Despite its contribution to English self-mythology, the Spanish Armada of 1588 did relatively little to settle matters between England and Spain. Elizabeth emerged as a great wartime leader, at least in this instance, and Spain was temporarily halted in its ambitions. But the war continued until 1604, and Spain would retain its imperial superpower status for decades to come. Not least, English victory did not lead people to believe that the country was at all free from other armadas on the horizon. Even if Spain had no plans for sending another naval force across the Channel, events such as the death of an English prince or the marriage of the king's daughter could precipitate a chain of rumors, propaganda, diplomatic tensions, and anxiety that made a pending Spanish invasion appear all too real. Nearly twenty-five years after England's providential scattering of Spanish ships to the winds, two such armada scares erupted once more; previously overlooked or sidelined by historians, they serve as the subject of Calvin Senning's excellent Spain, Rumor, and Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Jacobean England.
Drawing upon an impressive range of diplomatic, political, and literary sources, Senning provides an outstandingly written narrative account of the rumors and popular panic over Spain's alleged preparation of a new armada in 1612 and 1614, respectively. By 1611 and into 1612, relations between the two countries had already deteriorated in the wake of a new détente between Catholic France and Spain, and the proposed marriage between James's daughter Elizabeth and the Protestant Frederick V, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Fear of Spanish political and financial might and rumors of suspicious naval activity were further accompanied by renewed anti-Catholicism and persecutory measures against English recusants. The sudden death of Henry, Prince of Wales, and “Protestant champion,” however, came as an especially acute “psychological shock,” stoking rumors even further that Spain would take advantage of the loss and target Virginia or invade through the always-suspect Ireland, for example (66, 70).
Fortunately, belief in “internal subversion and foreign invasion” peaked as the marriage between Elizabeth and Frederick approached (88); even so, aggressively patriotic and religious sentiments were expressed at the wedding through masques and other entertainments, even as anti-Spanish sentiment could also subversively slip in, much to James's chagrin. In the end, the first scare was revealed to be a damp squib, or perhaps a “ruse” to stir up anti-Catholicism in England (145); but as Senning convincingly points out, the reason was less religious than it was due to an atmosphere of unease that emerged from the diplomatic, political, and prejudicial context that unfolded in these years.
James had always displayed a “commitment to peace” (195), but shortly after the first scare, he was challenged by the succession crisis in Cleves and Jülich, which gave way to aggressive military action by the Spanish and the Dutch. Rumors that the Spanish would conduct a sea attack on Emden, or that Spanish naval forces were moving north into the Atlantic, led people to “howl . . . as if the armada were already upon them” (204). The second armada scare thus began, and ships were in fact sighted; but they turned out to be ordinary commercial traffic—a revelation that did little to stop more sermons from being delivered, prints from being published, and recusants being persecuted. And when that rumor was quashed, another sighting caused mass panic in turn.
Aside from the treatment of Catholics in England, these scares lend themselves to many comic moments, which Senning describes well. His account of the Spanish ambassador Pedro de Zúñiga, reluctantly overstaying his welcome in London and treated by all as an “enemy agent on the loose” (19), is especially vivid, as are his accounts of diplomats generally. The fact that the armadas were nothing more than chimeras might also lead one to think, as Senning writes, that they are “much ado about nothing” (196). But Senning has used these episodes to reveal the larger mid-Jacobean age in all its complexities and across an international stage. Students and scholars of diplomacy, politics, and religion will therefore benefit from Senning's work, in addition to those interested in understanding the power of rumor and panics in the early modern world. Today those rumors and panics are wrapped up in the more modern phenomenon of conspiracy theories—which makes this book all the more relevant and sobering to read today.
