Fighting the Great Armada

We get a glimpse, in an old list of plunder taken from the Spanish prisoners, of the brave looks of the vanished host, that included the flower of Spanish youth and chivalry. There were “breeches and jerkins of silk, and hose of velvet, all laid over with gold lace, a pair of breeches of yellow satin, drawn out with cloth of silver, a leather jerkin, perfumed with amber and laid over with a gold and silver lace, a jerkin embroidered with flowers, and a blue stitched taffety hat, with a silver band and a plume of feathers.”

For some time England was haunted by fears that the Armada would return to her coasts, or that Parma would avenge himself. But the reports of the many wrecks and of the massacre of Spanish soldiers eased this present anxiety. And it was well, for fever and sickness broke out in the English ships, and the men were dying in hundreds, “sickening one day and dying the next,” as the letters say. The ships had to be disinfected and many of the men dispersed.

CHAPTER XII
EXPEDITION TO LISBON

The great Armada was scattered, and yet the English did not feel secure from their enemy. The sight of that fleet so near their shores in “its terror and majesty,” and the memory of its vast army of well-drilled soldiers, left a feeling of deep uneasiness in the minds of wise men. “Sir,” writes Howard to Walsingham, “safe bind, safe find. A kingdom is a great wager. Sir, you know security is dangerous: and had God not been our best friend, we should have found it so. Some made little account of the Spanish force by sea: but I do warrant you, all the world never saw such a force as theirs was....”

Fortune had favoured England this time, but what if Philip built newer and lighter ships, and really succeeded in landing his army? They did not as yet know that Philip had no money to build his ships with, and rumours of a second invasion were plentiful.

The Spaniards, it is true, had suffered great loss and a crushing defeat to their pride, but they had not, after all, lost anything that they already had, but only failed to get something they wanted very badly to have, and the second kind of loss matters far less than the first.

But, on the other hand, if the English had been defeated, it is difficult to think how darkly their history might have been changed. It was this thought that made the wise men sober in the midst of the national joy and exultation. They saw how much England, as an island, must depend for strength and defence upon her navy, and they saw this much more clearly than before. But Drake had seen it for a long time. And he had seen something more. He had seen that the English navy must be ready and able to protect her merchant ships by distressing and attacking her enemies abroad, and that this was a means of keeping the enemy so busy abroad that he could not invade the peace of England at home.

Elizabeth was eager to complete the destruction of Philip’s navy, now so much crippled. In the spring of 1589 she consented to a new expedition being fitted out, and appointed Sir John Norreys and Sir Francis Drake as commanders-in-chief. The two men had fought together in Ireland. “Black John Norreys,” as he was called, came of a famous fighting family, and had served in the Lowlands and in France with high courage and skill. During the Spanish invasion he had been made chief of the land forces. It is said that in one battle he went on fighting after three horses had been killed under him. With him went his brother Edward, and a famous Welsh captain, Sir Roger Williams, was his second in command.

The objects of the expedition were: first, to distress the King of Spain’s ships; second, to get possession of some of the islands of the Azores in order to waylay the treasure ships; and, lastly, to try to recover for Don Antonio his lost kingdom of Portugal.