CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF SPAIN
The conflict between the Old Faith and the lusty young Nation wentsteadily forward after the Jesuit invasion; more and more priests pouredinto England; more and more were banished, imprisoned and put to death.The advent of Father Holt, the Jesuit, to Scotland in 1583 was a signalfor a new outburst of Catholic feeling, which manifested itself not onlyin greater devotion to Religion, but, among the ill-instructed andimpatient, in very questionable proceedings. In fact, from this timeonward the Catholic cause suffered greatly from the division of itssupporters into two groups; the religious and the political, as they maybe named. The former entirely repudiated any desire or willingness tomeddle with civil matters; its members desired to be both Catholics andEnglishmen; serving the Pope in matters of Faith and Elizabeth in mattersof civil life; but they suffered greatly from the indiscretions andfanaticism of the political group. The members of that party franklyregarded themselves as at war with an usurper and an heretic; and usedwarlike methods to gain their ends; plots against the Queen's life wereset on foot; and their promoters were willing enough to die in defence ofthe cause. But the civil Government made the fatal mistake of notdistinguishing between the two groups; again and again loyal Englishmenwere tortured and hanged as traitors, because they shared their faithwith conspirators.
There was one question, however, that was indeed on the borderline,exceedingly difficult to answer in words, especially for scrupulousconsciences; and that was whether they believed in the Pope's deposingpower; and this question was adroitly and deliberately used by theGovernment in doubtful cases to ensure a conviction. But whether or notit was possible to frame a satisfactory answer in words, yet the accusedwere plain enough in their deeds; and when the Armada at length waslaunched in '88, there were no more loyal defenders of England than thepersecuted Catholics. Even before this, however, there had appeared signsof reaction among the Protestants, especially against the torture anddeath of Campion and his fellows; and Lord Burghley in '83 attempted toquiet the people's resentment by his anonymous pamphlet, "Execution ofJustice in England," to which Cardinal Allen presently replied.
Ireland, which had been profoundly stirred by the military expeditionfrom the continent in '80, at length was beaten and slashed intosubmission again; and the torture and execution of Hurley by martial law,which Elizabeth directed on account of his appointment to the See ofCashel, when the judges had pronounced there to be no case against him;and a massacre on the banks of the Moy in '86 of Scots who had comeacross as reinforcements to the Irish;--these were incidents in the blacklist of barbarities by which at last a sort of temporary quiet wasbrought to Ireland.
In Scottish affairs, the tangle, unravelled even still, of which MaryStuart was the centre, led at last to her death. Walsingham, withextraordinary skill, managed to tempt her into a dangerouscorrespondence, all of which he tapped on the way: he supplied to her infact the very instrument--an ingeniously made beer-barrel--through whichthe correspondence was made possible, and, after reading all the letters,forwarded them to their several destinations. When all was ripe hebrought his hand down on a group of zealots, to whose designs Mary wassupposed to be privy; and after their execution, finally succeeded, in'87, in obtaining Elizabeth's signature to her cousin's death-warrant.The storm already raging against Elizabeth on the Continent, but fannedto fury by this execution, ultimately broke in the Spanish Armada in thefollowing year.
Meanwhile, at home, the affairs of the Church of England were far fromprosperous. Puritanism was rampant; and a wail of dismay was evoked bythe new demands of a Commission under Whitgift's guidance, in '82,whereby the Puritan divines were now called upon to assent to the Queen'sSupremacy, the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book. In spite of theopposition, however, of Burghley and the Commons, Whitgift, who had bythis time succeeded to Canterbury upon Grindal's death, remained firm;and a long and dreary dispute began, embittered further by the executionof Mr. Copping and Mr. Thacker in '83 for issuing seditious books in thePuritan cause. A characteristic action in this campaign was the issuingof a Puritan manifesto in '84, consisting of a brief, well-writtenpamphlet of a hundred and fifty pages under the title "A LearnedDiscourse of Ecclesiastical Government," making the inconsistent claim ofdesiring a return to the Primitive and Scriptural model, and at the sametime of advocating an original scheme, "one not yet handled." It waspractically a demand for the Presbyterian system of pastorate andgovernment. To this Dr. Bridges replies with a tremendous tome of overfourteen hundred pages, discharged after three years of laborious toil;and dealing, as the custom then was, line by line, with the Puritanattack. To this in the following year an anonymous Puritan, under thename of Martin Marprelate, retorts with a brilliant and sparkling riposteaddressed to "The right puissant and terrible priests, my clergy-mastersof the Convocation-house," in which he mocks bitterly at the prelates,accusing them of Sabbath-breaking, time-serving, and popery,--calling one"dumb and duncetical," another "the veriest coxcomb that ever wore velvetcap," and summing them up generally as "wainscot-faced bishops," "proud,popish, presumptuous, profane paltry, pestilent, and perniciousprelates."
The Archbishop had indeed a difficult team to drive; especially as hiscoadjutors were not wholly proof against Martin's jibes. In '84 hisbrother of York had been mixed up in a shocking scandal; in '85 theBishop of Lichfield was accused of simony; Bishop Aylmer was continuallyunder suspicion of avarice, dishonesty, vanity and swearing; and theBench as a whole was universally reprobated as covetous, stingy and weak.
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In civil matters, England's relation with Spain was her most importantconcern. Bitter feeling had been growing steadily between the twocountries ever since Drake's piracies in the Spanish dominions inAmerica; and a gradually increasing fleet at Cadiz was the outward signof it. Now the bitterness was deepened by the arrest of English ships inthe Spanish ports in the early summer of '85, and the swift reprisals ofDrake in the autumn; who intimidated and robbed important towns on thecoast, such as Vigo, where his men behaved with revolting irreverence inthe churches, and Santiago; and then proceeded to visit and spoil S.Domingo and Carthagena in the Indies.
Again in '87 Drake obtained the leave of the Queen to harass Spain oncemore, and after robbing and burning all the vessels in Cadiz harbour, hestormed the forts at Faro, destroyed Armada stores at Corunna, andcaptured the great treasure-ship _San Felipe_.
Elizabeth was no doubt encouraged in her apparent recklessness by thebelief that with the Netherlands, which she had been compelled at last toassist, in a state of revolt, Spain would have little energy forreprisals upon England; but she grew more and more uneasy when newscontinued to arrive in England of the growing preparations for theArmada; France, too, was now so much involved with internal struggles, asthe Protestant Henry of Navarre was now the heir to her Catholic throne,that efficacious intervention could no longer be looked for from thatquarter, and it seemed at last as if the gigantic Southern power wasabout to inflict punishment upon the little northern kingdom which hadinsulted her with impunity so long.
In the October of '87 certain news arrived in England of the giganticpreparations being made in Spain and elsewhere: and hearts began to beat,and tongues to clack, and couriers to gallop. Then as the months went by,and tidings sifted in, there was something very like consternation in thecountry. Men told one another of the huge armament that was on its way,the vast ships and guns--all bearing down on tiny England, like a bull ona terrier. They spoke of the religious fervour, like that of a crusade,that inspired the invasion, and was bringing the flower of the Spanishnobility against them: the superstitious contrasted their own _Lion_,_Revenge_, and _Elizabeth Jonas_ with the Spanish _San Felipe_, _SanMatteo_, and _Our Lady of the Rosary_: the more practical thought witheven deeper gloom of the dismal parsimony of the Queen, who dribbled outstores and powder so reluctantly, and dismissed her seamen at the leasthint
of delay.
Yet, little by little, as midsummer came and went, beacons were gatheringon every hill, ships were approaching efficiency, and troops assemblingat Tilbury under the supremely incompetent command of Lord Leicester.
Among the smaller seaports on the south coast, Rye was one of the mostactive and enthusiastic; the broad shallow bay was alive withfishing-boats, and the steep cobbled streets of the town were filled allday with a chattering exultant crowd, cheering every group of seamen thatpassed, and that spent long hours at the quay watching the busy life ofthe ships, and predicting the great things that should fall when theSpaniards encountered the townsfolk, should the Armada survive Drake'sonslaught further west.
About July the twentieth more definite news began to arrive. At leastonce a day a courier dashed in through the south-west gate, with newsthat all must hold themselves ready to meet the enemy by the end of themonth; labour grew more incessant and excitement more feverish.
About six o'clock on the evening of the twenty-ninth, as a long row ofpowder barrels was in process of shipping down on the quay, the men whowere rolling them suddenly stopped and listened; the line of onlookerspaused in their comments, and turned round. From the town above came anoutburst of cries, followed by the crash of the alarm from thechurch-tower. In two minutes the quay was empty. Out of every passagethat gave on to the main street poured excited men and women, somehysterically laughing, some swearing, some silent and white as they ran.For across the bay westwards, on a point beyond Winchelsea, in the stillevening air rose up a stream of smoke shaped like a pine-tree, with a redsmouldering root; and immediately afterwards in answer the Ypres towerbehind the town was pouring out a thick drifting cloud that told to thewatchers on Folkestone cliffs that the dreaded and longed-for foe was insight of England.
Then the solemn hours of waiting began to pass. Every day and night therewere watchers, straining their eyes westwards in case the Armada shouldattempt to coast along England to force a landing anywhere, andsouthwards in case they should pass nearer the French coast on their wayto join the Prince of Parma; but there was little to be seen over thatwide ring of blue sea except single vessels, or now and againhalf-a-dozen in company, appearing and fading again on some unknownquest. The couriers that came in daily could not tell them much; onlythat there had been indecisive engagements; that the Spaniards had notyet attempted a landing anywhere; and that it was supposed that theywould not do so until a union with the force in Flanders had beeneffected.
And so four days of the following week passed; then on Thursday, Augustthe fourth, within an hour or two after sunrise, the solemn booming ofguns began far away to the south-west; but the hours passed; and beforenightfall all was silent again.
The suspense was terrible; all night long there were groups parading thestreets, anxiously conjecturing, now despondently, now cheerfully.
Then once again on the Friday morning a sudden clamour broke out in thetown, and almost simultaneously a pinnace slipped out, spreading herwings and making for the open sea. A squadron of English ships had beensighted flying eastwards; and the pinnace was gone to get news. The shipswere watched anxiously by thousands of eyes, and boats put out all alongthe coast to inquire; and within two or three hours the pinnace was backagain in Rye harbour, with news that set bells ringing and men shouting.On Wednesday, the skipper reported, there had been an indecisiveengagement during the dead calm that had prevailed in the Channel; acouple of Spanish store-vessels had been taken on the following morning,and a general action had followed, which again had been indecisive; butin which the English had hardly suffered at all, while it was supposedthat great havoc had been wrought upon the enemy.
But the best of the news was that the Rye contingent was to set sail atonce, and unite with the English fleet westward of Calais by mid-day onSaturday. The squadron that had passed was under the command of theAdmiral himself, who was going to Dover for provisions and ammunition,and would return to his fleet before evening.
Before many hours were passed, Rye harbour was almost empty, and hundredsof eyes were watching the ships that carried their husbands and sons andlovers out into the pale summer haze that hung over the coast of France;while a few sharp-eyed old mariners on points of vantage muttered to oneanother that in the haze there was a patch of white specks to be seenwhich betokened the presence of some vast fleet.
That night the sun set yellow and stormy, and by morning thecobble-stones of Rye were wet and dripping with storm-showers, and aswell was beginning to lap and sob against the harbour walls.