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

of one hundred and twenty vessels and twenty thousand men—15,000 soldiers and 5,000 sailors—with captains for both services, to go and restore Dom Antonio to the throne of Portugal.

      "Dom Antonio undertakes that within eight days from the arrival of the said fleet in Portugal the whole country will submit to him in accordance with the letters he has received from the principal people in the said kingdom.

      "Item, That on arriving in Lisbon the city will be reduced at once without any defence and all Castilians in it killed and destroyed, and, for the friendship and aid thus shown him in recovering his kingdom, he undertakes to fulfil the following things—namely:—

      "First that within two months of his arrival in Lisbon he will hand to her Majesty the Queen as an aid to the costs of the fleet five millions in gold.

      "Item, In testimony of the help she has given him he will pay every year to the Queen for ever three hundred thousand ducats in gold, placed and paid in London at his cost.

      "Item, That the English should have full liberty to trade and travel in Portugal and the Portuguese Indies and the Portuguese equal freedom in England.

      "Item, That if the Queen should not desire to fit out a fleet against the King of Spain in England she shall be at liberty to do so in Lisbon and shall be helped in all that may be necessary.

      "Item, That the castles of São Gian, Torre de Belem, Capariza, Oton, São Felipe, Oporto, Coimbra and the other Portuguese fortresses shall be perpetually occupied by English soldiers paid at the cost of Dom Antonio.

      "Item, That there shall be perpetual peace between her Majesty the Queen and Dom Antonio and they shall mutually help each other on all occasions without excuse of any sort.

      "Item, That all the Bishoprics and Archbishoprics in Portugal shall be filled by English Catholics and the Archbishopric of Lisbon shall be at once filled by the appointment of Monsieur de la Torques (sic).

"Item, On arriving at Lisbon every infantry man shall receive twelve months pay, and three extra, as a present from Dom Antonio and they shall be allowed to sack the city for twelve days, on condition that no man of any rank shall presume to harm any Portuguese or molest the churches or houses wherein maidens are dwelling; and also that they pay in money for whatever they may need in the country. Which agreement her Majesty ordered to be duly executed under date of last day of December 1588."[12]

      The Spanish scribe waxes very indignant at this document, showing, as he says it does, the sagacity of the Queen and the blind infatuation of Dom Antonio, "who gives up the substance for the shadow of kingship, and is content to make the Portuguese subjects slaves so that he shall be called King." But he is most shocked at the sacrifice to this "pestilent sect" of the two instincts clearest to the Portuguese heart, namely, devotion to their Church and their greed of gain; the first of which, he says, will be destroyed by relationship with the accursed heretics, and the second attacked by the substitution for "our lord the king who does not spend a maravedi of Portuguese money, but brings Castilian money into Portugal," of a King who has promised to pay away more than the Portuguese can ever give him. "And besides," he says, plaintively, "we Castilians and Portuguese are not so estranged in blood of boundaries after all, for only a line divides us, and if it be hard for the Portuguese to endure connection with their Castilian kinsmen who bring riches into the country and take nothing from it how much worse will it be to put up with a nation so greedy and insolent as the English, separated from them by land and sea, and foreign to them in customs, language, faith and laws?"

He ridicules the idea of five millions (of ducats) in gold being paid, and says he supposes that a mistake of a nought has been made, which probably was the case; but even then, he asks, where is such a sum as 500,000 ducats to come from, "let alone the 15 months' pay"? However correct or otherwise in detail this agreement may be, it is certain that some such terms were made, and it may be safely assumed that Elizabeth, with her keen eye to the main chance, would take care to make the best bargain she could out of the sanguine eagerness of Dom Antonio, who would be ready to promise "mounts and marvels" for ready aid.[13] My Portuguese diarist also ridicules the impossible terms promised by the Pretender, but adds the false finishing-touch, evidently spread by the Castilians for the purpose of arousing the indignation and resistance of the Portuguese, that the churches were to be plundered and the Portuguese inhabitants of Lisbon despoiled.

      It would appear strange at first sight that Elizabeth should have made any proviso for the benefit of English Catholics whom she had sometimes treated so unmercifully, but on other occasions she had favoured the idea of English Catholic settlements being established across the seas under her sway; and the great body of Catholic sympathisers resident in England had not acted altogether unpatriotically in the hour of panic and terror on the threat of invasion. It would, therefore, not have been an impolitic move to earn their gratitude and further loyalty by opening a new field for them outside of her own country but, in a manner, under her control.

On the 23rd of February, 1589,[14] the Queen issued a warrant of her instructions for the expedition, appointing Sir John Morris[15] and Sir Francis Drake to the chief command thereof, and in it lays down precise rules for their guidance. She says that the objects of the expedition are two: namely, first to distress the King of Spain's ships, and second to get possession of some of the Azores, in order to intercept treasure passing to and from the East and West Indies. Also to assist the King Dom Antonio to recover the kingdom of Portugal, "if it shall be found the public voice in the kingdom be favourable to him."

On the same date authority was given to Norris and Drake to issue warrants to the adventurers for their shares in the enterprise; and the Queen herself undertook to repay them if the expedition were stopped at her instance. Courtiers and swashbucklers touted their hardest for subscriptions to this joint-stock warfare, and pressure was put upon country gentlemen to subscribe liberally as a proof of their patriotism—a pressure not to be disregarded in those doubtful times.[16] The Queen's subscription ultimately reached £20,000, besides seven ships of the Royal Navy. Promises of money and arms were forthcoming in abundance, and flocks of idlers, high and low, offered their valuable services. The scum of the towns, the sweepings of the jails, were pressed for the voyage, and Pricket (or Wingfield), in his apology for the expedition, lays most of the blame of failure on the kind of men they had, and complains bitterly of the justices and mayors sending them "base disordered persons sent unto us as living at home without rule." He says many idle young men, having seen their fellows come back after a few months in the Netherlands full of their brave deeds and tales of the wars, "thought to follow so good an example and to spend like time amongst us," and finding soldiering a harder trade than they had bargained for, were not likely to make good troops.

      The misfortunes of the enterprise began before it was fairly launched. As may be supposed, promises of support, given under such circumstances as those which I have described, were hardly likely to be strictly kept, and the performance in this case fell far short. Pricket (or Wingfield) bemoans this as follows: "For hath not the want of 8 out of the 12 pieces of Artillerie which was promised unto the adventure lost her Majestie the possession of the Groyne and many other places as hereafter shall appeare whose defensible rampiers were greater than our batterie (such as it was) could force and therefore were lost unattempted. It was also resolved to send 600 English horse out of the Low Countries whereof we had not one, notwithstanding the great charge expended in their transportation hither. … Did wee not want seaven of the thirteene old Companies we should have had from thence? foure of the ten Dutch Companies and sixe of their men-of-warre for the sea from the Hollanders? which I may justly say we wanted in that we might have had so many good souldiers, so many good shippes, and so many able bodies more than we had.

      "Did there not, upon the first thinking of the journey, divers gallant courtiers put in their names for adventurers to the summe of £10,000, who seeing