The armada had now reached Calais, and cast anchor before that place, in expectation that the duke of Parma, who had gotten intelligence of their approach, would put to sea and join his forces to them. The English admiral practised here a successful stratagem upon the Spaniards. He took eight of his smaller ships, and filling them with all combustible materials, sent them, one after another, into the midst of the enemy. The Spaniards fancied that they were fireships of the same contrivance with a famous vessel which had lately done so much execution in the Schelde near Antwerp; and they immediately cut their cables, and took to flight with the greatest disorder and precipitation. The English fell upon them next morning while in confusion; and besides doing great damage to other ships, they took or destroyed about twelve of the enemy.
By this time, it was become apparent, that the intention for which these preparations were made by the Spaniards was entirely frustrated. The vessels provided by the duke of Parma were made for transporting soldiers, not for fighting; and that general, when urged to leave the harbor, positively refused to expose his flourishing army to such apparent hazard; while the English not only were able to keep the sea, but seemed even to triumph over their enemy. The Spanish admiral found, in many rencounters, that while he lost so considerable a part of his own navy, he had destroyed only one small vessel of the English; and he foresaw, that by continuing so unequal a combat, he must draw inevitable destruction on all the remainder. He prepared, therefore, to return homewards; but as the wind was contrary to his passage through the Channel, he resolved to sail northwards, and making the tour of the island, reach the Spanish harbors by the ocean. The English fleet followed him during some time; and had not their ammunition fallen short, by the negligence of the offices in supplying them, they had obliged the whole armada to surrender at discretion. The duke of Medina had once taken that resolution, but was diverted from it by the advice of his confessor. This conclusion of the enterprise would have been more glorious to the English; but the event proved almost equally fatal to the Spaniards. A violent tempest overtook the armada after it passed the Orkneys; the ships had already lost their anchors, and were obliged to keep to sea: the mariners, unaccustomed to such hardships, and not able to govern such unwieldy vessels, yielded to the fury of the storm, and allowed their ships to drive either on the western isles of Scotland, or on the coast of Ireland, where they were miserably wrecked. Not a half of the navy returned to Spain; and the seamen as well as soldiers who remained, were so overcome with hardships and fatigue, and so dispirited by their discomfiture, that they filled all Spain with accounts of the desperate valor of the English and of the tempestuous violence of that ocean which surrounds them.
Such was the miserable and dishonorable conclusion of an enterprise which had been preparing for three years, which had exhausted the revenue and force of Spain, and which had long filled all Europe with anxiety or expectation. Philip, who was a slave to his ambition, but had an entire command over his countenance, no sooner heard of the mortifying event which blasted all his hopes, than he fell on his knees, and rendering thanks for that gracious dispensation of Providence expressed his joy that the calamity was not greater. The Spanish priests, who had so often blessed this holy crusade and foretold its infallible success, were somewhat at a loss to account for the victory gained over the Catholic monarch by excommunicated heretics and an execrable usurper: but they at last discovered, that all the calamities of the Spaniards had proceeded from their allowing the infidel Moors to live among them.[*] [29]
1589.
Soon after the defeat and dispersion of the Spanish armada, the queen summoned a new parliament, and received from them a supply of two subsidies and four fifteenths, payable in four years. This is the first instance that subsidies were doubled in one supply; and so unusual a concession was probably obtained from the joy of the present success, and from the general sense of the queen’s necessities. Some members objected to this heavy charge, on account of the great burden of loans which had lately been imposed upon the nation.[**] [30]
Elizabeth foresaw that this house of commons, like all the foregoing, would be governed by the Puritans; and therefore, to obviate their enterprises, she renewed, at the beginning of the session, her usual injunction, that the parliament should not on any account presume to treat of matters ecclesiastical. Notwithstanding this strict inhibition, the zeal of one Damport moved him to present a bill to the commons for remedying spiritual grievances, and for restraining the tyranny of the ecclesiastical commission, which were certainly great: but when Mr. Secretary Woley reminded the house of her majesty’s commands, no one durst second the motion; the bill was not so much as read; and the speaker returned it to Damport without taking the least notice of it.[***] Some members of the house, notwithstanding the general submission were even committed to custody on account of this attempt.[****]
* See note CC, at the end of the volume.
** See note DD, at the end of the volume.
*** D’Ewes, p. 438.
**** Strype’s Life of Whitgift, p. 280. Neal, vol. i. p.
500.
The imperious conduct of Elizabeth appeared still more clearly in another parliamentary transaction. The right of purveyance was an ancient prerogative, by which the officers of the crown could at pleasure take provisions for the household from all the neighboring counties, and could make use of the carts and carriages of the farmers; and the price of these commodities and services was fixed and stated. The payment of the money was often distant and uncertain; and the rates, being fixed before the discovery of the West Indies, were much inferior to the present market price; so that purveyance, besides the slavery of it, was always regarded as a great burden, and being arbitrary and casual, was liable to great abuses. We may fairly presume, that the hungry courtiers of Elizabeth, supported by her unlimited power, would be sure to render this prerogative very oppressive to the people; and the commons had, last session, found it necessary to pass a bill for regulating these exactions: but the bill was lost in the house of peers.[*] The continuance of the abuses begat a new attempt for redress; and the same bill was now revived, and again sent up to the house of peers, together with a bill for some new regulations in the court of exchequer. Soon after, the commons received a message from the upper house, desiring them to appoint a committee for a conference. At this conference, the peers informed them, that the queen, by a message delivered by Lord Burleigh, had expressed her displeasure that the commons should presume to touch on her prerogative. If there were any abuses, she said, either in imposing purveyance, or in the practice of the court of exchequer, her majesty was both able and willing to provide due reformation; but would not permit the parliament to intermeddle in these matters.[**]
* D’Ewes, p. 434.
** D’Ewes, p. 440.
The commons, alarmed at this intelligence, appointed another committee to attend the queen, and endeavor to satisfy her of their humble and dutiful intentions. Elizabeth gave a gracious reception to the committee: she expressed her great “inestimable loving care” towards her loving subjects; which, she said, was greater than of her own self, or even than any of them could have of themselves. She told them, that she had already given orders for an inquiry into the abuses attending purveyance, but the dangers of the Spanish invasion had retarded the progress of the design; that she had as much skill, will, and power to rule her household as any subjects whatsoever to govern theirs, and needed as little the assistance of her neighbors; that the exchequer was her chamber, consequently more near to her than even her house’ bold, and therefore the less proper for them to intermeddle with; and that she would of herself, with advice of her council and the judges, redress every grievance in these matters, but would not permit the commons, by laws moved without her privity, to bereave her of the honor attending these regulations.[*] The issue of this matter was the same that attended all contests between Elizabeth and her parliaments.[**] She seems even to have been more imperious, in this particular, than her predecessors; at least her more remote ones: for they often permitted the abuses of purveyance[***] [31]to be redressed by law.[****] Edward III., a very arbitrary prince, allowed ten several statutes to be enacted for that purpose.