Under the Bloody Flag (18 page)

The early years of the Elizabethan regime thus experienced the spread of small-scale, organized piracy around the British Isles. In dealing with the problem, the Queen and her council resorted to expediency and past practice, notably in the pardon of pirates for public service. This may have been partly intended to demonstrate the power and authority of monarchy, sometimes in a deliberately dramatic and terrifying way. Machyn, for example, recorded the trial of a large number of mariners for piracy at the Guildhall in London, at least five of whom were to be executed at Wapping, though one was reprieved as the rope was placed around his neck.
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This dramatic, last-minute action may have been unusual, but it was in accordance with the use of pardons as policy which was encouraged by the active and interventionist policy of the new regime, particularly against Scotland and France. In these circumstances there was both the need and opportunity to employ reformed pirates in the service of the state.

War, privateering and piracy during the 1560s

The widening range of pirates such as Johnson and Phetiplace reveals the way in which small-scale, localized plunder paved the way for longer-range and more ambitious depredation. Although superficially masked by the renewal of Anglo-French hostilities during 1562, the focus for what became a sustained shift into the Atlantic was Spanish trade and shipping. There were times during the 1560s when Spanish ports appeared to be under siege from English pirates and rovers, some of whom began to haunt the Canary Islands in search of richer prey. In the short term the growing clamour in Spain against English plunder disrupted Anglo-Flemish as much as Anglo-Spanish relations. In the longer term it contributed to a lengthening list of grievances, on both sides, that merged with issues concerning access to transatlantic trade. Deteriorating relations with Spain and Portugal paved the way for the emergence of far-reaching, but speculative, oceanic depredation which was linked, at least during its early phase, with aggressive commercial schemes in Guinea.

The war with France led to a revival of organized reprisal venturing, under the guise of which English men-of-war intensified their spoil of Flemish and Iberian shipping, occasionally in partnership with Huguenot adventurers. The outbreak of hostilities was preceded by widespread complaints from merchants against the arrest and seizure of shipping in French ports and at sea. English intervention in the first French war of religion was an opportunistic and unsuccessful attempt to recover Calais. In October 1562 an expedition under the command of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was sent to Newhaven in Normandy, which the Huguenot leadership handed over to the English, in return for their support, until Calais was retaken. But the defeat and defection of the Huguenots isolated the English, and the expedition was forced to withdraw in July 1563. Peace was restored in April 1564. In addition to the military failure, however, the regime struggled to control the unruly activities of men-of-war, which provoked outrage from the Spanish monarchy.

The early months of the conflict were characterized by uncertainty and confusion concerning English aims and activities at sea. In order to maintain the fiction that Elizabeth’s intent was ‘not to make war or use any hostility against the French King or any of his faithful subjects’, the regime made no effort to authorize or encourage the plunder of French trade and shipping.
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Nonetheless, in January 1563 the council authorized the release of twenty-one pirates from the county gaol of Devon, and eight from Pembroke, on condition that they provided sureties to serve under Warwick at Newhaven. Following complaints from the Spanish ambassador and others, the Queen issued a proclamation in February ordering the arrest of any of her subjects who were aiding French rovers or pirates. According to the ambassador, the governor of Newhaven was issuing commissions to the English for the plunder of Catholics, French and Spanish, as the enemies of God. With reports of eighteen French men-of-war sailing under the command of Francois le Clerc, or Timberleg, alongside English ships, and with more being fitted out in south-coast ports, he warned Philip II that Elizabeth ‘was determined to make herself Queen of the Seas’. Several weeks later, in May, he reported alarming rumours that the Queen was involved in a scheme to send out an expedition of five vessels led by the adventurer Thomas Stukely, in association with Jean Ribault, with the purpose of seizing Spanish ships returning from America.
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Towards the end of May 1563 the Queen authorized Lord Cobham, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, to equip vessels to make reprisals on French shipping, but with potentially confusing instructions not to spoil them, but to compile an inventory of their cargoes. Within the Channel, however, English men-of-war seized the opportunity to use Newhaven as a base for sweeping raids along the coast towards Dieppe. During June, John Bryan, one of Warwick’s servants, captured twenty-three Norman and Breton vessels which were brought into Newhaven. More prizes were taken and brought in by other adventurers, including John Appelyard. The Queen tried to limit the disorder at sea, while preventing her subjects from aiding the Huguenots. In July an order by the French monarchy, justifying the capture of English vessels, persuaded her to authorize the seizure of French ships. Within weeks, however, it was qualified by another proclamation against the illegal depredation of the French which was linked with the growth of piracy and robbery along the Thames. Nevertheless, men-of-war remained active in the Channel and the Irish Sea. They included a warship sent out by Sir Thomas Stanley, lieutenant of the Isle of Man, with the support of a group of Chester merchants. In September Stanley’s ship seized a French prize, laden with woad, which was brought into Liverpool, to the accompaniment of a ‘noble peal of gones, thick, thick, une upon an other’, the like of which, it was reported, had never been heard before.
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Much of the initial uncertainty over the war at sea reflected the concern of the Queen and members of her council to prevent the piratical spoil of Flemish and Spanish shipping. In response to complaints from the Duchess of Parma, the Spanish regent in the Low Countries, in September 1563 the Queen ordered the captains of naval vessels and private ships-of-war to allow the subjects of the King of Spain to trade and fish freely. Furthermore, if Flemish or Spanish ships were attacked by French men-of-war, they were commanded to aid and defend them, as if they belonged to her natural subjects.
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Royal commands did little to stop attacks on Spanish or Flemish vessels, which were justified by claims that they were carrying goods either for or to the enemy. Such claims raised bitterly contested issues regarding neutral rights during wartime which were ill-defined, and subject to strategic and political considerations as much as to a rudimentary code of international law. Efforts to clarify these issues were undermined by the disorderly and piratical behaviour of men-of-war. In February 1563, for example, a Flemish merchant complained of the plunder of a French ship at Bordeaux, laden with wine and feathers, by an English vessel. The Flemish merchant had freighted the French ship, the master of which was able to demonstrate that its cargo belonged to subjects of the King of Spain. Nonetheless, the prize was brought into Tenby, where the wine was sold for £8 per tun. This kind of irregular plunder provoked angry demands for restitution, exposing the limited administrative and regulatory authority of the High Court of Admiralty.
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Disorderly privateering in the Channel and off the coast of Spain soon became confused with piratical activity. Both drew on anti-Spanish hostility, damaging the interests of English merchants in Spain, who faced the prospect of retaliation and reprisal. In June 1563 Hugh Tipton, the English agent in Seville, reported a recent attack by two small vessels on a Spanish ship returning from Puerto Rico, off Cape St Vincent. The rovers, who the Spanish claimed were English, ‘for that they shot so many arrows that they were not able to look out’, plundered the ship of 3,000 coin pieces, ten chests of sugar and 200 hides, as well as its ordnance, cables and anchors. Concerned that English property in Seville would be arrested if the plunder persisted, Tipton informed Spanish officials that the rovers were ‘Scots and Frenchmen, and some Englishmen amongst them, a sort of thieves gathered to go a robbing’.
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Attacks on Spanish shipping by the English increased during the year. By December 1563 Philip II remonstrated that the spoil of his subjects had reached an intolerable level. According to complaints from Bilbao, within the previous three months English rovers had captured four French prizes laden with Spanish goods, valued at 49,000 ducats, in addition to the seizure of a Spanish vessel in Santander by Phetiplace. A vessel of Bilbao, laden with wool for Flanders, was also spoiled by five English men-of-war off Ushant. Three or four of the crew, including a friar, were killed during the skirmish. The violence at sea spread further south. Tipton reported an incident off Gibraltar in November, when an English vessel attacked a French ship, with loss of life on both sides, which had serious diplomatic repercussions. The English vessel was one of eight trading ships which were ready to depart from Spain laden with wines, raisins, almonds and other commodities. The attack on the French ship was defended as a legitimate act of war. For the Spanish, however, it appeared to be another example of English piracy which was increasingly threatening their trade with America. Consequently, they claimed that all eight vessels were corsairs who had spoiled ships returning from the Indies. Soon after the attack, they were seized by galleys sent out from Cadiz. While the French ship was left unmolested, the Spanish ‘took the English banners and hanged them out at the stern of the galleys, dragging them along in the water, as though they had taken their enemies’.
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At the end of the year several hundred English mariners were reported to be prisoners of the Spanish, shackled aboard galleys, subsisting on a diet of bread and water.

The incident off Gibraltar seemed to confirm the fears of Sir Thomas Challoner ‘that the licentiousness of a few adventurers will be the cause that a number of honest merchants shall be undone’. The arrest of the English ships, and the accusation of piracy, fuelled Anglo-Spanish hostility. The English insisted that the ships were peaceful traders, blaming the French for the clash off Gibraltar. It was not until June 1564 that Philip II ordered the release of the English ships, while thirty mariners remained in captivity at least until August.
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Despite Challoner’s comments, the spread of English depredation along the coast of Spain could not easily be explained away as the ‘licentiousness of a few adventurers’. In particular, an increasing number of English men-of-war, which haunted the Bay of Biscay in search of French prizes, resorted to the plunder of Spanish and other vessels. An English trader in Bilbao reported early in 1564 that there were twenty-five English vessels off the coast of northern Spain, some of which were compelled by contrary winds to bring their French prizes into the Spanish port, where they were arrested on suspicion of piracy. Although English prisoners were reportedly dying daily, the Spanish ‘will not let them be buried but abroad in islands’.
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Among those involved in the plunder of the Spanish was Thomas Cobham, the brother of Lord Cobham who was a member of the Queen’s council. During the latter part of 1563 Cobham was cruising in the Bay of Biscay with three men-of-war, plundering Spanish vessels returning from Flanders. Following his seizure of one vessel, laden with goods valued at 80,000 ducats which were carried off to Waterford, officials in Bilbao and neighbouring ports arrested all English vessels on the coast. The activities of rovers such as Cobham and Stukely, who was involved in a midnight attack on a Portuguese ship in Bayonne during which three of the crew were killed, provoked a furious response from the Spanish. Anger at being attacked ‘as if they were mortal enemies’ was inflamed by religious hostility. In March 1564 John Cuerton, an English trader resident in Bilbao, reported a growing feeling among Spanish victims ‘that what hurt they do to Englishmen they get to Heaven by it’.
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In these circumstances the difficulties facing English seafarers in Spain seemed to multiply. Oliver Harris and other seamen were arrested and imprisoned in irons at Tolosa, following accusations that they were members of Phetiplace’s company. After eight months in prison, during which half of the prisoners died, while the survivors were abused and abhorred as Turks, Harris managed to contact Cecil, begging for assistance. Although they denied the charges of piracy, Harris and four others were sentenced to death.

In February 1564 the Queen tried to curtail the plunder of Spanish and Flemish shipping by proclamation. While claiming that some Spanish ships were carrying French goods, the decree acknowledged that English men-of-war had been too aggressive in searching the vessels of the subjects of the King of Spain for contraband. Accordingly the Queen appointed commissioners to hear and determine complaints of unlawful plunder, while providing rapid redress for the victims. At the same time, the proclamation openly recognized the difficulty in trying to prevent future attacks on the Spanish or Flemings, because of the number of armed vessels at sea and ‘specially considering the daily coloring of the French wares by the said King’s subjects’. As a result, officials in England and Ireland were ordered to apprehend anybody who was suspected of attacking the subjects of Philip II. If local officers failed to arrest such suspects, they faced punishment ‘as abettors to the offenders’. The owners, captains or masters of men-of-war were also instructed to provide sureties for the compensation of the victims of the plunder of Spanish ships or the vessels of friendly rulers. In response to recent complaints, men-of-war were instructed to be particularly careful in their conduct towards Scottish subjects.
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