Under the Bloody Flag (34 page)

Nonetheless, across the maritime counties, during 1578 and 1579 commissioners met to discharge their duties. They provided the council with variable information, inadvertently revealing weaknesses in the regime’s effort to suppress piracy. While officials in some areas put together extensive reports of piratical activity, with detailed lists of local supporters, others provided brief and unrevealing summaries. Given the nature of the problem they were dealing with, commissioners and their deputies were occasionally in danger of being identified as the unwelcome agents of an intrusive regime, whose legal authority was questionable. Thus in December 1577 Lord Thomas Howard reported that the mayor and other officials in Poole refused to cooperate with the commissioners in Dorset. The latter requested greater power to deal with such intransigence, but they faced more difficulties in other parts of the county as a result of local collusion and connivance with pirates. In January 1578 one member of the commission warned Walsingham that:

as longe as some be comyssioners wee shall doe but smale good about Lullworthe side where all pirates doe resorte, specially bycause wee have no aucthoritie to swere anye other but suche as be our deputies, and such as shalbe of the jurye, and manye there be that are to be examined, and oughte to be examined by force of an othe or else they will saye nothinge... . [Furthermore] there is suche cunynge & fyne devises used that suche persons as wee send for and woulde have them to be our deputies about Lullworthe ether they must be sycke, ether from home at London or Exeter, or taken some falle that they cannot, maye not or dare not come before us to do there duties.
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The situation in south Wales, especially in and around Cardiff, underlined the problems facing the regime in orchestrating its campaign against piracy. Concerned at the way in which Callice almost flaunted his presence in the town and the surrounding region, the council made several unsuccessful efforts to arrest him. During November and December 1576 an Admiralty officer, James Crofts, pursued the pirate and his company across south-west England and Wales. In Cardiff he heard of two prizes off Penarth, one of which had been taken by Callice. But the local inhabitants refused to assist Crofts in the capture of the pirates, ‘althoughe’, he reported, ‘in speche every sorte of people colde saie, it were well donne to take them’.
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Crofts also complained that the townsmen of Cardiff and local gentlemen bought plundered goods off Callice and his accomplices.

While he was at Cardiff, Callice’s prize was taken to Newport by servants of Sir William Morgan, the Vice Admiral of Monmouthshire. Crofts’ attempt to arrest it was rebuffed by Morgan’s deputy, William Morgan, with the statement that ‘he did not care for the commission, nor me’.
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Unable to get assistance from the local justices, who were unwilling to interfere in the affairs of the Vice Admiral, Crofts was forced to leave Cardiff after four days, during which time goods from the prize were ‘verey disorderlie conveyed away … by daie and night in lighters and botes, to places unknowen’, while the captive crew ‘lamentablie cried for aide & relief’. The most significant result of Crofts’ visit may have been the compilation of a lengthy list identifying the purchasers of Callice’s plunder, with the names of the brewers and victuallers who supplied him with provisions.

In the aftermath of Crofts’ failed attempt to arrest Callice, Sir John Perrot, one of the leading landowners and officials in south-west Wales, was forced to defend himself against allegations that he was a maintainer of pirates. During February 1577 he advised the council to take strong action against the inhabitants of Cardiff and the county of Glamorganshire on the grounds that they harboured the receivers of pirate booty. According to Perrot, support for piracy was part of a wider problem concerning the growth of violence and disorder among local inhabitants who ‘are become a warr lyke people for thear ys not almost one that goeth to the plowe amongst them, but he ys armed and weaponed’. It was, he added, an ‘ill example by their doings bothe by sea and lande’.
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In a further attempt to deal with such disorder, on the orders of the council in London, the Council in the Marches appointed Fabyan Phillips, Thomas Lewis and Perrot to investigate suspected pirates and their supporters in Cardiff. Phillips and Lewis were forced to proceed without Perrot, ‘by reason of infirmities as it seemeth by his letteres of excuse’.
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They examined at least sixty people, acquiring the names of a large number of pirates who were lodged in the town, and from whom the inhabitants had received much of their plunder. Local people were acutely aware of the discredit that the pirates brought to the town. Indeed, traders and others travelling overseas ‘dare not well be knowen or to avowe the place of theyr dwelling at Cardiff’. Even so, the inhabitants refused to cooperate with the investigation, in some cases because of fear or intimidation. Thus Phillips and Lewis complained that ‘they have taken a generall rule, that they wooll neyther accuse one another, nor yet answer to any matter that toucheth them selfes upon othes’.
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Faced with similar intransigence from one of the captured pirates, William Chick, the two officials handed him over to the council, in the hope that a spell of confinement in manacles would make him talk.

Although some of the chief suspects accused of receiving pirate goods, including one of the customs officials, David Roberts, had left town following their arrival, Phillips and Lewis continued to gather evidence during 1577. They bound five men, including William Herbert and John ap John, to appear before the council at the end of April, but there is no indication that they appeared on the required day. In January 1578 six men of Cardiff were examined at Hampton Court, before the judge of the High Court of Admiralty and two other officials, when they confessed to receiving goods and gifts from pirates or to supplying them with provisions. John ap John admitted ‘that he kept company with pirates in the town of Cardiff, as generally all men there did’.
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Five others, including Roberts, who failed to appear, were sent for. They included John Thomas, who was accused of providing bail for Court Hellebourg, though he denied the charge, claiming that somebody else had used his name without his knowledge. Most of those who appeared before the judge were fined £10, though two men were punished with fines of £200.

Community support for piracy was widespread in many other parts of England and Wales. In character it ranged from chance contact and barter to regular relations and commercialized exchange. Organized criminal activity on this scale and extent was impossible to prevent without local assistance and knowledge. Even with such support, there were serious difficulties in gathering and interpreting evidence against pirates, as demonstrated by the situation in Cardiff. Without a confession from pirates or their supporters, investigators were forced to rely on information from informers or on anecdotal allegations which were self-interested, partial and often coloured by local rivalries or personal animosities. One way of dealing with these difficulties, which the council appeared to resort to occasionally, was the threat or use of torture, which included the racking of pirates.

In these circumstances perhaps the best the regime could hope for was to deter the supporters of piracy ashore, while seeking to contain its spread at sea. But this called for a level of surveillance and policing which placed heavy, if not insupportable, demands on local officials. It was also dependent on maintaining a regular system of naval patrolling that may have been beyond the resources or capability of the regime. While the collection of fines may have helped to deter the supporters of pirates, and to provide compensation for their victims, this rested on their punitive impact which in some cases may have been insufficient. The evidence against John ap John of Cardiff suggested that he made £40 from dealing with Callice, though he appears to have been fined £10 by the council.
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Yet the regime met with some success, even if its campaign to suppress piracy was short lived and unsuccessful. Greater vigilance on the part of local officials, under the supervision of the council, led to more arrests. In February 1577 Perrot informed the council that he had arrested six pirates belonging to the companies of Callice, Hicks and Herbert. Several months later Callice was captured on the Isle of Wight. The following year Hicks was apprehended in Ireland and executed. Along the east coast Thomas Hitchcock was taken in or near Yarmouth, while Richard Scarborough was arrested in Lincolnshire. About the same time Philip Boyt, notorious for his plunder of a Spanish ship in the Straits of Malaga, was under arrest, though reports of his execution were premature. In obscure circumstances Boyt was reprieved, but in July 1580 the council was ‘informed there is great misliking conceaved’ against a stay of execution.
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As a result it ordered Boyt’s trial and execution, with several other pirates.

Under such conditions there was little reduction in the scale of pirate activity during the later 1570s. Nor was there any let up in the burden of business on the council, which included a variety of matters concerning piracy and depredation. In January 1579 it dealt with complaints concerning the plunder of vessels from the Low Countries off the coast of Kent by English pirates. Thereafter it handled cases concerning the spoil of French, Spanish and Scottish shipping, while trying to restore plundered goods which were brought into such scattered ports as Winchilsea and Waterford, as well as the Isle of Wight and in south-west England and south Wales. In addition it investigated allegations from the merchants of the Steelyard against pirates, issuing orders for the restitution of goods taken by Richard Scarborough which were brought into Grimsby, while dealing with a warning that another pirate, Captain Wilson, was lying in wait for their ships off Margate. It also faced repeated complaints against Henry Seckford, whose vessels were engaged in wide-ranging spoil during these years. A court official, trader and shipowner, Seckford survived several allegations of piracy; after 1585 his vessels were engaged in disorderly privateering.
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An increasing volume of business that came to the attention of the council concerned the business of receiving and dealing in the plunder of pirates. Early in 1579 it ordered the arrest of suspected supporters of pirates in Boston. Several weeks later it charged Thomas More of Gorleston, near Yarmouth, with handling goods from pirates. Faced with the refusal of some offenders to pay fines, it was forced to introduce more effective procedures for dealing with the recalcitrant. Bonds for the payment of fines were taken in Devon and Cornwall. But in March the collector of fines in Cornwall was admonished for the delay in paying in fines into the Exchequer. The difficulties in imposing financial penalties were revealed by the case of a group of men, accused of involvement in piracy, who were pardoned but unable to pay their fines because of poverty. Instead they were ordered to serve on a voyage to Iceland. Thereafter the council faced a steady stream of business dealing with the plunder and disposal of goods by pirates, which could only have raised doubts about the effectiveness of the piracy commissioners in some parts of the country.
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By 1580 the Elizabethan regime was struggling to contain the spread of piracy around the coasts of England, Wales and Ireland. Repeated attempts to eradicate it only revealed how deep seated and extensive the problem had become. While a growing band of pirate captains flourished in the local waters of the British Isles, a smaller number of resourceful and ambitious leaders, such as Callice, were also ranging into the Atlantic and beginning to enter the Mediterranean in search of richer prey. All too often the regime was left in the position of reacting to reports and complaints of piratical activity, while remaining dependent on inefficient or corrupt officials whose failings were strikingly exposed by the ease with which pirates either evaded capture or escaped from custody. Even when pirates were apprehended and executed, they were readily replaced by new recruits. Indeed, piracy was given renewed vigour by the cultivation of a new generation of leaders. Clinton Atkinson, a member of Boyt’s company who entered the Mediterranean in 1578, soon earned notoriety as a pirate captain. Although he was apprehended and imprisoned in Exeter gaol, during the summer of 1580 he managed to escape.

Underlying much of this piratical enterprise there was a widespread degree of complicity, which was reinforced by a vague patriotic impulse that pirates were attacking real or potential enemies of the realm. In May 1580 Philip Boyt defended his seizure of a Spanish ship by claiming to be under the apprehension that war was declared between England and Spain.
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Although Boyt’s defence was unsuccessful, the prospect of a war of plunder against Spain moved a step closer following the dramatic return of Drake, later in the year, with a rich haul of Spanish booty, after an absence of nearly three years during which he had circumnavigated the globe.

Oceanic plunder and schemes for overseas expansion

Drake’s voyage was a landmark in the development of English depredation. Though it grew out of a dense background of organized, but highly localized petty marauding, it dramatically illuminated the oceanic capability of predatory enterprise. Characteristically it proceeded in highly ambiguous circumstances. Despite the regime’s resolute response to piracy during the later 1570s, the Queen and some of her ministers covertly supported Drake’s venture, though more as a speculative adventure than a strategic design. At the same time, the emergence of oceanic depredation was driven by anti-Spanish hostility which appeared to be capable of initiating a private or surrogate war of plunder against Spain’s far-flung empire. Political and religious rivalries with Spain, inflamed by fear and aggression, were intensified by Philip II’s acquisition of Portugal and its seaborne empire during 1580. The pretender to the Portuguese throne, Don Antonio, who travelled between England and France in search of support for his cause, served as a figurehead for a varied group of adventurers, including Drake, who were determined to promote aggressive action against Spain in the Atlantic. These hostile ambitions helped to focus attention on the strategic potential of North American settlement. Under these conditions during the early 1580s, the interweaving between piracy, privateering and transatlantic expansion appeared to be laying the basis for a national assault on Spain and its empire.