English Catholics
were expected
to support the
Spanish invasion
English merchants helped
supply the Armada
Elizabeth’s ministers as well as Philip
expected that the half of England’s
population that remained Catholic would
rise in support of the Spanish invaders after
any landing. Jewel-hilted swords, intended
as Philip’s gifts for English Catholic nobles,
were found in a box on board the fatally
damaged flagship Nuestra Señora del
Rosario after the English vice-admiral
Sir Francis Drake boarded.
The Spanish king’s spies had reported
beforehand that the “greater part of
Lancashire is Catholic... and the town
of Liverpool”, and that the counties
of Westmorland and Northumberland
remained “really faithful to his majesty”.
In addition, another Spanish assessment
in August 1586 estimated that 2,000
men could be recruited in Lincolnshire
“which was well effected to the Catholic
religion”, plus 3,000 more in Norfolk, while
Hampshire was “full of Catholics”. This lastreport may have
contained some
truth. In early June 1586 Henry Radcliffe,
4th Earl of Sussex, suppressed what he
described as an intended rebellion “in the
country near Portsmouth” and arrested
some of its leaders.
Elizabeth’s government took stern
measures to contain the threat posed from
what they saw as potential fifth columnists.
Recusants who refused to attend Anglican
services were disarmed, and those regarded
as most dangerous were imprisoned without
trial in fortresses such as Wisbech Castle in
Cambridgeshire – arguably the world’s first
internment camps.
In Bedfordshire, Henry Grey, 6th Earl of
Kent, asked how he should deal with female
recusants who were “married to husbands
that are conformable in religion”. Godfrey
Foljambe arrested his own grandmother,
writing that “[I] now have her in custody”.Some among
Elizabeth’s subjects
placed profit ahead
of patriotism. In 1587,
her ministers learnt
that 12 English merchants – some based
in Bristol – had been selling supplies and
equipment to the Armada “to the hurt of
her majesty and undoing of the
realm, if not redressed”. Their
nine cargoes of contraband,
valued at between £300
and £2,000 each, contained
provisions, ammunition,
gunpowder and ordnance. The
fate of these reckless traders
(perhaps Catholic sympathisers)
remains unknown but it’s unlikely
they’d have enjoyed the queen’s
mercy, which was limited at best.Support for Elizabeth was sometimes
less than enthusiastic. Sir John Gilbert,
who organised Devon’s defence against the
Spanish Armada, refused permission for his
ships to join Drake’s western squadron, but
instead allowed them to sail on their planned
trading voyage to South America in March
1588 in defiance of naval orders.A mid-16th-century print
shows two merchant ships
firing cannon at one
another. English merchants
helped supply the ArmadaA shilling struck to
commemorate the
marriage of Mary I
to Philip II of SpainF
or much of
Elizabeth’s reign,
the threat of an
invasion of England
by Spain was very
real. Though
Spanish King Philip II had been
the queen’s brother-in-law
(having married Mary I),
relations between Catholic Spain
and England – a Protestant
nation under Elizabeth – had
deteriorated, and from 1585 the
two countries were at war. The
following year, Philip began
developing a scheme to send
a fleet of nearly 130 ships from
Spain to England, with the aim
of escorting a 26,000-strong
invasion army across the English
Channel from Flanders.
If the mission had succeeded,
the future of Elizabeth I and her
Protestant England would have
looked very black indeed. Had
the force landed as planned near
Margate in Kent in summer
1588, it is likely that battle-hard-
ened Spanish troops would have
been in London within a week.
England would probably have
reverted to the Catholic faith,
and the English might today be
speaking Spanish.
But the Armada under its
commander-in chief, the Duke
of Medina Sidonia, suffered one
of the most signal catastrophes
in naval history. Myth, driven
by Elizabethan propaganda, has
shaped our view of that dramatic
running fight up the English
Channel – yet the Spanish were
defeated not merely by the
queen’s plucky sea dogs fighting
against overwhelming odds, but
by appalling weather, poor
planning, and flawed strategy
and tactics. And this isn’t the
only surprising fact about the
most famous military episode
of the Elizabethan era, as these
eight insights reveal.1
2
BRIDGEMAN/ALAMYElizabethans and the world / Armada