LECTURE XLV.-GLORIANA. The Spanish Armada. The English fleet. The English sailors. The conflict. England's triumph. Literature. Shakespeare and the theatre. Death of Elizabeth. 66 The Spanish fleet. 1. THE Invincible Armada, as Philip's fleet was proudly named, consisted of 130 ships, sixty-five of which were called galleons, and looked like floating castles, they were so tall and strong; four of them more gigantic still were called galliasses." They were provided with 2500 cannon, and vast stores of provisions; they were commanded by all the best naval officers of Spain, and contained also great numbers of the young nobility, who looked on the invasion of heretic England as a holy war, a sort of Crusade. But all this great show had a canker hid in its heart. Down below the decks were more than 2000 miserable slaves, chained to their oars, working with no heart, no courage, under the eye of a ruthless master, armed with a terrible whip of bull's hide. 1588. 2. When the English knew that the King of Spain was coming to invade their country, to drive away their queen and make himself king, their hearts all rose as the heart of one man. The government appealed first to the Lord Mayor of London. They sent to inquire of him what force the city would furnish in defence of the kingdom. The mayor and common council, in return, desired to know what force the queen's Highness wished them to furnish. The answer was, fifteen ships and 5000 men. Two days after, the Londoners "humbly entreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and loyalty to prince and country, to accept 10,000 men and thirty ships amply furnished." The Catholics were as loyal as the Protestants; they forgot their divisions now, and only remembered they were Englishmen. 3. Still the English fleet was but a small one; the queen's navy consisted of only thirty ships; about fifty others, many of them belonging to private individuals, joined the The Eng admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, at Plymouth Harbour. These ships were very different from the stately Spanish vessels. Far the greater number of them were about the size of yachts; there were only four large ships, and those were hardly as large as the smallest of the galleons. the 4. But who had they got on board? The most splendid, boldest, the most brilliant sailors that ever sailed the sea. The English sailors at this time were the wonder of the world. They were everywhere: up in the frozen ocean of the North, trying to find a way to India in that direction; down in the dangerous straits by Terra del Fuego; out on the great Pacific Ocean, bringing home wonderful stories of their adventures; strange new plants and birds; great stores of gold which they took from the Spanish ships; above all, a spirit of daring and enterprise which would fear nothing and nobody. The most famous of them all was Sir Francis Drake, who had really done what Columbus hoped to do, sailed all round the world. The Spaniards knew his name well. He had already done things which would have seemed mad if they had not succeeded. They came to think he was a devil, and no man. He was there, too, with a crew of little ships which were all devoted to him. and 5. The English army was set in readiness also, to dispute every inch of ground, in case the invaders should succeed in landing. A strong camp was formed at Tilbury to The queen protect the capital, and thither went Elizabeth, to encourage and cheer her soldiers. All that was the army. noble and queenly in her rose to this emergency. She was warned by some of her counsellors to beware of treachery. But "no," said the queen, "I do not desire to live to mistrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear; I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects." She knew she had but the body of a woman. "But," said she, "I have the heart of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realms." 6. The soldiers would have shed the last drop of their blood for such a queen; but they were never called to fight at all. Not one Spaniard set foot on English ground but as a prisoner. The conflict between the two fleets reminds one of David and Goliath. The great towering ships must The conflict. at first have despised the little ones. They had to sail all up the Channel till they came to Dunkirk, where Parma's army was waiting for them. The little English fleet, which was lying in the harbour of Plymouth, let them pass, and then came out after them. The Spanish admiral wanted to close upon the English, to bring them to a definite engagement and crush them. But the Englishmen knew better. The great ships moved slowly and clumsily, nor did they know their way very well; they could get no pilots in England, of course, and the Dutch pilots, who were well acquainted with the Channel, were Protestants, and would not come. The little English ships moved so lightly and were so cleverly handled that they seemed as if they were alive. A Spaniard said that "the swiftest ships in the Armada seemed to be at anchor" in comparison with the dashing English vessels. It was just the same with the cannon. The English fired four shots to the Spaniards' one; and their shot were well aimed and took effect, while the Spanish flew wildly up in the air, or down in the sea, doing no harm. 7. The Spaniards began to be afraid; they had never seen anything like it. They tried hard to close and grapple, but they never could catch the English. So they went up the Channel towards Dover, the English behind harassing and tormenting them. As they went on, the young English lords and gentlemen, Catholics as well as Protestants, came streaming out from every port, in any boat they could get hold of, to join the English fleet. From Lyme and Weymouth, from Poole and the Isle of Wight they came, ever more and more. The Spanish admiral one evening could count 100 sail behind him, and thought the number was still increasing. 8. At last the Spaniards reached Calais; by this time there were 140 English vessels. At night Howard sent six fire-ships among them, which terrified and confounded them still more. They tried to move on, and the English pursued them. The next day, from eight in the morning until sunset, the English poured their shot upon the Spanish vessels like rain. 9. In this terrible week three great galleons had been sunk, and three more disabled; 4000 men had been killed; the rest were cowed and disheartened. What was to be done? The Spaniards gave up all thought of invading England, of joining Parma's army; all they could think of was how to get back to Spain. 10. There was no going back; the dreadful little English fleet was still behind them, following them like a shadow. All they could determine on was to go forward, sail round the Orkneys and west of Ireland, and reach Spain in that way. But very, very few of them ever got back to Spain. If the Queen of England had not been incredibly mean and niggardly, Howard and Drake would have followed them till they were all destroyed or captured; but Elizabeth kept them so short of powder and shot, and so short of food, that when they had pursued them as far as the Forth they had to turn back and leave them. 11. But now they had a worse enemy than even the English to confront. When they arrived in those northern latitudes, terrible storms overtook them. The great ships The end. could hardly make their way; they were separated from one another by fogs; they scarcely knew where they were. The sailors were falling sick and dying by hundreds from cold and misery. When they came on the coast of Ireland, which is frightfully dangerous and rocky, it was still worse. Their supply of water was nearly all gone. If they attempted to land, even to get fresh water, the savage Irish set on them and butchered them without mercy. It is horrible to read of their misery. At last, in September and October, a few wretched shattered ships began to appear on the coast of Spain. Day after day they came dropping in, laden with sick and dying men. Fifty-four in all came home; and so ended the great Spanish Armada, and the long rivalry between Philip and Elizabeth. 12. The joy and thankfulness of the English nation knew no bounds. The queen went in state to St. Paul's to return thanks for the great deliverance, with the flags of the conEngland's joy. quered enemy borne in triumph before her. The Protestants abroad shared in the joy of England. The dreadful power, the awful weight of Philip and Spain, which had so long impended over them was gone for ever. The brave little provinces of the Netherlands, which had held out so long, but which it seems must have been overmatched and crushed at last, were free; for England, the mainstay of their cause, was free. More than free; she was now, what she has been ever since, the mistress of the seas. Well might Spenser say that "Albion the sonne of Neptune was.' She could carry her commerce and plant her colonies wherever she pleased, in the Old World or the New. She felt her power, and her spirit and confidence rose gloriously. She thought "the Lord had fought for her." Never was Lady so praised, so honoured, so worshipped as Elizabeth. "All princely graces That mould up such a nighty piece as this is, Shall still be doubled on her; truth shall nurse her, In her days, every man shall eat in safety So wrote Shakespeare; and Spenser "Fairer and nobler liveth none this hour, Ne like in grace, ne like in learned skill; Long mayst thou, Glorian, live in glory and great power!" If we must call this flattery, surely it was flattery that any queen, any woman, might be proud of. 13. Full of patriotism, of triumph, of noble joy, this was the time when England's most glorious literature came into life. Now were written the books she is proudest of in all her history. In the "golden days of good Queen Literature. Bess there were chroniclers, and travellers, and divines, all eager to tell what they had read, and seen, and thought; above all, there were poets who read and saw and thought also, but who, by the glow of their own hearts, felt a life and soul in history, a tender and awful beauty in nature, a vastness and mystery in the heart and fate of man, and in his relations to his Maker, which enlarged the spiritual world in which we dwell more than ever Columbus had enlarged the natural one. 14. To know what the poets of Elizabeth's age did for England and for the world, we must read the books they wrote. Every one knows their names, Shakespeare, and Spenser, and Sydney; but who knows much of what they did and thought? There are others too whose names are not so famous, but who took their part, Green, Marlowe, Drayton, and many others; for this wonderful literary activity went on all through Elizabeth's reign. It was while she was queen that the first public theatre was opened. Little by little the old religious plays, the Mysteries and Miracles, which had been so popular in the middle ages, gave way to the tragedies 1576. The theatre. |