The Spanish Armada

Over the Halloween bank holiday a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to again visit the Ulster Museum in Belfast, where I spent a lot of time enjoyably running around as a kid in the 1970's and which gave me my first taste for history. My granny lived just up the road in Stranmillis and my brother and I would go down to the museum and stare at the modern art and Takabuti the Egyptian mummy, after we got bored of riding up and down in the lifts.

In particular, I used to like looking at the treasure which had been recovered from the wreck of the Spanish Armada Galleass, the Girona, which sank off Lecada Point, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, in July 1588, with the loss of 1300 lives. I was interested this time, upon seeing the treasure again, that there is in fact a link to the Camino de Santiago; one of the items recovered from the seabed is cross of a Knight of Santiago de Compostela. This order of chivalry was a very important one in 16th Century Spain and was given to very few people. The cross almost certainly belonged to Don Alonso Martinez de Leiva and is a red enamelled cross with arms ending in fleur-de-lys and set in an oval gold border and it's discovery is confirmation that he perished on the Girona.

De Leiva, who had been Captain-General of the Cavalry in Milan and was secretly charged with taking over command of the Armada should the Commander of the Fleet, Medina Sedonia be killed, was a favourite of King Philip of Spain and when he did not return the King was said to be devastated and Spain went into national mourning.