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United Kingdom and Ireland: Sample chronology
The Spanish Armada
December 1586 Don Enrique de Guzmán y Pimental, Count-Duke of Olivares, Spanish ambassador to Pope Sixtus V, persuades him to pledge 1 million ducats on the conquest of England by the Spanish Great Armada (war fleet).
12 April 1587–26 June 1587 The English buccaneer and navigator Francis Drake leads a powerful raid from Plymouth, England, to 'singe the king of Spain's beard', sacking Cadiz 19–21 April and profitably pillaging shipping along the Atlantic coast and toward the Azores. He delays the Spanish Armada against England for a year.
August 1587 The newly hatted English cardinal William Allen publishes a manifesto justifying a Spanish invasion of England and appealing to English Catholics for a rising against Queen Elizabeth I.
February 1588 Following the death of the Spanish admiral Alvaro de Bazán, marquis of Santa Cruz, King Philip II of Spain appoints the nautically inexperienced Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, duke of Medina Sidonia, as commander of the Great Armada (the fleet intended for the invasion of England).
30 May 1588 The Spanish Great Armada (the fleet intended for the invasion of England) sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, under the Duke of Medina Sidonia
21 July 1588 The English fleet under Francis Drake engages the Spanish Armada off the Lizard, Cornwall, England; the English militia is summoned to Tilbury, Essex, under Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, as lieutenant general of the realm.
27 July 1588 After an indecisive running fight against the English fleet up the English Channel, the Spanish Great Armada anchors in the Calais roadstead to take on board the main invasion force from the Army of Flanders of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, the Habsburg governor of the Spanish Netherlands.
29 July 1588 After being forced to slip anchor when attacked by fire ships at night, the Spanish Armada is defeated by the combined English fleet under Lord Admiral Thomas Howard of Effingham off Gravelines, France. The surviving galleons take to the North Sea; many are subsequently wrecked off the Scottish and Irish coasts.
September 1588–November 1588 After the failure of the Spanish Great Armada's expedition to England, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, the Habsburg governor of the Spanish Netherlands, leads the Army of Flanders to besiege Bergen op Zoom, the only town in Brabant remaining to the United Netherlands. They fail, in the face of stiff resistance.
13 April 1589 An expedition under the English navigators Francis Drake and John Norryes of 150 ships and 18,000 troops leaves Plymouth, England, to attempt to install Dom Antonio, Prior of Crato, on the throne of Portugal; after sacking the Spanish port of La Coruña, they land at Peniche near Lisbon, Portugal.
June 1589–October 1589 The absence of popular backing, or a siege train, and conditions of plague and burning heat cripple the English attempt on Lisbon, capital of Spanish-occupied Portugal, which simply shuts its gates on the invaders.
September 1589–November 1590 The English naval commanders George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, John Hawkins, and Martin Frobisher lead privateering expeditions throughout the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic, forcing King Philip II of Spain to delay the 1590 Flota (bullion fleet from Spanish America) by a year.
August 1591 The English Lord Admiral Thomas Howard of Effingham's squadron, waiting in ambush near the island of Flores in the Azores, is driven off by the escort of the Spanish West Indies bullion fleet under Alonzo de Bazan; the English galleon Revenge, captained by Sir Richard Grenville, carries out a single-handed rearguard action until forced to surrender.
3 November 1591 The Irish chieftain Brian O'Rourke is executed at Tyburn, London, England, for treasonably sheltering Spanish sailors shipwrecked from the Armada in Connaught, Ireland.
August 1592 The English privateer John Burrows captures the Portuguese galleon Madre de Dios off the island of Flores in the Azores. The 1,600-ton cargo of spices is valued at £850,000.
15 September 1594–7 November 1594 An English expeditionary force to Brittany, under English sailors and navigators Martin Frobisher and John Norryes, besieges and storms the fort of Crozon, held by Spanish troops under Don John of Austria. They thus relieve the town of Brest from the sea, but Frobisher is to die in the attack.
April 1595 King Philip II of Spain undertakes to aid the rebellion of 'Red' Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, against Queen Elizabeth I of England in Ireland.
23 July 1595 Spanish forces raid Penwith, Cornwall, southwestern England, burning the town of Penzance and outlying fishing villages.
August 1595–April 1596 The two most illustrious English buccaneers, Francis Drake and John Hawkins, mount a disastrous raid on the Spanish Main, failing in assaults on the Canaries, Puerto Rico, and Panama. Both captains are to die of fever (28 January and 12 November 1596, respectively).
20 June 1596–5 July 1596 An Anglo-Dutch expedition under Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, Francis Vere, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, takes and sacks the Spanish port of Cadiz, destroying the Spanish bullion fleet and thus exacerbating King Philip II of Spain's fiscal crisis. On their return they raid Portugal.
25 October 1596 A Spanish expedition leaves Lisbon, Portugal, with men and arms to support the rebellion in Ireland against England, but subsequently founders off Cape Finistèrre, Brittany.
August 1597–October 1597 The English naval commanders Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and Walter Raleigh lead an Anglo-Dutch naval expedition to the Azores ('the Islands Voyage') and raid the island of Faial, but fail to capture the Spanish 'Flota' (bullion fleet from Spanish America).
October 1597 Another Spanish fleet leaves the port of El Ferrol in Spain for England, but is scattered by storms; reports of the Armada's sailing cause alarm in London, England.
24 October 1597–9 February 1598 The English Parliament meets and approves further subsidies for the war against Spain; widespread social unrest after three bad harvests causes concern and fear.
July 1599 A final Armada (fleet of battleships) is collected in Spain to be sent against England, but it is scattered by storms and returns to port.
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