A Journey Through Tudor England (17 page)

‘Semper vivet anima Regis Henrici Octavi qui anno 34 sui regni hoc fecit fieri.’

(‘May the soul of King Henry VIII, who had this built in the 34th year of his reign, live ever.’)

P
endennis and St Mawes castles stand on headlands proudly facing each other across the mouth of the River Fal on the south-western tip of the Cornish coast. Guarding the estuary and anchorage known as Carrick Roads, near to Falmouth, they are perfect surviving examples of the scheme of coastal fortification constructed on Henry VIII’s orders after 1539. They were intended to be, quite literally, the last bastion of defence in the event of an invasion by the Catholic powers of Europe.

Henry VIII’s decision to break from the Roman Catholic Church and establish himself as Supreme Head of the new Church of England had meant not only schism, but that he was seen by the Pope and Catholic monarchs as an ‘impious and heretical tyrant’. As such, they came to believe that it was their Christian
duty to fight a holy war against the heretic and restore Catholic authority in England. In 1538, this situation became pressing. The French King, Francis I, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, signed a ten-year truce and, in December, the Pope published a decree excommunicating Henry VIII, freeing English subjects from any allegiance to him and authorising an attack on England. Invasion seemed not only unavoidable, but imminent.

In response, Henry VIII’s commissioners put together an ambitious programme, known as the ‘Device of the King’, to build a chain of new forts, castles, embankments, ditches and bulwarks to protect the vulnerable ports and landing points along the southern and eastern coasts. These coastal artillery forts were the last castles built in England. Much of the money to finance them came directly from the dissolution of the monasteries [see F
OUNTAINS
A
BBEY
], while monastic bells were melted down in bulk to provide gunmetal.

As the first safe place to land for ships heading up from the Mediterranean and an ideal springboard for an invasion by England’s enemies because of its wide, deep estuary, Carrick Roads was judged a soft target. Henry’s advisers, therefore, decided to build two forts, one on either side of the river, so that any advancing ships would be caught in the crossfire of their guns.

Pendennis Castle is one of these structures. The circular gun tower was built in the early 1540s, although the gatehouse, ramparts and forebuilding (with its elegant oriel window) are all Elizabethan additions. The central tower was designed to be fifty-seven feet in diameter, with octagonal rooms over several floors featuring gun ports from which heavy artillery could be fired. The recreation of such a room here, with replica guns, suggests just how cramped, noisy and smoky the rooms would have been if they were ever used. The tower is surrounded by a chemise, or gun platform, with embrasures for another fourteen guns and there is also a high lookout tower. The guns that the Tudors used were
smooth-bore and front-loading, mounted on wheeled truck carriages, each of which took four strong and skilled men to aim and fire. Completed by 1545, Pendennis Castle cost £5,614 to build: over £1.5 million today.

Across the water, St Mawes Castle (also completed by 1545 at a cost of £5,018) is an even finer example of Henry’s fortifications. It has a graceful geometry, with a forty-six-foot circular central tower and three lower semicircular bastions arranged around it in a cloverleaf pattern. It has survived remarkably well: all the buildings, including the gatehouse, are original.

St Mawes is particularly special because of its Latin and English inscriptions, which praise Henry VIII and his son. Over the gatehouse window is a carving of the Tudor royal arms and an inscription composed by John Leland (who wrote an itinerary of all the buildings in England in the 1540s), which reads, ‘
Semper honos Henrice tuus laudesque manebunt
’ (‘Henry, by honour and praises will remain forever’). On the second floor of the central tower, each room has an English inscription in the door spandrels that states, ‘God save King Henry VIII’ and ‘God save Prince Edward’. The door from the forward bastion into the central tower is also carved, this time with sea creatures and another Latin inscription:
‘Semper vivet anima Regis Henrici Octavi qui anno 34 sui regni hoc fecit fieri’
(‘May the soul of King Henry VIII, who had this built in the 34th year of his reign, live ever’). Perhaps the inscriptions were intended to rouse the men defending the fort to daring acts of patriotism (though not all soldiers would have been able to read — even the English!).

St Mawes also houses an original Tudor bronze Alberghetti gun, one of the great range of Tudor guns and munitions including culverins, falcons, demi-cannon, slings and minions that were used at these castles. Both Pendennis and St Mawes also have small
blockhouses or gun towers close to the water’s edge, which were probably built before the main castles had been constructed.

Pendennis and St Mawes are two of the best examples of the circular castles that were part of the 1539 device programme. Others still standing include Walmer, Deal, Portland and Calshot. Reflecting new ideas about fortification, there were more angular castles built in the late 1540s at Southsea, Sandown and Yarmouth. In fact, as has often been the case throughout the history of grand defensive military schemes, by the time the castles were completed, the risk of invasion had passed.

They were not built in vain, however. Under Elizabeth, the threat arose again, and both castles were garrisoned and provided with guns. Sir Walter Ralegh mustered 500 men at Pendennis in 1596, when a Spanish fleet attempted to land and use Carrick Roads as a bridgehead from which to launch an invasion.

‘Sic parvis magna’
‘Great achievements from small beginnings’

T
he converted Cistercian abbey at Buckland in Devon is chiefly remembered as the home of England’s most famous seaman, privateer and adventurer, Sir Francis Drake (which explains the bizarre decision to turn the top floor into a replica ship). Drake, rightly, remains a legendary hero of British history, but the story of Buckland Abbey reveals how much of his fame and success was a question of luck and timing, as well as of character and courage.

Born around 1540 of humble yeoman stock, Francis Drake’s life at sea began when he was apprenticed to the master of a small coasting ship. He was the eldest of the eleven children of Edmund Drake, a lay preacher whose fervent Protestant faith helped to shape Drake’s sense of personal destiny. Another crucial ingredient in Drake’s formation occurred on a slaving voyage with John Hawkins in 1568: the English captains were tricked, ambushed and defeated by the Spanish at the Battle of San Juan d’Ulua off the coast of Mexico, inciting Drake’s life-long hatred of Catholic Spain and his determination to avenge England at sea.

Stocky and strong, Drake was of middling height, with reddish brown curls and the ubiquitous sixteenth-century beard. He was cheerful, gregarious and direct, with an intrepid and impressive ability to inspire and lead. He made three bold and successful raids on the Spanish Main in the early 1570s, operating as a privateer (a private man-of-war licensed by the government, with a share of the spoils going to the Crown), although his first expedition — the first raid by any Englishman — was carried out without authorisation, which technically made it piracy. On his third voyage, he captured the Spanish treasure town of Nombre de Dios. His haul of 300,000 pesos’ worth of gold made him a rich man at home and a feared man abroad.

Drake was most famous, however, for his circumnavigation of the globe in 1577—1580. Surviving violent encounters with natives, threats of mutiny, relentless storms and attacks by the Spanish, he and his crew sailed through the Strait of Magellan, up the coast of Peru, across the Pacific and home via the Cape of Good Hope. He discovered Cape Horn, claimed England’s first overseas possessions during Elizabeth’s reign — Elizabeth Island and Nova Albion in California — and on his return was knighted on board his own ship, now renamed the
Golden Hind
(Sir Christopher Hatton part-financed the voyage, and the hind was his crest [see K
IRBY
H
ALL
]). For Drake’s flagrant intrusion into Spanish waters, the Spanish christened him ‘
El Draco’
(‘the Dragon’). Compare this with the so-called achievements of Sir Walter Ralegh [see S
HERBORNE
C
ASTLE
] and you may conclude that it’s a wonder the two are ever mentioned in the same breath.

After circling the globe, Drake, with his first wife, Mary Newman, acquired Buckland Abbey, and other nearby manors at Yarcombe, Sherford and Sampford Spiney. Buckland had been the last Cistercian abbey to be founded in England, in 1278, and had passed into the hands of the Grenville family after the dissolution
of the monasteries in 1541. Sir Richard Grenville and his son Roger started converting the Abbey into a family house but after Roger, as captain of the
Mary Rose
, sank on board his ship in July 1545 [see the M
ARY
R
OSE
], Buckland was inherited by his infant son, the younger Richard Grenville.

The lives of Richard Grenville and Frances Drake are rather uncannily similar, and if circumstances had been slightly different, it could be Grenville we remember as a Tudor hero and Drake who is largely forgotten. Grenville, like Drake, was a staunch and committed Protestant, who loved to sail and also wanted to defy the Spanish. In 1573, Grenville had proposed a voyage to explore the South Seas, to seek new lands in Terra Australis, and search for the Northwest Passage. Elizabeth, then trying to please the King of Spain, had refused. However, when Drake had suggested the same scheme four years later, during a very different diplomatic environment, Elizabeth had eagerly signed up. So Drake set off around the world on the voyage that would make him famous, while Grenville stayed at home converting Buckland into a pleasant modern dwelling. He pulled down one of the wings to streamline the building and let in more light, built a two-floored east wing for the kitchens and domestic servants and put three floors into the church, creating a Great Hall out of the nave.

Grenville also put in the Great Hall’s stunning wood panelling, plasterwork ceiling, overmantle and frieze (see if you can spot the spy holes: a small staircase running behind this wall allowed servants to spy on guests), granite fireplace with herringbone slate and pink and white triangular patterned tiled floor. The room remains unchanged and, unlike much of the rest of the house, which has been altered over the centuries, is a picture-perfect example of Tudor domestic style.

The irony is that when, after all this work, Grenville could no longer afford to keep the house, it was the newly returned,
knighted and wealthy Sir Francis Drake whose agents bought Buckland from Grenville for £3,400. Drake moved in during 1581, and lived here for nearly fifteen years. He made practically no changes to the fabric of the house, keeping it instead as Grenville had left it.

Drake’s life here was not entirely untroubled. His wife, Mary, died childless after thirteen years of marriage in January 1583, and although Drake married again to the beautiful heiress Elizabeth Sydenham (her portrait of 1585 by George Gower can be seen at Buckland), she too did not bear him an heir.

In terms of career and reputation, however, Drake’s star was still in the ascendancy. In 1587, Drake ‘singed the beard of the King of Spain’ with his raid against Cadiz, when he destroyed and captured, by his own account, thirty-nine Spanish ships, including a galleon belonging to the intended commander of the Armada, the Marquis of Santa Cruz. When the Spanish Armada itself finally attacked in July 1588, it was Drake’s daring, if maverick, capture of the prize
Rosario
and its 50,000 Spanish ducats that won acclaim (Drake was lucky again: terrible weather and delays among the Spanish army in the Netherlands played a pivotal role in the victory). Some of Buckland’s treasures — the Armada badges, the portrait of Drake from 1590 by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, a set of Elizabethan armour — allude to the Spanish defeat. Poor Richard Grenville also played an efficient, but far less fêted, role in dispatching the Armada, while even the Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Howard of Effingham, didn’t get the credit lauded on Drake.

Drake set out from Buckland for his last voyage in August 1595. Unfortunately, he had finally run out of luck and this expedition, with its 27 ships, 1,500 sailors and 1,000 soldiers, would see tragedy. First, Drake’s old friend, Sir John Hawkins, fell sick and died as the fleet sighted their old place of defeat, San Juan. Then, off the coast of Panama, and on his ship, the aptly named
Defiance
,
Drake himself died of dysentery on 28 January 1596. His body was sealed in a lead coffin and buried at sea.

Drake’s adopted motto, ‘
Sic parvis magna’
(‘Great achievements from small beginnings’), can be seen on the coat of arms at Buckland. It perfectly encapsulates the life story of this bluff, courageous and ever-so-slightly lucky man.