Garrett Mattingly.
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Introduction by J. H. Elliott.
London: The Folio Society, 2002.
Originally published as:
The Armada, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1959 and London: Jonathan Cape, 1959.
Book information:
Wikipedia.
Currently in-print as:
The Armada, Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005 [
Publisher;
Google Books;
Amazon.com].
Garrett Mattingly, Wikipedia.
J. H. Elliott, Wikipedia.
Some Wikipedia Articles:
Some Notable Websites:
Some webpages for the course
History 361: The Emergence of Britain, 1485-1660 by
Professor J.P.Sommerville, Department of History, University of Wisconsin - Madison:
The Spanish Armada, Royal Museums Greenwich.
Some lessons at The National Archives (with links to original documents):
Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada, The British Library.
Some Other Websites:
People, Events, Places roughly in order as discussed by Mattingly:
[Ch 1, Fotheringhay] :
Mary Stuart aka Mary, Queen of Scots;
Babington Plot.
[Ch 2, London] :
Elizabeth Tudor aka Elizabeth I of England.
[Ch 3, Greenwich] :
William Davison;
Francis Walsingham;
William Cecil, Lord Burghley;
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
[Ch 4, Paris] :
Bernardino de Mendoza;
Henry Valois aka Henry III of France;
Catherine de' Medici;
Edward Stafford;
House of Guise;
Catholic League.
[Ch 5, Brussels] :
Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma;
Dutch Revolt.
[Ch 6, Rome] :
Enrique de Guzmán, Count of Olivares;
William Allen;
Felice Peretti aka Pope Sixtus V.
[Ch 7, San Lorenzo de Escorial] :
Philip Habsburg aka Philip II of Spain;
El Escorial.
[Ch 8, London and Plymouth] :
Plymouth;
Francis Drake.
[Ch 9, Cadiz Bay] :
Cadiz;
Drake's 1587 expedition, "Singeing the King of Spain's Beard".
[Ch 10, The Portuguese Coast] :
Cape St. Vincent;
Sagres;
Lisbon.
[Ch 11, Cape St Vincent and the Azores] :
Azores;
Drake's 1587 expedition.
[Ch 12, Sluys] :
Dutch Revolt.
[Ch 13, Coutras] :
Battle of Coutras, 20 October 1587;
French Wars of Religion (1562-1598);
Henry Bourbon aka Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV of France;
War of the Three Henrys (i.e., Henry Valois, Henry Bourbon, Henry Guise).
[Ch 14, France] :
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592).
Following his victory at Coutras, Henry of Navarre visited Montaigne at his home; Montaigne then traveled to Paris and met with Henry III; the topics of these meetings are unknown.
[Ch 15, Western Europe] : The year
1588;
1580s in England.
For reasons of astrology and numerology the year 1588 was prophecied by
Regiomontanus (1436-1476) to be one of momentous events; that prophecy had been propagated over the following century and heightened anxieties among the credulous. In 1588
John Harvey published, probably, Mattingly speculates, with official encouragement, a pamphlet debunking the prophecies:
A discoursiue probleme concerning prophesies.
[Ch 16, Greenwich and English Waters] :
John Hawkins;
William Wynter;
Charles Howard aka Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral.
[Ch 17, Lisbon] :
Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz;
Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia.
[Ch 18, Paris] :
Day of the Barricades, 12 May 1588.
Mattingly does not mention the census ordered by
Henry III for 12 May. But Mattingly does discuss that Henry III knew well beforehand who the Sixteen and their co-conspirators were, but Henry III failed to arrest them, which may have suppressed the revolt. Henry III's failure to control his opponents was the beginning of his end. The slippery scheming by Henry III's mother
Catherine de' Medici, by assisting
Henry Guise, clearly didn't help Henry III's longevity.
[Ch 19, Paris] :
Day of the Barricades, 12 May 1588.
By weakening Henry III,
Bernardino de Mendoza (Philip II's ambassador to France) and the
Catholic League succeeded in implementing the French phase of Philip II's plan for invading England: France would not be able to assist England during a Spanish invasion, and France would not be able to undo the Spanish conquest of the southern territories of the Netherlands when the
Duke of Parma's army left the Netherlands to invade England.
[Ch 20, Lisbon to Corunna] :
Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia;
Spanish Armada: Planned invasion of England;
List of ships of the Spanish Armada;
Corunna.
Mattingly notes that in May, before leaving Lisbon, Medina Sidonia published a detailed description of the armada which was widely distributed in Europe; Elizabeth's advisor
William Cecil, Lord Burghley had a copy. The publication's title:
La felicissima Armada.
[Ch 21, Plymouth, the Sleeve and Biscay] :
Plymouth Sound;
Bay of Biscay. On 29 July Captain Thomas Fleming reports seeing Spanish ships near the
Scilly Isles at the mouth of the
English Channel.
[Ch 22, The Lizard to the Eddystone] :
Lizard Point, Cornwall;
The Lizard;
Eddystone Rocks.
[Ch 23, The Eddystone to Start Point, 31 July] :
Start Point; the first battle occured on Sunday 31 July;
Spanish Armada: First actions. (Note: The Wikipedia Spanish Armada article uses "old style"
Julian calendar dates while Mattingly uses "new style"
Gregorian calendar dates, which I have followed here. "Old style" date + 10 = "new style" date.)
[Ch 24, Start Point to Portland Bill, 31 July - 2 Aug] :
Portland Bill.
[Ch 25, Portland Bill to Calais Roads, 2-6 Aug] :
Calais. On Wednesday evening 3 Aug a change in English tactics: four squadrons led by
Charles Howard,
Francis Drake,
John Hawkins and
Martin Frobisher. An eastern fleet led by
Henry Seymour had patrolled the waters around Dunkirk from where the English expected the Duke of Parma to emerge with an invasion army in coordination with the Spanish Armada. While that was indeed the Spanish plan, Parma never assembled a fleet that could transport his troops. Seymour's fleet joins the four other English squadrons.
[Ch 26, The Neighbourhood of Calais, 6-7 Aug] : The English launch fireships (not quite
Hellburners) at the Spanish fleet anchored near Calais.
[Ch 27, Calais Road to Gravelines, 8 Aug] : The fireships scatter the Spanish Armada from their anchorage, but later that day they regroup.
Spanish Armada: Battle of Gravelines; the Spanish fleet suffers its greatest damage by English action.
[Ch 28, The Banks of Zeeland and the North Sea, 9-12 Aug] : The English almost herd the Spanish Armada into grounding itself in shallow waters but the wind shifts in the Spaniards favor and they escape into the North Sea.
[Ch 29, Tilbury, 18-19 Aug] :
Tilbury. Elizabeth I reviews her army accompanied by
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
Speech to the Troops at Tilbury (which contains the fondly remembered phrase: "I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too . . .").
[Ch 30, Western Europe, Aug & Sept] : Mattingly discusses how reports of the outcome of the English-Spanish sea war spread across Europe. The outcome will have significant political impacts for various groupings in Europe: nations, kingdoms, religions.
[Ch 31, From the North Sea, around Ireland to Spanish Ports] :
Spanish Armada: Return to Spain;
Spanish Armada in Ireland. Great losses of ships and men occurred especially along the Irish coast to a fleet perilously weakened at Gravelines and by the effects on men's physical condition of two months at sea with inadequate food and water.
[Ch 32, Blois, 23 Dec] :
Blois;
Château de Blois. Henry III finally dispatches the troublesome
House of Guise; the
Catholic League gets their revenge in July 1589; Henry III is suceeded by
Henry of Navarre, the first Bourbon king of France.
[Ch 33, El Escorial, New Year's Day 1589] : For Philip II war with England would continue the rest of his life and until, during the reigns of his successor and Elizabeth I's successor,
peace was negotiated in 1604.
[Ch 34, Richmond, New Year's Day 1589] :
Richmond Palace. Among the younger retainers present Mattingly notes
Walter Raleigh and
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
[Epilogue, New York 1959] :
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). Mattingly writes:
It is sometimes said that the defeat of the Armada produced the mood of buoyant optimism which characterised the Elizabethan temper, and led to the great explosion of literary genius which marked the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign. . . . There is no link in England between the Armada campaign and literary work as clear as one we can find in Spain. According the the acccepted story a maimed veteran of Lepanto, a minor poet, in the confusing weeks before the Armada sailed from Lisbon, got his accounts of collections he was making for the fleet so embroiled that nobody could tell whether he was trying to cheat the crown or not, and in due time he was sent to prison until somebody could straighten out his books. In his enforced leisure he found time to begin to write Don Quixote. Perhaps this proves that defeat may be just as stimulating to genius as victory, a proposition for which history can furnish considerable support. Or perhaps Cervantes and Shakespeare would have written much as they did whether the Armada had sailed or not.
Another passage in Mattingly's concluding remarks that I find interesting:
Philip and his militant advisors dreamed of a great crusade which should wipe out heresy and impose on Christendom the King of Spain's Catholic peace. Drake and his fellow Puritans dreamed of spreading the religious revolution throughout Europe until Antichrist was hurled from his throne. Both dreams were wide of reality. Neither the Catholic nor the Protestant coalition had the necessary unity, or could dispose of the necessary force. Systems of ideas, though usually self-limiting in their spread, are harder to kill than men, or even than nations. Of all the kinds of war a crusade, a total war against a system of ideas, is the hardest to win. By its very nature the war between Spain and England was likely to be indecisive, and men being what they are even its object lesson proved to be in vain. Most of Europe had to fight another war, thirty years long, before deciding that crusades were a poor way of settling differences of opinion, and that two or more systems of ideas could live side by side without mortal danger to either.
Recall that this was written in 1958/1959 so I think it's safe to infer that Mattingly was also indirectly commenting on the contemporary standoff between Capitalism and Communism. (Wikipedia:
1958;
1959;
Cold War (1953–1962).)
Selected individuals who were alive during the period 1587-1588 covered by Mattingly's book (except Sidney, recently killed in the Netherlands and fondly remembered at Elizabeth I's court) but who do not appear in Mattingly's book or are mentioned only very briefly. What were they doing during the days of the Spanish Armada?
- John Dee (1527-1608 or 1609) mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, alchemist, mystic.
- Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) astronomer.
- Thomas Digges (c.1546–1595) mathematician, astronomer.
- Nicholas Hilliard (c.1547-1619) painter.
- Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) philosopher, astronomer, heretic, martyr.
- Edmund Spenser (c.1552–1599) poet.
- Richard Hakluyt (c.1552 or 1553-1616). Author of The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1589-1600) [Project Gutenberg]. An abridged edition published by Penguin Classics is available: Publisher USA; Publisher UK; Google Books; Amazon.com.
- Philip Sidney (1554-1586) poet, courtier, soldier.
- Thomas Harriot (aka Thomas Hariot) (c.1560-1621) mathematician, astronomer, ethnographer, etc. Author of A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588) [Google Books; Project Gutenberg] (also later published as Narrative of the first English plantation of Virginia [Google Books]) and, later, books on mathematics.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) lawyer, statesman, jurist, writer, philosopher.
- Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) poet, dramatist, spy.
- William Shakespeare (1564–1616).
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).
- Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) mathematician, astronomer.
- John Donne (1572-1631) poet.