Absolute monarchy.
Henry VII began the move towards royal absolutism. This was a belief in
the divine right of kings to rule as they saw fit, without having to answer
to nobles, church, or Parliament.
Reference: David McDowall, An Illustrated History of Britain, Longman, 1989, 67-85.
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Absolute monarchy. |
Whatever else he was, Henry was an able and active administrator. He was frugal to the point of parsimony. When he came to the throne, the crown was heavily in debt, but when he died he left his son Henry a bulging treasury. What his son did with that money is another story.
Court of Star Chamber. Henry's reign saw the beginning of the Court of Star Chamber, so called because the room where they met was decorated with paintings of stars. This court was closed, and answerable to no one but the king. It eventually became synonymous with secretive and autocratic administration.
Rebellions. Henry had to deal with two rebellions during his reign, both by probable imposters claiming to be legitimate heirs to the throne. First there was Lambert Simnel, who was eventually captured and made to work as a scullery in Henry's kitchens. He was followed by Perkin Warbeck, who gathered foreign support for an invasion. Warbeck was defeated and eventually hanged with some of his supporters.
 An older but no wiser Henry VIII |
Henry VII's eldest son was Arthur, Prince of Wales. He married Catherine of Aragon, but died shortly thereafter, leaving the throne to fall to his younger brother Henry. History has not proved kind to the memory of Henry VIII (1509-47). He is often remembered as the grossly stout, overbearing tyrant of his later years. In his youth, however, Henry was everything it was thought a king should be. A natural athlete, a gifted musician and composer, Henry was erudite, religious, and a true leader among the monarchs of his day. |
Cardinal Wolsey. Henry had none of his father's drive for the grind of administration. He handed over that role to his advisor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. This Henry was more concerned with cutting a fine figure than with balancing rows of figures like his father, and the result was predictable. Over the course of his reign he managed to turn a bulging treasury into a gaping black-hole of debt.
Thomas Wolsey was the son of a Suffolk wool merchant. He became in turn Bishop of London, Archbishop of York, Cardinal and Lord Chancellor, and papal legate. He was even at one time considered seriously as a candidate for the papacy itself. Wolsey loved luxury and ostentation. He maintained a household of over 1000 people, and at the height of his power he was more king than Henry himself.
Religious Reformers. The whole of Europe was ablaze during Henry's time with the religious fervour of Reformation. Great reformers, religious and secular, called England home. Erasmus, scholar and monk, taught at Oxford, where he agitated for reform within the church. In his In Praise of Folly he lambasted the clergy for "observing with punctilious scrupulosity a lot of silly ceremonies and paltry traditional rules." Sir Thomas More, later Chancellor, wrote Utopia, a vision of an ideal society with no church at all to get in the way of spiritual understanding.
Henry himself, despite his later break with Rome, was not a religious reformer. He was fairly orthodox in his own beliefs, and he passed measures against Lutheranism and upheld many traditional Catholic rites from attack by reformers.
Marriage to Catherine. Henry received a special dispensation from the pope in order to marry his brother's widow, Catherine. The only child of that marriage was a daughter, Mary. Henry desperately wanted a male heir, and as time went on it became obvious that Catherine would have no more children. Henry began to cast around for a solution.
Anne Boleyn. For by now Henry had enough of his marriage, and was eyeing one of the Queen's ladies in waiting, Anne Boleyn. Anne refused Henry's advances without the benefit of a wedding, so Henry sent his chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, to ask the pope for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine. Unfortunately for the powerful Wolsey, he failed, and was deposed from office. Even the "gift" of his magnificent new palace at Hampton Court to Henry could not save Wolsey, who died shortly after his deposition, saving Henry the bother of a mock trial for treason. In Wolsey's place Thomas More was brought in to be Chancellor.
The Act of Supremacy. Henry's situation was now desperate, for Anne was pregnant, and at all costs the child, which Henry was sure must be a son, had to be legitimate. Henry got Parliament to declare that his first marriage was void, and he secretly married Anne. Unfortunately for Henry, the child proved to be female once again, the future Elizabeth I. Over the next several years Henry's wrangle with the pope grew ever deeper, until in 1534 the Act of Supremacy was passed, making Henry, not the pope, head of the church in England. This was not at first a doctrinal split in any way, but a personal and political move.
Sir Thomas More opposed the divorce and was reluctantly executed by Henry. At the foot of the scaffold More is reported to have said, "I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safely up, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself".
How was Henry able to carry off the split from Rome? For one thing, the church had incurred a tremendous amount of bad feeling over the years. High church officials were seen as rich, indolent, and removed from the people they were supposed to be serving. The abbeys and monasteries were well off, and certainly subject to jealousy. Feelings against priests and churchmen in general ran high. The church had become too far removed from its spiritual roots and purpose.
Starting small. Henry VIII took his most decisive step against the power of the church in 1538, when he began the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He did it piecemeal, perhaps to avoid too much outcry at the start. First the small, less powerful houses had their property confiscated and their buildings blighted (made unsuitable for use). They were followed the next year by the large houses.
Philosophical concepts of the power of the king over church may have played a part in Henry's decision to suppress the monasteries, but so did greed. The monasteries were rich, and a lot of that wealth found its way directly or indirectly to the royal treasury. Some of the monastery buildings were sold to wealthy gentry for use as country estates. Many others became sources of cheap building materials for local inhabitants. One of the results of the Dissolution of the Monasteries is that those who bought the old monastic lands were inclined to support Henry in his break with Rome, purely from self interest.
Attitudes towards the Dissolution. Many of the clerics themselves thought that a change was in order. The difference was, they thought the wealth they possessed should go to charity, "religious and educational enterprises." Everyone else had a personal stake in the matter; Henry wanted money, Parliament wanted to raise money without having to impose unpopular taxes, the gentry saw a chance to increase their own estates, and the merchant middle class saw a chance to become landed gentry themselves.
Winners and losers. Henry sold the monastic lands for bargain basement prices, such was his need for ready cash. The real beneficiary of the Dissolution was not the king, but the new class of gentry who bought the lands. The suppression of the monasteries and places of pilgrimages was devastating for those pilgrimage centres that had no other economic base. Income for people on the pilgrim routes dropped, with no way to recover it. The other great loser of the Dissolution was culture; many monastic libraries full of priceless illuminated manuscripts were destroyed, with little or no regard for their value.
The fate of the monks and nuns. The monks and nuns were treated quite well as a rule. Only a few who resisted were summarily executed. The others, including 5000 monks, 1600 friars, and 2000 nuns, were given reasonable pensions. Many of the monks and friars went into regular church office, so they could not be said to have suffered. Those who did suffer were the thousands of servants attached to the monasteries. They numbered more than the monks, but there was no pension for them, no golden handshake.
The English Reformation was slow to gather steam. Catholics were not mistreated (at least not at first), and in many parts of the country religious life went on unchanged. Catholic rites and symbols remained in use for many years.
 Jane Seymour |
Anne's Boleyn's Fall. For all the trouble that Henry had undergone to marry Anne Boleyn, their marriage did not last long. First was the disappointment of a female child. Then came rumours that Anne had been unfaithful to Henry, which neatly coincided with Henry's new infatuation for Jane Seymour. Eventually Anne was tried for adultery, which, since Henry was the king, was treason if Henry chose to look at it that way. He did so choose, and Anne was beheaded on the green in the Tower of London. She was little mourned; in her short reign she had managed to alienate just about everyone at court. |
Wives Three through Six. Henry married Jane, and between them they produced the long awaited male heir to the throne, the future Edward VI. Unfortunately, Jane died in childbirth. Henry then went through the last of his three wives in quick succession. Anne of Cleves, whom Henry married on the basis of a highly flattering portrait which proved to be largely artistic license, was divorced. Catherine Howard was accused of adultery and executed. And finally, Catherine Parr, who was more nursemaid than wife to the ailing Henry, managed to outlive the king.
At the end of his life Henry grew grossly fat and was in terrible pain from his swollen legs, probably brought on by gout. He was carried in a chair while indoors, and hoisted up and down stairs with the aid of elaborate machines, but he still insisted on riding on horseback when traveling.
Enclosures. The single greatest social issue of the reigns of the first three Tudors was the enclosure movement and the attendant woes to the lower classes who were displaced or had their common grazing privileges denied by the new enclosures. Simply put, enclosure was the fencing or hedging of open farmland for the purpose of raising sheep. As a landowner it made far more economic sense to raise sheep than to rely on traditional feudal arrangements of mutual obligation.
Summing up the early Tudors. Early Tudor Britain was a society in turmoil, both religious and economic. Social upheaval and religious strife dominated English public life. The prosperity of the early years of Henry VII gave way to terrific economic pressures on the lower classes, though the middle class merchants and yeomen continued to grow in strength and wealth.
Individual initiative, both economic and religious, was replacing the ordered (or static) conditions of the Middle Ages. Entrepreneurial zeal and religious reformation were overturning a society that had remained largely unchanged for centuries. It was now possible for peasants to rise to high church office, or to great economic power, through their own initiative and drive. This kind of upward mobility was something new and challenging for England. People with no pretensions to a noble title or lands were rising higher than anyone could have imagined a few decades earlier.
These changes primarily affected men. The role of women was mostly static, even during the later reigns of the two queens, Mary and Elizabeth. The abolition of monastic settlements must have proved a great hardship to those women who would otherwise have used the church to escape being married off for family profit.
The early Tudor period can be summed up in these three characteristics: peace in England, strong central government, and general prosperity.
The feeble Edward VI (1547-53) was only ten years old when he came to the throne. The Duke of Somerset (The Lord Protector) acted as regent. Somerset introduced Protestant reforms to the English church. Uniformity of service was ensured by an act of Parliament. In 1551 Archbishop Cranmer's Forty Two Articles of religion laid the foundation for Anglicanism.
When the Edward died at the age of sixteen the Duke of Northumberland tried to put a reluctant Lady Jane Grey, great grand-daughter of Henry VII, on the throne ahead of Edward's sister Mary. There was no real public support for the move and it fizzled after only nine days. The Duke, the unfortunate Jane Grey, and all her major supporters were executed at the Tower of London. Overseas, Calais was finally lost to the French, and a legacy of English presence on the continent going back to William the Conqueror disappeared forever.
 Queen Mary |
The reign of Queen Mary (1553-58) was marked by religious upheaval and dissension. She had been raised as a Catholic, and she sought to undo the Protestant changes of the past several years. Protestants were suppressed and burned in the hundreds, an act which earned Mary the charming nickname "Bloody Mary". |
Mary entered into an extremely unpopular marriage with Philip, heir to the throne of Spain. Parliament refused to accept Philip as co-ruler, and after much wrangling he took his place as Mary's consort only, with no right to inherit the throne. Mary seems to have doted on Philip, but he regarded the marriage as an affair of political convenience.
When Mary died the pendulum of English religious life swung once again. Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was raised as a Protestant, but she was shrewd enough to play the game of politics; she was a master of procrastination and of playing one side against the other.
 Elizabeth I |
Under Elizabeth the Church of England was officially established (1563) with Protestant dogma, but a liturgy, rites, and church organization which were essentially Catholic in form.There were many non-conforming Protestant sects at this time, most of which were tolerated under Elizabeth's policies. Life was not easy for Catholics, though. There were as many executions of Catholics under Elizabeth as there were Protestants under Mary, though over a reign nine times as long. |
One of the main thorn's in Elizabeth's side was Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary, a Catholic, fled from Scotland after managing to offend nearly everyone there, and took refuge in England. The trouble was that Mary became the centre of numerous Catholic plots to regain power in England. Elizabeth might have been able to overlook that, but Mary had the gift of indiscretion, and was discovered once too often corresponding with Elizabeth's enemies. Reluctantly, Elizabeth had Mary executed for treason.
Tension with Spain was constant during Elizabeth's reign. Philip, who had once been touted as a possible husband for Elizabeth, was now king of Spain. Spain had tremendous wealth pouring into its treasury from its territories in the New World, and English sailors had a habit of capturing Spanish ships on the high seas. This "piracy" was officially reprimanded by Elizabeth and unofficially praised. Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins were two captains who made their reputations and fortunes playing at piracy.
 An English ship in the Armada fight |
In 1588 Philip assembled a great fleet of warships to invade England. He should have succeeded, as the Spanish Armada had far more fire-power than the English. The Armada was sighted off Plymouth, where the English commander, Drake, was enjoying a game of bowls on the common, or Hoe. In one of those delightful scenes which become legends, Drake calmly insisted on finishing his game before taking ship to meet his foe. In reality his bravado was based on good knowledge of the weather and the tides; he knew full well that he had plenty of time. |
The English used their lighter, more manoeuverable vessels to great advantage against the larger, heavier Spanish. They sent fire-ships into the midst of the Armada to spread panic and disperse the fleet. All might well have been lost, however, but a heavy storm came up and scattered the Spanish vessels. A combination of tactics, luck, and weather sent a tattered Spanish Armada limping around Scotland, down the west coast of Ireland, and home to Spain.
While Henry VIII grumbled towards a cantankerous death, he felt it necessary to settle the matter of his succession. In his will, he named his son Edward to succeed him. After Edward, and the heirs of his body, he named his daughter Mary and the heirs of her body, and after that, his second daughter Elizabeth. Henry's will was duly approved by an acquiescent Parliament.
When Henry finally died in 1546, his son Edward took the throne as Edward VI. Since Edward was only 9 years old at the time of his coronation, government was actually conducted by a Council of Executors. The Council was headed by Edward's uncle, the Earl of Hertford, who was named Protector of the Realm. Shortly after taking office Hertford had himself named Duke of Somerset, and it is by that name that he is best known.
Somerset was an interesting character; a man of occasional laudable ideals, but with a knack for alienating people and going about his business with the least tact possible. He managed to pass measures aimed at widespread religious tolerance, for example, yet also aroused the church to fury by imposing the Act of Uniformity and the Book of Common Prayer upon it. More importantly, he aroused Parliament to an equal fury by his measures against land enclosure.
Somerset found himself wholly without support where it counted the most; amongst his fellow nobles. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, headed Parliamentary opposition which resulted in Somerset's arrest. Somerset was forced to resign as Protector, had some of his property seized, and was briefly held in the Tower of London.
Into the void created by the deposition of Somerset stepped John Dudley, better known by the title he later appropriated, Duke of Northumberland. Where Somerset had been possessed of laudable (by modern standards) motives on occasion, Northumberland was motivated by greed and personal power. His administration was marked by a move towards extremism and harshly repressive laws aimed at squelching any and all opposition to the Duke's power.
Somerset fell victim to those laws, and was executed in 1552. Northumberland's position might have seemed unassailable, but there was widespread opposition to his leadership within Parliament. More importantly, Northumberland was well aware that Edward was ill and probably had not long to live.
 Lady Jane Grey |
In a desperate bid to secure his own power upon the young king's death, Northumberland concocted a plan to put a puppet upon the throne. That puppet was Lady Jane Grey, the quiet, devout sixteen-year-old granddaughter of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary Rose. Northumberland believed that Jane would be pliable enough to do whatever he asked of her. It took a hefty measure of gall to put forward Jane Grey as the future queen of England, since her claim to the title was extremely weak. But gall was something Northumberland had in abundance. |
He married Jane to his own son Guildford Dudley, and through them believed he would be able to control the crown when Edward finally died. Jane had no inkling that her new father-in-law planned to put her forward in Mary Tudor's place when the king died.
Northumberland had little trouble persuading the fervently
Protestant Edward that the throne must not fall to his Catholic sister Mary.
The king was convinced to circumvent his father's will and name Jane's mother
Frances Grey as his successor. Frances then duly relinquished her own "claim"
in favour of her daughter, Jane. With great difficulty Northumberland convinced
the Council to fall in with his plans.
Edward died on July 6, 1553 and four days later Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen
of England. But here Northumberland's plans suffered their first check. Jane
flatly refused to allow her new husband Dudley to be named king, a title he
had manifestly no right to possess.
Instead, she proposed he be created Duke of Clarence. Northumberland, his wife, and Jane's own husband, were furious at her refusal, but she would not unbend from what she considered the only right and lawful course.
A second setback soon followed; to secure the success of his plans Northumberland needed to capture Mary and prevent support forming around her. But Mary was warned of his plans, and barely escaped the men sent to imprison her. Northumberland abandoned London and set off in pursuit of Mary, who had taken refuge at Framlingham Castle in Norfolk. In his absence the Council acted quickly and declared its support for Mary.
Mary was declared queen at Paul's Cross, London, and Northumberland realized that his plans had failed. He threw himself upon Mary's mercy. She was inclined to be magnanimous in victory, but Northumberland's enemies on the Council persuaded her that the Duke was too dangerous, and he was quickly put to death.
As for Jane Grey, she and her unwelcome husband Guildford were sent to the Tower. She had spent but nine short days as queen of the realm.
Guildford was held in the Beauchamp Tower, and Jane at the house of the Gaoler at #5 Tower Green. Though the couple were neighbours, they were forbidden contact.
On November 13 they were brought to trial for treason at the Guildhall and speedily found guilty. Even then, Mary was inclined to be merciful and spare the lives of these unwitting pawns in the schemes of Northumberland. But once again the plots of others ensnared Jane Grey. This time it was her father Henry, now Duke of Suffolk, who brought about her final ruin.
Henry Grey joined the ill-fated revolt known as the Wyatt Rebellion. Sir Thomas Wyatt, angered at Mary's plans to marry Phillip of Spain, raised an armed revolt in Kent and marched on London. His cause failed to rouse the Londoner's support, and Wyatt was captured. Grey tried to raise the Midlands in revolt, but he also was swiftly captured. Mary realized that as long as Jane lived she would continue be a focus for rebellion, so on February 7, 1554 she reluctantly signed Jane's death warrant.
Guildford begged Mary's leave to visit Jane, which Mary granted,
but Jane refused to meet with her husband, saying 'it would disturb the holy
tranquility with which they had prepared themselves for death.'
On the morning of February 12 Jane watched from her window as Guildford was
taken to Tower Hill, and she was still watching when his headless corpse returned
to the Tower. Then it was her own turn. At a scaffold erected on the Tower Green,
Jane Grey was beheaded.
The "Queen for Nine Days" was buried in the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula at the Tower, near her husband Guildford and his father Northumberland, who by his ambition had brought about her death.
 An English ship in action against the Spanish Armada |
Background. King Philip II of Spain was the most
powerful and (seemingly) wealthy man in Europe in the latter half of the
16th century. His territories in the New World brought him
enormous wealth, though the expense of administering that far-flung empire
meant that Spain was heavily in debt to foreign bankers. England, by comparison, was a relatively small nation, and not a particularly powerful or wealthy one. Why then would Philip spend the money to assemble the largest - and most expensive - naval force ever seen against his island foe? |
The answer has many parts. In his youth, Philip was married to his fellow Catholic, Mary, Queen of England. He was not king, indeed the only way the English Parliament would countenance the marriage was if Philip was expressly forbidden from ruling.
He was, rather, Mary's consort, a duty he fulfilled with underwhelming enthusiasm. Philip never cared for Mary, indeed, he said while on his way to his marriage, "I am going to a crusade, not to a marriage feast". He was fueled by a religious desire to father a Catholic heir who would keep England within the Roman Catholic sphere. Mary, by now a middle-aged spinster, certainly did care for her new husband, and even managed to convince herself that she was pregnant at one point, but it was not to be.
When Mary died in 1558 her very Protestant sister Elizabeth came to the throne. Philip was unwilling to let his precarious grasp on England slip away completely; he proposed marriage to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was a master at procrastination, and playing the game of politics. She kept communication open with Philip, and protested her friendship, all the while encouraging English pirates like Hawkins and Drake to seize Spanish ships and goods in the West Indies. Drake was dubbed by the Spanish "the Master Thief of the Unknown World".
In the 1560s Elizabeth also earned Spanish wrath by supporting Protestants in the Netherlands in their revolt against Spanish occupation.
Spain also believed, or at least found it useful to believe, that Elizabeth was illegitimate. Under Catholic principles Elizabeth's father Henry VIII had no right to divorce his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, to marry Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyne. Therefore Elizabeth was born out of proper wedlock, and thus had no right to the throne.
More importantly for the fervently Catholic Philip, he believed that it was his duty to lead Protestant England back to the Catholic faith - by force of necessary. He managed to get papal approval for his invasion, and a promise of money to be delivered after the Spanish had landed in England.
He also got papal permission to name the next ruler of England (by surreptitiously slipping a clause to that effect into the middle of the document of agreement with the pope). Philip planned to name his daughter Isabella as Queen of England, under his control.
The Spanish Fleet. Philip began preparing his invasion force as early as 1584. His first choice as commander was the Marquis of Santa Cruz, but when Santa Cruz died Philip ordered the Duke of Medina Sedonia to take command of the fleet. The Duke was an experienced warrior - on land. He had no naval background, and no interest in leading the Armada, as the invasion fleet came to be called. He begged to be dismissed, but Philip ignored the request.
Cadiz. Despite Spanish precautions, the English were well aware of the Spanish preparations. In a bold move that was apparently against Elizabeth's wishes, Sir Francis Drake sailed a small English fleet to Cadiz, where they surprised a large number of Spanish warships in the harbour. Drake burned and sunk a number of ships and slipped away before the Spanish could rally. Although the blow at Cadiz was more an annoyance than a major setback, the English took heart from this "singeing of the King of Spain's beard".
The Armada sets sail. By May of 1588, however, the Armada was finally ready to sail. The fleet numbered over 130 ships, making it by far the greatest naval fleet of its age. According to Spanish records, 30,493 men sailed with the Armada, the vast majority of them soldiers. A closer look, however, reveals that this "Invincible Armada" was not quite so well armed as it might seem.
Many of the Spanish vessels were converted merchant ships,
better suited to carrying cargo than engaging in warfare at sea. They were broad
and heavy, and could not maneuver quickly under sail.
This might not at first glance have seemed a problem to the Spanish. They did
not intend to engage the English in a sea battle. The ships of the Armada were
primarily troop transport. Their major task was simply to carry armed men to
a designated landing point and unload them.
Naval tactics were evolving; it was still common for ships to come alongside each other and allow fighting men to engage in hand to hand combat. Advances in artillery were only beginning to allow for more complex strategies and confrontations at sea. At this stage the English were far more adept at artillery and naval tactics than the Spanish, who were regarded as the best soldiers in Europe.
The Spanish plans called for the fleet to sail up the English Channel and rendezvous off Dover with the Duke of Parma, who headed the Spanish forces in the Netherlands. This in itself presented huge problems. Communications were slow, and the logistical problems of a rendezvous at sea were immense.
Also, the Duke of Parma was a very proud man, and resented the fact that Medina Sedonia had been given command of the operation. Throughout the whole Armada affair Parma, while not openly obstructionist, did a poor job of cooperating with his titular commander, Medina Sedonia. He did not believe the enterprise could succeed, and he did the absolute minimum possible to help.
Perhaps worst of all the problems faced by the Armada was Philip himself. The king insisted on controlling the details of the Armada's mission. He issued a steady stream of commands from his palace of the Escorial, yet he seldom met with his commanders, and never allowed his experienced military leaders to evolve their own tactics. He did not listen to advice, which was a shame, for Philip had little military training and a poor grasp of naval matters. He firmly believed that God guided him, and that therefore his mission would succeed.
The English were not idle while the Spanish Armada prepared to sail. A series of signal beacons atop hills along the English and Welsh coasts were manned. When the Spanish ships were at last sighted of The Lizard on July 19, 1588, the beacons were lit, speeding the news throughout the realm. The English ships slipped out of their harbour at Plymouth and, under cover of darkness, managed to get behind the Spanish fleet.
The Battle. The Spanish sailed up the Channel in a crescent formation, with the troop transports in the centre. When the Spanish finally reached Calais, they were met by a collection of English vessels under the command of Howard. Each fleet numbered about 60 warships, but the advantage of artillery and maneuverability was with the English.
Under cover of darkness the English set fireships adrift, using the tide to carry the blazing vessels into the massed Spanish fleet. Although the Spanish were prepared for this tactic and quickly slipped anchor, there were some losses and inevitable confusion.
On Monday, July 29, the two fleets met in battle off Gravelines. The English emerged victorious, although the Spanish losses were not great; only three ships were reported sunk, one captured, and four more ran aground. Nevertheless, the Duke of Medina Sedonia determined that the Armada must return to Spain. The English blocked the Channel, so the only route open was north around the tip of Scotland, and down the coast of Ireland.
It was then that the unpredictable English weather took a hand in the proceedings. A succession of storms scattered the Spanish ships, resulting in heavy losses. By the time the tattered Armada regained Spain, it had lost half its ships and three-quarters of its men.
In England the victory was greeted as a sign of divine approval for the Protestant cause. The storms that scattered the Armada were seen as intervention by God. Services of thanks were held throughout the country, and a commemorative medal struck, with the words, "God blew and they were scattered" inscribed on it.
Note: The term "Invincible Armada" was not a Spanish one. It was a sarcastic phrase employed by later English commentators.
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