Certainty of war with Spain.

It was impossible for Philip to endure any longer the insults and injuries sustained by his people. Their patience had become exhausted; no wonder! The flag of Spain, they said with much truth, no longer afforded them protection. To make matters worse, the English minister at the court of Madrid, during the whole of the time that these wrongs were being perpetrated by English cruisers, was professing the most sincere friendship in the name of his Queen. “It was she,” he said, “who had the greatest reason to complain, as the Duke of Alva, without the slightest provocation, had arrested English ships and goods in the harbours of the Low Countries.”

Secret preparations for the invasion of England, and restoration of the Catholic faith.

But, though anxious to avoid war with England, Philip was not to be deceived by the professions of friendship and fair words of her minister. He, however, waited his time. When that time came he proposed to himself measures of retaliation which he conceived to be worthy of the proud and powerful Spanish nation. With this view ever before him, he kept his secret and matured his arrangements until he felt that he could accomplish effectually his plans. To be slow and silent, to take every precaution for success, and then to deliver suddenly and unexpectedly the blow so long seriously but vaguely impending, was the policy he intended to pursue. When he did strike, he said to himself, the blow he intended should be terrible. His coasts had been plundered, his commerce destroyed, his colonies outraged by English desperadoes, in whose adventures he had heard that the Queen herself had become a partner. The seizure of his treasure he felt and knew was simply piracy on a gigantic scale, committed by the government itself. English harbours had been the home of a Dutch privateer fleet; ships built in England, armed in England, and manned by Englishmen had held the Channel under the flag of the Prince of Orange; and if Alva attempted to interfere with them, they were sheltered by English batteries. Dover had been made a second Algiers, where Spanish gentlemen were sold by public auction. The plunder of the privateers was openly disposed of in the English markets, even royal purveyors being occasionally its purchasers. Philip felt, and not without cause, that he was free in equity from any obligations to a nation which had set at defiance the usages of civilised countries, or to a government which had permitted and even aided these piratical expeditions. Open war would have been the legitimate remedy; but that did not suit his policy, and he thought that the wrongs and insults his people had sustained demanded a retribution of a more terrible character. He had also his own ends to serve on behalf of the Catholic faith, and he knew that if, while inflicting a summary though revolting punishment upon England, he could restore the people to the Church of their fathers, Catholic Europe would applaud his conduct, while the Pope would of course readily grant him pardon for any crimes he might commit for so just an end. In a word, the design he had been so long secretly maturing was nothing short of an invasion of England, the murder of Elizabeth, and the establishment of Mary Queen of Scots on the throne of that country.

Philip intrigues with Hawkins, and is grossly deceived.

Some of the old aristocracy of England, including the Duke of Norfolk, had too readily become converts to his views of restoring the supremacy of the Catholic Church. Froude in his ‘History of England’ relates with even more than his usual ability[139] an extraordinary intrigue whereby Philip thought he had secured for his scheme the services of Sir John Hawkins! The greatest freebooter of that freebooting age, with whose reputation Philip had become so terribly familiar that he had never read his name on a despatch without scoring opposite to it a note of dismay, had, by some unaccountable means, worked upon his credulity to such an extent that this negro hunter, who had sacked Spanish towns and plundered Spanish churches, was supplied by Philip with large sums of money to fit out a naval expedition, with the full conviction that he would render material aid to the cause of Spain in the invasion of England, and in the restoration of the Roman Catholic supremacy! Even the Spanish ambassador resident in England, who had no suspicion of treachery, was delighted at so important an acquisition to the Catholic cause, “and told the king that he might expect service from Hawkins of infinite value,”[140] as he had “sixteen vessels, one thousand six hundred men, and four hundred guns, all at his disposition, ready to go anywhere and do anything which his Majesty might command, so long as it was in the Queen of Scots’ service.” With this fleet increased to twenty vessels, and equipped with Philip’s money, and manned in part with English seamen, whom he had further duped Philip into releasing from the Seville dungeons, Hawkins sailed for the Azores to lie in wait for the Mexican gold fleet!

The Spanish Armada and

England’s preparations for defence.

Cherishing the vain hope that the English freebooter would render him powerful assistance, Philip despatched, after three years’ careful preparation, his famous Armada, comprising all the naval forces then at the disposal of the Peninsula. He had the most perfect confidence in the result. The invasion and subjugation of England were to his mind matters that could not admit of doubt; nor had the government and people of this country much hope of resisting so formidable a fleet, consisting as it did of one hundred and thirty-two ships and twenty caravels, amounting together to fifty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty tons, exclusive of four galliasses and four galleys, the whole manned by thirty-two thousand seven hundred and nine men of all ranks, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. But, though the defence appeared to be hopeless, the feeling of despair seems never to have entered the minds of the English people, who with one accord made the most strenuous efforts to meet this apparently overwhelming force. London, ever foremost in its loyalty, furnished Elizabeth with large sums of money, the citizens rivalling with each other in the amounts they raised, and furnishing double the number of ships and men required by the royal edict. The same patriotic spirit pervaded the whole of the country, especially the seaport towns and the merchant marine. The collective force of the English fleet has often been published,[141] and in abstract may be stated as follows:

Ships.Tons.Mariners.
The Queen’s ships, under Admiral Lord Howard of Effingham, consisted of3411,8506,279
Serving with the Lord High Admiral10750230
Serving with Sir Francis Drake325,1202,348
Fitted out by the City of London386,1302,710
Coasters with the Lord High Admiral201,930993
Coasters with Lord Henry Seymour232,2481,073
Volunteers with the Lord High Admiral181,716859
Victuallers (store transports?)15...810
Sundry vessels, of which particulars are wanting 7......
19729,74415,785