The Armada Maps
Incredible maps telling the story of the Armada of 1588 from the English perspective.
We can be forgiven, I think, for missing that there was anything else going on in 2020 other than the obvious, but there was a big story in the history world which almost went totally unnoticed. While many industries ground to a halt, some were able to continue operating including it seems, art dealers. Late on in 2020, a series of 10 hand-drawn maps were put on sale by Daniel Crouch Rare Books on the London Art market. These maps illustrated, step-by-step, the major events of the Spanish Armada of 1588 at which the English secured their most famous victory of the 16th century.
The hand-drawn maps, probably produced by Flemish cartographers working in England, on paper from the Rhine, were bought quickly by an overseas buyer and were set to leave the country. Indeed, that would have been the case if not for my new heroes, the Reviewing Committee for the Export of Works of Art, putting a stop on the exportation of the maps to allow time to try to find a British buyer. A short campaign raised £600,000 allowing for the purchase of the maps by The National Museum of the Royal Navy, based at Portsmouth Historic Dockyards.
I recently visited the Dockyards to attend a talk at The Mary Rose Museum, and to visit HMS Victory and the Warrior. By absolute chance, I stumbled across The Armada Maps after seeing a billboard outside one of the gift shops. Initially, I just purchased the small booklet about the maps and put it in my bag to read later. Only through a discussion with Pippa, the Events Manager at The Mary Rose Museum, later that evening, did I find out that the maps were actually on display in The National Museum of the Royal Navy at the dockyard.
The maps are incredibly delicate and are not on permanent display, their exposure to any light necessarily limited. My timing was incredibly lucky, they were going off display in only a few days time, so I still had chance to see them!
The National Museum of the Royal Navy is set out over a series of rooms, with many permanent displays to the glories and realities of life serving in the Royal Navy. I was told that I would find the maps right at the back of the exhibition space. Well, that was certainly true! Through two rooms, a long corridor and another room, finally I came to the space dedicated to the Armada Maps, but no wonder I had missed them earlier!
The Armada Maps exhibition space was expertly thought through and the use of varying technologies allowed for a large amount of information to be presented in an engaging way. Then, of course, there are the maps themselves. Ten maps telling the story of Queen Elizabeth’s Navy gaining victory over Philip II of Spain’s Armanda, in 1588. This famous event in English history tends to be remembered by two elements; ‘the superior Spanish force was seen off by the English weather,’ and Elizabeth I’s famous ‘Tilbury Speech.’
In 1587 Elizabeth I, after much procrastination, signed the death warrant of her cousin, the catholic Queen Mary of Scots. Before she could change her mind, something her council very much feared she would do, the warrant was dispatched to Fotheringhay Castle where Mary was being held. Mary was duly executed by beheading in the Great Hall. The elimination of Mary did not bring the promised peace which removing such a close rival and figure head for catholic resistance was supposed to do.
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