The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies. Martin A. S. Hume

and families, to any other reason but the obvious one that high and low, rich and poor, in the city were in a state of trembling panic from first to last, utterly cowed and appalled by the few Spaniards whom they hated as much as they feared.

      In 1578, ten years before the Armada, the rash young King Sebastian of Portugal had disappeared for ever from the ken of men on the Moorish battlefield which had seen the opening and closing of his mad crusade. For centuries afterwards the Portuguese peasants dreamt of his triumphant return to lead to victory the hosts of Christendom. But he came not, unless indeed one of the many claimants who long afterwards assumed his name was indeed he; and in the meanwhile, when his uncle, the childless Cardinal King Henry, died, Portugal wanted a monarch.

      It had a large choice of descendants of Dom Manoel, grandfather of the lost Sebastian, but the Magna Charta of the Portuguese, the laws of Lamego (apocryphal as we now believe them to have been), were then universally accepted, and strictly excluded foreigners from the throne; and all the claimants were aliens but two, the Duchess of Braganza, daughter of the elder son of Dom Manoel, and doubtless the rightful heiress; and Dom Antonio, a churchman, prior of Ocrato, the questionably legitimate offspring of Manoel's second son.

When the Cardinal King died in 1580, Philip II., who for two years had been intriguing, suborning, and threatening the leading Portuguese to acknowledge his right to the succession, stretched out his hand to grasp the coveted crown. Of the two native claimants one, the Duchess of Braganza, was timid and unready; the other, Dom Antonio, was ambitious, bold, and eager. Around him all that was patriotic grouped itself. The poorer classes bitterly hated the foreigner, and particularly the Spaniard, whose King was really the only other serious claimant to the throne. The churchmen were devotedly attached to the ecclesiastical claimant, the nobles were Portuguese before all, and Antonio was acclaimed the national sovereign. But not for long; the terrible Alba swept down upon Lisbon, as years before he had come down upon the Netherlands, and crushed the life out of Portuguese patriotism. There was no religious question to stiffen men's backs, and no William of Orange to command them here. The Portuguese were made of different stuff from the stubborn Dutchmen, and Alba rode roughshod over them with but little resistance. Antonio was soon a fugitive, hunted from town to town, holding out for weeks in one fortress, only to be starved into another; proclaimed a bastard and a rebel, with a great price set upon his head; and yet for eight long months he wandered amongst the mountain peasantry, as safe from betrayal as was Charles Edward amongst the Scots Highlanders. At last Antonio gave up the game and fled to France, and thence to England. He came in July, 1581, and was immediately made much of by the Queen and Leicester. In vain did Mendoza, Philip's ambassador, demand his surrender as a rebel. The Queen said she had not quite made up her mind to help him, but she had quite decided that she would not surrender him to be killed. He was too valuable a card in her hand for her to let him go, and she made the most of him. He was treated with royal honours, and covert aid was given to him to strengthen the Azores, which were faithful to him. He had taken the precaution to bring away the crown jewels of Portugal with him, the spoils of the two Indies, but he had no money. The greedy crew that surrounded the Queen soon scented plunder, and money for warlike preparations, the purchase of ships, and the like, was speedily forthcoming on security of diamonds and pearls such as had rarely been seen in England. Elizabeth and Leicester, in presents and by a quibble, managed to grab some of the best; and most of those pledged to the London merchants ultimately fell into the Queen's hands.[7] Some were left with Walsingham for safety, but when they were demanded Walsingham alleged that he was personally responsible for some provisions Antonio had ordered, and made difficulties about giving them up. So long as the money lasted Antonio might spend it in England and leave his diamonds, but some specious excuse was always invented to prevent any openly hostile expedition to attack Philip leaving an English port under Antonio's banner. The rascally Dr. Lopez, who was afterwards hanged at Tyburn for attempting to poison the Queen, was Dom Antonio's go-between and interpreter at Court, and he, greedy scamp as he was, made a good thing out of it until the money began to run short, when, in his usual way, he sold his knowledge to Philip, and attempted more than once to poison the unhappy Pretender. Antonio, indeed, was surrounded by spies though he knew it not,[8] but he found he was being frustrated, betrayed, and defrauded in every way in England, and his precious jewels the meanwhile were slipping away. So, in dudgeon with the greedy English, he fled to France and took such of his vessels as he could gain possession of with him. Catharine de Medici, the Queen-mother, was, for form's sake, a claimant to the Portuguese throne herself, but her shadowy claim was soon abandoned when she had an opportunity of cherishing such a thorn as Antonio promised to be in the side of her powerful late son-in-law Philip. Antonio still had jewels, and whilst they lasted he was treated with consideration and regal splendour in that gay and dissolute Court. He certainly got more return for them there than he got in England. Many were scattered in bribes amongst the easy-going ladies and painted mignons of the Court, and most of the rest went to pay for two costly naval expeditions fitted out in France in the Queen-mother's name, to enable Antonio to hold the islands faithful to him.[9] But Santa Cruz swooped down upon Terceira as Alba had pounced upon Lisbon, and the merry-making crew of revellers was soon disposed of. Then poor Antonio fell upon evil days. The emissaries of Philip, false friends of Antonio, tried time after time to put him out of the way by poison and the dagger, but he was ever on the watch; and for help and safety, still sanguine and hopeful, drifted from France to England and from England to France, the plaything in the game alternately of Elizabeth and Catharine, to be taken up or cast aside as the interests of the players dictated.

Philip's open attempt to invade England in 1588 seemed once more to offer him a chance of success, and his hopes rose again. One gem, and one only, of all the rich store he brought from Portugal was left to him; but that was the most precious of them all, the eighth greatest diamond in the world, the chief ornament in the Russian imperial crown to-day.[10] It was his last stake, and he decided to risk it on his chance. It was pledged to Monsieur de Sancy, whose name it ever afterwards bore, and with the money so raised Antonio started for England to tempt Elizabeth to link his desperate cause with her hopes of revenge upon Spain.

This was in the autumn of the Armada year, 1588, and, all unconscious of his vile treachery to him, Antonio once more evoked Lopez's influence at Court to gain the ear of the Queen and the support of his close friend Walsingham. The venal Jew, who was for ever craving rewards and favours, persuaded the Queen, no doubt for a weighty consideration, to listen anew to the pretender's proposals.[11]

      

      The adventurer-king was confident that if he could once set foot again in his own country with an armed force the whole population would flock to his standard, and he was ready to promise anything, and everything, for the help he wanted. Already in 1582, when Catharine de Medici had aided him to fit out the fleet under Strozzi at Bordeaux which was to hold Terceira and restore Antonio to the throne, the desperate gamester had promised her the great empire of Brazil as a reward for her help; and now, if my Spanish diarist is to be believed, he offered to make himself a mere vassal of Elizabeth if he were successful.

      In the Record Office there is a bond by which Antonio undertakes, in February, 1589, to reimburse to the adventurers all the cost of the enterprise and the pay of the soldiers, but the Spanish manuscript gives the substance of an agreement between Dom Antonio and the Queen which promises much more than mere repayment. The diarist I quote says:—

      "The Queen, cautious and astute as she was, caught at the fine promises that Dom Antonio held out and insisted that an agreement should be entered into; which was done, in substance as set forth in the following clauses. This agreement was brought, written in the English language, by a certain Portuguese named Diego Rodriguez who came hither as treasurer to this expedition and passed over to the service of our lord the King on the eleventh of June. The clauses, translated into Castilian, say as follows:—

      "First her Majesty the Queen of England undertakes to