The Elizabethans (47 page)

Remember that, as yet, those on land knew nothing of the outcome of the naval battles over the previous long ten days. The rumour flew across Europe that Drake had been captured by the Spanish. As late as 20 August, the Spanish Ambassador in Paris, Don Bernadino de Mendoza, was writing to Philip II, ‘as yet the story wants confirmation from the Duke himself, but it is widely believed and seems highly probable’. In Prague a solemn
Te Deum
was sung in thanksgiving for a Catholic victory. If Pope Sixtus failed to do the same in Rome it was only because he did not wish to pay out the first instalment of two million golden ducats, which he had promised as his contribution to the war effort if Parma set foot on English soil. Cardinal Allen nevertheless asked for his legatine Bulls at once, so that he could set out immediately from Italy to the Netherlands in order to expedite the conversion of England.
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It was in this atmosphere of total uncertainty that Elizabeth herself acted with decisive courage. Leicester, with his experience of fighting in the Low Countries, was convinced that the Spanish would sail up the Thames. The mustering of a land army, which was largely his responsibility, took much longer than he would have hoped. The everlasting shortage of money for victuals continued throughout the crisis. On 26 July Leicester had complained to Walsingham that he had an army of ‘as gallant and willing men as ever were seen’, but that, after a twenty-mile march, there was ‘not a barrel of beer nor a loaf of bread’ among them.
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The Council had hoped to raise an army of 50,000 men, but nothing like this number had materialised. Leicester had only 4,000 men in the main army camp at Tilbury.

At this decisive hour, thirty years into her reign, Elizabeth was caught between the conflicting temperaments of Cecil and Dudley. Lord Burghley, the snow-haired old Polonius, was appalled when she declared that, if necessary, she would ride to the confines of her realm at the head of an army:

Now for your person being the most dainty and sacred thing we have in this world to care for, a man must tremble when he thinks of it, specially finding your Majesty to have the princely courage to transport yourself to the utmost confines of your realm to meet your enemies and to defend your subjects. I cannot, most dear Queen, consent to that, for upon your well doing consists all the safety of your whole kingdom and therefore preserve that above all.

Always cautious, Burghley was also ever-mindful of the nightmare that would ensue, were Elizabeth to be removed from the scene. As the Armada made its fateful progress up the English Channel, with guns pounding and boys’ voices singing the Litany of Our Lady, everything that Cecil had worked for politically over the previous thirty years hung in the balance: the Protestant-humanist life of the universities; the power of the Protestant axis at court and in the Council; the prodigious wealth and power of the Cecils, the Dudleys and the other members of the junta, who kept alive this particular way of governing England; the independence of England both from France and from Spain. All this and so much more was embodied in the fifty-five-year-old woman to whom Burghley had consecrated his existence. He trembled indeed at the thought of her riding out in an act of extravagant daring. Among the 4,000 men mustered at Tilbury, who was to know if there was not a Catholic with a pistol, yearning for the return of monasteries and papal rule?

But Elizabeth would never have captured the hearts and imaginations of her people if she had been the obedient slave of all Burghley’s balance, caution and common sense. She was also the flamboyant woman who had deeply loved Robert Dudley, and probably – though he was now vermilion-faced, paunchy and grey-haired – she still did. It was Leicester who could see what a tremendous boost to national morale would be occasioned by her riding forth, rather than huddling immured under guard in Whitehall. He told her to go to her house at Havering, fourteen miles from the camp at Tilbury, where she should spend ‘two or three days to see both the camp and the forts . . . I trust you will be pleased with your poor lieutenant’s cabin and within a mile there is a gentleman’s house, where your Majesty may also be. You shall comfort not only these thousands, but many more shall hear of it, and thus far, but no farther can I consent to adventure your person.’

By the time Elizabeth reached this gentleman’s house – it belonged to a Mr Rich and was ‘a proper, sweet, cleanly house’ – Walsingham and Burghley were beginning to receive rumours that the Armada had been defeated. It would have been the perfect excuse for them to save money by disbanding the army, but Leicester longed for the great drama of her appearance before the troops. He could not know that it was the final pageant he would ever lay on for her, but he could know the significance of the hour. And he knew that her words and actions would more than rise to the occasion.

She travelled to the camp by river. A causeway was constructed, enabling her to ride from the boat to the assembled ranks of soldiers, who all fell to their knees as she trotted among them. She wept at the sight, and told them to rise. Then she dined with Leicester under canvas.

The next day they strapped plate-metal armour over her bodice. The breastplate shone ‘like an angel bright’ as the procession made its way among the troops, preceded by the Garter King of Arms and the Sergeant Trumpeter. Then followed Leicester and the Lord Marshal, and Leicester’s stepson, the twenty-two-year-old Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. ‘The air and earth did sound like thunder,’ recalled an eye-witness, presumably because of the tumultuous applause.

When Elizabeth addressed the army, her voice was too faint to be heard at the back of the ranks. That evening, therefore, Leicester told one of the chaplains, Dr Leonel Sharp, to redeliver the oration ‘to all the army together to keep a Public Fast’. Sharp wrote out the words and had them copied as a pamphlet. When he gave a copy to the Duke of Buckingham twenty years later he said, ‘I remember in ’88 waiting upon the Earl of Leicester at Tilbury camp.’ He recalled how the Queen ‘rode through all the Squadrons of her army as Armed Pallas’. And, thanks to that military padre, we have her magnificent words:

My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit our self to armed multitudes for fear of treachery, but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. And therefore I am come amongst you as you see at this time not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live or die amongst you all to lay down for God and for my kingdom and for my people my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any Prince of Europe should dare invade the borders of my Realm to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your General, Judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns and we do assure you in the words of a Prince, they shall be duly paid you.

In the meantime my Lieutenant-General shall be in my stead, than whom never Prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject, not doubting but by your obedience to my General, by your Concord, in the Camp, and your valour in the field we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of God, of my Kingdom and of my People.
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A cynic would say that Elizabeth and Leicester already knew, when the Tilbury display was orchestrated, that the Armada had in fact been defeated. An Elizabethan enthusiast might reply that whatever the truth of that (and we do not know for certain how fast the news of the Gravelines setback reached the Queen), she showed immense courage in riding among so many thousands of men at a time when many Catholics wished her dead. As so often, from the first spectacular theatre of her coronation procession, Elizabeth sensed the mood of her people and provided them with a display that strengthened national unity. England, from 1588 until the 1950s, would be shaped in its self-perception by the experience of the Armada, and by Elizabeth’s eloquent vision of herself as holding out against ‘any prince of Europe’ who threatened the island kingdom. Churchill would draw on all this spirit for one last glorious display of collective insular courage in the summer of 1940. Froude the agnostic, hesitantly Church of England and vehemently anti-Catholic, concluded his essay on ‘The Defeat of the Armada’
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with the cruel but unforgettable sentence, ‘Both sides had appealed to Heaven, and Heaven had spoken.’ If so, it was the pitiless Heaven that overwhelmed the Egyptian chariots in the waters of the Red Sea, rather than the merciful Father of the New Testament who notes even the fall of a sparrow. No English ships were lost.
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The Spanish fleet headed into the North Sea to avoid further confrontations with the English guns off the Essex or Kent coasts. Without hope of returning home via the Channel, they had no choice but to sail round the north coast of Scotland and back down the coast of Ireland. This was a navy that had scarcely collected enough provisions for the initial journey from Lisbon to England. Given this fact, and the appalling weather they had to endure, it is remarkable that any ships returned home. The Spanish lost between fifty and sixty-five ships, but the human losses were more devastating: of the 30,000 men who had left Lisbon, 20,000 died, more than half through sickness, starvation and disease, 6,000 in shipwreck, 1,000 by murder and 1,500 in battle. (Though the English gave out that only sixty-eight deaths had been suffered on their side as war casualties, it has been calculated that as many as 6,800 English sailors died as a result of the filthy conditions on the ships.) So the sailors on both sides had an horrific time, and those on the Spanish side had by far the worst of it because they were at sea for longer. The depredations were horrific and the death-figures speak for themselves. In order to preserve supplies of food and water, horses and mules were hurled into the sea. No one seems to know why they were not eaten.

For most of August, the Armada, or what was left of it, stayed together, but during September and October it drifted apart, many ships being wrecked off the Scottish and Irish coasts. Pedro Coco Calderon, the Paymaster General aboard the
San Salvador
, wrote, ‘from 24 August to 4 September we sailed without knowing where we were, through constant fogs and storms’. Then they found themselves on the Irish coast. In many ships the men were starving, but for those who had cut off their anchors at Calais there was no chance of getting ashore – their only fate was to be wrecked.

Those who did come to land faced further horrors. Sir Richard Bingham, the Governor of Connaught, claimed to have killed 1,100 Spaniards taken prisoner on his watch. He sent armed search parties throughout Clare and Connemara to round up the bedraggled, half-starved boys and young men and to massacre them with axe, rope or sword. His son, George Bingham, went up to Mayo to do the same. And thus, wrote Sir Richard, ‘having made a clean dispatch of them, both in town and country, we rested Sunday all day, giving praise and thanks to Almighty God for her Majesty’s most happy success and deliverance from her dangerous enemies’.
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Sir Geoffrey Fenton took a comparably religious view of the matter: ‘God hath wrought for her Majesty against these idolatrous enemies, and suffered this nation to blood their hands upon them, whereby, it may be hoped, is drawn perpetual diffidence between the Spaniards and them, as long as this memory endureth.’ The only Spaniards spared were those of sufficient wealth to have a ransom paid for them.

The cruelty seemed abominable at the time, but it was not gratuitous. The English in Ireland, even more than those who had watched the Armada make its sinister progress down the English Channel in early August, felt extremely vulnerable. Even the hungry rabble cast ashore from the semi-wrecked Armada could have provided a formidable army against England, if they had reinforcements sent from Spain and had joined forces with Irish malcontents. Fenton was not alone in this belief when he wrote to the Privy Council in December:

It may please your Lordships upon inquiry made of Don Alonso de Leva’s casting away upon these coasts, I have learned that in his abode here he wrote several letters, sent away by special men into Spain, but whether directly from hence or through Scotland, I cannot find out. Only it may please you that if upon this letter, tending as may be thought to that end, there had been but 1,000 men with victuals and powder of both him and his 2,600 men, which now are all rid hence, I see not how but that before I could have given your Lordships advertisement Her Majesty might have been dispossessed of Ireland.
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21

London and Theatre

FROM OUR ENGLAND
, industrial and post-industrial, with its huge cities, its road networks and railways and airports, its unstoppably expansive suburbs and its population racing towards seventy million, it is difficult to recapture the overwhelmingly rural character of Elizabethan England. The huge majority of the population lived in the country, and worked on the land. Villages, cut off from the towns by primitive roads, were tiny. The larger towns were not, as in the nineteenth century and after, likely to be centres of manufacture; much more likely, they were market towns, such as Norwich, with a population of 17,000, or ports such as Bristol, rather smaller.