Guest Historian Chris Oakley says, welcome to this timeline in which the Spanish Armada never makes it to England. If you're interested in viewing samples of my other work why not visit the Changing the Times web site.
| July 26 | ![]() |
| King of Spain | In 1588, on this day Spain's King Philip II went into seclusion after hearing the news of the Spanish Armada's destruction. He would not emerge from that seclusion for weeks. |
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| Philip II |
July 29
In 1588, on this day the Church of England held a special mass of thanksgiving to celebrate what Queen Elizabeth I called "our kingdom's fortunate deliverance" from attack by the Spanish Armada. | Queen of England |
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| Elizabeth I |
August 7
In 1588, on this day the Duke of Parma, who'd fallen into irreversible physical and mental decline following the destruction of the Spanish Armada, died from a cerebral hemorrhage. | |
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March 19
In 1593, on this day Dutch rebels won a crucial victory in their war for independence from Spain, seizing the main Spanish garrison at Amsterdam.                                           | Flag of |
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| Amsterdam |
April 3
| Flag of | In 1596, on this day Dutch rebels won their war for independence from Spain as the last Spanish colonial governor of the Netherlands fled the Hague. |
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| Amsterdam |
May 22
In 1601, on this day the first contingent of British occupation troops arrived in southern Spain. | |
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April 3
In 1603, on this day a pro-British regime seized power in Portugal, overthrowing the previous Spanish-backed government.                                                                                             | Flag of |
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| Portugal |
August 16
In 1604, the British navy began anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Florida, a former Spanish colony in the New World which had been annexed by Britain in the mid-1590s. | |
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October 28
In 1606, a British colonial expedition left Florida to establish a settlement in what is now the U.S. state of Georgia.                                                                                               | |
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November 10
| Flag of | In 1606, British colonists established the first permanent European settlement in what is today the state of Georgia. |
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| State of Georgia |
March 23
| Flag of | In 1607, on this day Britain's second permanent colony in North America, Jamestown, was established in Virginia. |
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| State of Virginia |
September 15
In 1607, on this day the British government organized an expedition to establish its third permanent settlement in the New World at the site of what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. | |
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| Plymouth Sound |
April 17
In 1608, a survey expedition left France for the New World with the goal of finding a suitable location to install the first permanent French settlement in North America. That expedition would go on to play a key role in the establishment of what is today the city of Montreal. | |
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| New France |
August 17
In 1610, British occupation troops in southern Spain joined forces with Spanish Protestant militias in crushing a Spanish Catholic uprising in Sevilla; it was the first major military engagement between the British and the King of Spain's loyalists since the Armada Storm. | Coat of Arms |
| Sevilla |
The commanding general of the British troops at Sevilla was later knighted for his actions. |
May 6
| Seal of | In 1613, a group of British colonists in the Massachusetts Bay region of New England established what is today the city of Boston. |
| Boston |
July 17
In 1614, on this day British occupation troops in southern Spain brutally suppressed an anti-occupation uprising in Valencia.                                                                                   | Symbol of |
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| Valencia |
Three-quarters of Valencia's population was put to death and half of the city itself was burned to the ground in retaliation for an attack on the local British garrison by insurgents loyal to the Spanish crown. |
November 20
| Symbol of | In 1618, the Spanish coastal town of Malaga witnessed one of the most gruesome acts of mass murder ever perpetrated on European soil as British occupation troops and Spanish Protestant militias joined forces to slaughter nearly twelve hundred Spanish Catholics for allegedly plotting to revolt against the local British garrison commander; whether such a conspiracy actually existed or was just a ruse has still not been proven to this day, but the massacre would prove to have dire repercussions for Anglo-Spanish relations for nearly two centuries afterwards. |
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| Malaga |
Between 1690 and 1778 three major wars would be fought between Britain and Spain due to lingering bitterness over the massacre, and in the early 19th century Spanish cavalry would attempt to ambush the Duke of Wellington's troops near Malaga in hopes of finally avenging the twelve hundred people put to death there during the British occupation. |
July 24
In 1588, on this day a fleet of 130 Spanish naval vessels, dispatched from Lisbon three days earlier to rendezvous with the Duke of Parma's 300-ship flotilla in advance of a planned Spanish invasion of England, met with disaster when it ran into a massive storm that savaged it with torrential rains and hurricane-force winds. 123 of the 130 vessels in the Lisbon squadron were lost in storm, which subsequently turned north and inflicted substantial losses on the Duke of Parma's fleet-- less than a third of the Duke's 300 ships would survive the ordeal.
The Armada Storm by Chris OakleyThe loss of so many warships constituted a catastrophic blow to King Philip II's hopes for a successful conquest of England; it also left Spain vulnerable to foreign invasion and internal unrest. By 1596 an anti-Spanish rebellion in the Netherlands had succeeded in gaining Dutch independence and Spanish Protestants had risen against the largely Catholic monarchy in Madrid; by the early 1600s a pro-British government had been installed in power in Portugal (previously under Philip's rule along with Spain) and British troops had occupied much of southern Spain. The British occupation forces would remain there until the mid-1650s.
Handicapped by the wounds inflicted on its maritime power by what modern historians now call "the Armada storm", Spain would be left in the dust as France took over her former position as Britain's chief rival for supremacy in Europe and colonial territory elsewhere. Not until the late 18th century would the Spanish even begin to regain a semblance of their former power, and by then Britain and France had effectively locked Spain out of most of the New World.
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© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.





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