Part 26

In the fighting on the 23d of July, "the Spaniards' shot flew for the most part over the heads of the English, without doing execution, Cock being the only Englishman that died bravely in the midst of his enemies in a ship of his own. The reason of this was, that the English ships, being far less than the enemy's, made the attack with more quickness and agility; and when they had given a broadside, they presently sheered off to a convenient distance, and levelled their shot so directly at the bigger and more unwieldy ships of the Spaniards, as seldom to miss their aim; though the Lord Admiral did not think it safe or proper to grapple with them, as some advised, with much more heat than discretion, because that the enemy's fleet carried a considerable army within their sides, whereas ours had no such advantage. Besides their ships far exceeded ours in number and bulk, and were much stronger and higher built; insomuch that their men, having the opportunity to ply us from such lofty hatches, must inevitably destroy those that were obliged, as it were, to fight beneath them. ... On the 24th day of the month there was a cessation on both sides, and the Lord Admiral sent some of his smaller vessels to the nearest of the English harbours, to fetch a supply of powder and ammunition; then he divided the fleet into four squadrons, the first of which he commanded himself, the second he committed to Drake, the third to Hawkins, and the fourth to Frobisher. He likewise singled out of the main fleet some smaller vessels to begin the attack on all sides at once, in the very dead of the night; but a calm happening spoiled his design." On the 26th "the Spanish fleet sailed forward with a fair and soft gale at southwest and by south; and the English chased them close at the heels; but so far was this Invincible Armada from alarming the sea-coasts with any frightful apprehensions, that the English gentry of the younger sort entered themselves volunteers, and taking leave of their parents, wives, and children, did, with incredible cheerfulness, hire ships at their own charge; and, in pure love to their country, joined the grand fleet in vast numbers. ... On the 27th of this month the Spanish Fleet came to an anchor before Calais, their pilots having acquainted them that if they ventured any farther there was some danger that the force of the current might drive them away into the Northern Channel. Not far from them came likewise the English Admiral to an anchor, and lay within shot of their ships. The English fleet consisted by this time of 140 sail; all of them ships of force, and very tight and nimble sailors, and easily manageable upon a tack. But, however, the main brunt of the engagement lay not upon more than 15 or 16 of them. ... The Lord Admiral got ready eight of his worst ships the very day after the Spaniards came to an anchor; and having bestowed upon them a good plenty of pitch, tar, and rosin, and lined them well with brimstone and other combustible matter, they sent them before the wind, in the dead time of the night, under the conduct of Young and Prowse, into the midst of the Spanish fleet. ... The Spaniards reported that the duke, upon the approach of the fire-ships, ordered the whole fleet to weigh anchor and stand to sea, but that when the danger was over every ship should return to her station. This is what he did himself, and he likewise discharged a great gun as a signal to the rest to do as he did; the report, however, was heard but by very few, by reason their fears had dispersed them at that rate that some of them ventured out of the main ocean, and others sailed up the shallows of Flanders. In the meantime Drake and Fenner played briskly with their cannon upon the Spanish fleet, as it was rendezvousing over against Graveling. ... On the last day of the month the wind blew hard at north-west early in the morning, and the Spanish fleet attempting to get back again to the Straits of Calais, was driven toward Zealand. {845} The English then gave over the chase, because, in the Spaniards' opinion, they perceived them making haste enough to their own destruction. For the wind, lying at the W. N. W. point, could not choose but force them on the shoals and sands on the coast of Zealand. But the wind happening to come about in a little time to Southwest and by West they went before the wind. ... Being now, therefore, clear of danger in the main ocean, they steered northward, and the English fleet renewed the chase after them. ... The Spaniards having now laid aside all the thoughts and hopes of returning to attempt the English, and perceiving their main safety lay in their flight, made no stay or stop at any port whatever. And thus this mighty armada, which had been three whole years fitting out, and at a vast expense, met in one month's time with several attacks, and was at last routed, with a vast slaughter on their side, and but a very few of the English missing, and not one ship lost, except that small vessel of Cock's. ... When, therefore, the Spanish fleet had taken a large compass round Britain, by the coasts of Scotland, the Orcades, and Ireland, and had weathered many storms, and suffered as many wrecks and blows, and all the inconveniences of war and weather, it made a shift to get home again, laden with nothing but shame and dishonour. ... Certain it is that several of their ships perished in their flight, being cast away on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and that above 700 soldiers were cast on shore in Scotland. ... As for those who had the ill fortune to be drove upon the Irish shore, they met with the most barbarous treatment; for some of them were butchered by the wild Irish, and the rest put to the sword by the Lord Deputy."

_W. Camden, History of Queen Elizabeth._

ALSO IN: _S. R. Gardiner, Historical Biographies: Drake._

_E. S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles, chapter 10._

_C. Kingsley, Westward Ho! chapter 31._

_R. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, &C. (E. Goldsmid's ed.), volume 7._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1596. Alliance with Henry IV. of France against Spain.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593--1598.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1596. Dutch and English expedition against Cadiz.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1596.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1597. Abolition of the privileges of the Hanse merchants.

See HANSA TOWNS.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1600. The first charter to the East India Company.

See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1601. The first Poor Law.

See POOR LAWS, THE ENGLISH.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1603. Accession of King James I. The Stuart family.

On the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, James VI. of Scotland became also the accepted king of England (under the title of James I.), by virtue of his descent from that daughter of Henry VII. and sister of Henry VIII., Margaret Tudor, who married James IV. king of Scots. His grandfather was James V.; his mother was Marie Stuart, or Mary, Queen of Scots, born of her marriage with Lord Darnley. He was the ninth in the line of the Scottish dynasty of the Stuarts, or Stewarts, for an account of the origin of which see SCOTLAND: A. D. 1370. He had been carefully alienated from the religion of his mother and reared in Protestantism, to make him an acceptable heir to the English throne. He came to it at a time when the autocratic spirit of the Tudors, making use of the peculiar circumstances of their time, had raised the royal power and prerogative to their most exalted pitch; and he united the two kingdoms of Scotland and England under one sovereignty. "The noble inheritance fell to a race who, comprehending not one of the conditions by which alone it was possible to be retained, profligately misused until they lost it utterly. The calamity was in no respect foreseen by the statesman, Cecil, to whose exertion it was mainly due that James was seated on the throne: yet in regard to it he cannot be held blameless. He was doubtless right in the course he took, in so far as he thereby satisfied a national desire, and brought under one crown two kingdoms that with advantage to either could not separately exist; but it remains a reproach to his name that he let slip the occasion of obtaining for the people some ascertained and settled guarantees which could not then have been refused, and which might have saved half a century of bloodshed. None such were proposed to James. He was allowed to seize a prerogative, which for upwards of fifty years had been strained to a higher pitch than at any previous period of the English history; and his clumsy grasp closed on it without a sign of question or remonstrance from the leading statesmen of England. 'Do I mak the judges? Do I mak the bishops?' he exclaimed, as the powers of his new dominion dawned on his delighted sense: 'Then, God's wauns! I mak what likes me, law and gospel!' It was even so. And this license to make gospel and law was given, with other far more questionable powers, to a man whose personal appearance and qualities were as suggestive of contempt, as his public acts were provocative of rebellion. It is necessary to dwell upon this part of the subject; for it is only just to his not more culpable but far less fortunate successor to say, that in it lies the source and explanation of not a little for which the penalty was paid by him. What is called the Great Rebellion can have no comment so pregnant as that which is suggested by the character and previous career of the first of the Stuart kings."

_J. Forster, Historical and Biographical Essays, p.227._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1604. The Hampton Court Conference.

James I. "was not long seated on the English throne, when a conference was held at Hampton Court, to hear the complaints of the puritans, as those good men were called who scrupled to conform to the ceremonies, and sought a reformation of the abuses of the church of England. On this occasion, surrounded with his deans, bishops, and archbishops, who breathed into his ears the music of flattery, and worshipped him as an oracle, James, like king Solomon, to whom he was fond of being compared, appeared in all his glory, giving his judgment on every question, and displaying before the astonished prelates, who kneeled every time they addressed him, his polemic powers and theological learning. Contrasting his present honours with the scenes from which he had just escaped in his native country, he began by congratulating himself that, 'by the blessing of Providence, he was brought into the promised land, where religion was professed in its purity; where he sat among grave, learned, and reverend men; and that now he was not, as formerly, a king without state and honour, nor in a place where order was banished, and beardless boys would brave him to his face.' {846} After long conferences, during which the king gave the most extraordinary exhibitions of his learning, drollery, and profaneness, he was completely thrown off his guard by the word presbytery, which Dr. Reynolds, a representative of the puritans, had unfortunately employed. Thinking that he aimed at a 'Scotch presbytery,' James rose into a towering passion, declaring that presbytery agreed as well with monarchy as God and the devil. 'Then,' said he, 'Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus: Then Dick shall reply, and say, Nay marry, but we will have it thus. And, therefore, here I must once reiterate my former speech, Le Roy s'avisera (the king will look after it). Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that of me; and if you then find me pursy and fat, and my wind-pipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you; for let that government be once up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath; then we shall all of us have work enough, both our hands full. But, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone." Then, putting his hand to his hat, 'My lords the bishops,' said his majesty, 'I may thank you that these men plead for my supremacy; they think they can't make their party good against you, but by appealing unto it. But if once you are out, and they in place, I know what would become of my supremacy; for no bishop, no king, as I said before.' Then rising from his chair, he concluded the conference with, 'If this be all they have to say, I'll make them conform, or I'll harry them out of this land, or else do worse.' The English lords and prelates were so filled with admiration at the quickness of apprehension and dexterity in controversy shown by the king, that, as Dr. Barlow informs us, 'one of them said his majesty spoke by the instinct of the Spirit of God; and the lord chancellor, as he went out, said to the dean of Chester, I have often heard that Rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote (that a king is partly a priest), but I never saw the truth thereof till this day!' In these circumstances, buoyed up with flattery by his English clergy, and placed beyond the reach of the faithful admonitions of the Scottish ministry, we need not wonder to find James prosecuting, with redoubled ardour, his scheme of reducing the church of Scotland to the English model."

_T. McCrie, Sketches of Scottish Church History, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 1, sections 3._

_G. G. Perry, History of the Church of England, volume 1, chapter 2._

_T. Fuller, Church History of Britain, book 10, section 1 (volume 3)._

England: A. D. 1605. The Gunpowder Plot.

"The Roman Catholics had expected great favour and indulgence on the accession of James, both as he was descended from Mary, whose life they believed to have been sacrificed to their cause, and as he himself, in his early youth, was imagined to have shown some partiality towards them. ... Very soon they discovered their mistake; and were at once surprised and enraged to find James, on all occasions, express his intention of strictly executing the laws enacted against them, and of persevering in all the rigorous measures of Elizabeth. Catesby, a gentleman of good parts and of an ancient family, first thought of a most extraordinary method of revenge; and he opened his intention to Piercy, a descendant of the illustrious house of Northumberland. In vain, said he, would you put an end to the king's life: he has children. ... To serve any good purpose, we must destroy, at one blow, the king, the royal family, the Lords, the Commons, and bury all our enemies in one common ruin. Happily, they are all assembled on the first meeting of Parliament, and afford us the opportunity of glorious and useful vengeance. Great preparations will not be requisite. A few of us, combining, may run a mine below the hall in which they meet, and choosing the very moment when the king harangues both Houses, consign over to destruction these determined foes to all piety and religion. ... Piercy was charmed with this project of Catesby; and they agreed to communicate the matter to a few more, and among the rest to Thomas Winter, whom they sent over to Flanders, in quest of Fawkes, an officer in the Spanish service, with whose zeal and courage they were all thoroughly acquainted. ... All this passed in the spring and summer of the year 1604; when the conspirators also hired a house in Piercy's name, adjoining to that in which the Parliament was to assemble. Towards the end of that year they began their operations. ... They soon pierced the wall, though three yards in thickness; but on approaching the other side they were somewhat startled at hearing a noise which they knew not how to account for. Upon inquiry, they found that it came from the vault below the House of Lords; that a magazine of coals had been kept there; and that, as the coals were selling off, the vault would be let to the highest bidder. The opportunity was immediately seized; the place hired by Piercy; thirty-six barrels of powder lodged in it; the whole covered up with faggots and billets; the doors of the cellar boldly flung open, and everybody admitted, as if it contained nothing dangerous. ... The day [November 5, 1605], so long wished for, now approached, on which the Parliament was appointed to assemble. The dreadful secret, though communicated to above twenty persons, had been religiously kept, during the space of near a year and a half. No remorse, no pity, no fear of punishment, no hope of reward, had as yet induced any one conspirator, either to abandon the enterprise or make a discovery of it." But the betrayal was unwittingly made, after all, by one in the plot, who tried to deter Lord Monteagle from attending the opening session of Parliament, by sending him a mysterious message of warning. Lord Monteagle showed the letter to Lord Salisbury, secretary of state, who attached little importance to it, but who laid it before the king. The Scottish Solomon read it with more anxiety and was shrewdly led by some expressions in the missive to order an inspection of the vaults underneath the parliamentary houses. The gunpowder was discovered and Guy Fawkes was found in the place, with matches for the firing of it on his person. Being put to the rack he disclosed the names of his accomplices. They were seized, tried and executed, or killed while resisting arrest.

_D. Hume, History of England, volume 4, chapter 46._

ALSO IN: _S. R. Gardiner, History of England, chapter 6, (volume 1)._

_J. Lingard, History of England, volume 9, chapter 1._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1606. The chartering of the Virginia Company, with its London and Plymouth branches.

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1606-1607.

{847}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1620. The Monopoly granted to the Council for New England.

See NEW ENGLAND: A.. D. 1620-1623.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1620. The exodus of the Pilgrims and the planting of their colony at New Plymouth.

See MASSACHUSETTS (PLYMOUTH COLONY): A. D. 1620.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1621. Claims in North America conflicting with France. Grant of Nova Scotia to Sir William Alexander.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1623-1638. The grants in Newfoundland to Baltimore and Kirke.

See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1610-1655.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625. The Protestant Alliance in the Thirty Years War.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1624-1626.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625. The gains of Parliament in the reign of James I.

"The commons had now been engaged [at the end of the reign of James I.], for more than twenty years, in a struggle to restore and to fortify their own and their fellow subjects' liberties. They had obtained in this period but one legislative measure of importance, the late declaratory act against monopolies. But they had rescued from disuse their ancient right of impeachment. They had placed on record a protestation of their claim to debate all matters of public concern. They had remonstrated against the usurped prerogatives of binding the subject by proclamation, and of levying customs at the out-ports. They had secured beyond controversy their exclusive privilege of determining contested elections of their members. They had maintained, and carried indeed to an unwarrantable extent, their power of judging and inflicting punishment, even for offences not committed against their house. Of these advantages some were evidently incomplete; and it would require the most vigorous exertions of future parliaments to realize them. But such exertions the increased energy of the nation gave abundant cause to anticipate. A deep and lasting love of freedom had taken hold of every class except perhaps the clergy; from which, when viewed together with the rash pride of the court, and the uncertainty of constitutional principles and precedents, collected through our long and various history, a calm by-stander might presage that the ensuing reign would not pass without disturbance, nor perhaps end without confusion."

_H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 6._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625. Marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria of France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624--1626.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1625-1628. The accession of Charles I. Beginning of the struggle of King and Parliament.