EARL OF EFFINGHAM.
Charles Howard, elder son of the Earl of Effingham, was born in the year 1536, in the reign of Henry VIII. Charles served under his father, who was Lord Admiral to Mary, in several expeditions. He did duty as an envoy to Charles IX. of France on his accession. He served as a general of horse in the army headed by Warwick, against the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, and, as a courtier, he rendered various other services, not calling for particular notice. In 1572 he succeeded his father, and in 1573 was made a Knight of the Garter. On the death of the Earl of Lincoln, in 1585, the queen appointed Lord Charles, High Admiral. This appointment gave great satisfaction to all ranks, and was especially gratifying to seamen,—with whom Lord Charles was highly popular.
Philip of Spain employed all the art he was possessed of to obtain ascendency over Elizabeth, as he had done over her infatuated sister Mary, and—irrespective of law, if any existed to the contrary—was more than willing to marry his “deceased wife’s sister,” but Elizabeth would neither marry, nor take orders from him, which exasperated Philip greatly. His religious fanaticism and the influence of the Jesuits made him determined to punish the queen and ruin her country. With this amiable intention the great Armada was prepared. It consisted of 130 ships, of an aggregate of about 60,000 tons. It was armed with 2630 pieces of cannon, and carried 30,000 men, including 124 volunteers,—the flower of the Spanish nobility and gentry,—and 180 monks. Twelve of the greatest ships were named after the twelve apostles.
The English fleet was put under the command of Lord Howard, with Sir Francis Drake for his vice-admiral, and Sir John Hawkins for his rear-admiral. Lord Henry Seymour, with Count Nassau, cruised on the coast of Flanders, to watch the movements of the Duke of Parma, who purposed, it was believed, to form a junction with the Spanish Armada, or to aid it, by making a separate descent upon England.
The threatened invasion stirred the kingdom to the highest pitch of patriotic fervour. The city of London advanced large sums of money for the national service. Requisitioned to provide 15 ships and 5000 men, the city fathers promptly provided 30 ships and 10,000 men.
The Armada encountered a violent storm, at almost the commencement of the voyage northwards, and had to put back. The rumour was current in England that the great expedition was hopelessly shattered. Lord Howard consequently received, through Walsingham, Secretary of State, instructions to send four of his largest ships into port. The admiral doubted the safety of this course, and willingly engaged to keep the ships out, at his own charge. He bore away towards Spain, and soon obtained such intelligence, as confirmed him in the opinion he had formed, and fully justified the course he had adopted.
On the 19th July, Fleming, a Scottish pirate, who plied his vocation in the Channel and the approaches thereto, sailed into Plymouth in hot haste, with the intelligence that the Armada was at hand. This pirate did, for once at least in his life, an honest and incalculably important day’s work. An ancient historian estimates it so highly as to say that “this man was, in reality, the cause of the absolute ruin of the Spaniards; for the preservation of the English was undoubtedly owing to his providential discovery of the enemy.” At the request of Lord Admiral Howard, the queen afterwards granted a pardon to Fleming for his past offences, and awarded him a pension for the timely service he had rendered to the nation.
“And then,” says Dr. Collier, “was played on the Hoe at Plymouth that game of bowls, which fixes itself like a picture on the memory,—the faint, hazy blue of the July sky, arching over sun-baked land and glittering sea; the group of captains on the grass, peak-bearded and befrilled, in the fashion of Elizabeth’s day; the gleaming wings of Fleming’s little bark skimming the green waters like a seagull, on her way to Plymouth harbour with the weightiest news. She touches the rude pier; the skipper makes hastily for the Hoe, and tells how that morning he saw the giant hulls off the Cornish coast, and how he has with difficulty escaped by the fleetness of his ship. The breathless silence changes to a storm of tongues; but the resolute man who loaded the Golden Hind with Spanish pesos, and ploughed the waves of every ocean round the globe, calls on his comrades to ‘play out the match, for there is plenty of time to do so, and to beat the Spaniards too.’ It is Drake who speaks. The game is resumed, and played to the last shot. Then begin preparations for a mightier game. The nation’s life is at stake. Out of Plymouth, along every road, men spur as for life, and every headland and mountain peak shoots up its red tongue of warning flame.”
The sorrows and sufferings of the crowd of Spaniards noble and ignoble, of the nine score holy fathers, and the two thousand galley slaves, who left the Tagus in glee and grandeur, in the “happy Armada,” with a great design,—but really to serve no higher purpose, as things turned out, than to provide, in their doomed persons, a series of banquets for the carnivorous fishes in British waters,—need not be dwelt upon here, being referred to elsewhere.