1588.]
THE ENGLISH CASE AGAINST SPAIN
551
After the Armada had failed, an official English account[1] of the proceedings against it was drawn up, and has been preserved. It will be much quoted from later, since it possesses the signal merit, from the naval point of view, of having been prepared under Howard's direction. But it is also interesting because it contains, in the form of a curious preamble, a statement of what was certainly the generally accepted English case against Spanish ambition and duplicity.
"Whereas," it runs, "the Queen's most excellent Majesty had of late years sundry and most certain intelligences of the great warlike preparation both for sea and land which the King of Spain of late years made from all parts, not only of the mightiest and most puissant ships and vessels that he could prepare, as well from foreign places as in his own dominions, and by arresting of the ships of other countries that came into his dominions, but also of all kind of munition and victuals, and of captains, soldiers and mariners, and of all other provisions for a mighty army by seas, to come out of Spain and Portugal; for the more strength whereof it was notorious to the world how he had drawn into Spain and Portugal his principal and most experimented captains and old soldiers out of Naples, Sicilia, Lombardy, and other parts of Italy, yea, and from sundry remote places of the Indies; the preparation whereof, with the numbers of ships, men, victuals, ordnance and all kind of munition, was made patent to the world by sundry books printed and published both in Spain, Portugal, and in many other countries of Christendom, carrying the titles of the 'Happy Armada of the King of Spain,' and, in some, specially expressed to be against England: And, in like sort, where[as] her Majesty had the like knowledge of the mighty and puissant forces of horses and footmen, sufficient to make many armies, prepared in the Low Countries under the conduct of the Duke of Parma, the King's Lieutenant-General, and of multitude of ships, bilanders, boats and other vessels fit for the transporting and landing of the said forces, armies from the coast of Flanders, with a general publication to the world that all these so mighty forces, both by sea and land, were intended to the invasion of her Majesty's realms, and, as was pretended, to have made therewith a full conquest: Yet for that, in this time of their preparation, the King of Spain, by his Lieutenant-General, the Duke of Parma, caused certain offers to be made to her Majesty for a communication of a peace betwixt their Majesties; howsoever, by the common judgment of the world, the same was done but to abuse her Majesty and to win time whilst his preparations might be made complete; her Majesty, nevertheless, like a most godly and Christian prince, did not refuse to give ear to so Christian an offer, for which purpose she sent certain noblemen[2] of her Privy Council into Flanders to treat with certain Commissioners, who continued there without any good success by reason of the unreasonable delays of the King's Commissioners;[3] yea, they continued there until the Navy of Spain was overcome and forced to fly."
- ↑ Cotton MS. Julius F. x. ff. 111-17. The credit of showing that this document has an official character, and, moreover, that it represents the views and conclusions of Howard himself, is due to Professor Laughton, R.N. See 'State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada,' ii. 358 (App. H.)
- ↑ The English Commissioners were Henry, Earl of Derby; William, Lord Cobham; Sir James à Crofts; and Doctors Valentine Dale and John Rogers.
- ↑ The demands and offers of the Commissioners are set forth in Cott. MS. Julius, F. vi. 23, f. 51 b.
