How far was the Elizabethan conflict with Spain avoidable — on the English side, at least?

Introduction

The English political landscape by during the first twenty years of Queen Elizabeth I of England’s reign included the not-so-subtle threat of war with Spain. While neither King Phillip II of Spain nor the queen desired war,[1] the situation between their kingdoms grew increasingly more strained and open conflict seemed inevitable. The problem was not as neatly direct as an invasion of one kingdom by the other, but the divided issue of if England would remain protestant or become Catholic like Spain, and who would hold command of the Atlantic Ocean – with which came the fabulous wealth of the New World. Although the Netherlands were close to home for both countries, the importance of having colonies in the New World should not be underestimated – domination of the Atlantic would secure Spain’s place of wealth and power. Thus, naval power was the key to overall power, and is significant that the destruction of the Armada in 1588 struck such a major blow to the Spanish that the conflict with England virtually ended (although the ending of conflict should not be equated with peace).  

Privateering

Open conflict, while not inevitable, was precipitated by the actions of the English privateers – most notably Sir Francis Drake. Drake’s actions were distinguished by two things – firstly, that he was not the Queen’s admiral, and secondly, that “[He] had no set plan … He was certain only of success”.[2] Drake was only encouraged in his exploits, as “The queen and her court, landowning gentry, permanent officials of the navy, the great London companies, individual merchants and shipowners, all participated as promoters or active adventurers or both”.[3] Therefore, while his actions were not done as a part of a formal British Navy, the Queen also was not stopping Drake. Her ready answer to any questioning over his actions was “‘If need be, the gentleman careth not if I disavow him’”,[4] effectively saying that she could do nothing to stop him and thus could not be held accountable for what he was doing. This attitude was unlikely to help diplomatic relations – in July 1585, when the Queen sent Drake to Spain to demand the release of English ships and men, her written commission was mild enough, but Drake’s actions were his own responsibility. Still, her actions were not an open attempt to stir up controversy but more a realization that Drake was becoming fabulously wealthy from these expeditions, had no intention of stopping – and also just how financially advantageous for the royal purse and the English economy his exploits were, as well.[5] Thus, regardless of the increasing diplomatic tensions with Spain, the English privateering went on because it was making the English wealthy and powerful and they were not about to decrease that trend.

The New World

The looting itself might have been more forgivable had not the Spanish holdings in the New World also been challenged. The Spaniards were (with reasonable cause) fearful of the English in the seas and desired to keep them away from their ships. However, the real threat was in the New World, where the English raids on Spanish holdings were worth not just the loot of a ship but thousands or millions of ducats. Even voyages that the English considered to be unsuccessful, not producing as much booty as they had hoped, were still damaging to the Spanish. Furthermore, even above the financial threat, the English were challenging the international authority of Spain not only on the seas but also in the New World. For Spain, this threat was at the heart of the problem. The gold, silver, slaves, and other riches of the New World were exactly what the Spanish needed to sustain their empire, and the English threat to their sole claim to wealth was greater than the Spanish were willing to accept.

When England began building up its navy, war with Spain was not the intended goal. Instead, it was a step of modernization that the English can hardly be faulted for – it was either build up a naval force or be dominated by the Spanish navy. In its own self-defense, England had to form a navy, no matter if it was highly structured or simply an agreement with private privateers. The danger to England, an island, of not having a navy was too great for the English to swallow. While this building of the naval was one of the factors that provoked the Spanish conflict, since the privateers stirred up trouble, the danger of not having naval protection while Spain built up her navy was unthinkable if England wished to remain independent.

It should not be assumed that the English were only concerned about protection and safety precautions, though – the Queen and her men were building an Empire and were actively seeking international trade routes, foreign money-making opportunities, and ways of expanding British power. If the English hadn’t kept on cutting into Spanish trade (both through looting ships and raiding New World holdings), perhaps the issues would have smoothed over better; as it was, “Philip remembered that Elizabeth often claimed no knowledge of her adventurers’ undertakings, while simultaneously counting her third of the cash they plundered”.[6] As a convincing excuse, Her Majesty’s actions left something to be desired in King Philip’s eyes.

Despite the flimsiness of her excuses, however, could the queen have achieved her naval success in a less threatening way? It seems unlikely – the English navy was not a fleet owned by the crown but rather a mobilization of private individuals like Drake who were looking for adventure and a chance to be wealthy. Had England put together an Armada of its own, then Spain may have been justified in thinking that the English were preparing a military attack on Spain itself. However, with the way the situation stood, the most that can be safely assumed is that the English were trying to get personally wealthy. The English knew how to get wealth; they used privateers. The Spanish sometimes had trouble preventing the English from taking their wealth, as can be seen from the successes of men like Drake. However, the English were not at war with Spain – that is why the conflict is not called a war. Skirmishes on the seas and in the New World may have made for tense diplomatic relations, but Spain and England had not yet declared war in the 1570’s.  

The Spanish Armada

War may have been avoidable, too, if the English hadn’t kept on building up their naval power through privateers and accumulating wealth. The more the Spanish saw the English building up their navy the more (justifiably) nervous they became, until in 1570 King Philip II decided that the situation was dangerous enough to him that he ordered the construction of an armada, the Armada para la Guardia de las indias.[7] This first armada, “shattered by disease … though it survived as a flotilla”,[8] never sailed.  King Philip again watched the political situation carefully until 1588, when a second armada, the Armada del mar Océano was finally built and secret plans were made to sail for England and stop the English threat to Spain’s power. For twenty years, the king had warily watched Queen Elizabeth and her protestants as they interfered with his territories and looted his ships, and now as it “[became] increasingly clear that this policy was persuading England neither to acquiesce in the reassertion of Spanish authority in the Netherlands nor to desist from maritime terror, he became more receptive to arguments in favour of all-out war”.[9]

Could the Armada have been avoided? Its sailing was one of the high points of the conflict with Spain; the time that war seemed the most inevitable, and in which the monarchs of both kingdoms mobilized fleets to protect their interests – the Spanish sailing from Spain to protect against the general threat of the English all over the world, the English patrolling their coast to ward off intruding armadas. The threat of war hung closely in the air, and what would happen could not be foretold.

The skirmishing up the English Channel was, for both sides, “a somewhat frustrating experience”, where “the Spanish were exasperated rather than hurt”.[10] If one thing was proven it had to have been that neither Spain nor England was so much stronger than the other that one could overwhelm the other with little effort. The guns used by both sides were shown to be almost pathetic against the ships, and the two ships Spain did lose were not to gunfire from the English but instead from difficulties within the fleet – the collision of two ships and an explosion on another.[11] The Armada, far from being a glorious Spanish victory, splintered to pieces in the frigid waters of the North Seas, and the ships that made it back to Spain could scarcely be called a conquering fleet.

This disaster for the Spanish was not English strategy as much as it was nature – as Queen Elizabeth acknowledged, with the famous inscription “God breathed and they were scattered”.[12]  While England could be thankful that destruction at the hands of the Spanish had been avoided, they could scarcely say that they had demolished the Spanish or even anything close to it – on the contrary, as could be seen with no trouble from the battle records, the Spaniard’s defeat had little at all to do with English’s fighting scheme or battle tactics. Did this convince the Spanish that England could easily defeat them in battle? It should not be assumed that this is the case; the Spanish could see as well as anyone else that their defeat was not solely a result of what the English had done but a combination of English preparation and “the winds of God”.[13] This ascription did not, however, make it easier for the Spanish to recover financially from the enormous sums they had put into the creation of the Armada – but “It is always easier to accept defeat at the hands of God than at the hands of men”,[14] and both sides found it advantageous to attribute the outcome to divine intervention.

After the Armada

Did the English, then, provoke the conflict with the Spanish? In the case of the Armada they were defending themselves, and even pursuit of the Armada –was not vicious, but instead was a “pursuing but starving fleet”.[15] The Queen’s men were in no shape to give chase and fight at sea, as lack terrible food and living conditions killed far more men than the short-lived battle with the Armada had.[16] The queen had “kept on talking [with Spanish delegates] in spite of the mounting dismay of the Dutch and the English war party, until the guns of the fleets were heard in the Channel. In consequence, Elizabeth was able to declare then and afterwards that she had never closed the door on peace and had patiently and honestly pursued it to the last”.[17] This policy before and after the battle with the Armada was a great disappointment of Drake and Sir Edward Howard, who, in the spirit of true privateers, did not speak of the day’s events as “a great victory won, but of a great opportunity missed”.[18]

Was this avoidance of conflict actually the goal of the Queen? That sounds like a bit of a stretch. The English were, at the time of the Armada, launching attacks of their own – Drake’s expeditions in 1587 “so damaged Spanish prestige that Spanish pride might not rest satisfied without a fight”.[19] So, in an international sense, it can be argued that Spain in sailing the Armada was not launching an offensive but merely reacting to the attacks the English were making on their colonies in the New World and their ships on the seas. While the Armada was under construction long before Drake and his men sailed on his 1585-87 pillaging voyage, this was not the first such trip and the Spanish can be justified in taking a rather protective attitude toward their colonies overseas.

The demise of the Armada may have temporarily ended the threat of Spain to England, since it sent Spain into financial disaster, but did it avoid the conflict? Were the English even interested in avoiding conflict? The answer to that question must be in the negative. The English were unquestionably building up their military strength, which arguably is a natural part of becoming an Empire. Could they have avoided becoming an Empire? That is scarcely a question worth asking – even if they could, there is no indication that they had any desire or intention of remaining a fringe power on the seas or in the world – or even a country under Spain! “[The queen] had read the mood of the nation perfectly: the country was puffing out its chest with pride at Drake’s exploits. England would no longer kowtow to Spain’s demands that she ignore the sea.”[20] So, assuming that it was inevitable that the English at least try to become an empire, could the conflict have been resolved in any way other than the ‘act of God’ attributed to the defeat of the Armada and the consequent financial disaster that irretrievably crippled the Spanish? The seeming lack of conflict did not mean that it had been resolved, only ended. Was there any way to actually end the conflict?

The answer to that question must also be negative. The English, as is common to man, had a desire for wealth and power, and the Spanish, at the time of the conflict, held both the wealth and the power. Transfer of such things is rarely a peaceful enterprise, and the conflict between England and Spain from 1558-88 showed this particular case to be no exception. The Spanish wanted to keep their status, and since a part of that included being the most powerful country on the seas and in the New World, it was not something that they and the English could both have. Instead, the English had the choice of either remaining an inferior power to Spain or encountering conflict.

Conclusion

There is not only one reason why conflict was the route the English took. In addition to the natural human desire to have more wealth and power that was so clearly a part of it, particularly for the privateers like Drake, there was also a religious aspect. Spain, as a Catholic country, was a particular threat to England’s status as independent of Rome and the Pope. The Queen had been prudent in her choices; at the beginning of her reign she had recognized the “near bankrupt and ill-armed state of her small, vulnerable, and still divided kingdom”[21] and had wisely not provoked an attack from Spain through beginning her reign as a radical protestant. If Spain had conquered England, then there was little doubt that England would be coerced back into Catholicism. While Protestantism was still a contested subject in England and there were many who still had Catholic leanings, the disruption that would take place were Queen Elizabeth to fall and the Catholic Church take back over cannot be ignored. The Queen’s diplomatic stance toward religion allowed even those among her subjects with Catholic leanings to still be loyal to her and her policies, and as a result it was the people who had the most to lose if Her Majesty was deposed that really had the most say – those Protestants who would lose land, money, and political office. These were the people who financed Drake’s expeditions, who allowed the privateering to go on, and who were the most at conflict with Spain.

The end result was that the conflict with Spain could not have been avoided – while Spain was Catholic and England was Protestant; while Spain had wealth and power and England wanted wealth and power. The English inevitably would not only raid to protect their country and religion, but for more personal reasons of individual gain loot the Spanish ships and colonies to establish profits from the New World. As long as the Spanish were in the New World and therefore in the way of the English, there can be little doubt that conflict would ever have ceased – it required something drastic, like the demise of the Armada and the eventual ruin of Spanish finances to bring about that lack of fighting and contention. And while the ending of conflict could scarcely be called peace, it took on some of the same qualities – the English retained their Protestantism and got access to the fabulous wealth of the New World; the Spanish sank back. The conflict subsided in the years following the Armada – but its course had to be run; there was no way the conflict could have been avoided completely.

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[1] D.B. Quinn and A.N. Ryan, England’s Sea Empire, p. 94.

[2] ibid., p. 103.

[3] ibid., 122.

[4] J.A. Williamson, The Age of Drake, p. 279.

[5] ibid..

[6][6] S. Ronald, The Pirate Queen, p. 295.

[7] D.B. Quinn and A.N. Ryan, p. 93.

[8] ibid..

[9] ibid., p. 95.

[10] G. Mattingly, The Armada, p. 282.

[11] ibid., p. 283.

[12]ibid., p. 390.

[13] ibid..

[14] ibid., p. 391.

[15] A. Bryant, The Elizabethan Deliverance, p. 165.

[16] ibid., p. 163.

[17] G. Mattingly, p. 193.

[18] G. Mattingly, p. 350.

[19] J.A. Williamson, p. 304.

[20] S. Ronald, p. 242.

[21] A. Bryant, p. 27.