The Pirate Queen (6 page)

3. The Queen, Her Merchants and Gentlemen

The State may hereafter want such men, who commonly are the most daring and serviceable in war of all those kind of people.

—SIR HENRY MAINWARING, ELIZABETHAN PIRATE-TURNED-ADMIRAL

T
he queen’s gentlemen and merchant adventurers—often referred to by England’s allies and adversaries alike as her corsairs, rovers, and pirates—were not the stuff of ordinary merchant stock. Indeed, pioneering into new worlds required men who thirsted for knowledge, had tremendous egos, were desperate to make their fortunes, had an acute business sense, and possessed more than a fair portion of intelligence and cunning. Many also claimed a fair degree of patriotism, and all professed undying loyalty to the queen. It was these men who would ultimately save England in ways that no one could begin to imagine in 1559.

Throughout her reign, Elizabeth’s court was stuffed to the gunnels with troublesome second sons of gentleman stock, the merchant trades, and the aristocracy. These men had been brought up with “expectations” of wealth, or luxury, but as younger sons they could inherit only the wealth of their wives—should they have the good fortune to marry well—or a portion of their fathers’ mercantile enterprises—should their fathers prove generous. If they were unlucky, then they’d have to make their own way in the world, often running foul of strict interpretations of the law and making enemies in their travails and travels. Robert Dudley, John Hawkins, Sir Robert Cecil, Francis Bacon, and Walter Raleigh were some of the most shining examples of Elizabethan younger sons grasping at court power and riches. The jealousy and envy they created was
undoubtedly destructive; their contributions to the mainstay of Elizabeth’s court, tremendous.

Then there were the great Elizabethan families who dominated the political, economic, and even the intellectual powerhouses of Elizabeth Tudor’s England. They were a heady brew of aristocracy, merchant classes, and poorer segments of society. The political and religious changes that were ushered in by Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn brushed away the cobwebs of the “old” nobility unwilling or unable to follow the king on his new path, and made way for a fresh rising class of merchant aristocrat, such as the Boleyns themselves. Elizabeth’s first lord treasurer, the admirably competent and loyal Sir William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, was one of Henry’s “new men.” The queen’s administrative and legal tigers, William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, while both younger than Winchester, were also cut of the same cloth. While the changes toward “meritocracy” began under Henry for loyalty to the king’s desires, under Elizabeth, those who demonstrated loyalty to crown and country by wholehearted dedication to work and wisdom would be richly rewarded irrespective of their social pedigree.

And despite much of what has been written, the lines of Elizabethan power were not necessarily drawn with Protestant pitted against Catholic. Where Edward Fiennes de Clinton, Elizabeth’s first lord admiral, who later became Earl of Lincoln, was a staunchly Protestant West Countryman, his successor, Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, Earl of Nottingham, was a Catholic. The Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Arundel, privy councillors under Mary as well as Elizabeth, both professed Catholic leanings. Robert Dudley and Sir Francis Walsingham were staunch Protestants with strong Puritan inclinations. William Cecil, who later became Lord Burghley, was a Protestant; and he, like the queen herself, believed in moderation in religious politics. Only the queen’s merchant adventurers and corsairs were virtually all Protestant, and the trades they plied were always tinged with social, religious, or political hidden agendas.

The men who surrounded the court and queen were united not only in their quest for power, knowledge, treasure, adventure, and England’s gathering greatness, but they were frequently closely related or in the same golden circle of good friends. Martin
Frobisher, the corsair who would explore the northern latitudes of North America, was jailed for piracy in the first year of Elizabeth’s reign.
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John Dee, Elizabeth’s unofficial astrologer and great mathematician, advised Frobisher and most other adventurers on their voyages of discovery. Dee was himself the son of a “mercer” or textile merchant, and his mercantile connections proved invaluable in Dee’s rise to political notice. Both Dee and Elizabeth shared the same tutors: Roger Ascham and Sir John Cheke. Ascham, Cheke, and Sir Thomas Smith, another councillor of the queen, were all Cambridge academics and closely associated with the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who was credited with bringing the Italian humanist Renaissance to northern Europe. Cheke was a cherished family friend of the East Anglian merchant, Anthony Cooke, whose daughter Anne had married Sir Nicholas Bacon, the queen’s lord keeper, while Cooke’s eldest daughter, Mildred, had married Sir William Cecil, the queen’s principal secretary, a few years earlier. Cooke and Cecil had been affiliated as well to the much-admired humanist clique cultivated by Queen Catherine Parr (Henry VIII’s last wife) and the young Prince Edward.
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Walter Raleigh was the nephew of Elizabeth’s beloved governess and lifelong friend, Cat Ashley. His elder half brothers, Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert, the adventurers who promoted the Northwest Passage route to Cathay and settlement of North America, had been introduced at court by Cat Ashley years before Raleigh himself craved the queen’s attention. Lady Catherine Knollys, wife of the privy councillor Sir Francis Knollys, was called Elizabeth’s cousin but is now thought by some to have been her half sister, born to Henry VIII and Elizabeth’s aunt, Mary Boleyn.
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Catherine Knollys’s brother, Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, is also believed to be Henry VIII’s son by Mary Boleyn, and he, too, would become a stalwart of Elizabethan England and William Shakespeare’s patron. By this yardstick of friends and relations, Elizabeth’s world was a small one indeed.

But Elizabeth’s men were more than close relations and a fractious lot. Her intellectuals brought the Renaissance to England, advancing society and thought beyond what had been believed possible in Henry VIII’s time. John Dee traveled extensively throughout Europe, gathering humanist friends abroad, like the phenomenally gifted mapmaker Gerard Mercator. On his return to England, Dee
preached to Elizabeth’s converted adventurers of great wealth and worlds beyond the horizons that could be theirs for the taking if only they tried.

From a Spanish perspective, Dee’s teachings were anathema. The world had been divided between the Portuguese and the Spanish in the previous century, with this division sanctioned by the pope and enshrined in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. Any voyages of discovery were the private reserve of the Iberians, and this precept, coupled with England’s economic necessity for survival and security against Spain, provided the catalyst for England’s entry into an expansionist world power. In fact, the phrase the “British Empire” wasn’t coined in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but by John Dee in his work
The Petty Navy Royal
in 1577.
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From Spain’s and Portugal’s perspective, empire was the fundamental principle in the battle to protect Iberian “rights.” From an English point of view, any acts of piracy, trade, or war were the basic ingredients needed for survival against the great Catholic powers. And these ingredients would beat at the heart of the clash between Spain, France, and England throughout most of Elizabeth’s reign. Yet it would be wrong to think that Elizabeth was ever an imperialist. England’s place in history would ultimately be secured by an English Renaissance in thought, science, and the arts by men like Dee, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. Yet her right to rule a Protestant England—and sow the seeds of empire—was secured by her numerous merchant and gentlemen adventurers through trade, plunder, and colonization.

Two other great contributors to expansionist thought and deed were the two Richard Hakluyts. Richard Hakluyt, the elder, and especially the younger Richard Hakluyt, made a lasting record for posterity by writing down the voyages for all the Elizabethan seamen they could find, culminating in the younger Hakluyt’s
Principall Navigations
, first published in 1589, and dedicated to Elizabeth’s then principal secretary and spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham.

Among others who helped the revolutionary trains of thought to take hold in England was the queen’s keeper of the great seal, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who promoted mass education and funded scholarships for students at Cambridge.
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Her principal secretary, Sir William Cecil, was the vice chancellor of the University of
Cambridge. Sir Thomas Gresham, Elizabeth’s ambassador to the Low Countries, “intelligencer,” arms dealer, and London merchant, founded the Royal Exchange in 1572 at his own expense for the promotion of international trade. The Corporation of London and the Mercer’s Company, to which he belonged, founded Gresham College for popular education with a strong emphasis on practical subjects connected with commerce.
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Some of the most influential merchants belonging to the Mercer’s Company or the Staplers (who traded in commodities such as wool rather than finished goods like cloth on the Continent) came from gentry stock like Gresham. Others married into the gentry and acquired their wives’ estates and coats of arms. Still others founded noble families by royal favor. Merchants and landed gentlemen who were to shine as Elizabeth’s adventurers learned over time to act in concert. Trade and plunder were not obvious commercial or political partners at the outset, but with the political movements of the time, they soon became a united cause. Within ten years of Elizabeth’s accession, the blurred distinctions between merchants and gentlemen were the accepted norm. The blurring between their legal trading and illicit plundering activities became a way of life as hostilities with Philip II grew, until, finally, it was virtually impossible to tell trade from plunder or piracy. This naturally created a more fluid society, which while still falling well short of a meritocracy, allowed some cream to rise to the top. And a wealth of hidden talent was not found wanting.

While the hub of the jostling for riches and power took place at court and London, a core of fiercely Protestant southwest gentlemen and merchants had already burst upon the world stage of exploration long before Elizabeth had become queen. John Cabot, an immigrant Italian, had sailed from Bristol in the
Mathew
during the reign of Henry VII.
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John Cabot’s son, Sebastian, who claimed the discovery of Newfoundland for himself, thereby eclipsed his father for posterity. The younger Cabot had masterminded the formation of the first joint stock company for exploration, the Muscovy Company, making its voyages independent of the crown, and provided the money with his small group of peers and high officials for the first Muscovy voyages. William Hawkins of Plymouth, the West Country merchant, had
established successful trading with Brazil in the late 1520s, and even brought back an Indian chief aboard ship on his second voyage in 1531 as a sign of the “great favor” that the Indians had shown him. Southampton and Plymouth spawned great adventurers—merchant, gentlemen, and piratical—with such evocative West Country names as Champernowne, Hawkins, Fiennes, Godolphin, Grenville, Gilbert, Killigrew, and Drake.

Yet, the desire for overseas riches that were brought to England by “trade”—whether through legitimate channels or piracy—did not originate with Elizabeth’s men. The Tudor courts from Henry VIII’s reign simply wallowed in luxury. Luxuries—be they sumptuous clothing, jewels, food, or amusements—were an integral part of Henry’s power, and under Elizabeth they became key symbols of her rule. Naturally, her court remained the fashion-setter for the rest of the country, with all the royal status seekers trying to emulate her court in its way of dress, its lavish tastes, and its lust for “the rich trades,” or luxury goods, from India and the Orient.

And treasure was the most highly valued prize by the queen herself. It enabled her to pay her bills and spend—carefully—on her aura of wealth, power, and courtly love while, above all else, investing in the security of the realm. Treasure, followed by the rich trades, became the manna of the body politic, attracting royal participation in search of gold.
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If a lucky adventurer had a cunning plan to find treasure that mitigated risk to the crown, then royal patronage would not be far behind. However, before the queen would commit herself or her ships to dangerous and costly overseas expeditions, she demanded that her men put their own personal fortunes alongside her own at the realm’s disposal for most voyages seeking treasure. Even the queen’s most cautious ministers of state like Sir William Cecil; Sir Nicholas Bacon; and Sir William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, became eager participants in the quest for riches, wagering their own fortunes in the balance. In this way, the precedence was set: anyone wanting royal favor must venture his own wealth for queen and country.

Salaries were notoriously mean, often paid late or not at all, and ministers of state and civil servants alike had to devise ways in which they could serve the realm and earn a good living, while
spending their personal fortunes on behalf of the queen. By modern standards, some conflict of interest was expected in their execution of duties, like adding a percentage onto a bid to cover their costs, but loyalty was always demanded. Cecil’s and the queen’s answer to the conundrum of how to keep these firebrands under control was to promulgate the sale of patents for sweet wines, alum, tin or copper mining, or salt, or even the sale of royal lands. Probably the most lucrative of these patents, or grants, was the ruling in 1560 that Lord Admiral Clinton (and his successors), in adjudicating cases of piracy as well as complaints against holders of legitimate letters of marque, or letters of reprisal, would henceforth be entitled by law to a one-third interest in goods taken from the pirate or legitimate adventurer.
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