West Tilbury - Elizabeth's Armada Camp

Elizabeth's Armada Camp

Confusion has arisen as to exactly where the royal review took place. Various locations became favoured, especially that of Tilbury Fort itself. Other authorities decided for the high ground surrounding St. James’ church, or the plateau top of Gun Hill. Early in the 18th century, an accurate county historian, William Holman, had concluded that the field of parade on that historic occasion, had been just outside the village centre near the windmill and this location was offered again in Philip Morant’s ‘History and Antiquities ...’, 1768.

As 1988 approached, the local authority (Thurrock Borough) became involved in preparations for a re-enactment of the historic scenes somewhere in the village surrounds and the local museum undertook to finally answer the locational question. The project ranged between archival research at the British Museum, where two important maps by the military surveyor Robert Adams were examined, and fieldwork around the parish (1986). The project resulted in certifying that Holman had been correct. ‘The place of assemblie at armes’, where the speech had been given was certainly in fields beside the manorial post mill, but there was another important site a little to the south-west, on the present Gun Hill summit. Here, overlooking the fort and Gravesend, had stood the Lord General’s pavilion, doubtless with the other richly adorned tents of the Earl of Leicester’s staff officers close by. The queen had moved to this site to dine among her captains after the parade.

Such images of spectacular ceremonial and royal glamour all apply to the two days of Elizabeth’s visit – the 8th and 9 August. The Camp Royal itself had been in preparation for several weeks beforehand. On the river, just downstream of the Tudor blockhouse (fort), a defensive boom made of ships’ masts and anchors was being constructed at a cost of over £2,000.

The numbers of soldiers present at the time of the queen’s visit is not clear. Over the month or so of the great army’s presence at West Tilbury, between 17,000 and 22,000 men are said to have lain in camp, but certainly not all served throughout.

The high stone tower of St. James’ is the most likely visual communications station to have served the Armada camp, conveying signals via all waterfront blockhouses, Leicester’s pavilion, Gravesend and the ports of the Downs, (exploiting the Kentish hilltops). Eastward, it looked far beyond Sheppey, where the uppermost turrets of Queenborough held a beacon facility. Ranging the Thames during the invasion scare were two specially appointed watch vessels, the ‘Victory’ and ‘Lion’, while the fishermen of Leigh – a small seaport visible with moderate eyesight from the West Tilbury fields – were primed to give warning of the presence of any hostile galley to speedy English pinnaces patrolling the estuary. Leigh’s pale 15th century tower still carried its masonry beacon turret, as does that of nearer church of St. Michael’s, Fobbing.

On the day of her arrival by royal barge from London (8 August), the queen’s progress, (after being received by the Earl of Leicester at the blockhouse fort), was across the mile or so of marshland below the church and Tilbury Hill. Robert Adam’s detailed ‘second’ map depicts the route of her coach over the raised marshland – ‘the causey from the forte to ye Campe’ – where he shows the positions of groups of guards, with no less than 34 fluttering ensigns (banners) along the way:

The drums do sound, the phifes do yield their notes And ensigns are displayed ... They couch their pikes and bowe their ensigns downe When as their sacred royal Queene past by ...

So tells James Aske in his contemporary verse-picture of the royal visit, called ‘Elizabetha Triumphans’.

After an initial visit to the camp, the queen continued on through the narrow lane which led northwards out of West Tilbury, onto Mucking hilltop and thence toward Horndon on the Hill, where she was to stay the night at the manor house called ‘Cantis’, the home of ‘Master Edward Rich’. Upon the morning of August 9, a return journey through the valley of ‘Howe ford’ was made, climbing finally to the ‘place of assemblie at armes’, where the great review was to be enacted and Elizabeth’s historic speech delivered.

West Tilbury’s highest unwooded ground provided the queen’s parade area – some 17 acres of common strip field, lying eastward from the windmill and with clear views of the distant Thames, beyond (modern) Southend. From this dry gravely hilltop, the landscape fell to a small tree-crowned valley, across which, perhaps, a mock skirmish, ‘of two battalions’ described by the ballad maker Thomas Deloney: ‘such a battaile pitcht in England many a day had not been seene’.

Spanish captives, destined for confinement at Richard Drake’s house near Esher, were brought into the queen’s presence. Among them was Pedro de Valdez, General of the Andalusian squadron, which had sailed with the Armada from Lisbon. Interrogated by the Privy Council as to why Philip’s armies had put forth, Don Pedro answered; ‘Why, but to subdue your nation, and root you all out’. All, he said, meant both Catholic and Protestant alike – to send the former ‘good men’ to heaven, and ‘all you that are heretics, to hell’. The drift of this bloody message was ordered to be read out to the trained bands by the camp’s chaplain next sermon.

Reaching the queen whilst at dinner, came the earliest dispatches from Francis Drake aboard ‘Revenge’, reporting the Spanish fleet already hastening in the eastern channel; less joyous was other news that the Duke of Parma’s squadrons lying in the Netherlands, were immediately to sail for the invasion of the south of England.

It was a false alarm. By mid August, the Camp Royal was discontinued, its warriors, ill-fed and wanting wages despite royal promises, were drifting homeward. The Surrey contingent’s records reveal dreadful confusion over equipment and misplacement of ‘furniture’; as the camp dispersed. William Virtell of Croydon claimed that his morion helmet of iron had been taken by Lieutenant Pavett who ‘gave him a worste for it’. Numerous men were pressed into sea-service before they could officially leave the military zone. Thus Edward Upchurch of Surrey lost his equipment (a firearm, powder flask and ‘tuch box’) aboard a ship called the Rose or the Lion. Another soldier called Merce ‘lefte his musket in pawne’, while Anthonie Clarke’s complaint was that he had served his country at Tilbury ‘one whole week with a calliver and had no paie’.