Page 52 - All About History - Issue 08-14

The Spanish Armada
is put into disarray
to sign it. We can’t know how much of Elizabeth’s
by English fire ships warrant – or at least she was reluctant to be seen
on 8 August 1588 grief was genuine, but she bitterly resented the
circumstances of Mary’s execution.
“Elizabeth was reluctant to be seen to execute
The gun-crew on
an Elizabethan first the senior nobleman in England, in Norfolk,
ship – she funded and then a fellow queen, in Mary,” says de Lisle:
the journeys of “That is not to say she regretted their deaths. She
numerous privateers
would have preferred to have Mary murdered, for
example, as she made very clear. It is also notable
that she was quite ruthless in ordering the deaths
of traitors of humble birth – the 900 or so executed
after the Northern Rebellion testifies to that. This
was three times the numbers Henry VIII had
executed after the far more serious Pilgrimage of
Grace, and ten times the numbers Mary executed
after Wyatt’s revolt.”
Mary’s execution provided Philip II with the
reason he needed to declare war and his Spanish
Armada co-ordinated with the Duke of Parma’s
forces in the Netherlands, with the two forces
meeting before sailing on England. They launched
on 12 July 1588, their forces possessing more than
twice the number of English ships, but the English
ships did have some advantages; they were smaller,
faster, and designed to carry guns rather than
men. The English ships could outmanoeuvre the

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