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OF THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY

VOL. 127

THE EXPEDITION OF SIR JOHN NORRIS AND SIR FRANCIS DRAKE TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY was established in 1893 for the purpose of printing unpublished manuscripts and rare works of naval interest. The Society is open to all who are interested in naval history, and any person wishing to become a member should apply to the Hon. Secretary, c/o the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1LR. The annual subscription for individuals is £10, and for libraries and insti- tutions £12, which entitles the member to receive one free copy of each work issued by the Society in that year, and to buy earlier issues at much reduced prices.

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Sir Francis Drake after the original portrait in the National Maritime Museum. Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum. THE EXPEDITION OF SIR JOHN NORRIS AND SIR FRANCIS DRAKE TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589

Edited by R. B. WERNHAM Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Oxford First published 1988 by Temple Smith

Published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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ISBN 13: 978-0-566-05578-2 (hbk) 978-1-911-42356-0 (pbk)

Typeset by Acorn Bookwork, Salisbury, Wiltshire THE COUNCIL OF THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY 1988

PATRON H.R.H. THE PRINCE PHILIP, DUKE OF EDINBURGH, K.G., O.M., F.R.S.

PRESIDENT THE RT HON. THE LORD CARRINGTON, K.G., C.H., K.C.M.G., M.C., P.C.

VICE-PRESIDENTS A. W. H. PEARSALL, I.S.O., M.A. H. U. A. LAMBERT, M.A. A. P. McGowAN, M.A., Ph.D. Admiral of the Fleet the Lord LEWIN, K.G., G.C.B., M.V.O., D.S.C., F.R.S.A., Hon.D.Sc.

COUNCILLORS N. R. BOMFORD, M.A. John GOOCH, B.A., Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S. R. J. B. KNIGHT, M.A., Ph.D. R. F. MACKAY, M.A., D.Litt. A. J. MARSH, M.A. Lieutenant-Commander Lawrence PHILLIPS, R.D., R.N.R. P. M. H. BELL, B.A., B.Litt., F.R.Hist.S. Lieutenant-Commander J. V. P. GOLDRICK, B.A., M.Litt., R.A.N. A. D. LAMBERT, M.A., Ph.D. Captain A. B. SAINSBURY, V.R.D., J.P., M.A., R.N.R. Professor D. M. SCHURMAN, M.A., Ph.D. Geoffrey TILL, M.A., Ph.D. C. S. WHITE, M.A. Jonathan COAD, M.A., F.S.A. Miss P. K. CRIMMIN, B.A., M.Phil., F.R.Hist.S. E. R. LI. DAVIES, B.A., B.Sc. J. D. DAVIES, M.A., D.Phil. Professor B. McL. RANFT, M.A., D.Phil., F.R.Hist.S. K. C. BREEN, B.A., M.Phil. VI

R. P. CROWHURST, B.A., Ph.D. The Hon. David ERSKINE, M.A. Roger A. MORRISS, B.A., Ph.D. M. A. SIMPSON, M.A., M.Litt. R. W. A. SUDDABY, M.A.

HONORARY SECRETARY N. A. M. RODGER, M.A., D.Phil., F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S.

HONORARY GENERAL EDITOR A. N. RYAN, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.

HONORARY TREASURER C. SWINSON, M.A., F.C.A. CONTENTS

PAGE Illustrations and Maps ...... viii Acknowledgements ...... ix Introduction ...... xi Letters and Papers: I. The Origins and Original Purposes of the Expedition, August-October 1588 ...... 1 II. Preparations in England, October-December 1588 19 III. Sir John Norris in the United Provinces, October-December 1588 ...... 33 IV. The Troops ordered to the Ports, December 1588-January 1589 ...... 45 V. Mounting Costs, December 1588-February 1589 53 VI. Difficulties and Delays, January-February 1589 . 63 VII. Orders, Instructions, and Proposals, January-March 1589 ...... 79 VIII. Contrary Winds and Financial Problems, March-April 1589 ...... 107 IX. The Earl of Essex joins the Expedition, April 1589 ...... 131 X. Operations at Corunna, April-May 1589 ...... 139 XI. First Reactions at Home, May 1589 ...... 155 XII. Operations in Portugal, May-June 1589 ...... 175 XIII. Return and Disbanding, June-July 1589 ...... 197 XIV. Recollections and Reflections, July 1589 onwards 215 XV. The Hanseatic Prizes and the Dutch Flyboats .... 301 XVI. Making up the Accounts ...... 317 Appendices: I. Lists of ships and their officers ...... 331 II. Army lists ...... 343 Vlll

III. Wingfield's date for the entry into Lisbon suburbs 353 IV. The dating of Drake's letter of June 2 ...... 355 V. An earlier visit to Santander? ...... 357 List of Letters and Papers and their Sources ...... 359 Index ...... 371

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Sir Francis Drake (National Maritime Museum) ... frontispiece Theatre of Maritime Operations, 1588-1589 ...... x Corunna and its Environs ...... xxxviii The Iberian Peninsula, 1589 ...... xliii Inset: Approaches to Lisbon ...... xliii Estuary of the Tagus ...... xlvi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Crown copyright material is reproduced by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. My thanks are also due to the Keeper of Manuscripts, the British Library; the Keeper of Western Manuscripts, the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Keeper of Manuscripts, Cambridge University Library; the Li- brarian, the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge; His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library; the Marquess of Salisbury; the Council of the Hakluyt Society; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; and, for help and counsel, to Dr R. F. Hunnisett, Mr Alan Pearsall and, last but far from least, to the General Editor, Mr A. N. Ryan.

DATING, SPELLING, AND PUNCTUATION

Dates are given in the Old Style, unless otherwise stated. Spelling (with a few exceptions) and punctuation have been modernised. ENGLAND IRELAND^ ) ^ j ,-^, LONDON Dover^Bergen-op-Zoom

/ ^^x- — • Plymouth,^ ^Portsmouth

-^XAT^^ r BRITTANY FRANCE !s\ BA Y OF ^ BISCAY LaRochelle, ) 1 • Bordeaux

San Sebastian J c . T . t^~~ Corunna _— ^-_i£ St. Jean-de-Luz

LISBON Azores Is. ^ ^"— Cape St. Vincent

Theatre of Maritime Operations, 1588-1589 INTRODUCTION

By 24 August 1588 it was known for certain that the great Spanish Armada, bruised and battered in its encounters with the English naval forces in the Channel and off Gravelines, was at last 'west­ wards of the islands of Orkney'. 1 It was, that is to say, past the point of no return and committed to the long and hazardous voyage home around the west of Scotland and Ireland. Those of its ships that survived the perils of those inhospitable coasts in that stormy summer could hardly be either seaworthy or battleworthy for months to come. So for months to come Spain would have no Atlantic fleet 'in being'. How might England make the most of this opportunity? The Queen's first idea was to send off part of her navy 'for the intercepting of the King [of SpainJ's treasure from the Indies' [see Document no. 5]. This was a natural, if by no means novel, idea and one with an especial appeal after all the expenses of the past two or three years. It was natural because the power and cohesion of Spain's empire depended, to a greater or lesser extent, upon three lines of communication by sea. The first, across the Bay of Biscay and up the Channel, was the easiest and quickest way for sending reinforcements, supplies, and pay to Spain's main field army fighting the rebel Dutch in the Netherlands. However, although war with England had already virtually closed this route, there was an alternative, longer and slower but now safer, way round by land from Milan and Genoa through Savoy, whose duke was the King of Spain's son-in-law, on by Spanish Franche-Comte*, and then Lorraine, whose duke was likewise a client of Spain, and so to Luxembourg and Brussels. The second line of communication by sea was again across the Bay of Biscay and up the Channel, but then continuing on across the North Sea to Hamburg and into the Baltic to the other

1 J. K. Laughton (ed.), State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Anno 1588, 2 vols (Navy Records Society, 1894), ii, p. 150, where 'young Norris' should read 'Young Harris'. Xii INTRODUCTION Hanseatic Towns, Poland, and Scandinavia. From there came back to Spain the masts, cables, canvas, pitch, and other naval stores essential for the equipment of her armadas, and the corn that was becoming hardly less essential as drought and a series of bad harvests brought near-famine to Spain and much of southern Europe. Here again, however, there was another, if longer, more expensive, and this time more risky, way round by sailing west of Scotland and Ireland, a way exposed to serious English interfer­ ence only on its final stage. The third, and seemingly much the most vulnerable, line of communication by sea was that across the Atlantic from Havana to Cadiz, with its necessary halfway port of call at the Azores. By this route came, usually in late summer or early autumn, the richly laden annual fleets from the New World bringing in particular the produce of the silver mines of Spanish America, the only part of Philip IPs dominions that now produced a substantial surplus of local revenue over expenditure. Without that silver he would find it hard to pay his armies, subsidise his allies and clients such as the Catholic League in France, or pay for the essential supplies of masts, naval stores, and corn from the Eastlands. To this trans­ atlantic route there was no alternative. And if it could be closed Spain might well be forced to peace on England's terms. Small wonder, therefore, that Elizabeth's thoughts turned first to this direction. After all, Sir John Hawkins had been urging this idea upon her for years and recently both Burghley and Walsing- ham had advocated it. 1 Moreover, the thought of capturing the homeward-bound transatlantic flota with treasure to the value of several million pounds sterling was at this moment even more than usually appealing. For the Queen's Exchequer was well nigh empty after the war expenses of the past three years. Her ordinary annual income, her income, that is, apart from occasional and extraordi­ nary supplements such as parliamentary grants, was little more than £250,000. Yet in the two years 1586 and 1587 her aid to the Dutch had alone cost her £313,000. In 1588, by dint of keeping her 6,000 troops there upon bare weekly lendings - weekly advances of a part only of the full pay due to them - and during the Armada weeks without even that, she had kept this cost down to £88,000. But during that year the defeating of the Armada and the

'J. A. Williamson, Sir John Hawkins: The Time and the Man (1927), pp. 232-4, 397, 413-14, 419-20, 451; Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960), p. 419. INTRODUCTION Xlll defence preparations against it had added another £167,000 (besides at least as much again in cost to the counties for troop musters and to the port towns in ship money). The Exchequer issues had risen from a pre-war average of about £168,000 a year to £367,000 in 1587 and to £420,000 in 1588. The gap between these figures and those for the 'ordinary' revenue had been partly filled by parliamentary subsidies, which during the past three years had brought in some £215,000, and by drawing out £245,000 from the war reserve of £299,000 'chested treasure' accumulated during the last decade of peace. Yet by July 1588, in spite of a loan of £30,000 from the city of London, the Exchequer was virtually empty [2]. 1 To intercept the King of Spain's treasure from the Indies was indeed a tempting project. There was, however, an insuperable obstacle to putting this plan into immediate operation. As Lord Admiral Howard was quick to point out [4], all the Queen's ships and most of the larger merchant vessels had been at sea continuously for at least five months, some for eight, through the rough and stormy spring and summer of 1588. All needed not only reprovisioning, but also careening to have the weed and barnacles scraped off their bottoms and their seams caulked, and to have their sails, spars, and rigging over­ hauled and repaired. They also needed a thorough cleansing and fumigating to arrest the diseases that were already raging among their crews. All this must take a good many weeks. Add the time needed to sail to the Azores, or even to the south-western coast of Spain, and by the time they arrived there it would already be too late to catch this year's American convoys unless they were very much behind their normal schedule. Yet to wait another year, for the next American convoys, the next treasure ships, would be to throw away the advantage that the Armada's defeat offered England. It would give the Spaniards time to refit those ships that survived the 1588 voyage, even to reinforce them with newly built or newly hired vessels. Spain would then once more have an Atlantic fleet in being, not perhaps strong enough to renew the 'Enterprise of England', but at least able to escort the American convoys home from the Azores

'S. P. Domestic, ccxviii, nos. 51-2; F. C. Dietz, English Public Finance, 1559-1641 (New York, 1932), pp. 439-41; Dietz, The Exchequer in Elizabeth's Reign (Northampton, Mass., 1923), pp. 84-6, 100-1; R. B. Wernham, Before the Armada: The Growth of English Foreign Policy 1485-1588 (1966), pp. 391-2, 404; Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe, 1588-1595 (1984), pp. 14-15. Xiv INTRODUCTION against anything less than the whole of England's naval forces. To 'intercept the King's treasure from the Indies' might then, in other words, involve England in a campaign on much the same scale as that of 1588, but a hazardous, long-distance campaign fought in the Spaniards' home waters. This was the problem that faced the sailors, soldiers, and Coun­ cillors who came together on the Queen's summons at the end of August 1588. Very little evidence remains about their deliber­ ations, little even about who took part - of the sailors certainly Howard and Drake, but clearly not Hawkins, Winter, Frobisher, or Sir Henry Palmer who were busy down at Dover demobilising the fleet and organising the 'winter guard' in the Narrow Seas; of the soldiers Sir John Norris at least at a fairly early stage; of Councillors, certainly Burghley and almost certainly Walsingham. There may have been others, but there is no record of their presence. But clearly, whoever attended the discussions, it was soon agreed that an attempt should be made to destroy in their harbours those ships of the 'Invincible Armada' that had managed to reach home, and to make this attempt as early as possible, before they had time to refit and become once again seaworthy and battleworthy. It may well be that Burghley was largely responsible for this decision, for back in early August he had suggested sending ships to harass the Armada survivors as they limped home on the last lap between Ireland and Spain [3]. Now in late August and early September 1588 it was natural to assume that the Armada survivors would return to Lisbon, the base from which they had set out. But for ships to force their way unaided into that haven, up the winding estuary of the Tagus, past the powerful forts at St Julian's, Torre Viejo, and Bel£m and batteries elsewhere, was an operation that Drake had shied away from during his bold and daring raid in 1587. 1 He was no more likely to consider attempting it now without the help of land forces to ease his way past the land defences. It might even be necessary to take Lisbon itself if the destruction of the shipping there was to be thoroughly accomplished [169]. So, when Burghley on 20 September 1588 noted down the conclusions of the discussions between Councillors, sailors, and soldiers, he listed the objectives as '(1) to attempt to burn the ships in Lisbon and Seville; (2) to take Lisbon; (3) to take the Islands

'Julian S. Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy: With the History of the Rise of England as a Maritime Power, 2 vols (1898), ii. pp. 92-4. INTRODUCTION XV [the Azores]' [10]. This, by and large, was a reasonable and coherent programme. It kept the main purposes - the destruction of Spain's Atlantic naval power and the intercepting of the King of Spain's American treasure - well to the fore. For Lisbon and Seville were not much off the direct path for an expedition going to the Azores and there would be ample time for operations there and off the Azores before the 1589 homeward-bound Atlantic convoys and treasure were due to arrive. But if an attempt was to be made 'to take Lisbon', why not also try to restore the Portuguese pretender Don Antonio to the throne from which the Spaniards had evicted him in 1580? This, again, was a project with quite a long pedigree. Many of Elizabeth's ministers and warriors had toyed with it, on and off, since 1580 - Walsingham, Leicester, Howard, Hawkins, Drake, and Norris. Not long before the coming of the Armada, Leicester had helped Don Antonio to open negotiations for a substantial loan and a military alliance with Mulay Ahmed el Mansur, Sharif of Morocco [I]. 1 Indeed, while the Armada was in the Channel, Don Antonio's younger son, Don Cristobal, had been making ready to go to Morocco to clinch the deal - and to serve as security for the loan. Owing to adverse winds and weather, first at Dover and then at Plymouth, it was mid-December before he finally got away,2 but as early perhaps as 5 August, certainly by 10 September, the Queen had written in his favour to Mulay Ahmed. She then had professed her earnest desire to see Don Antonio restored. Pleading, however, her already great expenses in her wars with Spain, she had ex­ pressed the opinion 'that the aid you yourself have promised will suffice to the purpose and to beat down the tyranny of Spain,

1 For earlier projects to aid Don Antonio, see H. de Castries, Les sources inedites de I'histoire de Maroc, premiere serie, dynastie saadienne (1530-1660), archives et bibliotheques de France, ii (Paris, 1925), pp. 151-8; Castries, op. dr., archives etc. d'Angleterre, i (Paris, 1918), pp. 495-523; G. K. McBride, 'Elizabethan Foreign Policy in Microcosm: the Portuguese Pretender, 1580-89', Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, v (1973), pp. 193-210; Dahiru Yahya, Morocco in the Sixteenth Century: Problems and Patterns in African Foreign Policy (1981), pp. 120-144; M. Oppenheim (ed.), The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, 5 vols (Navy Records Society, 1902-14), i. pp. 57-8; Corbett, op. cit., i, pp. 326-30; E. P. Cheyney, History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth, 2 vols (New York, 1914-26), i. pp. 156-7; Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (Oxford, 1925), ii. p. 51; J. A. Williamson, The Age of Drake (1938), pp. 212-14, 222; Williamson, Sir John Hawkins (1927), p. 409; and Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth (1949), p. 216. 2 Castries, op. cit., archives etc. de France, ii. p. 163 note; Calendar of State Papers [Cal.S.P.] Spanish, iv, 173, 484, 485, 498, 511. XVI INTRODUCTION chiefly because of this loss he has suffered' in the repulse of the Armada [7]. Clearly at that stage Elizabeth was not thinking of an English expedition to restore Don Antonio to the throne of Portugal. And, as we shall see, that never attained to more than a low and experimental priority in her mind. But once the idea had been mooted of adding a military contingent to help the naval forces up the Tagus and to take Lisbon, it was almost inevitable that in the minds of the expedition's commanders military operations in Por­ tugal should bulk larger and larger. All the more so because Don Antonio had succeeded in building up, on very flimsy foundations, a myth that as soon as he set foot in Portugal all its people would spring to arms on his behalf. 1 This was a myth that the two chosen commanders of the proposed expedition, Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, would find all too easy to swallow. For, as Sir Julian Corbett wrote,2 Drake after his 1587 operations saw 'himself more clearly than ever as an instrument of heaven' and Norris, if with a somewhat less exalted belief in his mission, eagerly wel­ comed an opportunity to display his military prowess in conditions less cramped than in the Netherlands and less frustrating than in Ireland. And both were to receive, from the consultations of a group of Puritan divines in London, the comforting, if intolerably long-winded, reassurance that the Lord of Hosts would condone and even favour their efforts to restore a Catholic pretender to his lost throne when it would be a blow at that great champion of Antichrist, the Most Catholic King of Spain [26]. Nevertheless, the addition of so ambitious and far-reaching an objective to their enterprise was bound to make it more difficult for them to keep in the forefront of their minds its two most essential aims - the destruction of the King of Spain's naval forces and the interception of his American treasure. This possible distraction of aim was made all the more possible and all the more dangerous by the methods which had to be adopted to set forth and finance the expedition. It was obviously beyond the capacity of the Queen's Exchequer at this moment to finance an expedition of the size and strength required to force its way into Lisbon harbour and into Lisbon itself and then to go on to seize one or more of the Azores islands. It was also doubtful whether the dockyards could make ready in time a sufficient

'McBride, op. dr., pp. 201-5. 2 Corbett, op. cit., ii. pp. 104-5. INTRODUCTION XV11 number of the Queen's ships and it was very difficult to see where the Queen could find the nucleus of trained and experienced troops needed in the land force - with Parma about to turn against the Dutch the army he had been holding for the invasion of England this hardly seemed the moment to draw away the English auxiliary companies. So, what was proposed was a joint effort in which the Queen's contribution would be substantially augmented by contributions from her subjects and her Dutch allies. Where and with whom this project originated, it is not possible to dis­ cover. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that the general idea emerged from the deliberations of the conference of ministers, sailors, and soldiers in late August and early September and that Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake then undertook its implementation and formulated the proposals in detail. At all events the proposals at first put forward probably in mid-September asked the Queen to contribute £20,000; 'six of her second sort of ships', manned and munitioned, and victualled for three months; 'the two late-taken Spanish ships with their artillery and tackling' (the N.S. del Rosario and the San Salvador)', ten siege guns, with 400 balls apiece, and six field pieces, with 20 lasts of powder; tools for pioneers; and 3,000 calivers. It was also asked that she would, 'by authority or by contract', get London and other towns to supply 20 ships of 150 tons and upwards; that she grant her commission to levy 6,000 soldiers, 'only furnished with sword and dagger for the easier charge of the country' and to freight shipping and take up victuals 'at Her Majesty's prices'; that she 'give free licence to all manner of person of what quality soever to go on this voyage'; and that she send to ask the States of the United Provinces to contribute two or three thousand 'shot' (that is, troops armed with firearms), transports, six siege guns, and powder. The Queen was further asked to pay for victualling the expedition if its departure was delayed more than ten days by contrary winds and to make good any losses that should result if she countermanded it [8]. These proposals were clarified and slightly modified, according to notes made by Burghley on 20 September. The 'adventurers' were to pay the crews of the Queen's six ships; 8,000 troops were to be raised in England, 4,000 of them, armed only with swords and daggers, to be pressed by the Queen's commission, the other 4,000 to be volunteers but not to be taken from the trained bands; and the Dutch were to be asked for 4,000 shot as well as pikes, firearms, six siege guns, and powder [10]. XV111 INTRODUCTION It was expected that the 'adventurers' - Norris, Drake, and their backers- would raise £40,000 and on 19 September Norris offered that, if the Queen would immediately pay out £5,000, they would bring in the whole of their £40,000 before asking for her remaining £15,000 [9]. He was, indeed, looking for contributions amounting to £43,000 - £20,000 from himself, his brothers, and his friends, mostly military men such as Sir Roger Williams, Sir Charles Blunt, Sir Edward Wingfield, together with the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Rich; £2,000 from Drake and £6,000 from Drake's friends, together with £10,000 from the city of London and £5,000 'out of Leadenhall', that is from the company dealing with Drake's 1587 prize, the Portuguese East Indian carrack, the San Felipe [17,22]. Now this method of financing the expedition necessarily meant some weakening of the Queen's control over its aims and oper­ ations. She would find it a little more difficult to call the tune when she was only paying one-third of the piper's fee. And her fellow adventurers might perchance prefer different tunes. They were naturally attracted chiefly by the hope of martial glory under Norris or, even more, by the rich spoils that Drake's past record promised. With them, therefore, strategic purposes might well take second place. This, however, did not so much matter as long as the main objectives of the expedition remained Spanish shipping in Lisbon and Spanish treasure at the Azores. After all, the Queen herself looked for a rich profit on her own investment: capture of the American treasure would repay her £20,000 many times over. But sometime in the first weeks of October it became known that the half of the 'invincible Armada' that had managed to limp home had not put into Lisbon but had been driven well to leeward, 40 or more sail two-thirds of the way along Spain's northern coast to Santander, another dozen even farther east to San Sebastian [13]. 1 This meant that what for the Queen was the first objective, the destruction of the temporarily helpless remnant of Spain's Atlantic sea power, could no longer be taken, as it were, in its stride by an expedition bound for Portugal and the Azores. It would require an awkward detour into the leeward corner of the Bay of Biscay, a detour, moreover, that, although it could bring great strategic advantage, could offer little or no pecuniary gain. From this moment forward, therefore, there was increasing tension between l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 394-6. INTRODUCTION XIX the Queen's insistence upon the prime strategic importance of Santander and the adventurers' attraction to the profits hoped for in Portugal and at the Azores. What made this divergence of aim the more dangerous was that some of Drake's most important backers had long been casting covetous eyes upon Portugal's trade with Brazil and Guinea, and more especially that with India and the East Indies. Sir George Barnes, of the Muscovy Company, had backed the early voyages to Guinea and Edward Fenton's ill-fated 1582 voyage which had hoped to follow up Drake's dealings with the Spice Islands' Sultan of Ternate. Sir Edward Osborne, one of the founders of the Turkey Company, and Richard Stapers had backed Ralph Fitch and John Newbery's overland journey in 1583 from Aleppo by way of Basra, Ormuz, and Goa to the Court of Akbar in India. Alderman John Hart, another of the Turkey merchants, was to be one of the founders of the East India Company. To men like these it was the hope of trade concessions from a restored Don Antonio that tempted them to invest in the enterprise [22]. Other investors were tempted by similar, if somewhat less far-reaching, hopes. There were merchants who had turned to organising Atlantic privateering when the outbreak of war closed down their peaceful trade with Spain and Portugal. Among these were such London merchants as Thomas Cordell and William Garraway, John Newton and Sir George Bond, and John Watts whose enterprises were already beginning to reach out into the Caribbean. [23]. l Like Robert Flick, another London merchant and privateering promoter, who captained the 400-ton Merchant Royal and later claimed to have subscribed £1,000 and furnished 20 musketeers to the expedition, they most likely made their investment upon the hope, if not actually 'upon foundation only of a direct course and voyage to Lisbon or the Islands' [198].2 They hoped not only for rich hauls immediately from plundering Spain's American convoys, but also, in the longer run, by the favour of a restored and grateful Don Antonio, to regain their Portuguese trade and add to it a large share in the lucrative trade between Portugal and Brazil. Strategically vital, but non-profit-making, operations at Santander or San Sebastian could hold little attrac­ tion for such investors.

'See K. R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585-1603 (Cambridge, 1964), index. 2 Though he is only down for £500 in the note of 1 April 1589 [87]. XX INTRODUCTION It was just at this time, too, on 9 September, that Thomas Cavendish anchored in Plymouth at the end of the second English circumnavigation of the globe. He at once despatched to Court a fresh report of the East Indies 'where our countrymen may have trade as freely as the Portuguese, if they will'. 1 It hardly needed this to widen the horizons of the adventurers, but as early as 20 September Burghley, in a 'Note of the charge of Sir John Morris's journey and Sir Francis Drake, at St. James's', included 'Mr. Candish offers for a trade into the Indies [and] articles of offers from the King Antonio' [10]. Thus even at this early date the hopes and dreams placed by some upon the Portuguese part of the expedition's plans were growing notably more ambitious and seductive. Now ideally, in view of all this, when the news came that the surviving half of the Armada had limped into Santander instead of into Lisbon, the Queen should at once have despatched a separate, smaller, more compact task force of perhaps a dozen of her warships, with a few transports carrying a small landing party, for the sole purpose of cutting out and burning those battered and helpless vessels. But, of course, by the time this news arrived, she was already committed to Norris and Drake's Lisbon/Azores expedition and it is difficult to see how she could have found the means for this additional operation. The dockyards could hardly have made ready another dozen royal warships, in addition to the six promised to Norris and Drake, after the long Armada cam­ paign. Nor, despite any windfall that Cavendish may have brought, did it then look as if the Exchequer could well finance a separate Santander enterprise. For it was not only committed to the £20,000 for Norris and Drake but faced also the likelihood of extra expenditures in the Netherlands, where Parma had just laid siege to Bergen-op-Zoom [27], and in France, where Henry III had recently capitulated to the Catholic League.2 It is, perhaps, just possible that Elizabeth did for a brief moment consider deferring Norris and Drake's expedition in favour of an immediate attack upon Santander. Later, in February 1589, Norris complained of the long time she took to resolve upon their enterprise (though from late August to late September does not seem unduly long for a government without a regular general staff

1 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, 8 vols. (1927 edn), viii, 279. 2 For these matters, see Wernham, After the Armada, pp. 23-66. INTRODUCTION XXI or planning organisation to resolve upon and plan an enterprise of this magnitude). He went on to allege that, after she had resolved and had signed their commission 'it was stayed from the seal at least ten days' [75]. There is no other evidence of this. But the enrolment of the commission on the patent roll is dated 11 October. That is also the date on the warrant for the great seal [12]. Now, as we have seen, the expedition had probably been resolved upon by late September. That was just about the time when the news of the Armada survivors' return to Santander would probably have reached England (Palmer had written of it on 19 September from St Jean-de-Luz) [13]. So possibly Elizabeth did hesitate for a few days and stay the commission at the seal during the first ten or 11 days of October. But this is guesswork. The certainty is that she did not in fact withdraw her approval of Norris and Drake's enterprise [14]. 1 The costs of that enterprise itself were also now beginning to mount. Norris, as early as 16 October, in writing to Walsingham to get them the Queen's Victory as a ship 'of greater room . . . very necessary in respect of the King of Portugal . . . goeth with us', added pleas that the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops should organise 'a general contribution from the clergy' and that the Privy Councillors be moved 'to enter into adventure with us' [19, 33]. None of these requests were granted, though apparently Lord Chancellor Hatton did subscribe £1,000 [87]. But a week later Drake estimated that £25,500 was needed in the immediate future to lay in two months and fourteen days' victuals for 10,000 men and to fit out and rig the shipping. This was in addition to £20,723 13s. 4d. to be provided by Norris in the Low Countries [20]. He therefore asked that the £17,000 of the Queen's promised £20,000 which had not yet been handed over, should be paid out towards the £17,500 worth of victuals now being made ready. It would, he said, 'induce the adventurers to bring in their adventures with greater readiness and expedition' [21] - some, it seems, were having second thoughts [166], among them (by the Queen's order, according to Norris) the Earl of Northumberland [75]. Norris's promise that the adventurers would pay in the whole of their £40,000 before asking for more than £5,000 from the Queen was conveniently forgotten. And on 27 October a warrant was sent to the Exchequer to pay Norris and Drake the £17,000 [24 33].2 So

1 See also Appendix V, below. 2 And see below, p. xxiv. XX11 INTRODUCTION the preparations in England went steadily forward. At the same time steps were taken to hamper the repair and re-equipment of Spain's naval forces. The Hanseatic Towns were warned, through the Hamburg agent, against carrying munitions, naval stores, or victuals to Spain and the King of France was asked to restrain French exports of corn and other victuals thither [14, 15, 16]. Don Antonio also promised Norris and Drake's expedition free access to all ports in his dominions and English merchants freedom to dwell and trade there untroubled by the Inquisition, besides offer­ ing to establish in England 'a house of contraction of the spicery of the East Indies from Portugal' [25]. Meanwhile, Sir John Norris had gone over to the Netherlands to seek the contributions hoped for from the States of the United Provinces. He took with him, besides 500 soldiers raised from the Protestant refugee churches, 1,500 English troops for the relief of Burgen-op-Zoom. He was to get the States to promise to repay the cost of the levy and wages of those 1,500 men, who would go off to serve in the expedition when the siege was over [29, 30, 31]. But he very soon discovered that the States were most unlikely to give such a promise. They could not afford it, it was said, and anyway they had not asked for the troops. So Norris wrote home at once that 'Her Majesty shall not have any so good means to prevail herself of that charge as to give us leave to have ten of the old companies with us' - ten, that is, of the 32 footbands which made up the 5,000 'auxiliary' footmen promised to the States by the 1585 Treaty [32, 33]. l And even before he received the Queen's consent2 to this, he was already by 26 November asking the Dutch, not for ten, but for 13 of the old footbands (2,000 men) and 600 of the 1,000 'auxiliary' horsemen as well.3 He also asked that he himself should be allowed to choose which companies he should take [32] - a request that can hardly have endeared him to Lord Willoughby [50, 53], the English Lord General in the Low Countries. Their relations were not improved by his demand that the Lord General should provide arms and should warrant the payment of weekly lendings to the 1,500 men

'As distinct from the 1,450 'cautionary' troops garrisoning the two 'cautionary' towns of Flushing and Brielle which they held as pledges for the eventual repay­ ment of the cost of the 'auxiliary' companies. The Dutch were not bound to repay the cost of these 'cautionary' troops. 2 Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxii, p. 336. 3 N. Japiske (ed.), Resolution der Staten Generaal van 1576 tot 1609, 14 vols. VI 50-1. INTRODUCTION XX111 just come over - and this at a moment when Willoughby had barely enough lendings for his own troops and had just completely exhausted his personal means and credit for the victorious defence of Bergen-op-Zoom against Parma [31]. 1 Coolly to take away some two-fifths of his forces without so much as a by-your-leave (for apparently Norris took little pains to keep Willoughby informed about his negotiations) [50, 53], was, to say the least, tactless. But Sir John Norris, 'manly and brave but much too arrogant' as the contemporary Netherlands historian Meteren described him, was never noted for tact, and his offhand and hostile attitude to Willoughby was to have unfortunate conse­ quences [32, 33]. For the time being, however, all seemed to go well in Norris's negotiations. As the States General were not in session when he arrived, he had to wait until they reassembled at the beginning of December before he could obtain final answers. But, as he had been given reason to anticipate [32, 33], when those answers were given on 6 December, they seemed to him highly satisfactory. The States readily granted him permission to purchase considerable quantities of armour, weapons, munitions, and victuals duty-free; to take five of their warships and eight (later raised to ten) companies of their infantry, with a couple of dozen transports to carry them. They also agreed that he might take for five months, until 1 June, 13 of the English 'auxiliary' footbands and six of the horsebands, provided there were left 13 footbands (2,000 men) and 200 horse in Bergen-op-Zoom and seven footbands (1,000 men) in Ostend [34, 35]. All the troops and supplies, Norris reckoned, would be ready for shipment to England by 31 December.2 As Drake's preparations in England were equally well in hand, there seemed every reason to expect that the expedition would be ready to set forth as planned by 1 February, so as to strike its blows in Spain before the campaigning season opened in the Netherlands and northern France. Accordingly, on 22 December the Queen wrote to Willoughby for the immediate despatch of the 2,000 foot and 600 horse [26]. Four days later the Privy Council sent him a list of the companies that were to go [37]. Then on 30 December letters went out to London and to 19 southern English and six Welsh counties for the levy of those troops that were to be levied

l Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxii, p. 293; Wernham, After the Armada, pp. 29, 38, 47. 2 Historical Manuscripts Commission (H.M.C.), Ancaster MSS, p. 227. XXIV INTRODUCTION in England: they were to be at their embarkation ports by 20 January [38, 40]. It was then that the first setbacks occurred. They did not, however, originate in England. There, admittedly, Howard had no great enthusiasm for an expedition that Drake and not he, the Lord Admiral, was to lead [149]; 1 and Hawkins might have preferred a purely naval treasure hunt around the Azores.2 Burgh- ley, too, was not altogether happy about withdrawing English troops from the Netherlands, doubting that 'whilst we attempt an uncertainty we shall lose a certainty and so seek a bird in a bush and leese that we have in a cage' [42]. Norris had clearly been wise to direct his complaints against Willoughby to Walsingham rather than to the Lord Treasurer [33]. Burghley was also worried about the rising cost of the expedition. Already the estimate for expendi­ ture in England had risen to £65,315, of which only £54,000 was covered by contributions, including £17,000 of the Queen's £20,000. And in the Netherlands Norris had incurred £26,970,3 less the remaining £3,000 of the Queen's contribution, and another £4,000 besides [4, 47; also 52]. By 6 February Drake had in fact spent £49,135 185. Qd. and had actually paid £32,919 19s-. 2d. [46]. Moreover, in addition to that extra £4,000 to Norris, the Queen would now be paying the five months' wages of the English companies from the Netherlands, a matter of £14,511, 'so as they are to be relieved farther than was at first offered to the sum of £18,511' [43]. Nevertheless Burghley was not against the expedition. He had paid out the whole of the Queen's promised £20,000 when she had wanted to hold Norris to his offer not to ask for more than £5,000 of it until the adventurers had paid in all their £40,000 [9, 42]. And now he wrote to Walsingham about the withdrawals from the Netherlands painfully with his own gouty hand 'because I would not make any other acquainted with the matter' [43]. The Queen, too, as soon as she heard Norris's report, had at once and without any hesitation ordered the troop levies in England and the despatch of the companies from the Low Countries. It was in the Netherlands that the trouble arose. In ordering the despatch of her troops, the Queen instructed Willoughby to inform

l Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv. p. 114. 2 Williamson, Sir John Hawkins (1927), pp. 450-3. 3 I.e. not counting the £3,000 for levying 6,000 voluntary soldiers, reckoned as the captains' contributions. INTRODUCTION XXV the States that she would never have agreed to any withdrawals 'but that they have accorded and assured us to supply the same with the like numbers ... at their own charges in case of necessity' [26]. But the States had never promised any such thing [53] and there was nothing at all to suggest that they had either in their reply to Norris or their letter to the Queen [34]. Norris must have badly misunderstood or badly misreported their answers. 1 To make matters worse, Elizabeth also threatened to abandon Ostend, which was garrisoned by her troops, unless the States saw promptly to the repair of its fortifications and sea defences [26]. The States' reaction was sharp and uncompromising. They abso­ lutely denied any promise to supply the places of the troops that were to be withdrawn; they emphatically commanded Willoughby and the governors of Bergen-op-Zoom and Ostend not to despatch a single English soldier from those garrisons unless 2,000 English foot and 200 English horse were left in Bergen and 1,000 English foot in Ostend; and they refused utterly to agree to the abandoning of Ostend [49, 51, 54]. What made matters worse was that some 1,500 footmen of the English 'auxiliary' forces had been for the past year and more in the 'cautionary towns',2 over whose governors Willoughby's commission as Lord General gave him no authority [59]. To prise them out would not be easy and without them there would be no more than 1,500 of the 5,000 'auxiliary' foot left to garrison both Bergen and Ostend once the 2,000 for Norris and Drake's expedition had been withdrawn. For Willoughby this requirement by the States was the last straw. He professed to 'wish well to the journey' [50], but he was intensely jealous of Norris and Drake who, 'glorying with Artax- erxes in a few ships', were making it impossible for him either to defend his towns or keep the field [50, 53]. At the beginning of the year he had even suggested raising 4,000 by subscription from Narrow Seas traders, 'the nobility, clergy, and well-affected gen­ try', with £10,000 from himself, to invade Flanders and seize Dunkirk and Nieuwpoort [48].3 Now, when the Queen on 27

1 Before Norris left the Hague the States had been talking about keeping in service ten of their 'supernumary' bands and putting them on the regular pay rolls of Holland, Zeeland and Friesland, 'in place of the men from Her Majesty's succours . .. thereby the better to provide for and strengthen the frontiers', Japiske, op. tit., vi, 178. It is possible that Norris may have heard of this proposal to provide for the Provinces' eastern frontiers and mistaken it for a general promise to replace the withdrawn English. 2 Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxii, pp. 263, 333. *Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxiii, p. 37. XXVI INTRODUCTION January, in answer to the States' demands, sent a revised list for the withdrawals [55], he presented this to them on 8 February in a fashion that went far to ruin its effect. By the comparatively simple expedient of reducing the number of withdrawals from 2,000 foot to 1,500 and ordering 500 of the 'auxiliary' troops in the caution­ ary towns to reinforce Bergen, the revised list provided the 2,000 foot in Bergen and the 1,000 in Ostend. But the Queen's letter accompanying the list did not mention in so many words that the withdrawals were to be reduced to 1,500 foot (although the list did so explicitly) [55] and Willoughby, we must in charity assume, read only the letter. For in his final declaration to the States on 14 February, before he himself left for England, he still spoke of 2,000 foot and 600 horse being withdrawn. He did not believe that the cautionary town governors would release any troops and, by some arithmetic that is not easy to follow, he reckoned that 'only one thousand footmen or thereabouts' would be left to garrison both Bergen and Ostend. He therefore asked again that the States reinforce those garrisons with their own troops [56, 59]. This completely spoiled the Queen's prompt effort to meet the States' conditions, for it dealt a near-fatal blow to their already waning interest in the expedition. As a result, none of their five warships, none of their cannon, very few of their transports, and only six of the promised ten Dutch footbands ever joined Norris and Drake [84, 166]. Also, as the governors of Bergen and Ostend, and their subordinate officers too, took full advantage of the States' countermanding orders [52, 56, 60, 62], only six of the 13 English footbands came away [166] - four from the cautionary towns, one from Ostend, and one from Utrecht. Moreover, the footband from Utrecht and the horsebands were employed by the States on their eastern frontier until late in January. When they and the States' footmen did join the four footbands from the cautionary towns, they were further delayed, first by the failure of Sir Edward Norris and his agents to have transports ready, and then by the freezing over of the harbours. Contrary winds caused yet further delay, so that it was early March before they arrived in England [58, 75]. 1 The six horsebands were then found to be so weak (one, indeed, existed only on paper) that they were dis­ charged, though Norris was allowed to receive their pay for the five months to wage a somewhat larger number of footmen [71, 76].2 l Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxiii, p. 143. 2 Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxiii, pp. 142-3; 158-9. INTRODUCTION XXV11 And it was late in March before a scant half (£4,349 out of £9,000 worth) of the arms and munitions Norris had purchased in Holland arrived [85, 98].' The most serious effect of this quarrel with the Dutch, however, was the delay it caused to the entire expedition. Every week that passed brought nearer the opening of the campaigning season in the Netherlands when the Dutch would need all the troops they could muster against Parma. Every week brought nearer the time when the surviving ships from the 1588 Armada would be ready for sea again.2 Every week narrowed the time available for oper­ ations in Spain and Portugal before the American convoys arrived at the Azores. The Queen, therefore, did all she could to hasten the expedition away. She did defer from 20 January the assembly of the troops levied in England, but only until 1 February [40] and in mid-February she told Norris and Drake not to wait for the troops and supplies icebound in the Netherlands [58]. While undertaking to pay the whole loss if the expedition were stayed or called back by her order [70], at the end of February or early in March she paid Norris £11,678 85. for five months' weekly lend- ings and summer apparel for the six horsebands and six English footbands [71].3 Norris and Drake, however, were naturally reluctant to sail without so substantial a part of their munitions and weapons and without so many of their experienced soldiery. Moreover, they had transports for only 9,000 of their hoped-for 12,000 troops [61, 69, 75, 85]. They were probably the more reluctant because their hopes of success in Portugal were growing. What little news came in from there [e.g. 64] could be interpreted to support Don Antonio's optimism about his support among the Portuguese.4 And early in January Henry Roberts, the Barbary Company's agent, arrived back in England from Morocco bringing with him an envoy, Mushac Reyz, from the Sharif. The Sharif offered 150,000 ducats, victuals, the use of his ports, and troops under his personal leadership if the expedition would attack the Spanish coast inside

l Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxiii, p. 246. 2 Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxiii, p. 151. 3 I.e. assuming that the payment was for the six footbands that actually came and not for the full ten for which the Privy Council gave Sherley warrant on 2 March, in which case the amount would be £13,865. 4 Mendoza heard in February of reports in England that there had been a rising against the Spaniards in the Azores island of Terceira; also that St. Julian's and Bele"m were short of guns, which had been taken for the 1588 Armada; and that Don Antonio had no lack of friends in Portugal (Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, p. 515). XXV111 INTRODUCTION the Straits of Gibraltar, thereby also diverting Spanish forces from Portugal and making Don Antonio's task easier there [66]. From notes made by Robert Cecil and almost certainly reflecting his father's views, it is clear that the Queen, while welcoming the offer of money to Don Antonio, was not prepared for an open alliance or for open military co-operation with the Muslim Sharif against the Christian, albeit Most Catholic, King of Spain [73, 74]. And in her formal reply she did in fact speak only of the expedition possibly being supplied with victuals, and so on, from the Sharif s ports [80]. Cecil and a colleague were to ask Don Antonio 'what party he looketh for in Portugal? what party in the Isles? whether upon their first descent they will discover themselves?' They were further to tell him that Her Majesty 'cannot advise him to adven­ ture his person [in the expedition] because the success is doubtful [and] that their voyage hath sundry ends' [73]. Don Antonio, however, did not intend to be left out. Nor did Norris and Drake have any intention of leaving him out. For about the same time that the Queen was seeking to dissuade him, they were putting to him a number of articles which must have assumed that he would go. The articles do not appear to have survived, but Don Antonio's answers show clearly that he had every intention of taking part in the expedition and regarded the recovery of his dominions as its main purpose. Reiterating his assurance that his Portuguese subjects would at once rally to his party as soon as he landed, he undertook to do his best to repay the entire cost of the expedition - troops, ships, victuals, munitions - within six months; to pay the troops monthly from the time of their landing, making the first payment by or before the end of the third month; and to provide them with victuals. He asked that the troops give no offence in matters of religion, that they respect churches and women, and abstain from all pillage and spoil; and that the navy make no seizure of Portuguese shipping. If it should not prove possible to land in Portugal itself, he asked to be taken to some other part of his dominions that he should choose. If he wished to stay there and they wished to go farther, 'to recover our other estates and isles of the East Indies', they should leave him, at his expense, 4,000 soldiers and ten ships [72]. l What the articles had said upon this last point, we do not, of course, know; but Don

1 For other, pretended, articles published by Spanish propaganda in Portugal, see Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 458; M. A. S. Hume, The Year after the Armada and Other Historical Studies (1896), pp. 18-20. INTRODUCTION XXIX Antonio's reply certainly suggests that Norris and Drake's ambi­ tions were reaching pretty far. Certainly the Queen feared that those ambitions were threaten­ ing to blur what to her were the principal purposes of the expedi­ tion. For the instructions that she gave Norris and Drake on 23 February began with a firm and emphatic statement that

forasmuch as the chief and principal end of the setting forth of our army under your charge tendeth chiefly to two purposes, the one to distress the King of Spain's ships, the other to get possession of some of the islands of Azores thereby to intercept the convoys of treasure that doth yearly pass that way to and from the West and East Indies, we would have you direct the whole course of your proceeding in such sort as may best serve to accomplish and perform the said two ends and purposes.

They were first and foremost to take or destroy the enemy shipping in the ports of Guipuzcoa, Biscay, and Galicia and after that in Lisbon. Then if- and only if- they found 'upon good ground that the party Don Antonio hath [in Portugal] is great and that they stand so well affected towards him as he pretendeth', they might attempt the recovery of his kingdom. Even so, they should only stay there long enough to see him established, his frontiers with Spain somewhat fortified, and arrangements made for him to reimburse their expenses. That done, they must go on to occupy such of the Azores 'as may best serve to place our ships for the intercepting of the Spanish treasure'. Then the Queen reiterated that

before you attempt anything either in Portugal or in the said Islands our express pleasure and commandment is that you first distress the ships of war in Guipuzcoa, Biscay, Galicia, and any other places that appertain either to the King of Spain or his subjects, to the end that they may not impeach you in such enterprises as you are to execute upon his dominions, as also that the said ships remaining entire and undistressed, they may not . . . take encouragement in the time of your* absence to attempt somewhat against this our realm or our realm of Ireland.

As first drafted the instructions also contained a clause directing that if the enemy forces proved too strong to make head against or to distress in their havens, Norris and Drake should either stay to XXX INTRODUCTION watch them so long as their victuals lasted, or 'distress them in their repair hitherwards', or else return home. This clause, how­ ever, was replaced by a bolder direction that if nothing could be attempted in Portugal or the Azores without great danger and hazard, they should 'attempt any other thing that you shall think most may annoy [the King of Spain], for that we hold it would greatly touch us in honour if you should return home without doing anything, as the said King's army did last year'. Finally, Norris and Drake were instructed to seize any victuals or munitions being carried to the enemy and they were to use the counsel of 'such persons of your company as you know to be men of experience and judgement', whose advice and consents should be 'recorded in writing under their hands' [67]. With the instruc­ tions went sealed orders naming Sir Roger Williams to command by land and Thomas Fenner by sea if either Norris or Drake died or became incapacitated [68]. 1 It was not only in these instructions that the Queen insisted so emphatically that the primary object of the expedition must be the destruction of Spanish naval forces, those in Santander especially. For, as she reminded Norris and Drake three months later,

before your departure hence you did at sundry times so far forth promise us as with oaths to assure us and some of our Council that your first and principal action should to be take and distress the King of Spain's navy and ships in ports where they lay, which if ye did not, ye affirmed that ye were content to be reputed as traitors [124].2

How little these oaths were worth, the event was to show. How little faith the Queen herself had in them was shown by her appointment, early in March, of Anthony Ashley, one of the clerks of the Privy Council, to go 'with Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake in the journey towards Spain, with authority for the obser-

1 It is not hard to understand why Oppenheim (Monson's Tracts, i, pp. 196) thought that 'there are probably no other instructions to a commander-in-chief in the whole course of English history which show such an entire ignorance of the conditions and of the object to be aimed at'; why Corbett thought no more highly of them (Drake and the Tudor Navy, ii. pp. 307-9); and why Cheyney (History of England, 1588-1603, i, p. 182) regarded the commanders as 'ill instructed', for all three believed that the true and primary object should have been the conquest of Portugal. 2 Were these perhaps the 'threatenings and chidings' that Norris complained of on 8 April? [95] INTRODUCTION XXXI vation of their actions and for writing of their common letters . . . and to assist them with good counsel and advice'. The Queen herself also especially warned him 4to keep a true journal in writing of all public actions and proceedings in way of counsel or in fact' [77].' At some point, too, the expedition was denied its six siege guns [166]. Was this likewise an attempt to curb the enthusiasm of the military men? For that enthusiasm was assuredly mounting. Sir Roger Wil­ liams, for example, was already envisaging seizing Seville, Lisbon, or Cadiz and entrenching half the army there while the ships and the other half ransacked the Azores. Despite past experience at Newhaven and Boulogne, he was sure all Spain would not be able to dislodge 7,000 men thus entrenched. 'Unless there be means', he wrote on 6 March,

to levy and maintain wars with the spoils of their countries, the Spanish treasure will eat us in time and beggar our whole state - the which must be in Spain, Portugal, or in his Indians, where with all reasons one hundred thousand pounds with twenty thousand men will do more good than ten times as much in any other place, especially in the Low Countries or France [78].

Clearly Williams's ideas were leaping far above a mere raid to destroy enemy shipping. And if, as seems possible, he was the author of the 'Project. . . that this army prepared may sail directly for the port of Lisbon and not to attempt any other service till their arrival there' [81], he must already have written off in his own mind the Queen's insistence upon the primacy of an attack upon Santander. About this time the attraction of Portugal received yet another boost. On 16 March, when the major part of the expedition was assembled at Dover, with more troops than they had transports to carry, some sixty Dutch flyboats of 150 to 200 tons apiece sailed by in ballast on their way to western France for salt. There could not be found in all Europe a meeter fleet for transporting of men than this is', Drake exclaimed, and finding that some of them carried copies of passports from Parma, he promptly impressed the lot as none-too-willing transports for the expedition's troops [85, 91, 163; for the passports, see also 89]. Largely as a result of this, as Norris and Drake wrote on 3 April,

'The two papers printed below nos 112, 137 may be such a journal. XXX11 INTRODUCTION since our first assembly of the determined number of men for this service, the army hath been almost double increased, especially of late since the bruit of the taking of the flyboats, by repair of many gentlemen and divers companies of voluntary soldiers offering to be employed in this action, whom ... we could in no sort refuse to entertain [88]. And indeed, according to the list that Norris and Drake both signed on 8 April [Appendix II] there had been a considerable increase, though hardly a doubling of the army's numbers. Since their earlier list of 23 February [Appendix II] the number of regiments had increased by only one, from 13 to 14, but the number of companies in them was half as many again, 115 as against 82. Of course, the list of 8 April reckoned those 115 companies each at its full listed strength of 150 officers and men - at 17,390, in addition to 1,500 gentlemen and their servants - for Norris and Drake would obviously aim at having victuals enough to supply companies at full strength. But 17,390 is still no more than half as many again as the 12,000 which had been the original 'determined number'. And there is no doubt that the 8 April list exaggerated the real numbers. Later examinations of the certificates of musters taken on 16 April alleged indeed that there had then been present not 17,390 but 13,324 - 12,194 men and 1,130 officers [Ap.II]. These examinations were made in September 1589 and January 1590, probably in the interest of minimising the expedition's losses. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that Norris and Drake were guilty of considerable exaggeration on 8 April in claiming that the army had been 'almost double increased'. Yet the increase was considerable and it could only inflate the Portugal ambitions of the military men; and the increase of the shipping to some 180 sail which it entailed [Appendix II] must have made operations into the leeward corner of the Bay of Biscay less attractive than ever to the sailors. There was also another more immediate problem. After arriving at Plymouth on 19 March, the expedition lay there windbound for another month. Now even if the West Country had been able to supply the quantities of victuals needed daily for these swollen numbers [but cf. 88 and 97 with 94], Norris and Drake could not pay for them. For between them they had now spent £96,324 105. 8d. [87, 90] instead of the £70,000 they had budgeted for1 and already towns 'This may be what Wingfield misinterpreted as wanting '£20,000 of their adven­ ture' [166]. INTRODUCTION XXX111 and counties along the south coast were pestering the Privy Council for payment of debts for earlier victualling of their troops [83]. As a result, they had to dip into the £28,377 Is. 9d. worth of victuals that they had laid in as a four months' sea store, By 1 April £8,885 of that had already been consumed and what was left would last at that rate only another six weeks or less [87, 88, 89]. In this crisis they turned to the Queen. With fearsome warnings of what would happen to the countryside and its inhabitants if this great army were disbanded unpaid and unfed, on 3 April they invoked the provision in their original proposal by which she was to pay for victualling the expedition if it were weatherbound in harbour for more than ten days. They also asked to have 'a convenient proportion of victual' sent after them when they did sail [88, 94, 95; also 86]. Despite the fact that Norris and Drake had largely brought this trouble upon themselves by allowing so great an increase in their soldiery, the Queen granted their request [96]. It was to cost her £12,459, bringing the Exchequer issues for the expedition up to £37,609 [196], in addition to the £11,678 for the pay of the six 'auxiliary' footbands and the six horsebands from the Netherlands [71], a total of £49,287 instead of the £20,000 she had originally promised. The readiness with which the Queen granted Norris and Drake's demand is perhaps surprising. For at this moment her own finan­ cial prospects looked hardly brighter than theirs. 1 Parliament, meeting in February, had voted her some £320,000. This was twice the usual grant. But its collection was to be spread over twice the usual time and was not to begin until November. In the meantime she had begun to raise a Privy Seal loan, which by June was to bring in £46,925; and in late February she despatched William Milward to Germany on a secret - and as it was to prove, vain - mission to borrow £100,000 for her there [82]. Then in March in the Netherlands Count Maurice rashly laid siege to the mutinous German garrison of Geertruidenberg [84] and on 8 April news reached Court that the mutineers had yielded the town to Parma [92]. It seemed all too likely that this would have 'waked the sleeping dog'2 and started the campaigning season there before Norris and Drake had even left harbour. On that same day, 8 April Sir Edward Stafford landed, very seasick, at Dartmouth from France bearing Henry Ill's request for a loan of £45,300 to help

'For this paragraph, see Wernham, After the Armada, pp. 77-91, and references there. 2 Cal.S.P. Foreign, xxiii, p. 218. XXXIV INTRODUCTION him raise an army of Germans to rescue him from the Catholic League [93]. And on that same 8 April Norris and Drake wrote to report that their attempt to get the expedition to sea had been frustrated when 'suddenly the wind chopped directly contrary' and forced them back again into Plymouth with their need for more victuals greater than ever [94, 96]. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the Queen told the two Generals that 'she looketh to be satisfied again of them hereafter of such money as now Her Majesty doth disburse for this present supply of victuals' [99]. And Morris's grumble to Burghley that 'we never received any favourable answer of any matter that was moved by us, were it never so just or reasonable, but contrarily threatenings and chid- ings', seems peculiarly unfair and curmudgeonly even for Norris [95]. In these same first few days of April another event occurred which some of the expedition thought might, and some later historians believe did, turn the Queen wholly against it [91]. l On Friday, 3 April, the young Earl of Essex took horse in St James's Park between five and six o'clock and galloped off, without the Queen's permission, to join the expedition. He rode so hard that he reached Plymouth on Saturday morning, quite outstripping the younger Sir Francis Knollys, his uncle, whom the Queen sent to stop him [101]. Arriving just as the fleet was preparing to make its first, abortive attempt to sail, he rushed aboard the Queen's Swiftsure and lay low there till dark, when she crept quietly out of Plymouth Sound. It is difficult to avoid a suspicion that the expedition's leaders were aware both of the Earl's presence and his plans. Why, for example, in their very first proposal to the Queen did they ask that any person 'of what quality soever' should be free to go on their voyage? Also, on 7 April they wrote off, a little too innocently, to the Privy Council that, on Knollys's arrival, 'under­ standing that a ship of Her Majesty's called the Swiftsure was gone forth to sea that night, we entered into some mistrust and suspicion of the Earl's departure to sea in the said ship'. So they had sent Knollys off in pursuit, but his pinnace was unable to weather Rame Head before the wind turned southerly. At the end of their letter,

"Elizabeth was much more interested in recovering the victim of her elderly charms than in the needs of the army', Oppenheim, Monson's Tracts, i, p. 193; 'From this time forward the Queen's unfavourable attitude was transformed into actual hostility . . . [She] cared more that Essex was out of her sight than that fifteen thousand of her subjects were sailing away to destroy a fleet and capture a kingdom with only two weeks supplies aboard', Cheyney, op. cit., i, pp. 167, 188. INTRODUCTION XXXV however, their wrote that upon the arrival of the Earl of Hunting­ don with fresh commands from the Queen, they had sent Knollys off again and had 'again written to the Earl [of Essex] and Sir Roger Williams who is gone with the Earl' - a phrase that seems to betray rather more knowledge than they had before professed [102]. Moreover, the change of wind forced the Swiftsure back into Falmouth. Yet they did not manage to make any official or open contact with her or with the Earl during the 11 more days they themselves were weatherbound in Plymouth and he in Falmouth, a mere 60 miles to the west [103, 105, 166]. l Essex himself claimed nine years later that 'I engaged my meanest kinsfolk, friends, and followers, else neither the adventure had been made up nor their journey performed;2 and that

although I had no charge, yet I made my brother general of the horse, my faithful friend Sir Roger Williams colonel-general of the infantry, seven or eight of my fast friends colonels, and 20 at least of my domestics captains, so as I might have authority and party enough when I would [106].

Even if this bombastic claim were only partly accurate, there was enough truth in it to justify the Queen's anxiety. For she was already well aware that this young man's dazzling promise and popularity were seriously flawed by an arrogant and puerile egot­ ism. And in some of the 40 or more letters he left behind on that 3 April he spoke of being £22,000 or £23,000 in debt and of being resolved that 'if I speed well I will adventure to be rich' [100, 101]. Such a man, bearing all the prestige of a peer of the realm, could not but have a considerable influence upon the conduct of the expedition. And that influence was not likely to encourage obedi­ ence to the Queen's orders to go first to Santander. For there little glory and no riches were to be won. Moreover, Essex had taken with him one of the six Queen's ships, so reducing the fighting core of the fleet by one-sixth just when at Santander its full strength might most be needed. This itself was a selfish and irresponsible folly that almost justified Elizabeth's angry letter of 4 May ordering Norris and Drake not

'W, B, Devereux, The Lives and Letters of the Devereux Earls of Essex in the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles /, 1540-1646, 2 vols. (1853), i, pp. 198-9. 2 Mendoza heard that the earl had contributed 10,000 crowns (or pounds?), Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, pp. 500, 511. XXXVi INTRODUCTION only to send Essex back at once if he had rejoined them, but also to place Williams (who really deserved, she said, punishment by death) under close arrest [105]. Walsingham, it seems, managed to suppress this letter [104]; certainly the Generals never referred to it in their later letters [cf. 166; and see below, p, liv]. But clearly there were good and sufficient reasons for the Queen's anger without our having to presume a doting spinsterly affection on her part which could not bear to let young Essex out of her sight. For what worried her was Essex's presence with the expedi­ tion, not his absence from her side. The course that the expedition took when it eventually got to sea on 18 April provided further justification for the Queen's anxiety. For it made no serious attempt to go first to Santander or San Sebastian. Later, Norris and Drake sought to explain this by alleging that by the time they had gathered their shipping together west of Ushant, 'the wind was that far easterly the fleet was not able to reach to Santander' [169]. The Queen, however, earlier maintained, on the evidence of Sir William Knollys, that 'they had eight days fair wind to have gone to those 2 places' [120]. Drake on 8 May said that the wind was 'very much easterly' when they arrived off Corunna on 23 April [114]. John Evesham said that off Ushant on 21 April the wind came fair at north-east 'so we set our course towards Galicia' [163]; and Wingfield said that the wind came good on the evening of 20 April [166]. No one spoke at the time of contrary wind preventing their going to Santander. 1 Norris and Drake also later alleged that 'the flyboats, wherein the greatest number of soldiers were, could not safely go to the coast; and how unfit and dangerous it had been to have brought so great a fleet among the rocks and on that broken coast, all men of war can best consider' [169]. That a number of the flyboats did in fact end up in La Rochelle [125,126, 128] is an argument that can cut both ways. But clearly it was the swollen size of the army and its transports, encouraged by swollen ambitions about operations in Portugal, that made a visit to Santander so particularly unattractive. What was reprehensible in the commanders was that they had not made this clear to the Queen before they set out. They knew her wishes, and her reiterated instructions were clear and empha­ tic. Yet it appears highly probable that by the latter part of March they had already resolved to miss out Santander and sail straight for Portugal. The Spanish spy David - Manoel d'Andrada, one of a

'Oppenheim, Monson's Tracts, i, p. 198. INTRODUCTION XXXV11 number of traitors in Don Antonio's ill-paid household - in sending Mendoza an accurate general account of Don Antonio's answers to Norris and Drake's articles (see above, p. xxviii), wrote that 'it is whispered that the landing will take place at Peniche' - just, in fact, where they did eventually land [2]. 1 Williams's project - if it was his - for a direct attack upon Lisbon up the Tagus 'and not to attempt any other service till their arrival there' (see above, p. xxxi) suggests that the debate was by then about which way to approach Lisbon rather than about when to go there. At least one adventurer, Robert Flick, subscribed £1,000 'upon foundation only of a direct course and voyage to Lisbon or the Islands' [198]. Above all, Essex and Williams in the Swiftsure, when they were at last able to get out of Falmouth on 17 or 18 April, made straight for Lisbon, expecting to meet the rest of the fleet there. And Williams, when the Swiftsure had sneaked out of Plymouth during the night of 5 April, can hardly have been ignorant of Norris and Drake's intentions even though 'all their proceedings are kept very secret' [91, 162]. Nevertheless the expedition did not, after all, sail direct to Portugal. On 6 April Norris and Drake wrote to the Privy Council that they had recently heard 'that there are arrived to the number of 200 sail of ships of divers nations at the Groyne [i.e. Corunna] and other ports of Galicia and Portugal with store of munition, masts, cables, and other provisions for the enemy'. So, while promising (a little disingenuously) to observe their instructions as near as wind and weather permitted, they announced their inten­ sion 'if the wind will not suffer us to bear with Biscay [i.e. Santander, etc.] and those parts, to attempt the destroying of the shipping in the foresaid coasts of Galicia and Portugal' [108; and cf. 107]. And they asked for their supply of victuals to be sent after them 'to Cape Finisterre or the Isles of Bayona' [108; see also 110]. This letter reinforces the suspicion that they had already decided not to go to Santander; and Burghley's underlining of the words printed above in italics suggests that it was a suspicion he shared. But the letter also shows that in a last-minute change of

1 Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, pp. 522-6. For the reports of Spanish spies in Don Antonio's household - David (or Manoel d'Andrada), Antonio da Vega, Escobar, and of Sir Horatio Palavicino's friend Marco Antonio Messia, see ibid., pp. 468-521 passim. They were not too far wrong about the numbers of men, ships, etc., but very uncertain about the objectives - the Santander ships, Portugal, the Islands, or the West Indies. As late as 22 March Mendoza believed the intention was to join Henry of Navarre in France, ibid., pp. 526-7. XXXV111 INTRODUCTION

O

I

08

C INTRODUCTION XXXIX mind they had decided to look into Corunna on their way to Portugal. Now Corunna was not a particularly likely destination for 200 laden merchantmen, but it was on the direct route to Portugal and worth a brief inspection to make sure. Besides, to catch those 200, or a considerable number of them, at the very beginning of the expedition would do much to satisfy the investors in it and perhaps even to appease the Queen's wrath at the failure to attempt Santander. Profit was already challenging strategy. They arrived off Corunna on 23 April and caught the town entirely by surprise. According to what the Venetian ambassador at Madrid heard, the governor, the Marquis of Seralba, was attending to private busi­ ness; the courts were sitting; and the soldiers 'had left their quarters and their arms and were scattered all over the country'. 1 But in the harbour there were only the battered galleon San Juan, vice-admiral of the 1588 Armada; a 1,000-ton Biscayan, also an Armada survivor; a 600-ton hulk; a vessel laden with pikes and firearms; and two galleys. Owing to a sudden drop in the wind it was 3 o'clock next afternoon before the expedition came to anchor in the roads. Within three hours, however, they had landed 7,000 men a mile to the east of the town, on the narrow isthmus that joins it to the mainland. Rain and darkness prevented them from then doing more than drive the enemy back behind the wall across the isthmus that guarded the lower town on this landward side. Next morning Norris brought ashore two demi-culverins, which speedily caused the two Spanish galleys to flee across the bay to Ferrol and stopped the San Juan from bothering the troops with its gunfire - that a mere two demi-culverins could do this, even with the help of Captain Flick's 'muskets with arrows', suggests that the 50 - or 90 - gun San Juan was very thinly manned and still far from ready for action [163, 166, 198]. That night another 2,000 men were embarked in small boats and at about 2 a.m. on 26 April they attacked the lower town from the harbour side, taking in rear the defenders on the wall. The lower town was soon won, whereupon the Spaniards set fire to the San Juan which an offshore wind prevented Flick's Merchant Royal cutting out. They abandoned the other three ships. From the mainland about 1,000 or 2,000 Spanish troops - the Venetian ambassador heard they were 2,400 peasants with only six har-

l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 439. Xl INTRODUCTION quebuses between them 1 - then approached the town and a hundred or so got as far as the English boats on the beach, but the whole force was easily put to flight [163, 166, 198]. In all these actions the English lost only 20 men, but claimed to have killed 500 Spaniards and taken 80 prisoners, among them the comman­ der of the lower town, Don Juan de Luna, and a commissary, Juan de Vera. In the lower town they found, besides 150 small brass pieces and casks, cables, ropes, and anchors, large quantities of corn, meal, beef, and fish. They also found a great store of wine, which soon had many of the troops helplessly drunk. This and the plundering of 'the old clothes and baggage of those which returned with the Duke of Medina out of the journey of England' [161], were to bring upon them a devastating epidemic of sickness. All this, however, should have ended complaints about shortage of victuals. For, as Anthony Wingfield later wrote,

yet know you this, there is no man so forgetful that will say they wanted before they came to the Groyne, that whosoever made not very large provisions for himself and his company at the Groyne, was very improvident, where was plentiful store of wine, beef, and fish . . . wherewith some did so furnish them­ selves as they did not only in the journey supply the needs of such as were less provident than they but in their return home made a round commodity of the remainder thereof.

[For the landing at Corunna and taking of the lower town, see 109, 110, 112, 114, 160, 163, 164 (a clearly second-hand account), 165, 166, 172]. That could all have been done in the three or four days that the expedition had so far been at Corunna [160]; and it was all that could usefully be done there. But Norris now decided to attack the much stronger upper town on a hill to seaward of the lower town. His excuse was that he heard there was much victual and munition in the upper town and that, anyway, they were held in Corunna by contrary winds [110; cf. 109, 114] - though it is not clear when the wind turned contrary and they were eventually to set sail six days before it came favourable again [163, 165].2 Adding two demi- cannon to the two demi-culverins, he began his battery. One demi-cannon's carriage broke at the second shot [166] and then

{ Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 432. 2 Oppenheim, Monson's Tracts, i, p. 204 note 67. INTRODUCTION xli the rest had to cease fire because the gunners had failed to protect themselves properly against the enemy's shot. Also in an attempt to mine under a tower at the corner of the higher town's wall, 'the powder brake out backwards' [163, 166]. Meanwhile, the sea side of the town was left open so that the two galleys repeatedly were able to run in fresh supplies to the Spanish garrison [160]. Eventu­ ally, however, by 3 May the cannon made 'a very fair breach' [165] - Norris and Drake in their letter called it 'a little breach' [110] - and the mine brought down half of the tower. But 'the English common soldier is not well acquainted with matters of breach' [111] and the assault parties rushed prematurely forward. One was driven back in panic and with some losses when the other half of the tower toppled over upon them; the weight of the other party caused the rubble of the breach made by the cannon to slip away under their feet, carrying them down with it and revealing half the . heighth of the wall still standing [109, 110, 112, 117, 118, 163, 164, 165, 166]. While all this had been going on, raiding parties had spoiled the countryside for up to a dozen miles round, almost unopposed [109, 110, 163, 166]. But on 6 May Norris learned that a Spanish force, at first thought to be 15,000 strong, but later estimated at 10,000 and eventually at 8,000 or 8,500 [109, 110, 111, 114, 166] was within five miles of them. He sallied forth with 7,000 men and found the enemy encamped at Puente de Burgos, across a 200- yard stone bridge where men could pass no more than three abreast. Storming over this, they put the enemy to flight, killing (by varying estimates) anything from 200 to 1,500 of them, for a loss on their own part of two common soldiers and a corporal of the field, with three or four captains wounded - Sir Edward Norris by a sword blow in the head as he fell over 'with very earnestness in overthrusting' with his pike [109, 110, 112, 114, 117, 118, 163, 164, 165, 166]. This success at Puente de Burgos, however, brought them no nearer to taking the upper town at Corunna. Sir John Norris blamed that failure upon 'the want of the artillery that we demanded from Her Majesty . . . and the like want we shall feel of it in every place where we come'. He therefore demanded that the missing siege guns and a supply of powder be sent to them at once [113]. William Fenner heard that the reason was 'a general want of powder in the fleet' - a by-product of the earlier dispute with the Dutch [164]. Ashley added that 'Santander by report is as strong as the high town of the Groyne, whereunto the cannon must of Xlii INTRODUCTION necessity be brought. . . the entry to the haven is straiter than this1 where notwithstanding the fleet hath rid it out in contempt of the cannon yet hath been somewhat endamaged'. But he went on to say that their experience around Corunna showed 'that an army of 10,000 men, good soldiers, may pass through the whole realm without great danger' [111]. Sir John Norris was of much the same opinion. He hoped 'that the success of the war of Portugal. . . will give Her Majesty encouragement to be at some charge for the maintenance thereof. And in this hope he boldly requested that 30 of the old companies from the Low Countries be sent to them 'to continue the war here all this year' [113; cf. 110]. On the day, 8 May, that Norris wrote that letter, the troops, after setting fire to the lower town, were re-embarked and the fleet prepared to put to sea [111, 163, 166] - but southward towards Portugal, not eastward towards Santander,2 although the wind was blowing strongly from the south-west and continued in that quar­ ter for the next six days so that it was 14 May before they doubled Cape Finisterre [163, 165, 166], though Fenner, who was not present, says they left Corunna 'with a fair wind' [271]. Norris and Drake did consult Thomas West, master of the Revenge, Robert Wignal, master of the Nonpareil, Captain Sackville, and Captain Thomas Drake, who, obligingly, utterly refused to conduct the navy to Santander. Norris and Drake also said later that they remembered Sir John Hawkin's advice that it would be perilous 'for such a navy to enter into that Bay out of the which the same would hardly have been brought again until time and victual had been so far spent as that thereby the enterprise would have been utterly overthrown' [169]. These were, perhaps, rather better arguments than those put forward to excuse not going to Santan­ der first of all. It is nevertheless pretty clear that Norris and Drake had already made up their minds to go from Corunna to Portugal and not back to Santander. Their decision is the more remarkable because they learned from their prisoners that the Santander and other galleons were expected at Corunna by the end of May to prepare for a new attack upon England or Ireland [109, 110, 111, 112, 113]. They pro­ fessed to believe that they had delayed the enemy preparations by taking or destroying the stores in the lower town [109, 111, 166]. They do not seem, however, to have appreciated that if they had

l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 438. 2 As the Spaniards feared, CalS.P. Venetian, viii, p. 438. INTRODUCTION xliii Xliv INTRODUCTION instead destroyed those Santander galleons, they would have prevented any further Spanish attempts against England or Ireland for as long as the war lasted and would have left the American convoys at the mercy of the English into the bargain. It is true that they said they would come back later to deal with the Santander shipping [110], but it did not apparently occur to them that those ships would by then be that much the better prepared to resist them. And their belief that 'the better part of the King's fleet' was in Lisbon was little more than wishful thinking [110, 112]. 1 Certainly when the Queen heard the reports and requests of Norris and Drake which Sir William Knollys brought to Court on 16 May [118], she was far from pleased. In discussion with Thomas Windebank, one of the clerks of the signet, she complained that

they had not performed that which they promised to have [done] before they went, which was that they had left 2 places where they should have done greater service in taking and burning the ships. For, said she, they had eight days fair wind to have gone to those two places before they came to the Groyne.

When Windebank suggested that perhaps she might be mis­ informed, for surely Norris and Drake would omit nothing 'to perform the best service for Her Majesty and her realm', she then replied that 'they went to places more for profit than for service' [120; cf. also Ashley's remarks, 111]. In her written reply of 20 May to Norris and Drake the Queen reminded them of how much more than her promised £20,000 she had in fact given them. She refused their request for the siege guns and pointed out that it was they who should have provided powder enough. She likewise refused their request for 30 old companies (the entire remainder of the 'auxiliary' forces!) from the Low Countries, where 'there are few enough left for the causes which we have undertaken' - especially, she could have added, so soon after the loss of Geertruidenberg. But above all she reminded them of their repeated promises 'that your first and principal action should be to take and distress the King of Spain's navy and ships where they lay'. That was 'the chiefest thing for which we gave our assent to this your enterprise' and yet they had 'left two of the chiefest places where the said King's ships lay and passed to the Groyne'. She understood from Sir William Knollys that when he

'Hume, op. cif., p. 50. INTRODUCTION xv left them the wind had been good 'for you to direct your course to Santander and so continued eight days together. So we do not only hope but in a manner assure ourself that ye are before this time come to that place and achieved the purpose which we have above mentioned'. They must 'accomplish it before your return as ye think to answer for your doing otherwise than yet you have given us cause to be satisfied with you'. Only after that might they briefly see whether Don Antonio could be restored in Portugal before they went on to the Azores [123]. This douche of cold water did not reach Norris and Drake until after failure had already overtaken their headier ambitions. But those ambitions had become considerably clouded over even before they reached Portugal. To begin with, the strength of their army had been much reduced from the 18,485 that they had reported to the Council on 8 April [Appendix II]. That figure was probably a considerably inflated one, as we have seen. Indeed, if it was not, something like 5,000 men must have grown weary of waiting for a wind and had quietly drifted off home even before the expedition left Plymouth [Appendix II]. Certainly 30 flyboats, with 30 companies of soldiers, separated from the fleet between Plymouth and Corunna, some back to England, some to La Rochelle [110, 119, 122, 125, 126, 163]. Ten of those flyboats rejoined at Corunna, but as the fleet left there another four sailed off to La Rochelle with 400 soldiers and at least two others went home to England [127, 128]. So, at least another 3,000 men had parted company by the time that the expedition left Corunna [166]. Worse still, the 10,000 or so who remained were already being ravaged by sickness bred of orgies in the Corunna wine cellars and infection from the rotting clothes and baggage of the 1588 Armada [110, 161, 166]. Perhaps worst of all, 'this idle vain siege' as Lane termed it [160], had given the Spaniards in Portugal '20 days respite to arm and put themselves in order' [162; see also 161] and allowed the Governor-General there, the Cardinal Arch­ duke Albert, time for a final clamp down upon any signs of a movement in favour of Don Antonio [133, 137]. ! And this, moreover, just when a Portuguese uprising to support the expedi­ tion's dwindling land forces was becoming daily more essential to their success. It was probably for such reasons that when the expedition - now at last rejoined after over five weeks by Essex and Williams in the l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 433-4, 449-50. xlvi INTRODUCTION

E?

e? 03 INTRODUCTION Swiftsure [163, 166] - arrived off Cape la Roca on 15 May, its council of war rejected, if indeed it ever discussed, the plan put forward earlier for a bold 16-mile dash up the Tagus for a combined assault upon Lisbon by fleet and army hand-in-hand [164]. That might perhaps still have been their best course, for the Cardinal Archduke had at first barely 7,000 troops and a good number of them were Portuguese whose loyalty had yet to be tested. 1 It may be that Williams (if he were the author of that plan) did urge it again; certainly, after all was over, he wrote that 'had we gone to Lisbon and not touched at the Groyne, we had found the town unprovided of men of war. In such sort, with the favour of God, we had carried it away without blows' [161; also 162]. It was indeed by then generally recognised that 'the landing at the Groyne . . . [hath] been the special hindrance of good success here' in Portugal [132, 133]. Drake himself wrote that 'if we had not been commanded to the contrary but had first landed at Lisbon, all had been as we could have desired it' [130; cf. 133] - though he conveniently forgot that it was Santander and not Corunna that they had been commanded to. At all events, the council of war decided to stick to what was apparently the original plan (cf. p. xxxvii above) and go back to land the army 45 miles north of Lisbon at Peniche. This was done and on the afternoon of 16 May [131, 134] Essex and Williams landed there with the vanguard of about 2,000 troops [135, 160]. The Earl leapt into the water shoulder deep to be the first man ashore and then he 'killed a Spaniard hand-to-hand' [137, 139]. Owing to dangerous rocks and a heavy sea, which sank one boat and drowned the men in it, it was almost two hours before Norris and the main body could get ashore. Meanwhile the five companies - or 5,000 men [137] - of the Spanish garrison under the Count of Fuentes put up a stiff resistance for a time and 'truly did abide it even to the very pike' before eventually withdrawing inland [135, 160,166, 172]. The English did not pursue them, but proceeded to occupy the town, while next morning the strong castle was yielded to them by its Portuguese commander [131, 134, 137, 160, 165, 166]. Then on 18 May Norris, with Essex and the bulk of the army, marched off towards Lisbon [131, 132, 135, 163], Drake standing on a hillside to wave them good-bye and promising to bring the fleet up the Tagus to meet them [160, 166]. A company was left in l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 441, 449. Xlviii INTRODUCTION Peniche castle [131, 164, 165, 166] in case the army had to come back there [163] and Drake took six companies with him in the fleet [166]. All the rest, now less than 6,000 foot [131, 134, 137, 161] and a mere 44 horse [129], went with Norris. Fuentes, with (it was believed) 5,000 Spanish and 5,000 Portuguese foot and 500 horse [131, 137], fell back step by step before him [131, 134, 135, 137, 166], not making the expected stand even at Torres Vedras on 19 May [166]. In a camisado before dawn on 22 May some enemy horse and foot did break into the camp of Drake's regiment which was quartered a mile or so from the rest, but the attack was repulsed [135, 165, 166], 1 and that was virtually the only attempt to check the advance. Even so, it took Norris six days to march those 45 miles, for a good many of his men were already sickly and all of them found the summer heat exhausting [129, 134, 137], all the more because, at least on the first day, they had to carry their munition for lack of carriages [166].2 Norris and Essex did what they could to ease matters. They had all the baggage mules unloaded and used to carry sick and hurt men; they hired peasants to carry sick and hurt men on stretchers of pikes [166]; and the Earl had his own carriages emptied and used for the same purpose [164, 166]. On the evening of 23 May they at last arrived before the suburbs of Lisbon. Williams, with about 30 'shot', 'scoured the streets till they came very near the town, where they found none but old folks and beggars crying "Viva el Key Don Antonio", and the houses shut'. For the inhabitants had carried much of their wealth into the town and 'had fired some houses by the waterside full of corn and other provisions of victuals . . . but yet left behind them great riches in many houses' [166; also 131, 138]. Next morning the Spaniards just beat Williams in a race to occupy the church of San Antonio which, abutting on the town wall, might have given the besiegers a covered way in [166].3 Then, just after mid-day, when the English, weary from their six days' march and most of them also from standing in arms most of the last night, were enjoying a well-earned siesta, a strong enemy force sallied out upon the quarters of Colonels Brett and Lane. 'Bullets came as fast as if it had been hailstones' and Brett, two captains, and about 40 others

1 Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 457. 2 A Spanish report said that they had 'some sutlers' waggons', Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 456. 3 Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 448. INTRODUCTION xlix were killed before Norris, Essex and Williams arrived with re­ inforcements and drove the Spaniards back 'even to the gates of Lisbon' [137, 165, 166]. After this, the garrison of the town, apart from shooting from the walls, made little attempt to interfere with the English during the rest of the time that they remained in the suburbs [131, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 160, 161]. There was little need for them to interfere. The city was well and continuously supplied from across the river. Most of the Por­ tuguese officials, indeed most of the Portuguese inhabitants, had either fled across the river or gone into hiding. The few who dared to attempt anything for Don Antonio had been caught and most of them hanged or beheaded [135]. 1 The garrison already outnum­ bered their besiegers among whom sickness was taking an increas­ ing toll and who had now spent almost all the powder and match they had been able to carry with them [131, 132, 134, 135, 160, 162, 164,166]. Moreover, Norris had no artillery with him and the walls of Lisbon were Very high and strong (contrary to that which was told him)' [134]. That was not the only thing which had turned out contrary to what had been told him. Don Antonio, 'carried away with imagination by the advertisements he received from the Portugals or willing by any promise to bring such an army into his country thereby to put his future once more in trial' [166], had promised an immediate and wholesale uprising by the Portuguese as soon as he landed and Norris and Drake had believed him all too easily.2 In fact not even 200 soldiers - 'and those the greatest cowards that I ever saw', Williams wrote [129] - had rallied to them [131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 161].3 One gentlewoman pre­ sented Don Antonio with a basket of cherries and plums. A number of barefoot friars and 'other mean people' had come over, with big promises of more and better to follow [137, 164, 166]. But despite Norris's strict enforcement of his proclamation against plundering or molesting the local inhabitants [163, 166], 'the laity did respite their homage till they might see which way the victory would sway' [166].4

1 CalS.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 445-50, 457, 461-2; Hume, op. cit., pp. 48-50, 57-9. 2The Spanish spy David in his report in March had said that the adventurers were all 'under the impression that they have only to land and load themselves with gold and silver, so confident are they in the hopes held out to them that the Portuguese will take up arms in their favour at once', Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, p. 525. 3 Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 457. 4Cf. Contarini's view that the nobles were 'made lukewarm by fear' and the masses 'too stupid to act well and too cowardly to act ill', Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 461-2. 1 INTRODUCTION Indeed, we may well doubt whether even an English victory would have stirred the strongly Catholic Portuguese to rise for Don Antonio and his heretic allies, even had their army numbered the 18,000 or 20,000 men they had claimed it to be in early April or even if their fleet had appeared alongside it before Lisbon, After all, in 1582 the Portuguese in Brazil had certainly not welcomed Edward Fenton's men and those in the Cape Verde Islands had been very hostile to William Hawkins's ships, while in 1587 they had fired upon the Earl of Cumberland at Bahfa. 1 Norris and Drake must surely have been very naive to believe Don Antonio's assurances that all would be different in Portugal itself. Yet it was upon those assurances that they had founded their plans and their conduct of the expedition. For they themselves confessed after their return that before the landing at Peniche 'they never received any advice out of the country' [169]. Wingfield argued that only by that landing and march could they test the promises of Don Antonio which they 'had no reason to distrust without trial' [166]. But surely the truth is that they had no reason to trust his promises without trial. For, as Contarini, the Venetian ambassador in Spain, remarked, 'the hopes of exiles are usually higher than the inclination of the populace will warrant',2 and to wager so much upon the mere word of an exiled Pretender was, to say the least, uncommonly trusting. Yet that, it seems, was what they did. For there are only two possible explanations for their landing - and landing with no artillery or means of transport - 45 miles north of Lisbon at Peniche instead of a mere 16 miles away, with fleet and army in close contact, at Cascais as Alba and the Spaniards had done in 1580. One explanation is that they believed a wholesale Portuguese uprising would welcome them and sweep them into Lisbon in spite of its high walls; the other that, like the Queen, they regarded a landing in Portugal as no more than a tentative reconnaissance in force to test the attitude of the population - an explanation that would make nonsense of all the emphasis they had increasingly put upon that part of their enterprise. At all events, in a council of colonels that Norris called together on the evening of 25 May, Lane alone advocated waiting three days more before Lisbon to see if Don Antonio's promised support

'K. R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 164-5; also Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 85, 201-7. 2 Cat.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 445. INTRODUCTION 11 materialised [160]. A few others, apparently, still trusted the Pretender's word enough to suggest sending 3,000 men down to Cascais to fetch up their artillery and munitions. But more, those 'whose unbelief was very strong of any hope from the Portugal7, were for an immediate departure. Norris compromised. He

told them that, though the expedition of Portugal was not the only purpose of their journey but an adventure therein (which if it succeeded prosperously might make them sufficiently rich and wonderful honourable) and that they had done so much already in trial thereof as what end soever happened could nothing impair their credits, yet in regard of the King's last promise that he should have that night 3,000 men, armed, of his own country, he would not for that night dislodge.

If those 3,000 Portuguese turned up, he would send part of his troops to Cascais for the artillery and munitions and then 'try his fortune for the town'. If they did not turn up, he would 'march wholly away the next morning' [166]. The Portuguese, of course, did not appear and so next morning, 26 May, Norris and his men retired to Cascais [131]. They retired unmolested [134], except that as far as St Julian's they came under sporadic gunfire from the Spanish galleys which 'struck off a gentleman's leg and killed the sergeant-major's mule under him' [166]. 'And so', Lane wrote, 'concluded all our travails and adventures with just nothing' [160]. Or, with not quite nothing. For they found Drake and the fleet just beginning to round up about 60 1 Hanseatic hulks and French­ men laden with corn, cables, masts, copper, etc., that came sailing unsuspectingly into the Tagus [130, 131, 133, 134, 137, 138, 163, 164, 166]. This at least looked like providing some return on their adventure. But why were Drake and the fleet still off Cascais? Why had they not sailed up the Tagus to meet the army in Lisbon as Drake had promised at Peniche? He had arrived off Cascais on 20 May and had occupied the town next day [163]. He at once set ashore some Portuguese 'to understand in what state our army stood' [169]. For the landing at Peniche had severed all communication between army and fleet and, as both he and Norris had insisted to the Privy Council before they left England, the destruction of shipping to Lisbon was 'not performable unless they might have

'Williams put the number up to eighty and later to seven score (pp. 159-253). Hi INTRODUCTION their forces as well at land as at sea' [169]. It was not until the morning of 25 May that news came that the army was in the suburbs of Lisbon [163]. Drake called 'a council of the captains and masters to advise and resolve for the manner of his going up to Lisbon'. As he explained after his return home, 'he found by their several reports, testified under their hands to be showed, that the sickness and weakness of the mariners and soldiers was so extreme as they were not able to handle the tackle of their ships and that the sea captains and masters were all of opinion, as appeareth under their hands likewise, that it was most dangerous for sundry good reasons to have passed up with the fleet'. Nevertheless, disregarding these counsels of caution, he 'gave order that two- thirds parts of the best ships of the navy and best manned, should bring themselves into the further channel [the wider and furthest from St Julian's guns] ready to take the first good wind . . . and the other third part to stay behind at Cascais for guard of the town and the flyboats' [169]. This would have proceeded accordingly, for the good wind 'came the very next day, being the 27th, at south-west' [169]. But on the night of 26 May [163, 165] 1 'Sir John Norris returned to Cascaes with the army' [169]. Had he waited a mere 24 hours longer, Drake would have been bringing his ships up past the 60 cannon of St Julian's and the 12 galleys sheltering under them [163, 166]. As Ralph Lane wrote, that was an action that 'required many circumstances, of which if any should fail, it might be the overthrow of the whole'. Nevertheless he believed that 'if we had not wanted powder and match, we had not retired from Lisbon before Sir Francis Drake's passing of St. Julian's with the fleet and then the town had been ours' [135]. That may well have been no more than wishful thinking. But assuredly there is no justification for accusing Drake, as many did at the time and others have done since, of lack of boldness and readiness to take a calculated risk [162, 166].2 For almost a couple of weeks after 26 May army and fleet remained at or off Cascais, 'thinking to make a second attempt upon the city [Lisbon] if by any means our wants could be supplied either by the King or out of England' [131]. After Drake issued l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 447, 454, 457. See also Appendix III, below. 2 W. Camden, Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha (Leyden, 1625), p. 555; Oppenheim, Monson's Tracts, i, pp. 210-11, 217-23; Cheyney, op. dr., i, pp. 176-8; but not Corbett, op. cit., ii, pp. 321-4. INTRODUCTION Hii stern orders against plundering, the inhabitants of Cascais proved friendly enough, 'bringing bread, water, and wine into the streets for our men', although this 'most sweet town and cleanly kept' became 'a place most loathsome' after 'our soldiers had kept it one week' [163]. The castle at Cascais also yielded somewhat tamely on 31 May [132, 134, 135, 163, 165, 166], so tamely that its Spanish commander was executed when he returned to Lisbon [138]. 1 The Spanish forces in Lisbon and St Julian's, however, hardly showed more stomach for a fight. St Julian's indeed offered to surrender if the cannon and the troops were brought before it, although that may have been a device to trap the dwindling English numbers between the fort, the growing Lisbon army, and the galleys [135]. On 1 June 8,000 (or 5,000) enemy foot and 400 horse did approach as far as St Julian's, but promptly retired into Lisbon when Norris advanced to give them battle [134, 137, 162]. They contemptuously ignored a challenge Norris sent by a trum­ pet, giving them the lie for printing a pamphlet stating that they had driven the English from Lisbon. He offered also to meet them next day at noon to give them battle, while Essex sent a verbal challenge to any of their commanders, promising to be in the vanguard with a red scarf on his left arm and a great plume of feathers on his casque [135, 166]. By now, though, hope of success in Portugal was almost gone. The envoys sent to the Sharif of Morocco returned with another Moroccan agent but with little solid assurance of aid [166].2 The expedition's numbers were greatly decayed [131, 132, 133]. Evesham reckoned that they had lost nearly 2,000 soldiers, died of sickness or slain, between Peniche and Cascais [163]. A note, endorsed as 2 June, gave the numbers as 5,735 serviceable and 2,791 sick [131], while Williams reckoned there were less than 4,000 fighting men [129, 162]. On some ships victuals were run­ ning low [129, 134, 136], though Thomas Fenner, at least, still had plenty [140]. They had no means of grinding for bread any of the wheat in the captured hulks [134]. Morale, too, was getting low and the men were beginning 'to droop and desire much to go for England', though Drake believed that would change 'if God will bless us with some little comfortable dew from heaven, some crowns, or some reasonable booty for our soldiers and mariners' [130]. l Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 459. 2 Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 447, 458-9; Yahya, op. cif., pp. 133-9. Hv INTRODUCTION So on 3 June, with hopes of a Portuguese rising gone and with no news of supplies, it was decided to set course for the Azores, to find a fresher air to help the sick to recover and 'to annoy and endamage the Spaniard' in accordance with their instructions [136,163]. The next couple of days the troops were re-embarked, some of them aboard the captured hulks [163]; the Dutch fly boats were dismissed with an offer of corn to the value of their hire, though as the wind was good for them to go to La Rochelle, 'they chose rather to lose their corn than the wind and so departed' [166]. On 6 June two small barks brought the Queen's letter of 20 May, which effectively dashed any lingering hope Norris and Drake had of reinforcements. In accordance with that letter, too, they now sent home the Earl of Essex. Williams, however, they kept with them, 'in that he bare the next place unto them and if they should miscarry was to command the army' [166]. 1 The barks did also bring news of other ships with victuals from England, but 'there blew so much wind' that it was not until 8 June that the fleet was able to get to sea and next day meet them [163, 165, 166]. The Merchant Royal and three or four, or perhaps six, other ships were then sent to take off the footband and guns left at Peniche [163, 166], only to find that Captain George Barton, upon letters from the generals, had already departed in a French ship, leaving some - or all - of his men and the guns behind him to be captured and killed by the enemy, who shot at the English ships as they entered the road [164, 166].2 At dawn on 9 June, in 'a very dead calm' [166], the 12 galleys from under St Julian's, now reinforced by nine more from Andalusia [136, 163, 166] made their one and only attack. They fell upon three small vessels which were straggling behind 'so calmed as neither they could get to us nor we to them, though all the great ships towed with their boats to have relieved them'. The crew of one straggler, William Hawkins's 120-ton bark William, took to their boats, one of which was run down by the galleys and those in it drowned. Captain Minshaw in another ship fought the galleys for a long time, even when his ship was already burning under him. Another vessel successfully fought them off [162, 163, 166; briefly in 165]. They then came towards Evesham's Gregory,

'This seems to support the view that the Queen's angry letter of 4 May (pp. xxxv- xxxvi above) was not sent. 2 Also Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 462. INTRODUCTION lv but sheered off when they saw her, too, prepared to fight and when 'a small breath of wind' began to bring the Queen's Dreadnought to her rescue [163, 166]. During the next ten days strong southerly winds prevented any progress towards the Azores and gradually forced the fleet back northwards as far as the isles of Bayona. The fleet became scat­ tered [163, 166] 1 and a number of ships made for home. On 19 June the rest moved in from the islands and sailed up the river past Vigo [163, 166]. Next morning they landed 'as many men as were able to fight' - a mere 2,000 of them. Advancing on the town from two sides, they found it well barricaded but entirely abandoned, except for one man. All the other inhabitants had fled [166; briefly, 165] and the troops found nothing there except a great store of wine. So, after spoiling the country for seven or eight miles around, next morning, 21 June, they set fire to the town and re-embarked [166]. Norris and Drake, seeing how greatly their army was weakened by sickness, then decided 'to man and victual twenty of the best ships for the Islands of Azores with General Drake, to see if he could meet with the Indian fleet; and General Norris to return home with the rest' [166]. The next day, Sunday, 22 June, Drake put to sea with the bulk of the fleet without waiting for more men and victuals. Norris and 33 ships that were farther up the river, were unable to get out before strong and adverse wind and tide forced them to anchor for the night. Next morning as they put to sea, 'the greatest storm we had all the time we were out' forced most of them, including Norris, back into the river again. The following morning, with the wind at west and south-west, Norris and a council of officers decided to set course for home, as previously arranged [165, 166]. Norris and 24 or 25 of them reached Plymouth on 2 or 3 July [143, 166],2 where they found Drake, with all the Queen's ships and a number of others, who, caught in the open sea, had all been blown back to England by the storm that had blown them back into the river at Vigo [163, 166]. The expedition's leaders clearly anticipated a somewhat rough

'Young William Fenner (not to be confused with the expedition's rear-admiral William Fenner), who had come out from England as vice-admiral to Captain Cross and his 17 victuallers, after 'wandering as a lost ship in search of the Generals', got as far south as Porto Santo in the Madeira islands. Cross joined him there and next day seven more of the victuallers. They thereupon landed, sacked Porto Santo and then sailed off home [164]. 2 Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, p. 549. Ivi INTRODUCTION reception from the Queen. 'We are afraid that Her Majesty will mislike of the event of our journey', Norris wrote [142]. Essex, who had arrived ahead of the rest on 24 or 25 June, had, of course, special personal reasons to fear the Queen's displeasure. So he had at once sent his brother to sue for his pardon. As soon as Drake, and then Norris, came in, he plucked up courage to ride off to Court himself, with Anthony Ashley who carried the generals' letters. 1 On 4 July Sir John Norris sent his brother Sir Edward after them and ten days later the vice-admiral, Thomas Fenner, as soon as he had recovered from the sickness, wrote off to Walsingham. Both stressed that only the ravages of that sickness among their companies and crews had prevented them going on to the Azores [140, 142]. Sir Edward was also to ask 'my Lords of the Council to allow that we may make prize of such goods as were taken in the hulks, towards the paying of our soldiers, mariners, and other charges of the voyage' [142]. They must all have been agreeably surprised by the Queen's reply. She rejoiced to hear from Ashley - who must have covered up for them very skilfully - of their safe return and their 'happy success' in Portugal and Spain. Though sickness and the lack of Portuguese support had made that success less than had been hoped for, yet she acknowledged 'that there hath been as much performed by you as true valour and good conduction could yield' [143]. And the Privy Council, on that same day, 7 July, confirmed that Her Majesty 'did take their service and good endeavours in very acceptable part, as they should more particularly understand by Her Highness's letters which should be sent them very shortly' [144].2 It looks, however, as if neither Queen nor Council at this early stage had a very clear idea of the real state of Norris and Drake's forces. For in another letter written the same day, the Council required them to send up a note of how many soldiers, mariners, and others had returned safely and 'how many ships and men, besides mariners and sailers', would suffice 'to destroy the King of Spain's ships and to intercept his fleet coming from the Indias' [146; see also 148]. As for the hulks' cargoes, the Council had already on 30 June instructed the Lords Lieutenant to appoint some of the Justices of the Peace in Devon, Cornwall, and Hampshire to sell off, with the

l Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, pp. 549-50. 2 Oppenheim doubted if the Queen's letter was actually sent, but the Privy Council's reference to it seems to suggest that it was, Oppenheim, Monson's Tracts, i, p. 217. INTRODUCTION Ivil owners' privity, the corn and other perishable goods on certain Easterling ships that had put into Plymouth, Portsmouth, and other ports, pretending to have lost the English fleet [141]. Now on 7 July they sent Anthony Ashley back to Plymouth to join with William Hawkins and the Mayor to inventory the hulks' cargoes, to store any goods that might deteriorate on shipboard, and to sell such part of the 'goods and merchandises as is most vendible and will yield ready money' enough to pay off such soldiers, mariners, and shipping as would not be needed for the operations against the King of Spain's ships and his Indies fleets [145, 146]. In answer to Norris's angry protests, the Council pointed out that they had not ordered a general sale of the goods and that they had empowered Norris and Drake to join with, or appoint deputies to join with, the commissioners [146, 149, 152]. By now it had become all too obvious that there was no possibility of either fleet or army being able to undertake any further service, 'either for the Islands or Santander' [149]. Accord­ ingly, two officers of the navy, John Thomas and Christopher Baker, were sent down to Plymouth to take charge of the Queen's ships; and another official to take over such munitions as remained unspent and the brass guns captured in Spain and Portugal [151, 152]. The Council had sent instructions as early as 11 July about the return of the 'auxiliary' companies to the Netherlands [147]. By 25 July the Queen's ships had been handed over, most of the other shipping and the soldiers and mariners discharged, and on 27 July the Council required Norris and Drake 'to repair hither to London, to remain there till they heard from their Lordships'. They were to bring up their accounts of receipts and disbursements [156, 157]. Meanwhile the Privy Council, in response to the protests of the Alderman of the Steelyard, representing the Hanseatic Towns, had resolved that such of the captured hulks as were not ships of war nor provided for the King of Spain's service, should be released, together with such part of their cargoes as was not reputed by the civil law to be munition or victuals [174, 175]. This decision was duly confirmed and published in a Council decree on 27 July, with a detailed list of goods that were considered contraband [179]. The Queen acquiesced in it with the utmost reluctance - 'the only reason that moveth her to be stiff therein is the profit', Walsing- ham wrote to Burghley, 'which I showed her that I feared the same would be purchased at too dear a price' [176]. And certainly it meant that she now had little chance of being repaid the £49,000 Iviii INTRODUCTION she had contributed to the expedition. She did get such of the brass guns, £3,000 worth perhaps [197], as the various ships' captains did not succeed in making off with. The money from the sales of the corn and other contraband goods, however, went upon imprests to the 'auxiliary' companies from the Netherlands until 11 August (that is, to the end of the five months for which they had been granted to Norris) and their transportation back there; £500 upon bringing the Queen's ships round from Plymouth to the Thames, where they should have been re-delivered; 1 £2,831 5s. IQd. upon paying off the crews of private shipping freighted for the voyage [Appendix I]; more upon paying off the army captains and their soldiers and providing for the sick; and more upon settling the debts still owed to south and south-east coast towns for victualling the troops before they embarked from England [178]. It is doubtful, even so, if any of these were paid in full, although to get better prices for the corn the Council allowed buyers to export it anywhere east of Bordeaux [181].2 Wingfield did claim that when the army was discharged every soldier was given five shillings in cash and his arms and apparel, which together came to more than any pay due to them [166]. Yet a mob of 'mariners and other lewd fellows' gathered 'in a mutinous- sort at the Royal Exchange' demanding pay [153]. Three days later 'divers of the mariners and soldiers that served in the late voyage' were still causing alarm in London [155] and in October nearly 100 soldiers came clamouring to Court in disorderly manner, despite the proc­ lamation forbidding any from the expedition to come to Court for fear they might bring the infection with them. At the same time others were robbing on the highways [150].3 In October also, an unspecified number of 'poor captains of the late Portugal voyage' had not yet received any pay [194] and Anthony Potts of New­ castle was petitioning the Council for payment for the tonnage of the

1 Acts of the Privy Council, xvii, pp. 382, 401, 404; xviii, pp. 15, 22. 2 Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, pp. 15, 35. 3 Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, pp. 54-5. According to a Spanish intelligencer, four were hanged, one of them shouting out on the scaffold that 'the gallows was the pay they gave them for going to the wars', Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, pp. 558-9. An indirect effect of these disturbances was the appointment of provosts-marshal in certain towns and counties when the return of Willoughby's troops from France was expected in November 1589; see P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (1964-9), iii, The Later Tudors, 1588-1603, p. 716; Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, pp. 221-5, 229, 236-8. INTRODUCTION lix two ships that he had set out. 1 As late as June 1590 Captain Cross had received only £118 towards the wages of the crews and the tonnage of the ships which had taken out the extra supply of victuals; the London and Plymouth commissioners were then ordered to pay him the £803 that remained due.2 At that time, too, Robert Dackham and his Dorset footband still had had no pay or allowances.3 By January 1591 two London parishes had not yet been repaid for victualling Norris's troops before they left for Portugal,4 and by 13 June of that year Dover and four other towns in Kent were still waiting for payment of similar debts due to them [202]. Indeed, the chances of repayment must by then have become slender, for even by 13 December 1589 there was only an esti­ mated £2,319 Is. lid worth of the 'corn and other merchandises remaining unsold' [197], in addition to an estimated - and admit­ tedly overestimated - £3,737 85. 4d. unused out of the £12,559 granted by the Queen for the extra supply of victuals [197]. Purloining and embezzling by those serving in the expedition, from the highest to the lowest, had greatly reduced the quantity of goods available for sale. According to Ashley's certificate (no longer apparently extant, but quoted in 1594 by Drs Aubrey and Caesar of the Admiralty Court)

two-third parts of all the lading was spoiled and embezzled by the men of war and mariners at the sea before they were brought into Plymouth and one half of that third remaining was purloined and scattered since the arrival of the ships in that haven, so that nothing was left aboard the ships but that which was too cumbersome or heavy to carry away when Ashley took the inventory [190].

The government did what it could to track down and recover the stolen goods [176, 180],5 a task made more difficult because 'some, being possessed of the hulks, sought other ports from their Generals' eye where they might make their private commodity of them, as they have done to their great advantage' [166]. But the

'S.P. Domestic, ccxxvii, no. 53. 2 Acts of the Privy Council, xix, pp. 215-17. 3 Acts of the Privy Council, xix, pp. 217-18. 4 Acts of the Privy Council, xx, p. 195. 5 Acts of the Privy Council, xvii, pp. 400, 403, 407-10, xviii, p. 19. IX INTRODUCTION generals themselves - or at least Norris (Drake appears to have been less guilty or more experienced) - were not above a little purloining for their own gain [185]. 1 Even the Portsmouth com­ missioners tried to make something on the side by buying consid­ erable quantities of the contraband wheat and rye 'at base and low prices rated by themselves' - though they were found out and made to pay the full market price [184]. Norris made a similar charge against the Plymouth commissioners.2 Some purloined goods were recovered - some packs of linen cloth, wax, and so on, from Sir Edward Norris;3 a French bark laden with barley and sold by a captain to Sir Walter Raleigh;4 340 bushels of wheat from another French ship sold at Helford by Lieutenant Williams;5 £7,000 in gold coins 'in a chest hidden . . . among the powder and munition' aboard the Unity of London as well as 'a certain waistcoat of carnation colour curiously embroi­ dered with gold' [182];6 three pieces of brass ordnance from the Greyhound of Aldeburgh.7 The hunt was still going on in June 1590,8 but the amount recovered was limited. By then the last of the Easterling hulks had been released [187, 188]. The releases had been briefly halted in September 1589 upon reports that an assembly of the Hanseatic Towns at Liibeck was to treat about taking revenge for the seizures [186]. But the slow process was soon resumed of inventorying, checking, sorting out the contraband, and restoring to the owners such non-contraband merchandise as could be found. Making up and settling the expedition's accounts was an even slower process. Norris and Drake had been called to London, bringing their accounts with them, on 27 July [156, 157]. Drake was delayed in Devonshire by his wife's indisposition (and possibly his own), but he was directed to send his accounts if he could not bring them [191], and Norris was in London by mid-August. So, on 17 August the Privy Council appointed Sir John Hawkins, Alderman Henry Billingsley, Peter Osborne, William Borough, and Richard Young as commissioners to receive Norris and

1 Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, pp. 53, 84. 2 S.P. Domestic, ccxxv, no. 30. 3 Acts of the Privy Council, xvii, p. 416. 4 Acts of the Privy Council, xvii, p. 417. 5 Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, p. 13. 6 Also Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, pp. 52-3. 7 Acts of the Privy Council, xviii, pp. 25, 28-9, 73. 8 Acts of the Privy Council, xix, pp. 253-4. INTRODUCTION x Drake's accounts, 'effectually examine the receipts and issues . . . and thereof make up a just book which with as much expedition as they may they shall send to their Lordships' [192]. On 29 Sep­ tember Aldermen Barnes, Bond, and Ratcliffe, with John Con- yers, an Exchequer auditor of the prests, were added (Osborne being now omitted). They were to examine the accounts of Norris and Drake and the certificates of Ashley, the registrar Serle, and the various local commissioners concerning the ladings of the Easterling and other ships brought in by the expedition; to commit any embezzlers or purloiners who refused to restore stolen goods; and to take account of all sales of goods, of how the money from those sales was employed and in whose hands any of it remained. The ordering of the accounts was to be committed to Conyers; and Norris and Drake were to be made acquainted with the commis­ sioners' proceedings [193]. Soon afterwards the local commission­ ers were required to send up statements of what they had sold, what they had done with the money, and what remained unsold [195]. A note of the money issued from the Exchequer for the expedition was also given in to Barnes and his fellow commissioners [196]. Those commissioners then on 13 December, at the Lord Treas­ urer's request, sent him an interim report of the money received for the sales of goods and as yet unspent, and of the quantity and estimated value of the goods that remained unsold, as well as of the money and victuals remaining from the extra supply that had been collected too late to go to the fleet. As we have seen, there remained from the captured corn, etc., sold and unsold, an esti­ mated £2,319 Is. lid., and from the extra supply an (over) esti­ mated £3,737 Ss. 4d. Some accounts were not yet finished and there were many things yet to sell. But Alderman Billingsley told Burghley 'this will be in a manner the chief sum and substance, within a little more or less, unless anything may be recovered of the things purloined and embezzled, whereof I see small hope, especially of any great matter to come thereby. How far wide this will be to answer all things yet unpaid pertaining to the action, your Lordship can easily judge', though there might be another £3,000 for the ordnance and copper delivered for Her Majesty's use [197]. As we have also seen, the expedition's creditors were still pressing for payment; and the final accounts had still not been made up by the middle of 1591 [202]. Nor have I succeeded in finding a final statement. There are no separate declared accounts in the Exchequer Pipe and Audit Offices for the 1589 Portugal Ixii INTRODUCTION expedition as there are for Hawkins and Drake's 1595-6 voyage or for the Cadiz expedition of 1596. There are the declared accounts of Hawkins as treasurer of the navy and of Marmaduke Darrell as victualler; but these deal in general fashion with the Queen's ships (and with the Queen's ships as a whole), not with the expedition either specifically or in its wider sense. The Privy Council's instructions to the original commissioners did, it will be remembered, instruct them to 'make up a just book, which with as much expedition as they may they shall send to their Lordships'. So possibly the final account became one of the miscellaneous records of the Privy Council which no longer exist, rather than part of the more carefully preserved archives of the Exchequer. In their absence the accuracy of the 13 December 1589 figures must remain untested. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that the 1589 expedition to Spain and Portugal proved no less a failure financially than strategically. There were, of course, some who defended the conception and achievements of the expedition, notably Sir Roger Williams and Captain Anthony Wingfield. Williams believed that had they not touched at the Groyne, Lisbon would have fallen to them and then 6,000 English could have held it all that winter 'against all Spain and Portugal', until a new supply came out of England. As it was, despite their losses through desertion and the disease contracted at Corunna, 'the world will speak how 5,000 Englishmen dared the Spaniards to battle at the gates of Lisbon, not stealing but giving leave to arm two months'. They had spoiled Spanish preparations for a new attempt against England and had 'discovered their government's ability, means, and how to undo them' - though now, he confessed, it was still 'necessary to send six of Her Majesty's good ships, with 12 merchants and some six pinnaces, with store of fireworks in some six old vessels, resolutely con­ ducted, into Santander, there to burn their 58 armathoes' [161]. Wingfield took a similar line, but in a much more detailed discourse that, most significantly, never once mentions Santander and its galleons. They had, he said, lacked their 'artillery, 600 horse, 3,000 foot, £20,000 of their adventure, 1 and one month's victuals'; their setting forth had been delayed; and their numbers had been heavily reduced by sickness, though no more than was 'ordinary among Englishmen at their first entrance into the wars, whithersoever they go to want the fulness of their fleshpots'. And,

1 But see above, footnote to p. xxxii. INTRODUCTION Ixiii of course, the Portuguese had been too cowardly to rise for Don Antonio. Yet

we have won a town by escalade, battered and assaulted another, overthrown a mighty prince's power in the field, landed our army in 3 several places in his kingdom, marched 7 days in the heart of his country, lain three nights in the suburbs of his principal city, beaten his forces into the gates thereof, and possessed two of his frontier forts spoiled his preparations for a new Armada, and shown up the Spaniards' weakness 'even upon their own dunghill' [166]. The expedition, Wingfield argued (not altogether accurately), had not cost the Queen one-third as much as she spent yearly upon aid to the Dutch. There in the Netherlands wars must be defensive and progress slow, for there were so many rivers to cross and a fortified town every eight or ten miles. To recover the other provinces there would be a longer and larger task than England could endure. In the Peninsula, on the other hand, 20,000 men could dominate the whole country and they could live upon the spoil of Lisbon or Seville. (How, given the usual wastage rate in armies overseas, 1 England would be able to keep such numbers up to strength, he did not consider.) Even if they were unable to land, 'by possessing his principal roads are we not in possibility to meet his Indian merchants and may like to prevent him of his provisions coming out of the East Countries, without the which neither the subject of Lisbon is able to live nor the King to maintain his navy' [166].2 It looks as if Wingfield's discourse may have been called in almost as soon as it came out [177].3 And certainly he and Williams were at the time voices crying in the wilderness. A few others who had taken part in the expedition wrote, though prob­ ably did not publish, straightforward accounts that abstained from criticism - John Evesham, master-gunner on the Gregory of

'Sir John Norris later wrote that 'all men of war do [know] and daily examples do show it, that three months being in the field is enough to ruin the greatest army that may be', S.P. France, xxvi, fo. 5. 2 For the military preparedness of Spain in the peninsula, cf. I. A. A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain (1976) and The Armada and Administra­ tive Reform; The Spanish Council of War in the Reign of Philip II', English Historical Review, 82 (1967), pp. 698-725. 3 It was 'printed for Thomas Woodcock, dwelling in Paul's Churchyard at the sign of the Black Bear, 1589', Hume, op. dr., p. 10 note. INTRODUCTION London [163]; another unnamed writer [165]; and in the main, young William Fenner, though he himself saw only part of the final actions and did describe the expedition as 'that miserable action' [164]. Ralph Lane, the touchy and pedantic muster-master, in a letter of 27 July which he begged Walsingham to keep secret, went further and criticised bitterly both Norris and Drake, '2 so over­ weening spirits, contemning to be advised and disdaining to ask advice' [160]. 1 There seems to be no English evidence to corrobo­ rate the rumour current in Spain that Norris and Drake now become open enemies.2 Yet if Norris himself did not blame Drake for failing to bring the fleet up the Tagus to Lisbon, Williams and Wingfield did, though in a restrained manner [162, 166). And their younger contemporary, William Monson, later recorded that Drake 'was much blamed by the common consent of all men, the overthrow of the action being imputed to him'.3 Indeed it seems certain that Englishmen in general soon came to regard the whole expedition, as young Fenner did, as a 'miserable action'.4 They were not only disappointed by the insubstantial nature of its military and naval achievements and by its financial failure, but also by the loss of life. Spanish spies reported the loss of soldiers and sailors at above 18,000, including 900 gentlemen, and said that under 2,000 arrived home in good health.5 Young Fenner put the losses at 11,000 men out of 21,000, and including 750 gentle­ men of name [164]. These estimates were certainly too high. Wingfield argued that no more than 13,500 soldiers and mariners had actually set out on the expedition, of whom 3,000 had deserted, some back to England, some to France [166]. This claim is borne out to a considerable extent by a later examination by the deputy muster-master of the certificate of the muster taken at Plymouth on 16 April, which put the soldiers at 12,194, with 1,130 officers and 295 pioneers [Appendix II]; (and see above, p. xlv). Wingfield also claimed that they brought home 6,000 soldiers and sailors. This, too, looks exaggerated. For no less than 32, almost a third, of the 107 English army captains and colonels were killed or died of sickness [158; Appendix II] - and colonels and captains were by no means the soldiers most likely to perish from diseases. Among many ships' crews the losses were even greater.

'The paper no. 173 is probably from Lane. 2 Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 467-8. 3 Oppenheim, Monson's Tracts, i, p. 178; Camden, op. cit. (1706 edn), ii, p. 554. 4 Cf. also Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, pp. 558-9; Cal.S.P. Venetian, viii, p. 467. 5 Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, p. 549. INTRODUCTION Ixv Of the near 300 mariners on the Queen's well-victualled Dread­ nought 'there scaped but three only from the sickness'; about 114 died; and at the finish there were only '18 persons able to do work' [140]. Out of 50 soldiers put aboard the Griffin of Liibeck, one of the captured hulks, 35 died and not enough of the crew were left alive and well to bring her into port [154]. The 180-ton Gregory of London had only two men and two 'yonkers' out of her crew of 40 [Appendix I] left standing, not enough to trim her sails, and she only got back to Plymouth thanks to the Bark Banner which stood by her and lent her two sailors and two soldiers [163]. Altogether, it does look as if the total casualties must have been well above Wingfield's figure, if appreciably below young Fenner's. If so, that would still be as many as the whole number of the Queen's 'auxiliary' forces in the Netherlands. In view of all this, it is perhaps a little surprising that Norris and Drake got off so lightly from their 'court of inquiry' before the Privy Council in late October 1589. They were then charged with deliberately failing to go to Santander, both before and after visiting Corunna; with landing in Portugal without being assured of a sufficient party there to support them; and Drake with failing to keep his promise to bring the fleet up the Tagus [168, 169]. Their answers, which we have already seen, to these charges did not prove convincing enough to prevent them both falling out of favour for a time. Norris was not given another command until the spring of 1591 and Drake had to wait even longer, until 1595. These, however, do not seem unduly harsh punishments for flagrant disobedience to the Queen's instructions, disobedience that had lost them the chance to deal a crippling, and probably a fatal, blow to Spain's Atlantic naval forces. For within little more than a month of their return home, some 60 of those ships at Santander and San Sebastian were at sea again and on their way to Corunna and Lisbon. They were shorthanded, but Spain had a 'fleet in being' once more, strong enough to escort home the American convoys, though not yet capable of covering an invasion of England. And another 12 large galleons were being built at Santander and Bilbao. These, too, might be afloat by Easter [159, 167]. 1 This rebirth of Spanish naval power was taking place, moreover, just when in France the assassination of Henry III and the accession of the Huguenot Henry IV was giving Spain's client, the Catholic League, a new lease of life and thereby putting at risk

'Also CaiS.P. Venetian, viii, pp. 465, 467, 474. Ixvi INTRODUCTION Brest and the French Channel ports, which could serve as advanced bases for a new Spanish Armada. 1 As Edmund Palmer, an English intelligencer at St Jean-de-Luz, wrote on 15 July:

If Sir Francis had gone to Santander as he went to the Groyne, he had done such a service as never subject had done. For with 12 sail of his ships he might have destroyed all the forces which the Spaniards had there, which was the whole strength of the country by sea. There they did lie all unrigged and their ordnance on the shore and some 20 men in a ship only to keep them. It was far overseen that he had not gone thither first [159].

'In May 1589 Philip II had instructed his envoy Moreo to accept the League leaders' offer 'to give me ports and other facilities for my Armada on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, to operate against England, and the power of drawing ships and seamen and other necessaries from the same coasts', Cal.S.P. Spanish, iv, p. 517 note. PART I

THE ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION, AUGUST-OCTOBER 1588

ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 3 1. Henry Roberts to the Earl of Leicester

[Holograph] 2 July 1588

Your Honour's I received here by the King Don Antony's messenger the 16 of May, this King [Mulay Ahmed el Mansur] being then in his camp out of the city. But presently I sent His Majesty word that there was a messenger come a purpose from the King Don Antonio and that I had a letter of importance, written by Her Majesty's order to me, to impart to His Majesty. And 2 days after, the King sent his viceroy, with whom the King Don Antony's ambassador and I had loving talk and discoursed all the business at large. And 2 days after, the King returned us answer that he liked well of all, but put us off for answer from time to time till the 18 of June and then the King, being come in, sent for us. So when the King Don Antony's ambassador had told the King all his business, I, having your Honour's letter in my hand, did tell His Majesty the full effect thereof, what Her Majesty caused to be written to me by your Honour. I showed His Majesty how thank­ fully Her Majesty took the good offer His Majesty offered to the King Don Antonio and that Her Majesty was very thankful in the King Don Antony's behalf to His Majesty for the same. With these and many other discourses, as was most fit for that matter, the King promised us he would be as good as his promise in every proving, and told us 2 days after his viceroy should answer us at large his whole determination. Then the King Don Antony's ambassador desired His Majesty to give me leave to go for England, declaring my going would do the King his master much profit by my service, for that I had served the King Don Antonio before against the Spaniards. And he answered he would think on it and his viceroy should answer us it all. So, the 2 days after this the viceroy sent for us and told us that the King his master was fully determined to perform all that he promised and much more, and also was well content that I should depart for the service of the King Don Antonio, and that the King his master would send with us a principal Moor of his to end all matters betwixt the King Don Antonio and him and we should all be despeeded within. 12 days after. And he prayed me to stay the ships till that time. After all this I, seeing there was small forwardness in the business, I sent for audience to the viceroy and told him the time passed away and the ships would not tarry. Then he desired me to 4 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 stay the ships 8 days longer for that the King did mean to perform all things. This being Sunday, the last of June, promising we should be despeeded from Marrakesh upon Saturday next without all fail. But since this matter was in hand, here came news that the King of Spain's armada is departed for England. The which I well perceive is the cause that this King doth prolong the times, to know how they speed. For if the King of Spain should prosper against England, then this King would do nothing; and if the King of Spain have the overthrow, as by God's help he shall, then will this King perform promise and more. Wherefore I, perceiving his delays, I write this, fearing that the King Don Antony's man may be left behind these ships also, and for that I have found no great credit in this King's words hitherto. I trust to come myself. If not, I humbly sue your Honour to procure Her Majesty's gracious letter to this King for my coming home by the next ... - Marakesh, the 2 of July & 1588 . . .

2. Burghley to Walsingham

[Holograph] 19 July 1588

... A man would wish, if peace cannot be had, that the enemy would not longer delay, but prove, as I trust, his evil fortune. For as these expeditions do consume us, so I would hope, by God's goodness, upon their defeat we might have one half year's time to provide for money. I have had conference with Palavicino and with Saltonstall how 40,000 or 50,000 might be had for 10 per cent, but I find no probability how to get money here in specie, which is our lack, but by exchange to have it out of the parts beyond sea, which will not be done but in a long time . . .

3. Burghley to Walsingham

[Holograph] 9 August 1588

... I am not of opinion that the Spanish fleet will suddenly return from the north or the east, being weakened as they are, and knowing that our navy is returned to our coast where they may repair their lacks and be as strong as they were afore. And without ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 5 a north or east wind the Spanish fleet cannot come back to England. I wish if they pass about Ireland, that four good ships, well manned and conducted, might follow them to their ports, where they might distress a great number of them, being weather- beaten and where the number of the gallants will not continue on shipboard . . .

4. Lord Admiral Howard to Walsingham

[Holograph] 27 August 1588

Sir, upon your letter I sent presently for Sir Francis Drake and showed him the desire that Her Majesty had for the intercepting of the King's treasure from the Indies. And so we considered of it and neither of us finding any ships here in the fleet anyways able to go such a voyage before they have been aground, which cannot be done in any place but at Chatham, and now that this spring is so far past it will be 14 days before they can be grounded. And where you write that I should make nobody acquainted with it but Sir Francis Drake, it is very strange to me that anybody can think that if it were that [some] of the smallest barks were to be sent out, but that the officers must know it. For this is not as if a man would send but over to the coast of France, I do assure you. Sir Francis Drake, who is a man of judgement and best acquainted with it, will tell you what must be done for such a journey. Belike it is thought the Islands be but hereby; it is not thought how the year is spent. I thought it good therefore to send with all speed Sir Francis, although he be not very well, to inform you rightly of all; and look what shall be there thought meet. I will do my endeavour with all the power I may, for I protest before God I would give all that I have it were met withal. For that blow, after this he hath, would make him safe . . . Endorsed by Burghley as Lord Admiral by Sir Francis Drake.

5. Sir John Hawkins to Burghley

[Holograph] 4 September 1588

. . . The companies do fall sick daily. It is not fit for me to persuade in so great a cause, but I see no reason to doubt the Spanish fleet; 6 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 and our ships utterly unfitted and unmeet to follow any enterprise from hence without a thorough new trimming, refreshing, and new furnishing with provisions, grounding, and fresh men . . .

6. Walsingham to Henry Roberts

[Holograph] 5 August 1588

Her Majesty being informed that the King of Morocco, after she had commended the King Don Antonio to his royal favour, showed himself willing and intending to grant such honourable assistance by which there is great likelihood that he will be able (with what he expects to have here) to re-establish himself in his kingdoms; whereby it is the Queen's wish that you continue and further by all ways and means such a disposition and will in the said King, so as to bring this matter to effect. And in order that the said King may see and understand how welcome Her Majesty finds his royal promise lastly made to the King Don Antonio, she has written to him in her own letters, which in a few days will be sent to the said King by the lord Don Christobal, son of the said King Don Antonio, a prince of great promise, who will be ready to depart within a few days to journey to those parts, of which you will inform him as aforesaid. Meanwhile it will be appropriate that you repeat to the King of Morocco, in order to encourage him further in the performance of his offer and royal promise, how the King of Castile has received a few days since so great a blow as the defeat of his army at sea, which he had sent into these quarters for the conquest of this realm. This army was so great and powerful that it was said nothing like it had been seen for a long time on the sea and which he will be unable to reassemble in three years or perhaps in his lifetime, especially seeing that Her Majesty is resolved to exploit the victory both by sea and land if the other Princes neighbouring Spain (who have greater cause than she has to fear his greatness) are willing to play their part according to their ability in this present decline of his fortune and to show him such means as Our Lord has given them. Then in short time he will be reduced to such a condition that he will be content to live in peace with his neighbours and not to behave so ambitiously as he does in expelling and chasing these ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 7 other princes from their realms and states in which they have been established by divine grace. It is necessary that the meaning here to assist the said King Don Antonio be handled with such secrecy there and here so that, when this resolution of the Queen's shall be put into execution, the King of Castile, not being warned, may the less defend himself, being taken by surprise. - From London, this 5 August 1588.

7. The Queen to Mulay Ahmed of Morocco

10 September 1588

Most high and most puissant Lord, The King Don Antonio, in accordance with the great affection that he bears to us, has told us in particular that you, moved with compassion at his disaster and affliction, wish to show a magna­ nimity worthy of so great a Prince by helping to restore him to his realm and lordships, having already to this end promised very liberally all the succour and favour that he asked of you. Also as one of your last letters to us has confirmed this your royal intention, we cannot tell you the contentment and satisfaction that we have received thereby. For, taking so much to heart and in charge the affairs of this afflicted King as you have commended them to us and as befits his goodness, nothing could happen more in accordance with our wish than that so good a path should be opened with your favour and assistance to regain him his estate. In this we wish all the more to participate since we see that he has you for friend and so we have to this end granted him the aid of which he himself will tell you more particularly, comforming our­ selves therein to the desire we have to do him good so far as the expenses of the wars we have here with the King of Spain will allow, against whom we can now more freely and openly favour the King Don Antonio as we have already seen the deceit of the peace by which he wished to blind our eyes, having while the peace was being treated of, without regard for the honour or the consid­ erations which should pertain among Princes, sent against our realms to conquer them the most powerful armada ever sent on the sea. Nevertheless that, thanks to the goodness and mercy of our God who upheld and favoured the justice of our cause, has been sent back so mauled and in such disorder that they cannot claim 8 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 any success and they remain in such a state that the enterprise, in which we concur, to restore the King Don Antonio to his estate, will be so much the easier for us - indeed, it seems to us that the aid you yourself have promised will suffice to the purpose and to beat down the tyranny of Spain, chiefly because of this loss that he has suffered. We beg you to do it according to your royal will and promise, on which he relies assuredly. For in this you will do us a most singular favour on account of the affection that we bear him, as if we ourselves had received it, and you will do a work ever to be remembered by which you will earn everlasting honour. And because the King Don Antonio sends you Don Christobal, his son, as pledge to fulfil the agreements that he has made with you, although we do not doubt that he, being the son of such a father to whom you wish all good, will be held and treated by you with the honour and favour that may be expected of you and is fitting for him, we nevertheless in accord with the great friendship that we have for the said King, may not omit to commend him particularly to you and to tell you that, having the affairs of his father so much at heart, we cannot but have a particular care of him and his fortune. - From our royal palace of St. James's, the 10 of September 1588.'

8. A proportion to be furnished by Her Majesty of all sorts of provisions fit for the enterprise of Portugal

[?17 September]2

First, that Her Majesty will be pleased to set forth six of her second sort of ships, victualled for such number of sailors as they shall

1 A version of this letter, with a few minor verbal differences but dated at London on August 5, is printed in H. de Castries, Sources inedites pour I'histoire de Maroc: archives, etc. de France, ii, 151-3, from Briejve et sommaire description de la vie et mort de Don Antoine (Paris, 1629); also at ibid., pp. 154-6, a French translation, similarly dated, from the Excellent et libre discours (Paris 1606) from which the Walsingham letter (Doc. 6) came. These are among pamphlets that Don Christobal published to establish his father's claim to the throne of Portugal and in which he published a number of documents coming from his father (see ibid.). 2 See footnote at p. 55 below. ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 9 require, and provided of all sorts of munition for their sea freight, for three months. That Her Majesty will, either by authority or by contract with the city of London and other towns, cause to be supplied twenty good ships of 150 tons or upward, victualled and provided as her own. That Her Majesty do furnish twenty last of powder [margin: 2,000 7.], with fit proportion of lead and match, as also tools for pioneers. That there be furnished by Her Highness 4 cannons, 4 demi- cannons, 2 culverins, and six field pieces, furnished and prepared for the field [a hand in margin pointing to this]. That every piece of battery have provided for him four hundred bullets. That Her Majesty lend the two late-taken Spanish ships, with their artillery and tackling. That it will please Her Highness to furnish three thousand calivers for store. That Her Majesty's commission be granted for the levying of 6,000 able soldiers in the next adjoining shires where it shall be thought fit to embark, only furnished with sword and dagger for the easier charge of the country. That it will please Her Majesty to disburse towards the voyage in ready money twenty thousand pounds. That Her Highness will be pleased to give commission to the enterprisers to buy or freight any manner of shipping at Her Majesty's prices, as also to press masters and sailors for the voyage. That the like commission be granted for the taking of all manner of grain and victuals at Her Majesty's prices. That Her Majesty's commission be granted for taking up of boats, for carriages, carts, wains, and post horses, as many as shall be necessary. That Her Majesty will be pleased to give free licence to all manner of persons, of what quality soever, to go on this voyage. That Her Majesty will be pleased, in case the army being ready at the seaside should be stayed from going forward by contrary winds above the space of ten days, Her Highness will be contented to pay the charge of the victualling of the soldiers and sailors so long as they shall be kept in by contrary winds after the expiring of the said ten days [margin, by Burghley: uncertain]. That it may please Her Majesty to set down an order for the 10 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 distribution of all profits that may be anyways gotten by the voyage. That Her Highness will be pleased, if Her Majesty shall think it convenient at any time to break or countermand the journey, that all losses that shall be duly proved that any of the enterprisers shall have sustained by making provision for this journey, shall be borne by Her Highness; for examining whereof it may please Her Majesty on either side that indifferent commissioners be appointed. That it will please Her Majesty to send to the States of the Low Countries to be assisted from them with two or three thousand shot, shipping for the transporting of 3,000 soldiers, ten hulks or other fit ships for transporting of horses, six pieces of battery appointed for the field, some good quantity of powder. Not signed, dated, or addressed.

9. An offer by Sir John Norris

(19 September 1588)

If it will please Her Majesty to nominate a treasurer for the whole adventure of the voyage and to put into his hands five thousand pound as parcel of her adventure, the adventurers shall bring up and deliver into the said treasurer's hands their whole adventure of forty thousand pound before that Her Majesty shall need to furnish the rest of her adventure. And the five thousand pound delivered beforehand to the treasurer of the voyage not to be issued but with the consent and liking of the Lord Treasurer. And if the journey should fail by any default on the adventurers' part, for not being able to bring up their whole portion, they shall put in sureties that so much of the five thousand pound as shall be issued as aforesaid shall either be repaid to Her Majesty or else the armour bought therewith to be delivered to Her Majesty at such prices as it shall be worth in London. Not signed or addressed, but in Norris's hand. Passages in italics underlined. Endorsed with a trefoil, and by Burghley as 19 Sep­ tember 1588. Sir John Norris. ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 11 10. Notes of the charge of Sir John Norris journey, and Sir Francis Drake: at St. James

20 September 1588

6 ships, 2 pinnaces, furnished with masters, mariners, and gun­ ners at the adventurers' charge [margin: the Revenge]. 8,000 men English, 1,000 pioneers, whereof 4,000 by commission without arms but only sword and dagg[er]; no trained men to be had with their arms. 4,000 out of Holland, as many to be shot as can be, with shot from thence [margin: the Queen's letters of commenda­ tion for shipping and me[n]]. 2,000 corselets. 200 horse voluntary lances, and hulks out of Holland for them; with curats. 4,000 pikes, 1,000 halberds, 3,000 muskets, 4,000 calivers. 6 pieces of artillery to batter, with powder and bullets; powder, 40 lasts out of Holland. Victuals for 4 months and a proportion of wheat for 3 months more to be had [with crossed out] out of Holland. Mr. Candish offers for a trade into the Indias. Articles of offers from the King Antonio. 1. Attempt to burn the ships in Lisbon and Seville; 2. To take Lisbon. 3. To take the Islands. The shipping to be out of the Thames, Southampton, Plymouth. In Burghley's hand and endorsed by him.

11. Certain points to be resolved by Her Majesty for the despatch of the voyage intended

[?September 1588]

First, that Her Highness will be pleased to grant under her great seal of England a commission with as much speed as may be, both for our more effectual proceeding and for authorising of us in the said enterprise [margin, in another hand: the commission to pass in general terms for service to be done for the defence of this realm]. That a general stay be made that no person whatsoever (except­ ing the Right Honourable the Earl of Cumberland) be suffered to pass farther southward than the coast of France until this action be past [margin: not found necessary]. That some fit person may be despatched into the Low Countries 12 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 for the necessary preparation of shipping, armour, men, munition, and other provisions [margin: to be committed to Sir John Norris]. That if haply hereafter it shall seem good unto Her Majesty, upon any occasion whatsoever, to call us back or stay our proceed­ ings in this enterprise, the charge and expense thereof may be born by Her Highness only. Not signed, dated, or addressed. Endorsed as things propounded by Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake.

12. Commission for Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake, knights

11 October 1588

Elizabeth, by the grace of God, etc., to our trusty and well beloved servant Sir John Norris, knight, president of our council in the province of Munster in our realm of Ireland, and to Sir Francis Drake, knight, greeting. Foreasmuch as looking into and deeply considering the late hostile attempts against our realm and our person (altogether without any just cause given by us), and doubt­ ing that the like is meant to be renewed and continued against us and our crown and country, we are justly moved to enter into the consideration what urgent and just cause we have and how neces­ sary it is for us to use all the best means we can (where peaceable means on our part hath not prevailed) to prevent, impeach, and withstand such hostile attempts and all preparations for the same for the better defence and protection of us, our realm, and dominions and of all our good and loving subjects. We let you weet that having to that end resolved with you two by the advice of our Council upon some special service to be done for this good purpose, whereunto you have assented, and knowing your approved fidelities, valour, and circumspection, we have made special choice of you two and have committed the charge thereof afore all others unto you and do therefore by these presents give you jointly and severally authority to make choice and constitute such principal officers as well by sea as by land as by you or either of you shall be thought meet for this service, as also to appoint such meet captains and other persons whom ye or any of you shall depute thereunto by writing under your hand to levy, assemble, muster, and arm within any part of this our realm and dominions, ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 13 being and 'coasting' meet and convenient for the purpose of this service such and so many of our loving subjects as are meet and apt for the wars to serve by sea and land, not exceeding the number of four thousand, and the same so levied, registered, mustered, and by you two or either of you sufficiently furnished with armour and weapons and other things requisite, to conduct or cause to be conducted to meet captains, leaders, and officers to such places as ye or either of you shall direct them for the speediest and aptest use of the service. We also hereby give you full power and authority by yourselves or by your deputies authorised by you jointly or severally, to take up and provide, at prices reasonable for the contentment of the owners, in meet places for this service as well such and so many ships, barks, boats, lighters, and other vessels whatsoever with the advice and privity of the Lord Admiral, as also carts, wains, and draughts with horses and oxen with the privity of the Justices or officers where the same shall be provided, and horses as shall be meet for the carriage, conveying, and transporting from place to place by sea and land of any men, provisions of victuals, money, armour, and weapons. And with the same men, provision, and furniture shipped and embarked do we authorise you jointly and severally, both in your own persons and by such others also whom ye or either of you shall depute, by sea and land to invade and destroy the powers, forces, and the preparations for all such forces made and to be made by all manner of persons and their adherents that have this last year both by sea and by land with their hostile and warly powers and armadas sought and attempted the invasion of our realm of England and the dominions of the same (which it pleased Almighty God with his most singular favour towards us to frustrate and defeat), or of any such persons as shall hereafter during the continuance of this our commission go about to make the like or other new hostile preparations against us or any of our dominions or subjects; and the same persons and their possessions and goods to take and destroy in hostile manner to the frustrating and diminution of their forces prepared against us. And to the end that our loving subjects serving in this service under you may be the better ordered and governed by a due obedience to be by them yielded unto you and to either of you in all martial services and in the observing and executing of such good orders and constitutions as ye two shall think convenient to make for the furtherance of this service, to our honour and your own credits, we do hereby straitly charge and command all persons serving thus under you and every of you to 14 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 give all obedience and respect unto you, authorising you to lay such punishment upon them as ye or any of you shall think meet according to the quality of the offence and in cases requisite and needful also to use the law called martial law. And forasmuch as there may be some of our loving subjects willing to bear some part of the charges of this service and put in their adventures in furtherance thereof, who are to have consideration and benefit according to the proportion of their charges agreed upon by you and either of you, we give you full power and authority not only to deal with our said subjects so offering to adventure and to accept and agree with them for the same, but also to make distributions and shares of such gains, goods, and prizes whatsoever that shall by you or any of you or by your company be taken from any such foresaid manner of persons and their adherents as are above expressed, the same gains, goods, and prizes after due shares distributed to be kept, holden, and enjoyed by you and our said subjects so adventuring without any account to be made for the same to us, our heirs or successors; provided that such distribu­ tion be made with the privity and allowance of such as shall be appointed by our Privy Council or any six of them to join with you in that behalf. We do also hereby straitly charge and command all and singular our officers, ministers, and subjects whatsoever to be aiding, assisting, and furthering unto you jointly and severally and to your deputies in anything that may be for the better execution of this our commission as well by sea as by land for the furtherance of this our service and thereof not to fail as all and every of them will answer for the contrary at their uttermost perils. And further our will and pleasure is that whatsoever ye shall do jointly and sever­ ally by virtue of this our commission and according to the tenor and effect thereof touching the execution of the premises or any part thereof, ye and every of you shall be discharged in that behalf against us, our heirs, and successors. In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent and to continue during our pleasure. Witness ourself at Westminster, the llth day of October, per ipsam Reginam. 1

'Where the edges of the Patent Roll have been worn away, words have been supplied from the warrant for the great seal (C82/1492) which was delivered to the Lord Chancellor on 11 October 1588. ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 15 13. Edmund Palmer to Walsingham

[Holograph] 19/29 September 1588

. . . About six days past arrived at the Passage Captain Oquendo with other six sails. Testimonial they do bring on their sides from what banquet they came from, with loss of half their men in fight, famine, and sickness, crying out on Sir Francis Drake, saying that he is a devil and no man. These 7 ships in the whole do report that there were come on this coast a forty sail in the whole, and yet no certainty of so many. For after they departed from before Calais every one of them shifted for themselves and if they had tarried at sea but three days more, they had been all famished. They say the Duke [of Medina-Sidonia] is in Santander; but no ready news as yet, neither of the fleet. But these do say that they left the Duke about Cape Clear and they do put great fault in the Duke, as also of one Francisco Duarte, the victualler of Lisbon, who put to the King's account 6 month victuals and have not found above 3 month, the provedor gone no man can tell whither. Such soldiers as are come home are sent up 12 leagues into the country, reparted into labouring men's houses till the next spring. And they do report that at the spring, they will be doing again. But I see not which way they can do it, for he hath no mariners to set out half the strength that he did before. In San Sebastian they do make still great preparation of victuals, as beans and biscuit. It might be for that wheat is very scant and dear in Lisbon and Andalusia. There, ere the year go about, there will be great famine among them . . . Dated as stilla Espanje at St. Jean-de-Luz.

14. Walsingham to Sir Edward Stafford 1

20 October 1588

Sir, after the signing of my other letter I received advertisement from a friend of mine at St. Jean-de-Luz that there is great scarcity of corn in Spain this year and that their hope is to be relieved out of France, without the which they are like to endure great extrem­ ity. If the King there [i.e. of France] shall not assent unto a

'English ambassador resident in France. 16 EXPEDITION TO SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1589 restraint, it is meant that such of our ships as lie upon the coast of Spain shall impeach all those that they shall find laden with grain, or any other kind of victual, from repairing thither, of what nation soever they be. It were good the King were let know so much by way of discourse. There is some information already made to those of the East Countries that in case any of them shall be found upon the seas laden with corn, munition, or other warlike furniture for Spain, they shall be held for good prize. If it shall please God to bless Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake in their enterprises, I hope all Christendom shall receive good by it. And so, in haste, I commit you to God. Copy.

15. Answer given to Mr Sebastian van Bergen, secretary and orator of Hamburg

[after 27 September 1588]

. . . This neutrality [which the Hamburgers claim] Her Majesty on her part will have understood according to the privilege of King Edward the First of noble memory, her predecessor, granted to the Hanses and merchants strangers, viz. that they shall not carry any merchandise of this his realm of England without her [sic] express licence to the lands of his manifest enemies. And where the King of Spain by evident deed hath lately showed himself open enemy in that, war not proclaimed, he hath by a mighty navy endeavoured to invade this land and to subject the same to his yoke, to root out Christian religion, to establish Popery, and to slay Her Majesty's person, Her Majesty will not assent or doth think it equal that under colour and pretence of such neutrality it is lawful either for the Hamburgers or any of the Hanses to carry either gunpowder, instruments for the war, victuals, or other suchlike to so notorious enemies to her and to Christian religion. But if the mariners and subjects of Her Majesty do in the ocean sea fall upon any ships of the Hanses which shall carry such things into the enemies' coun­ tries, it shall be lawful to take them from them as heretofore it was lawful for Princes in such cases so to do, this excuse of neutrality notwithstanding . . . Endorsed The copy of Her Majesty's answer given to Sebastian van Bergen, the last messenger from Hamburg. ORIGINS AND ORIGINAL PURPOSES OF THE EXPEDITION 17 16. Advertisements from Flushing

29 November 1588

The Danskers have sent divers ships into Spain laden with masts, munitions, and corn, which went a-seaboard of Ireland in fleet. There is now twenty sail more ready to go thence of double [fly?] boats of 200 and 300 tons with the like lading which shall go [a-seaboard?] of Ireland. They offered 40 pound wages to an Englishman [to go as?] pilot in one of them. The party is now here, come from Melvin [in] a ship of London. • He saith that the Danskers do daily buy from all ports about them flyboats of the greatest burden they can get to send into Spain, for they regard not the great hulks as before time they did. Here are letters from Stade which declare that at Hamburg there is a fleet ready to go into Spain laden with the forena[med] provisions, but they suppose that they will pass about Ire[land] . . . Not signed or addressed. Words in square brackets supplied where manuscript torn.