The road to war with Spain, 1569–87
In 1558 Philip II of Spain had been Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, briefly proposed marriage, and was the dominant Catholic monarch of Europe. By 1587 his fleet was assembling at Lisbon to invade England. The drift from awkward alliance to open war took thirty years and pulled in religion, money, the Atlantic, and a small group of English seafarers who treated Spanish ships as legitimate prizes. By 1587 two decisive moves — English involvement in the Netherlands and Drake’s raid on Cadiz — had made war unavoidable.
Anglo-Spanish relations broke down across four strands: political (Mary’s execution and rival claims to the throne), religious (Protestant England versus Catholic Spain after 1570), commercial (privateering and clashes in the Atlantic), and military (English troops in the Netherlands from 1585 and Drake’s raid on Cadiz in 1587).
Political and Religious Rivalry
Through the 1560s the breakdown was slow. Philip II initially valued England as a buffer against France and tolerated Elizabeth’s Protestantism. The 1570 papal bull Regnans in Excelsis changed the diplomatic weather: Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved Catholics of allegiance, recasting any Catholic monarch’s duty as removing her. The Ridolfi (1571), Throckmorton (1583) and Babington (1586) plots all featured Spanish backing or Spanish ambassadors. Mary, Queen of Scots was Catholic Europe’s legitimate alternative ruler — her execution in February 1587 removed Philip’s diplomatic restraint.
Religion ran underneath all of this. Philip saw himself as the defender of the Catholic faith; the Counter-Reformation made the survival of Protestant England a personal affront. Recusancy fines, the execution of Catholic priests under the 1585 Act, and English support for the Dutch Protestant rebels all looked, from Madrid, like a Protestant crusade against Catholic Europe.
Commercial Rivalry — Privateering and Drake
Spain claimed a monopoly on trade with its American colonies under the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. English merchants disagreed. From the 1560s, captains such as John Hawkins (with Crown investment) ran trading voyages into the Spanish Caribbean, and from the early 1570s privateering exploded.
Sir Francis Drake was the most successful and most provocative privateer. In 1572–73 he raided Spanish silver convoys at Nombre de Dios in Panama. Between 1577 and 1580 he circumnavigated the globe in the Golden Hind, plundering Spanish ports along the Pacific coast of South America and returning with around £400,000 of treasure — roughly the value of a year’s Crown revenue. Elizabeth knighted him on his own ship at Deptford in 1581. Philip II read the knighthood as a deliberate insult: the queen of England was endorsing piracy.
Drake is often presented as an unambiguous English hero. The Edexcel B4 spec foregrounds his circumnavigation and his role against the Armada, and you should know those events well. But context matters: Drake had earlier sailed with John Hawkins on Crown-backed voyages that trafficked enslaved Africans to the Spanish Caribbean. The same decades that saw English ‘heroes’ tweak Spanish noses in the Atlantic were also building the early infrastructure of the transatlantic slave trade. Top-band judgement answers can know the spec content without absorbing the ‘Sea Dog’ legend uncritically.
English Involvement in the Netherlands
The Netherlands had been Spanish territory since 1556. Protestant unrest in the Netherlands from 1566 led Philip to send his most ruthless commander, the Duke of Alva, with 10,000 men in 1567; open war followed from 1568. Elizabeth had three reasons to worry. A Catholic Spanish-controlled Netherlands sat just across the Channel from Kent. Spanish armies in the Netherlands could ferry to England. And the suppression of Protestantism on her doorstep made her own position weaker.
Through the 1570s Elizabeth offered the Dutch covert support — money, English volunteers, harbour for Dutch ships — without committing troops officially. By 1584–85 the Dutch position was collapsing: William the Silent had been assassinated in July 1584, the Duke of Parma was steadily reconquering Dutch towns, and Antwerp fell in August 1585. In August 1585 Elizabeth signed the Treaty of Nonsuch, agreeing to send 7,400 men under Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in support of the Dutch.
Leicester’s Expedition, 1585–87
Leicester’s expedition was a strategic and personal embarrassment. He fell out with the Dutch, accepted the title of Governor-General without Elizabeth’s permission (which the queen publicly repudiated), and lost the strategically important towns of Sluys and Deventer — the latter handed to Spain by an English Catholic deserter. His one famous engagement, Zutphen in September 1586, was a small skirmish best remembered for the death of the poet Sir Philip Sidney. Leicester returned home in disgrace in late 1587. The expedition failed militarily but succeeded diplomatically — Philip II treated the Treaty of Nonsuch as a formal declaration of war.
Drake’s Raid on Cadiz, 1587
By the spring of 1587 Philip’s invasion fleet was being assembled at Cadiz, Lisbon and the smaller Iberian ports. Elizabeth authorised Drake to disrupt it. On 19 April 1587 Drake led 23 ships into the harbour of Cadiz, fought past the Spanish defending galleys, and over the next two days destroyed around 30 Spanish warships and supply vessels — including barrels of seasoned wood needed for water casks. He then cruised the Iberian coast for weeks, attacking shipping and the fortress at Sagres.
Drake himself called it ‘singeing the King of Spain’s beard’. The raid did not destroy the Armada — it delayed it by about a year. The destruction of barrel-stave timber proved more important than the ships sunk: when the Armada finally sailed in July 1588, its water and provisions were stored in newer, unseasoned casks that leaked and spoiled at sea.
On 19 April 1587 Drake raided Cadiz with 23 ships, destroying around 30 Spanish vessels and barrels of seasoned wood for water casks. The raid delayed the Spanish Armada by roughly a year and contributed to its supply problems in 1588.
A middle-band answer lists privateering, religion, the Netherlands and Cadiz as separate causes. A top-band answer connects them: the 1570 papal bull (religion) made Catholic plots (Ridolfi, Babington) targeted at Mary politically explosive, which in turn drove Mary’s execution; meanwhile English privateering (Drake) had wrecked the commercial relationship and Crown finances; English troops in the Netherlands from 1585 were the strategic affront; Cadiz in 1587 was the open military challenge. By the time the Armada sailed, all four strands had hardened into a single Spanish decision to invade.
By the end of 1587 every restraining factor was gone. Mary was dead so Philip had a free hand. The Treaty of Nonsuch had committed England to the Dutch revolt. Drake had humiliated Spain at Cadiz. The papal bull was nearly two decades old. The Armada that left Lisbon in May 1588 was the product of all four strands — political, religious, commercial and military — not a sudden Spanish overreaction.