Hanson - The confident hope of a miracle: the true history of the Spanish Armada

Table of Contents

For Lynn, Jack and Drew

ACCLAIM FOR NEIL HANSONS

The Confident Hope of a Miracle

Hansons narrative is brilliantmelding deep research and page-turning writing. When he deals with the disaster of the Armadas homeward passage, battling monstrous seas and shipwrecks he reaches dramatic heights that make him the equal of Parkman or Prescott. The Sunday Express (London)

Hanson writes with sweep, confidence and great verve. He re-creates the feel and sounds of sixteenth-century battle [and] is especially vivid when describing the appalling squalor of shipboard life. The ConfidentHope of a Miracle is a driving narrative, filled with keen observation and the occasional debunking. The Washington Post Book World

An exceptionally vivid account.... Hanson is essentially a narrative historian with all the talents required of that genre: a gimlet eye for interesting detail, an ability to convey atmosphere and a storytellers instinct for pace. He has written a marvelous book.The Daily Telegraph (London)

An extraordinarily detailed and... magnificently researched account.... Hansons text remains intelligent, persuasive and well-structured throughout, a triumph of diligent research that will undoubtedly be of immense appeal. San Francisco Chronicle

Superb.... Not only does the author convincingly nail Elizabeth I and Sir Francis Drake as egregious villains but he does so in glowing historical prose. Best Reads of the Year, The Independent on Sunday (London)

In 1959, Garrett Mattingly, a professor at Columbia University, wrote a landmark account of the Spanish Armada of 1588. No one, until now, has supplanted it.... A brilliant summary of the endgame, as vivid and passionate as everything that has gone before. The Economist

Hanson tells the story well, and with a good eye for the telling quotation.... It is with the ships, the commanders and the common fighting men at seaSpanish and Englishthat he comes into his own. Here is where the book carves out its special place.The San Diego Union-Tribune

Hansons own contribution is to have researched, more thoroughly than any historian before, the fate of the common sailors and soldiers on both sides of the epic sea battle. That story, which fills the final chapters of his book, is among historys saddest and most forlorn.... Clear, insightful, and very gripping. St. Petersburg Times

Portrays in vivid, almost cinematic detail how the highest and the lowest lived their daily lives during those turbulent months when the destiny of all Europe was in question. This is a book that truly brings the past to life with compelling prose and a carefully researched foundation. An outstanding read, and a must-have for every history library. History Book Club

Brilliant in conception and exquisite in execution, The Confident Hopeof a Miracle is a definitive account. The Charleston Post and Courier

Entertaining and exhaustive. The Spectator (London)

This years greatest triumph of sheer driving narrative and a master-piece of popular history. There are passages that can stand comparison with the finest historical prose but what is just as attractive is Hansons originality. At the hands of Hansons impeccable scholarship, the myth of Gloriana takes even more of a battering than the storm-tossed Spanish galleons. Books of the Year, The Glasgow Herald (Glasgow, Scotland)

Hanson tells the story of the famous victory and its political, economic and social ramifications with formidably detailed scholarship and narrative flair.... An enlightening work of historical investigation. The Irish Times (Dublin)

A splendid narrative interspersed with irreverent, but convincing, character sketches.... Escapism of a very high historical and literary order. We should be the poorer without this privileged glimpse into another world. History Today (London)

Acknowledgements

Among the tens of thousands of documents on the Armada held primarily, but not exclusively, in archives in England, France, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands, I have concentrated much of my original researches on the fate of the survivors of the fleets after they came ashore. Like countless other writers and historians, I have also consulted the Calendars and printed versions of contemporary documents, offering silent prayers for the dedication of those, usually Victorian, scholars who performed the difficult task of transcribing the often tattered and near-illegible originals for the benefit of writers and researchers as yet unborn, and I am also indebted to the painstaking research work in the Spanish archives undertaken by historians from Duro and Laughton in the nineteenth century to Geoffrey Parker towards the end of the twentieth.

Eugene L. Rasors bibliography of the Armada sources and literature is the starting point for any researcher, and of the innumerable previous accounts of the Armada, I would single out four. Garrett Mattinglys, written as long ago as 1959, remains the definitive account of the diplomatic background to the launching of the Armada, though he perhaps made less of the Spanish attempts to create a second front in Scotland and Ireland than their importance merited. Geoffrey Parker and Colin Martin combined their respective expert knowledge of Spanish archives and marine archaeology and Armada wrecks to correct many prior misapprehensions, Alexander McKee constructed a vivid account from primary sources, and David Howarth wrote one of the more elegant and intelligent analyses of the campaign. Other significant sources include Botelers Dialogues, written within thirty years of the Armada and invaluable on the day-to-day running of ships of the era and their conduct in battle, Peter Kemps excellent exploration of life on the lower deck, The British Sailor, Kenneth R. Andrewss absorbing study of Elizabethan privateering, Leon van der Essens massive biography of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, and Peter Piersons definitive biography of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. The many other writers upon whose work I have drawn are listed in the bibliography. Direct quotations have been converted into modern Englishdoth and hath have been replaced by does and has, for example, but no other changes have been made to the contemporary texts.

All dates in this book use the Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and still in use today. Because of its papist origins, England refused to adopt the system and stubbornly adhered to the old Julian calendar for over a century after it had disappeared from the rest of Europe. As a result, all events mentioned in contemporary English documents on the Armada appear to have occurred ten days earlier than in Spanish ones. To avoid confusion, they have been rendered into the equivalent New Style date. The first sighting of the Armada off the Lizard therefore occurred on 30 July 1588, not 20 July.

As always, my thanks go to the knowledgeable and helpful staff at the London Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library in London and its outstation at Wetherby, the Public Record Office, the Historic Manuscripts Commission, the National Maritime Museum, and all the many regional libraries, museums, archives, record offices and historical societies who responded so positively to my requests for help and information. Im grateful also to the fishermen, yachtsmen, coastguards, naval officers and many other people with expertise in a variety of fields whom I encountered during my researches, and who, without exception, gave freely of their time in answering my queries.