Part 25

"That the conspiracy with which these men were charged was a fiction cannot be doubted. They had come to England under a prohibition to take any part in secular concerns, and with the sole view of exercising the spiritual functions of the priesthood. ... At the same time it must be owned that the answers which six of them gave to the queries were far from satisfactory. Their hesitation to deny the opposing power (a power then indeed maintained by the greater number of divines in Catholic kingdoms) rendered their loyalty very problematical, in case of an attempt to enforce the bull by any foreign prince. It furnished sufficient reason to watch their conduct with an eye of jealousy ... but could not justify their execution for an imaginary offence."

_J. Lingard, History of England, volume 8, chapter 3._

"It is probable that not many more than 200 Catholics were executed, as such, in Elizabeth's reign, and this was ten score too many. ... 'Dod reckons them at 191; Milner has raised the list to 204. Fifteen of these, according to him, suffered for denying the Queen's supremacy, 126 for exercising their ministry, and the rest for being reconciled to the Romish church. Many others died of hardships in prison, and many were deprived of their property. There seems, nevertheless [says Hallam], to be good reason for doubting whether anyone who was executed might not have saved his life by explicitly denying the Pope's power to depose the Queen.'"

_J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands, chapter 17, with foot-note._

ALSO IN: _J. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1574. Emancipation of villeins on the royal domains. Practical end of serfdom.

See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: ENGLAND.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1575. Sovereignty of Holland and Zealand offered to Queen Elizabeth, and declined.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1581. Marriage proposals of the Duke of Anjou declined by Queen Elizabeth.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1583. The expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Formal possession taken of Newfoundland.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1583.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1584-1590. Raleigh's colonizing attempts in America.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1584-1586; and 1587-1590.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1586. Leicester in the Low Countries. Queen Elizabeth's treacherous dealing with the struggling Netherlanders.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587. Mary Queen of Scots and the Catholic conspiracies. Her trial and execution.

"Maddened by persecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion within or deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics listened to schemes of assassination, to which the murder of William of Orange lent at the moment a terrible significance. The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the host before setting out for London 'to shoot the Queen with his dagg,' was followed by measures of natural severity, by the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry, by a vigourous purification of the Inns of Court, where a few Catholics lingered, and by the dispatch of fresh batches of priests to the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the House of Commons who had served in the Queen's household, on a similar charge, brought the Parliament together in a transport of horror and loyalty. {842} All Jesuits and seminary priests were banished from the realm on pain of death. A bill for the security of the Queen disqualified any claimant of the succession who had instigated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from ever succeeding to the crown. The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or Scotland to aid her, of the baffled revolt of the English Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, she bent for a moment to submission. 'Let me go,' she wrote to Elizabeth; 'let me retire from this island to some solitude where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I will sign away every right which either I or mine can claim.' But the cry was useless, and her despair found a new and more terrible hope in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew and approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of young Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal household, to kill the Queen; but plot and approval alike passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's correspondence revealed her guilt. In spite of her protests, a commission of peers sat as her judges at Fotheringay Castle; and their verdict of 'guilty' annihilated, under the provisions of the recent statute, her claim to the crown. The streets of London blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out from steeple to steeple, at the news of her condemnation; but, in spite of the prayer of Parliament for her execution, and the pressure of the Council, Elizabeth shrank from her death. The force of public opinion, however, was now carrying all before it, and the unanimous demand of her people wrested at last a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung the warrant signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves the responsibility of executing it. Mary died [February 8, 1587] on a scaffold which was erected in the castle hall at Fotheringay, as dauntlessly as she had lived. 'Do not weep,' she said to her ladies, 'I have given my word for you.' 'Tell my friends,' she charged Melville, 'that I die a good Catholic.'"

_J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 7, section 6._

"'Who now doubts,' writes an eloquent modern writer, 'that it would have been wiser in Elizabeth to spare her life?' Rather, the political wisdom of a critical and difficult act has never in the world's history been more signally justified. It cut away the only interest on which the Scotch and English Catholics could possibly have combined. It determined Philip upon the undisguised pursuit of the English throne, and it enlisted against him and his projects the passionate patriotism of the English nobility."

_J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 34._

ALSO IN: _A. De Lamartine, Mary Stuart, chapter 31-34._

_L. S. F. Buckingham, Memoirs of Mary Stuart, volume 2, chapter 5-6._

_L. von Ranke, History of England, book 3, chapter 5._

_J. D. Leader, Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity._

_C. Nau, History of Mary Stuart._

_F. A. Mignet, History of Mary Queen of Scots, chapters 9-10._

England: A. D. 1587-1588. The wrath of Catholic Europe. Spanish vengeance and ambition astir.

"The death of Mary [Queen of Scots] may have preserved England from the religious struggle which would have ensued upon her accession to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth from only one, and that the weakest of her enemies; and it exposed her to a charge of injustice and cruelty, which, being itself well founded, obtained belief for any other accusation, however extravagantly false. It was not Philip [of Spain] alone who prepared for making war upon her with a feeling of personal hatred: throughout Romish Christendom she was represented as a monster of iniquity; that representation was assiduously set forth, not in ephemeral libels, but in histories, in dramas, in poems, and in hawker's pamphlets; and when the king of Spain equipped an armament for the invasion of England, volunteers entered it with a passionate persuasion that they were about to bear a part in a holy war against the wickedest and most inhuman of tyrants. The Pope exhorted Philip to engage in this great enterprize for the sake of the Roman Catholic and apostolic church, which could not be more effectually nor more meritoriously extended than by the conquest of England; so should he avenge his own private and public wrongs; so should he indeed prove himself most worthy of the glorious title of Most Catholic King. And he promised, as soon as his troops should have set foot in that island, to supply him with a million of crowns of gold towards the expenses of the expedition. ... Such exhortations accorded with the ambition, the passions, and the rooted principles of the king of Spain. The undertaking was resolved."

_R. Southey, Lives of the British Admirals, volume 2, page 319._

"The succours which Elizabeth had from time to time afforded to the insurgents of the Netherlands was not the only cause of Philip's resentment and of his desire for revenge. She had fomented the disturbances in Portugal, ... and her captains, among whom Sir Francis Drake was the most active, had for many years committed unjustifiable depredations on the Spanish possessions of South America, and more than once on the coasts of the Peninsula itself. ... By Spanish historians, these hostilities are represented as unprovoked in their origin, and as barbarous in their execution, and candor must allow that there is but too much justice in the complaint."

_S. A. Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal, book 4, section 1, chapter 1._

ALSO IN: _J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 35._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1588. The Spanish Armada.

"Perhaps in the history of mankind there has never been a vast project of conquest conceived and matured in so protracted and yet so desultory a manner, as was this famous Spanish invasion. ... At last, on the 28th, 29th and 30th May, 1588, the fleet, which had been waiting at Lisbon more than a month for favourable weather, set sail from that port, after having been duly blessed by the Cardinal Archduke Albert, viceroy of Portugal. There were rather more than 130 ships in all, divided into 10 squadrons. ... The total tonnage of the fleet was 59,120: the number of guns was 3,165. Of Spanish troops there were 19,295 on board: there were 8,252 sailors and 2,088 galley-slaves. Besides these, there was a force of noble volunteers, belonging to the most illustrious houses of Spain, with their attendants, amounting to nearly 2,000 in all. ... The size of the ships ranged from 1,200 tons to 300. The galleons, of which there were about 60, were huge round-stemmed clumsy vessels, with bulwarks three or four feet thick, and built up at stem and stern, like castles. {843} The galeasses--of which there were four--were a third larger than the ordinary galley, and were rowed each by 300 galley-slaves. They consisted of an enormous towering fortress at the stern, a castellated structure almost equally massive in front, with seats for the rowers amidships. At stem and stern and between each of the slaves' benches were heavy cannon. These galeasses were floating edifices, very wonderful to contemplate. They were gorgeously decorated. There were splendid state-apartments, cabins, chapels, and pulpits in each, and they were amply provided with awnings, cushions, streamers, standards, gilded saints and bands of music. To take part in an ostentatious pageant, nothing could be better devised. To fulfil the great objects of a war-vessel--to sail and to fight--they were the worst machines ever launched upon the ocean. The four galleys were similar to the galeasses in every respect except that of size, in which they were by one-third inferior. All the ships of the fleet--galeasses, galleys, galleons, and hulks--were so encumbered with top-hamper, so over-weighted in proportion to their draught of water, that they could bear but little canvas, even with smooth seas and light and favourable winds. ... Such was the machinery which Philip had at last set afloat, for the purpose of dethroning Elizabeth and establishing the inquisition in England. One hundred and forty ships, 11,000 Spanish veterans, as many more recruits, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese, 2,000 grandees, as many galley slaves, and 300 barefooted friars and inquisitors. The plan was simple. Medina Sidonia [the captain-general of the Armada] was to proceed straight from Lisbon to Calais roads: there he was to wait for the Duke of Parma [Spanish commander in the Netherlands], who was to come forth from Newport, Sluys, and Dunkirk, bringing with him his 17,000 veterans, and to assume the chief command of the whole expedition. They were then to cross the channel to Dover, land the army of Parma, reinforced with 6,000 Spaniards from the fleet, and with these 23,000 men Alexander was to march at once upon London. Medina Sidonia was to seize and fortify the Isle of Wight, guard the entrance of the harbours against any interference from the Dutch and English fleets, and--so soon as the conquest of England had been effected--he was to proceed to Ireland. ... A strange omission had however been made in the plan from first to last. The commander of the whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head was the whole responsibility. Not a gun was to be fired--if it could be avoided--until he had come forth with his veterans to make his junction with the Invincible Armada off Calais. Yet there was no arrangement whatever to enable him to come forth--not the slightest provision to effect that junction. ... Medina could not go to Farnese [Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma], nor could Farnese come to Medina. The junction was likely to be difficult, and yet it had never once entered the heads of Philip or his counsellors to provide for that difficulty. ... With as much sluggishness as might have been expected from their clumsy architecture, the ships of the Armada consumed nearly three weeks in sailing from Lisbon to the neighbourhood of Cape Finisterre. Here they were overtaken by a tempest. ... Of the squadron of galleys, one was already sunk in the sea, and two of the others had been conquered by their own slaves. The fourth rode out the gale with difficulty, and joined the rest of the fleet, which ultimately reassembled at Coruña; the ships having, in distress, put in first at Vivera, Ribadeo, Gijon, and other northern ports of Spain. At the Groyne--as the English of that day were accustomed to call Coruña--they remained a month, repairing damages and recruiting; and on the 22d of July (N. S.) the Armada set sail. Six days later, the Spaniards took soundings, thirty leagues from the Scilly Islands, and on Friday, the 29th of July, off the Lizard, they had the first glimpse of the land of promise presented them by Sixtus V. of which they had at last come to take possession. On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand beacon-fires from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle of Wight to Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that the enemy was at last upon them."

_J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands, chapter 19._

ALSO IN: _J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 36._

_J. A. Froude, The Spanish Story of the Armada._

_R. Southey, Lives of British Admirals, volume 2, pages 327-334._

_C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 5th series, chapter 27._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1588. The Destruction of the Armada.

"The great number of the English, the whole able-bodied population being drilled, counterbalanced the advantage possessed, from their universal use of firearms, by the invaders. In all the towns there were trained bands (a civic militia); and, either in regular service or as volunteers, thousands of all ranks had received a military training on the continent. The musters represented 100,000 men as ready to assemble at their head-quarters at a day's notice. It was, as nearly always, in its military administration that the vulnerable point of England lay. The fitting-out and victualling of the navy was disgraceful; and it is scarcely an excuse for the councillors that they were powerless against the parsimony of the Queen. The Government maintained its hereditary character from the days of Ethelred the Unready, and the arrangements for assembling the defensive forces were not really completed by them until after the Armada was destroyed. The defeat of the invaders, if they had landed, must have been accomplished by the people. The flame of patriotism never burnt purer: all Englishmen alike, Romanists, Protestant Episcopalians, and Puritans, were banded together to resist the invader. Every hamlet was on the alert for the beacon-signal. Some 15,000 men were already under arms in London; the compact Tilbury Fort was full, and a bridge of boats from Tilbury to Gravesend blocked the Thames. Philip's preparations had been commensurate with the grandeur of his scheme. The dockyards in his ports in the Low Countries, the rivers, the canals, and the harbours of Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Italy, echoed the clang of the shipwrights' hammers. A vast armament, named, as if to provoke Nemesis, the 'Invincible Armada,' on which for three years the treasures of the American mines had been lavished, at length rode the seas, blessed with Papal benedictions and under the patronage of the saints. It comprised 65 huge galleons, of from 700 to 1,300 tons, with sides of enormous thickness, and built high like castles; four great galleys, each carrying 50 guns and 450 men, and rowed by 300 slaves; 56 armed merchantmen, and 20 pinnaces. These 129 vessels were armed with 2,430 brass and iron guns of the best manufacture, but each gun was furnished only with 50 rounds. {844} They carried 5,000 seamen: Parma's army amounted to 30,000 men--Spaniards, Germans, Italians and Walloons; and 19,000 Castilians and Portuguese, with 1,000 gentlemen volunteers, were coming to join him. To maintain this army after it had effected a landing, a great store of provisions--sufficient for 40,000 men for six months--was placed on board. The overthrow of this armament was effected by the navy and the elements. From the Queen's parsimony the State had only 36 ships in the fleet; but the City of London furnished 33 vessels; 18 were supplied by the liberality of private individuals; and nearly 100 smaller ships were obtained on hire; so that the fleet was eventually brought up to nearly 30,000 tons, carrying 16,000 men, and equipped with 837 guns. But there was sufficient ammunition for only a single day's fighting. Fortunately for Elizabeth's Government, the Spaniards, having been long driven from the channel by privateers, were now unacquainted with its currents; and they could procure, as the Dutch were in revolt, only two or three competent pilots. The Spanish commander was the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, an incapable man, but he had under him some of the ablest of Philip's officers. When the ships set out from the Tagus, on the 29th May, 1588, a storm came on, and the Armada had to put into Coruña to refit. From that port the Armada set out at the beginning of July, in lovely weather, with just enough wind to wave from the mastheads the red crosses which they bore as symbols of their crusade. The Duke of Medina entered the Channel on the 18th July, and the rear of his fleet was immediately harassed by a cannonade from the puny ships of England, commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham (Lord High Admiral), with Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Winter, Fenner, and other famous captains. With the loss of three galleons from fire or boarding, the Spanish commander, who was making for Flanders to embark Parma's army, anchored in Calais roads. In the night fire-ships--an ancient mode of warfare which had just been reintroduced by the Dutch--passed in among the Armada, a fierce gale completed their work, and morning revealed the remnant of the Invincible Armada scattered along the coast from Calais to Ostend. Eighty vessels remained to Medina, and with these he sailed up the North Sea, to round the British Isles. But the treacherous currents of the Orkneys and the Hebrides were unknown to his officers, and only a few ships escaped the tempests of the late autumn. More than two-thirds of the expedition perished, and of the remnant that again viewed the hills of Spain all but a few hundreds returned only to die."

_H. R. Clinton, From Crécy to Assye, chapter 7._