On this day in Tudor history, Sunday 29th July 1565, twenty-three-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, queen regnant of Scotland, married her second husband, nineteen-year-old Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, at Holyrood Palace.
I give details of their wedding and how the couple’s marital bliss was rather short-lived…
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On this day in Tudor history, 29th July 1588, the English naval fleet attacked the Spanish Armada in a battle known as the Battle of Gravelines.
England defeated Spain and it was down to the new tactics they’d learned from previous encounters with the Armada and from capturing a Spanish ship, as well as weather conditions.
What were these new and successful tactics and what happened at the Battle of Gravelines?
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In 1588, the day after the English had wrecked the crescent formation of the Spanish Armada and caused havoc, they attacked the Spanish fleet. This battle is known as the Battle of Gravelines because it took place just off the port of Gravelines, a Spanish stronghold in Flanders.
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Defeat of the Spanish Armada at Gravelines, Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg the Younger.
The English had learned from previous encounters with the Spanish fleet and so used new and more successful tactics. They had learned from capturing the Rosario in the Channel that the Spaniards could not easily reload their guns, so with their smaller and lighter ships the English were able to provoke the Spaniards into firing, but keep out of range and then close in for the kill.
