BOOKS.

THE STORY OF THE ARMADA.*

THESE State Papers relate to the condition of the English Navy during the year 1588. They are many and various ; there are letters from Howard of Effingham, the Lord Admiral and his sea-captains, intermingled with dry cata- logues of ships and armaments. Executive orders from the authorities in London jostle strategic schemes of Drake and Fenner; and mixed with these are occasional reports from English and foreign spies, by whom Elizabeth seems to have been well served. The documents are interesting, and give a very full picture of the alarm and excitement that prevailed, throughout the year. One fact strikes the reader more pro- minently than any other in reading these papers, and that is the sound and reasoned confidence felt by the naval experts, with regard to the result of the struggle. The terror that may have reigned in London among the Council, the per- petual anxiety of the Queen's Ministers, Walsyngham and Burghley, finds no response in the replies of men like Drake, Hawkyns, and Fenner, captains who had despoiled the Spaniards many times, and could gauge to a nicety the power of their ships and the quality of their sailors. Speaking from long knowledge of the foe, they were well able to predict that the Armada could effect very little against the well-found English ships—mostly from the dockyards of John Hawkyns—and that for seamanship their sailors were no match for the English veterans. Most historians have largely exaggerated the strength of the Armada, and have regarded the fight rather with the eyes of the Council who knew nothing of the sea, than with those of the men who did the actual fighting. The publication of such contemporary documents as these shows that the Elizabethan captains were right. Of the army in Flanders, commanded by the Prince of Parma, they were not so certain ; there seemed to them always a possibility that he might succeed in effecting a landing some dark night, and with his trained soldiers destroy the raw levies that would be opposed to him; but the naval fighting they predicted, and quite rightly, would be wholly in favour of the English. Drake, writing to the Council on March 30th, says " Doubtless, the King of Spain's force is, and will be, great in Spain ; and thereon he will make his groundwork or foundation whereby the Prince of Parma may have the better entrance, which in mine own judgment is most to be feared."

And a little lower down in the same letter :— " The advantages and gain of time and place will be thbeezlz and chief means for our good ; wherein I most humbly ea your good Lordships to persevere as you have begun, for that with fifty sail of shipping we shall do more good upon their own coast than a great many more will do here at home ; and the sooner we are gone the better we shall be able to impeach them."

• The Story of the Armada State Papers of the Year 1388. dit.d by_Oagtain Laustbtam, &?(., Professor at Eines College, London. Vols. L sad II. London e Navy Records Society. These were bold words, and Drake continues almost pas- sionately to ask leave for this expedition,—there are letters from him dated April 13th and 28th to the same effect. Nor was he alone in this opinion. Frobisher, Hawkyns, and Fenner heartily concurred, and Lord Howard several times memorialised the Council that permission should be granted. Drake bad wrought endless havoc the summer before in the harbours of Cadiz and Lisbon, and had good reason to believe he could repeat this effective stroke. The publication of the papers in the Spanish archives by Captain Duro, show us that the Armada was in lamentable disarray, and of this fact the English Government was well advertised by its spies. Even if the Spaniards had been in a condition to fight Drake on the high seas, the result could hardly have been doubtful. They were high and top-heavy in build, of shallow draught and without those improvements in rigging (notably the bowline, says Professor Laughton) possessed by the ships from Hawkyns's dockyards. Thus they were bad sailors, could not approach the English in speed, and were unable even to beat to windward. But the Queen was obstinate and timid ; either she hoped for a definite peace, or else she imagined that the Armada would not come at all. In any case, Drake was for- bidden to sail, and the struggle had to be fought out on English waters. Professor Laughton's practical knowledge of matters nautical enables him to set these facts forth very clearly, and we are inclined to think that he at last destroys the heresy that the defeat of the Spaniards was in any way due to the inclement weather. Had the winds been as favour- able as possible, they could under no circumstances have fought the English again after the rough handling they had received in the Channel ; their vessels had been shot through and through by the heavier broadsides of Howard's fleet, and their cartridge had given out as completely as that of their foe. "They were leaking like sieves, had no anchors, their masts and rigging shattered, their water-casks smashed, no water, and were very short-handed ; and that they were in this distressed condition was the work of the English fleet, more especially at Calais and G-ravelines." The Atlantic gales, which made of defeat an entire destruc- tion, were at work on an easy prey. The Spanish had been, as we have seen, torn to pieces by the English fire, and they were in the first plaoe very badly found. The strength of the Armada was largely on paper. Philip's hope of dictating terms to Elizabeth rested on his land-forces, the soldiers carried on board the fleet, and those commanded by Parma in the Low Countries. The Armada, as a fighting power, was on the face of it very inferior to the seaworthy and efficient ships commanded by Elizabeth's captains. And the fire of the English, which impressed this fact on the Spaniards from the first, leads Professor Laughton to an interesting excursus, which to our thinking breaks new ground. No historian ever recounts the story of the Armada without copious blame of the Queen and the Council for the insufficient supply of ammunition. The editor points out that the " off-fighting " practised by the English ships was a new departure in naval tactics. Hitherto the method of capture had been by boarding, and from other sources we know that the Spaniards themselves thought very little of gunnery, and considered it better and more chivalrous to win the victory by hand-to-hand fighting. Howard, acting under the advice of Drake and Hawkyns, avoided coming to close quarters with his huge opponents, the more as they "had an army aboard and he had none;" he kept his distance, and poured in a constant and rapid fire. Several days of such fighting drained the English supplies of powder ; and after the fight of July 29th, there was hardly a round left. For this novel state of things the Council were in no way prepared : Drake and his fellow- privateers may have seen somewhat similar fighting in the Indies, but to the home authorities it was quite new. Thus it an hardly be wondered that supplies ran short, and that Howard was unable to follow up his success at Gravelines. That the Council should not have foreseen this experiment in naval tactics—for it was nothing else—may argue them short- sighted ; but it is hardly correct to attribute the deficiency to the parsimony of the Queen. Another very common charge against the naval administration—and indirectly against Elizabeth also—is that the ships were insufficiently victualled. This is an indictment that has been preferred by many writers ; by none more vigorously than the late Professor Froude. On the whole, it seems to have small foundation in fact.

That the Administration was unprepared for supplying a large fleet, that its organisation was defective and imperfect, and that Marmaduke Darell, the commissary, had untold difficulty in collecting provisions—all this may be readily granted. About forty days before the coming of the Armada we have Howard writing to Walsyngham :—

"Our victuals are not yet come to us The time of our victualling that we have doth come [run] out on Saturday next ; but by the good means and wise and well doings of Mr. Darell, we have been refreshed here with some 12 or 14 days' victual at times."

And again, about a week later :— "If Mr. Darell had not very carefully provided us of 14 days' victuals, and again with four or five days more, which now he

bath provided, we had been in some great extremity it would do very well that her Majesty would send five or six thousand pounds hither, for it is likely we shall stand in great need of it Yet I protest before God we have been more careful of her Majesty's charges than of our own lives."

From all which may be inferred that Howard and his sea-

captains were better satisfied with the victualling system than their nineteenth-century historians, however they may have carped between whiles at the Queen's frugality. As to the system of putting "six upon four "—that is, six men at a mess intended far four—which has been so roundly denounced by Professor Fronde, the editor is able to demur that this custom lasted till well on into the present century,—thus, is hardly to be put to the blame of Elizabeth. But most of the charges of maladministration seem, on more careful examina- tion, to arise from ignorance of what was customary at the time, not from shortsighted economy on the part of the Queen and her Ministers. The story that the heroes of that week's fighting in the Channel were left without pay, springs from ignorance of the fact that the Navy then, as now, was not paid at the end of every week as are factory hands. Still, making every allowance, these arguments do not touch the main question of Elizabeth's administration, and we await further evidence ere we can acquit the Queen of a certain amount of niggardliness that seriously prejudiced the success of her administrators and fighters.

Another interesting set of papers that appear in this collection are those relating to the behaviour of Hawkyns as Treasurer of the Navy. He had contracted to supply ships

to the Government and to keep the Royal dockyards in repair, and a very general cry was raised against him that he had " scamped " the work. Several pages are devoted to the

objections preferred against him, and to the replies put in in justification by that tough old salt. The question is corn. plicated, especially as the objects in dispute, the ships and their gear, are no longer in existence to prove whether Mr. Hawkyns had driven a hard bargain with the Government or no. Perhaps the best reply to the various charges is to be found in the fact that, when put to the test, the English ships,

especially those built by John Hawkyns, were found quite seaworthy and easy to handle. But the whole question is

obscure. Then, and for more than two centuries, men had not that nice sense of honour about public moneys that is required at the present day.

The first volume ends with the beginning of August, 1588. The letters with which the book concludes leave no doubt in the reader's mind that the Armada has been thoroughly worsted ; but the captains are still quite ignorant of the carnage and wreck their fire has achieved, and some enter- tain fears that the Armada may find leisure to refit in one of the Northern ports, and attack the English fleet once again.

The second volume completes the great story, and gives the documents, less thrilling, but still of sufficient interest, which detail the losses of the Spaniards and the sufferings of the survivors. Many details are furnished us concerning their hard fate,—one specially noticeable as being from the hand of Medina-Sidonia, their Admiral. Outside the terrible slaughter and the bad weather that had been their portion, they were, we learn, even worse off in the matter of provisions than the English. Their contractors had cheated them shamefully. Gregorio de Sotomayor deposes that "King Philip did command that the fleet should be victualled for six months ; but Luiz Hezar and Francisco Duarte of Cadiz did victual them but for four months, and with that which was nought and rotten." This indeed we knew before from the work of Captain Duro. The papers before us amply confirm the opinion that the whole expedition was ill-fur- nished for its work. Of the fear of the English captains that the Armada would return, we have several instances, notably one from Lord H. Seymour to the Queen. He com- plains of being set to guard the coast, and signs himself, surely not without sarcasm, "Your Majesty's most bounden and faithful fisherman."

Professor Laughton has done his work well. The documents included in these two volumes are interesting and representa- tive. We have every reason to believe that they are accurately transcribed,—the more especially as Professor Laughton's readings invariably differ from those of Mr. Fronde whenever they happen to quote the same paper. The introduction contains much that is new, though we must confess that some of the sentences are of quite unmanageable length. We hope to welcome other volumes in this series under the " recognition " of Professor Laughton.