobles.

Medina Sidonia’s insatiable demands, they said, were prompted by sheer

cowardice, with a view to preventing the sailing of the expedition

altogether. Already he had under his command the strongest force that

ever sailed the seas—130 vessels of an aggregate tonnage of 58,000

tons, 2,431 cannon, and 30,000 men, between soldiers and sailors. All

was ready. The orders to the fleet had been given long since—orders that

prescribed a code of conduct for the rough seamen and men-at-arms such as

would have befitted a convent school. There was to be no bad language or

loose talk, no dicing or card-playing, no evil living. Prayers and Masses

were to be sung daily, and every man, high and low, was to be confessed

and absolved; for all were going on a sacred crusade against the foes of

God and the faith. The friars and priests, both on the ships and ashore,

exhorted ceaselessly all these reckless soldiers and half-savage sailors,

until, with hearts aflame, they too began to scowl at the tardy Duke, who

alone seemed to hold them back from their heaven-sent mission.

At length, at the end of April, peremptory command came from Philip that

the Armada must sail at once. The old orders to Santa Cruz were repeated.

The fleet must go straight up the Channel to the North Foreland,

avoiding an engagement if possible, until the main body of the English

fleet should be met, as he thought it would, off Margate, where it was

to be defeated or held in check, and then Parma and his army were to

be protected on their way across to the Thames. All difficulties and

dangers in such a plan were ignored or smoothed over by Philip. The

warnings of years had been lost upon him. He still counted upon his big

ships outmanœuvring and gaining the wind of the English craft; he still

believed that the old grappling tactics were possible, in the face of

Drake’s new strategy and the superior build of the English ships. And he

broke faith with Parma too. Parma had never wavered in his condition. He

would not cross the sea until he was reinforced by six thousand Spanish

veterans from the Armada; and yet in these last instructions to Medina

Sidonia it was left to his discretion whether these veterans should be

sent. Thus all the elements of discord existed before the great fleet

sailed. An almost monkish discipline was enjoined on the fleet by the

King, and it is clear that Philip himself had worked his spirit into a

state of fervour which made him believe that sanctimoniousness would

compensate for the absence of practical provisions for success. Saints’

names alone formed the watchwords, Jesus for Sunday, the Holy Ghost for

Monday, the Holy Trinity for Tuesday, and so on; whilst the ships’ boys

were to chant the Salve and good-morrow at daybreak and the Ave Maria at

sunset on every vessel.

On the 25th April, 1588, the sacred banner was delivered to the Duke by

Philip’s Viceroy, the Archduke Albert, in Lisbon Cathedral; and thence

with raised crosses, swinging censers, flaming candles, and chanting

priests it was borne before the whole kneeling hosts of the Armada in

the great square of the city. And then, sped by prayers and psalms of

rogation, the Armada, with its cargo of hopes and fears, tried for a

month in vain to get out of the Tagus, with a boisterous westerly gale

blowing full into the mouth of the river. But at length, at the end of

May, 1588, the fleet got clear out to sea; the Duke complaining to the

last of his subordinates and of his ships to the King, and praying that

God would avert disaster. Contrary winds still held the fleet back for a

fortnight more on the coast, and then, on the 19th June, a great storm

came and scattered the ships like chaff. Some, with the Duke, fled in

dire danger to shelter in Corunna, some even were blown within sight

of the Scilly Isles, and many ran into the Biscay and Galician ports.

Confusion, utter and complete, overcame the host. Many of the ships were

crippled, spars broken, sails split, and planks started. Provisions were

spoilt; the long delay had consumed stores and water; and again Medina

Sidonia appealed to the King to abandon an enterprise which seemed so

ill-starred, and again he clamoured for more stores, more men, more

money, more arms.

On the 24th June, in despair, he wrote to the King as follows: “When

your Majesty ordered me to take command of this fleet I gave many

reasons why I ought not to undertake it.... I saw that it was going

against a powerful nation, which had the help of its neighbours, and

that the task would require a much larger force than that collected at

Lisbon; I therefore declined the command.... Since then the ships have

suffered much, and the fleet is now greatly inferior to that of the

English; the crews are weakened by sickness, and numbers fall ill daily

in consequence of bad food.... The provisions are rotten, the water

is stinking, and our stores will not last two months under the most

favourable conditions.”[291] Then he goes on to say that all the power of

Spain, all the King’s hopes, credit, and prestige, are entrusted to this

Armada, and its loss would mean irretrievable ruin. “It would be unwise,”

he says, “to run such a risk even with equal forces, but much more so

with such an inferior force as we have now, the men inexperienced, and

the officers, on my conscience I assure your Majesty, hardly any of them

knowing or capable of doing their duty.... Believe me, your Majesty, we

are very weak; pray do not allow any one to persuade you otherwise.” The

timid Duke was full of forebodings, but Don Pedro de Valdés and other

officers were writing at the same time to the King, impatiently scoffing

at the delay, and Philip sternly, almost angrily, ordered Medina Sidonia

to carry out his instructions without further parley—to patch up and

collect his vessels again and sail up the Channel, with God’s blessing,

to conquer the heretics who were holding the fair land of England.

And thus Philip the Prudent cast to the winds all the dictates of

prudence. Parma, at all events, could not be accused either of ineptitude

or of cowardice, and yet he had twice solemnly warned his uncle to

abandon his plan, now that all Europe knew of it and was prepared to

frustrate it. If Philip had determined (as indeed he had) to run all

risks and depend upon the special interposition of Providence in his

favour, it was surely the height of folly to entrust the task, upon the

success of which the whole future of his cause depended, to two unwilling

commanders, both of whom deliberately foretold failure. It was, perhaps,

impossible for him to dismiss Parma at short notice; but the letter

from Medina Sidonia quoted above would amply have justified either his

recall or the abandonment of the enterprise for which he, the commander,

foretold defeat. Like Villeneuve at Trafalgar, Medina Sidonia was a

beaten man before he met his enemy; but Philip, blind to all worldly

considerations and steadfast in his faith in himself and his cause,

elected to strike his supreme blow against Elizabeth with an obsolete and

faulty weapon wielded by a feeble hand.

With plentiful prayers and the blessings of Churchmen, with abundant

copies of Father Parsons’s allocutions to his countrymen on the

blessings of Spanish rule, and Cardinal Allen’s exhortations in favour of

the old faith, the Armada sailed. The victuals were scanty and bad, the

water was putrid, the craft overcrowded and fever-haunted; the admiral

was faint-hearted and prophesied disaster; but the crank ships, with

strained spars and gaping seams, though they looked so brave and loomed

so high, sailed out of Corunna on the 12th July, 1588, doomed beforehand

to disaster, which only a miracle from on high could avert from them. How

the disaster fell there is no space here to relate; but a week’s running

fight up the Channel, and one hopeless battle at bay, struck the first

irreparable blow at the fable of Philip’s irresistible power, and the

prestige that clung still around the name of the Emperor and his son.

We have followed the process by which circumstances and the personal

character of the chief actors in the great drama had driven Philip, after

thirty years of diplomacy in trying to win England to his side without

any concessions on his part, into a violent course at last. The result

of his over-caution for so many years had been that he was forced to be

reckless after all or fail entirely; the outcome of his fatal desire to

win all for himself without risking anything was that when the crisis

came he had to risk everything on a losing hazard. Elizabeth was more

fortunate in the issue than her brother-in-law, but hardly more wise.

Almost to the day when the Armada sighted her coasts she was beguiled

into a belief that her negotiations with Parma might avert war, though

Walsingham and the sailors were almost in despair at what they saw was

the terrible risk she ran. She was far more hard-fisted and parsimonious

than Philip, too, when once it was brought home to her that she and

her people would have to fight for the independence of England. Her

men, unlike those at the bidding of Philip, were full of initiative and

boldness, though they had to cope with material obstacles almost as great

as his. All was unready in England when the peril loomed near, and even

if the Queen had been as liberal as she was stingy, sufficient stores

could not in the circumstances have been improvised and concentrated.

But every one in England, high and low, did his best. There was but

little of the vapouring self-confidence that led the Spanish soldiers

into the disillusionment which destroyed their nation’s potency; but the

predictions and assurances with regard to England of Parsons and the

English Jesuits and Spanish pensioners, were all signally falsified. The

moderate English Catholics, who quite conceivably might have welcomed

the adoption of an English Catholic successor to Elizabeth under Spanish

patronage, were indignant at the Jesuit-Spanish plan to foist Philip’s

daughter upon the throne after deposing Elizabeth and submitting the

country to conquest. The treatment meted out to Englishmen in Spain by

the Inquisition had given even to Catholics no desire to live under a

rule which made such an institution a branch of Government. So, when the

time of trial came, the Howards, Catholics though they were, and often as

they had been parties to Philip’s plans, fought against him as stoutly

as the veriest Puritan of them all. A generation had passed away since

Philip had personally felt the pulse of England. Allen, Englefield, and

Parsons had not, for many years before the Armada sailed, seen with

their own eyes the growing spirit of patriotism which under Elizabeth

was binding Englishmen as such together, independent of their creeds;

and the Jesuit Churchmen and pensioned laymen who advised Philip that

the English people would welcome the men on the Armada with open arms

as liberators were as the blind leading the blind, for they were not in

touch with nor understood the England that had arisen since their time.

For the rest of Philip’s life, ten years, a more pressing task even than

that of winning England by finesse or force claimed his every effort. The

murder of Henry III. made a Protestant King of France; and to prevent

the country from joining the Reformation Philip and Spain would have

to fight until the last dollar was spent and the last Spanish soldier

was dead. Again, the Infanta was his candidate for the Crown of all or

a portion of her mother’s land; and, as in the case of England, the

forces of patriotism in the end overrode the differences of creed, and

all Frenchmen coalesced to oppose foreign aggression. Henry IV. “went to

Mass,” it is true, and that France remained a Catholic country through

his efforts was the only great triumph of Philip’s strenuous life.

From the time when the Armada, or such of the ships as escaped the

wild Atlantic gales, crept home, plague-stricken, battered wrecks, and

the cry of mortal anguish went up from all Spanish hearts at the cruel

disappointment of their hopes, Philip, it is true, continued to strive

against the woman who had beaten him. These efforts I have described

elsewhere: but with no hope of conquering England by frontal attack was

one little expedition after another with infinite difficulty and friction

fitted out thenceforward in Corunna. For that Philip knew well the time

had passed, notwithstanding the continued exhortations of the Churchmen

and pensioned refugees. Thenceforward it was his plan to incite Irish

Catholics to revolt, to render Elizabeth unsafe and uneasy, in order to

prevent her from aiding Henry of Navarre in France; to look forward to

the time when her death, by natural or unnatural means, should give him a

chance of manœuvring a sovereign apt for his purpose upon the throne of

England. With the failure of Philip’s thirty-five years’ struggle to gain

the control of England for his ends under two sister Queens, the downfall

of his own system and the decay of Spain were absolutely inevitable,

though the tradition of its potency died hard and was maintained long

after its reality had fled.

It is bootless to consider what would have been the result if Philip’s

methods had been less rigid, and if he could have fought his enemies with

their own weapons; for if such had been the case he would not have been

Philip, and the situation that made the long struggle incumbent upon him

would never have been created. But, though on his agonising death-bed

in his poor cell at the Escorial, in the autumn of 1598, he knew that

Elizabeth still defied him, and the Dutch Protestants repudiated his

rule, that wherever the yoke of Rome was shaken off it could be imposed

no more, he still held firmly to his faith beyond all earthly evidence,

that God in His good way and time would send triumphant victory to the

cause for which He and Philip had fought in partnership—the supremacy of

Catholicism and the preponderance of Spain amongst the nations.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Moryson to the Council, 7th October 1552. Record Office.

[2] Thirlby, Hoby, and Moryson to the Council. State Papers, Germany.

[3] Sir Philip Hoby to Cecil. Hatfield Papers and Haynes.

[4] Papiers d’État du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. iv.

[5] The envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.

[6] The Emperor to the envoys. Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.

[7] The Imperial envoys to the Emperor. Papiers d’État, vol. iv.

[8] The Emperor to the envoys, 20th July.

[9] Contemporary account by Antonio de Guaras. Edited by Garnett.

[10] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii

[11] Renard to the Emperor. Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.

[12] He had, in fact, several children by the Lady Doña Isabel de

Osorio, with whom he had lived since his young wife’s death. The fact

that Granvelle puts the word in the plural proves that this was quite

recognised.

[13] In the private letter which the Emperor wrote to his son on the

subject he says: “if the choice falls upon a foreigner, I think the

English would rather have me than any one else, as they have always

been well disposed towards me. But I can assure you that even greater

dominions” (_i.e._, than England) “would not seduce me nor divert me from

the very different intention which I hold. If, therefore, they should

send and propose this marriage to me, I have thought that it would be

better to suggest you, and the matter could then be carried through

successfully. The benefits and advantages which would accrue are so

great and notorious that they need not be particularised. I only place

it before you for your consideration. Let me know at once what you think

of it, so that we may act accordingly; but keep it strictly secret.”—MS.

Simancas. Printed in the _Retiro, estancia y muerte del Emperador Carlos

V._

[14] Granvelle to Renard. Papiers d’État, vol. iv.

[15] Although Renard at this interview of 6th August did not, according

to his own statement, bring forward Philip’s name to the Queen, public

rumour was already busy with it. Noailles three days afterwards wrote

to the King of France saying that the Imperial ambassadors had proposed

Philip to the Queen: “and it was not now so sure that she would

marry Courtenay. It is thought that the effect of his presence has

greatly damaged his reputation, although he is quite handsome and well

bred.”—“_Mais la nourriture que vous, Sire, pouvez penser qu’il á pris

ayant été toujours fermé dés son enfance dans des murailles lui a laissé

si peu de gravité et d’experience qui je crains beaucoup qu’il soit

pour se conduire á telle fortune, Combien que la commune de toute cette

province la lui desire._”—Ambassades de Noailles.

[16] The Princess in question was the daughter of Eleanor, sister of the

Emperor, and now the widow of Francis I. of France.

[17] Renard had seen Bishop Gardiner, the Queen’s principal minister, the

day before, and had tried to draw some declaration from him, although he

was known to be in favour of the Courtenay match. The Bishop said that

he would not suggest any name to the Queen; but if she asked his advice

as to marrying a foreigner, he would tell her that, for the good of her

country and her own safety, it would be better to marry an Englishman, as

the very name of foreigner was hated by the English. “As for the Prince

of Spain,” continued Gardiner, “if she married him, the people would

never tolerate the Spanish character; which even the Flemish subjects of

the Emperor detest; besides which, the marriage would mean for England a

perpetual war with France.”—Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.

[18] Philip wrote to his father, “If the marriage should be proposed for

your Majesty, that would be the best course. But if your Majesty persists

in the view you state to me in your letter and you think better to treat

of the marriage for me, you know already that as an entirely obedient

son I have no other will than yours, and above all on an affair of this

importance. I therefore leave it to your Majesty to act as you deem

best.”—MS. Simancas. _Retiro estancia y muerte del Emperador_, etc.

[19] A curious account of these preparations will be found in Machyn’s

Diary.

[20] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. ii. Noailles, in describing the scene

to the King of France, says that when de Geneda entered the boat that

was to convey him down the Thames on his way to Spain, he announced that

Prince Philip would visit Queen Mary in the following March on his way to

Flanders; and Noailles advises the King of France to muster his ships in

the Channel to prevent the Prince’s passage.

[21] Antonio de Guaras.

[22] Antonio de Guaras, who was present in the Abbey. It was noticed by

the Imperial ambassadors that Princess Elizabeth, who at the ceremony

took the place due to a Royal Princess, with Anne of Cleves, exchanged

significant glances with Noailles whenever she met him. In the course

of the day she complained to the French ambassador of the weight of the

coronet she was wearing. “Patience!” was his reply, “it will soon produce

a better one.”—Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, i. p. 436.

[23] The details of these interesting interviews are in Renard’s Letters,

Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i.

[24] Renard to the Emperor, 31st October. Record Office, Brussels

Transcripts. Mary had apparently waited until the Acts had passed

declaring her mother’s marriage legal. This was effected on the 28th

October.

[25] The Emperor to his son, 21st January, 1554, asking him to ratify the

treaty, notwithstanding the hardness of the conditions. MSS. Simancas,

Estado 808.

[26] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.

[27] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.

[28] Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, vol. i. 979.

[29] Documentos Ineditos, vol. iii.

[30] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.

[31] Ambassades de Noailles, Instruction à Lamarque, vol. iii.

[32] Documentos Ineditos, iii.

[33] Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels

Transcripts, vol. i.

[34] Renard to the Emperor, 8th March. Record Office, Brussels

Transcripts, vol. i.

[35] Ibid.

[36] As showing the excited condition of the public mind even yet with

regard to the marriage, it may be mentioned that the day before this

scene was passing, on the 6th March, two bands of about 300 London

urchins collected in a field—probably Moorfields—and engaged in strenuous

combat against each other; one band representing the Queen’s and

Philip’s forces, and the other those of the King of France and Wyatt’s.

Noailles, in his account of the affair—though Renard does not mention the

detail—says that the unfortunate boy who was made to represent the Prince

of Spain was captured and hanged, very nearly fatally. The leaders of

the fight on both sides were well whipped and imprisoned by the Queen’s

orders.—Ambassades de Noailles, iii. 130. Renard’s Letter, 9th March.

Record Office, Brussels Transcripts, and Queen Jane and Queen Mary.

[37] Muñoz’s narrative, Sociedad de Bibliofilos.

[38] Muñoz’s narrative.

[39] On this and on all occasions that English fashions of the time

are described by Spaniards, mention was made of the enormous number of

ornamental buttons that English gentlemen wore on their garments.

[40] Muñoz’s narrative.

[41] Muñoz’s narrative.

[42] In fact they shipped a large number of horses.

[43] Muñoz’s narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.

[44] Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.

[45] Renard to the Emperor. Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.

[46] Renard to the Emperor, 9th June. Record Office, Brussels Transcripts.

[47] Noailles to the King, 17th June, 1554. Ambassades.

[48] Renard to the Prince, 13th March, Record Office, Brussels

Transcripts.

[49] Papiers d’État de Granvelle, vol. iv.

[50] The only warrant for the seasick story is that contained in a letter

from Bedford and Fitzwalter in Spain to the Council, saying that the

Prince “was wont to be very sick upon the sea,” and proposing that some

preparations should be made at Plymouth for his landing there in case of

need. But, in fact, Philip had a smooth voyage, and remained at anchor on

the _Espiritu Santo_ in Southampton harbour for nearly twenty-four hours

before he landed, and was in perfect health.

[51] The bulk of the Spanish fleet was not allowed even to enter the

harbour of Southampton for provisions and water, which only after much

unpleasantness and discourtesy they were able to obtain at Portsmouth.

[52] Whilst they all praise the sumptuous fittings of the rooms, not a

single Spanish narrator says a word of the story told by the malicious

Venetian, that Philip was shocked by the words “Fidei Defensor” being

embroidered on the hangings.

[53] Enriquez’s narrative. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.

[54] Philip’s courtiers sneered that Browne took the King’s horses to his

own stables to recover from the voyage, in order that he might have a

chance of keeping them altogether.

[55] Muñoz’s and Enriquez’s narratives. Sociedad de Bibliofilos.

[56] Narrative by Car, who was a servant to Pescara. Printed in Milan,

1554. See the author’s “Year After the Armada.”

[57] All foreign visitors to England in the sixteenth century remarked

upon the great profusion of plate used for household purposes at the time.

[58] Enriquez’s narrative.

[59] Philip had sent a Spanish magistrate, Alcalde Bribiesca, to England

before him, to dispose of cases in his own following. The English were

bitterly jealous of this, and refused to acknowledge any jurisdiction for

him.

[60] Enriquez’s narrative. The narrator was a kinsman of the Duchess.

[61] This reminds one of Queen Elizabeth’s dancing, which was praised as

“high and disposedly.”

[62] Queen Jane and Queen Mary (Camden Society), Foxe’s Acts and

Monuments, and other contemporary chronicles.

[63] John Elder’s Letter, Camden Society.

[64] John Elder’s Letter, Camden Society.

[65] MSS. Simancas, Estado 808.

[66] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.

[67] Ambassades de Noailles, vol. iii. 311.

[68] Letters from both Mary and Pole to the King of France advocating the

conclusion of Peace are in Ambassades de Noailles, vol. iii. 323-4.

[69] Queen Jane and Queen Mary.