The Spanish Armada Read Online Free PDF

William Cecil, did not share Elizabeth’s regal sympathy or her constitutional concerns about the inviolable divine right of monarchs. To him, Mary Queen of Scots’
presence on English soil posed a grave threat to his mistress’s throne and his own political and personal survival. In his view, her Catholic loyalties also imperilled England’s
fledgling Protestant faith that had been forged in the cruel fires of martyrdom of Mary I’s reign. No surprise then, that within hours the Scottish queen found herself in comfortable quarters
in the south-east tower of Carlisle Castle – but under strict twenty-four-hour guard. Even in her worst nightmares, she could not have dreamt that she was to be sequestered from the outside
world for the next eighteen years as Elizabeth’s unwanted guest. Mary might be allowed to enjoy the title and a few trappings of a queen, but the cruel reality was that she was to remain a
closely guarded prisoner in five-star captivity in a succession of fortified houses in northern England and the Midlands.
    Cecil’s uneasiness stemmed from his uncomfortable knowledgethat large swathes of England remained staunchly Catholic, with perhaps more than half of Elizabeth’s
three million subjects still clinging stubbornly to that faith. Lancashire, for example, was to retain a Catholic majority until very late into the sixteenth century. 6 In the strategically important maritime counties of Sussex and Hampshire, bordering the English Channel, the heart of the old religion was yet beating strongly, nurtured by
conservative gentry and fugitive priests. Many rood screens 7 stood in Sussex chancels in defiance of government order; and where they had been
dismantled, ‘the wood lies still . . . ready to be set up again’, according to a disquieting official report of 1568. Holy images were hidden, not destroyed, and ‘other popish
ornaments [were concealed] to set up the Mass again within twenty-four hours’. Chalices were secreted to await the happy return of the ancient ritual. Parishioners still brought their Latin
missals with them to Protestant services and women and the elderly openly said their rosary beads, ignoring the benefits of both God’s Word and those of the dark-clad ministers wearing sober
Geneva bands at their throats. 8 In Hampshire, Bishop Robert Horne had great difficulty in finding ministers who would preach ‘sound
doctrine’ and complained indignantly that some priests even in Winchester Cathedral were still stubbornly ‘inculcating popery and superstition’. 9
    Events were to justify Cecil’s hard-nosed assessment of the ramifications of Mary Queen of Scots’ ill-omened arrival in England. By the middle of the following year, 1569, Thomas
Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, the egotistical premier peer of England, was up to his innocent eyes in plans to marry the imprisoned Scottish queen, motivated by fevered dreams of becoming king
consort of Scotland one day, if not of England the next. Mary herself also proved a compulsive conspirator. Not content with pledging her love for the naïve duke as a possible means of
escaping Elizabeth’s unwelcome and unwilling hospitality, she had written secretly to the Catholic earls of Northumberland and Westmorland seeking their assistance in freeing her, by force of
arms if necessary.
    Generations of sixteenth-century Howards had been flawed by a fatal arrogance and Norfolk’s pride inescapably became his downfall. Describing his fabulous wealth and his opulent palace at
Norwich, he bragged shamelessly that his annual revenues were ‘not much less than those of Scotland . . . and when he was in his tenniscourt at Norwich, he thought
himself equal with some kings’. If he had hopes of reassuring the mistrustful and always penny-pinching Elizabeth, these were hardly appropriate blandishments. Peremptory royal summonses to
Norfolk to attend court were seemingly wilfully disobeyed and the queen suspected that the duke’s