Under the Bloody Flag (39 page)

The Foreland, Studland Bay, Dorset. Possibly the site for the execution of John Piers in 1582, who was hanged in chains on the order of the Privy Council. Piers was a particularly violent character. He had already been captured twice before, but on the first occasion he was freed by the mayor of Rye, while on the second he escaped from the gaol in Dorchester. (Author’s collection)

Although there was a tendency to idealize piracy during these years, it remained a dangerous criminal activity in which intimidation, violence or murder were never far removed. Captain Clarke and his company seized a Dutch ship which was carried off to a remote part of the coast of Northumberland, where the master was persuaded into buying back his vessel and its cargo. If he refused to sign a bill of sale, Clarke threatened to hang him from the yard arm of his own ship.
¹⁰¹
Some pirates developed a pattern of pathological behaviour which passed from sea to shore. John Piers reputedly killed four French mariners with his dagger. Described as a ‘crewell mortherer and a bloody varlet … [who] dowthe seeke nothinge mor but to embrace his hands in the bloud of strangers’, he had allegedly been twice pardoned for similar offences.
¹⁰²
During the course of a visit to the Isle of Wight in 1581, he attacked and raped the daughter of a local man.

At times the behaviour of pirate leaders indirectly challenged the authority and jurisdiction of the regime. Purser was captured and executed before he was able to carry out his threat of supporting Desmond’s rebellion. Nonetheless, it was a defiant statement and an alternative to the supposed patriotism of Callice and others. The executions of Purser and Clinton, who were hanged at Wapping with seven other pirates during 1583, furnished an opportunity for both men to indulge in a theatrical display that seemed to mock the pretensions of the wealthy in a way that reaffirmed community with their followers. According to John Stow’s subsequent description, the pirates were richly dressed for the occasion. Clinton wore velvet and gold lace. Purser’s attire included ‘venetian breeches of crimosin taffata’ which he cut up and distributed ‘to such [of] his old acquaintance as stood about him’.
¹⁰³
Purser’s conduct contained real and symbolic messages for the audience. His unwillingness to play the part expected of him, to the apparent disapproval of Stow, suggested a defiance that reflected a deeper ambivalence about piracy as a crime. These ambiguities were appropriated and exploited by ballad writers and dramatists. Thus the execution of Purser and Clinton was followed by the publication of at least three ballads, though the text of just one has survived. While serving as a means to portray the penitence and alleged patriotism of the pirates, unintentionally such material laid bare conflicted loyalties, in the process of trying to explain their aberrant behaviour.
¹⁰⁴

The ambiguities of local piracy were carried over into more ambitious venturing into the Atlantic, under the uncertain legality of commissions issued by Don Antonio. The cause of the Portuguese pretender enabled enterprising English adventurers, including Drake and Hawkins, to promote predatory ventures against Iberian trade and shipping. The deterioration in Anglo-Spanish relations pointed in a similar direction. On Christmas Day 1584 Ralph Lane, a military adventurer who was closely associated with Walter Ralegh, requested a commission from the Queen to lead an expedition of seven ships to the coast of Spain. Although Elizabeth remained reluctant to sanction open hostility towards Spain, the availability of licences from Don Antonio authorized voyages of plunder which drew on the experience and resources of the pirate fraternity. During the latter part of 1584 William Fenner of Chichester and his uncle, Edward, set out with their ship, the
Galleon Fenner
, to serve against Spain under his authority. The Fenners sailed with a company of about seventy men, with Callice as their lieutenant. William Fenner’s account of the voyage, though intended to clear him of charges of piracy, indicated that this was a disorderly venture during which French and other shipping were plundered on the grounds that they were trading with Spain and Portugal or carrying Iberian goods.
¹⁰⁵

Sailing along the coast of Spain, the
Galleon
Fenner
encountered five French ships, all but one of which were plundered of provisions, ordnance, canvas and cloth. The English also seized a vessel of about 400 or 500 tons of Lübeck, carrying timber, copper, wax and other commodities for Spain. Its plunder was justified by Fenner on the dubious grounds of providing compensation for damages ‘susteyned in fight’.
¹⁰⁶
Thereafter the English were chased by two French men-of-war. During the ensuing skirmish one of the vessels was taken. It was laden with plunder from the Portuguese and English, including 100 chests of sugar. As was customary Fenner placed some of his company, under the command of Callice, aboard the French prize. This was followed by the seizure of a Portuguese ship laden with sugar and spices.

As the weather grew increasingly stormy Fenner decided to return for England. During the homeward voyage the
Galleon
Fenner
and its prizes were separated. Evidently Callice, whose vessel was forced into Ireland, was arrested on the orders of the Lord Deputy, while the Portuguese prize was captured by the pirate William Wise, and taken to Wales. Much of the remaining plunder was used to purchase provisions in Ireland, distributed among the company or given away as gifts to Fenner’s family and friends. When the ship was arrested in March 1585, on orders from London, only twenty-two chests of sugar remained. In seeking to justify his conduct at sea, Fenner insisted that he had only seized Spanish or Portuguese goods, except necessary provisions and victuals. He hoped, therefore, ‘that he hath not broken the lymitts of his commission or incurred the daunger of her Majesty’s lawes’.
¹⁰⁷

By the early 1580s the Elizabethan regime appeared to have lost its campaign against piracy. Essentially this was due to the varied and intractable nature of the problem. In the waters around the British Isles pirates exposed serious limitations in the naval resources of the regime, while on land they challenged its policing and regulatory powers. The prevalence of sympathetic attitudes towards piracy, and a growing awareness that it was often related to the uncertain and irregular work cycles of the seafaring population, undermined the response of the regime which, in any case, was divided in its willingness to sponsor ambitious schemes for oceanic depredation. For the early propagandists of empire, indeed, the remedy lay in the employment of seamen in the cause of overseas expansion. In 1584 Hakluyt tried to advance English colonization in North America by claiming that longer, transatlantic voyages would prevent poor and idle mariners from falling into piracy. It was an appealing suggestion. Before it could be put to the test effectively, however, conflict between England and Spain had broken out. The war at sea which followed soon provided alternative employment for large numbers of seafarers, including pirates and other rovers.

Notes

  
1.
  
CSPF 1585
–
86
, pp. 409, 411–2.

  
2.
  SP 12/103/61; 12/75/19; 12/135/11–12, 28–33. On good fellowship, Robin Hood and the spread and use of stories see J.C. Holt,
Robin Hood
(London, 1982), pp. 38–9, 140–2, 147 and A.J. Pollard,
Imagining Robin Hood: Late
–
Medieval Stories in Historical Context
(London, 2004), pp. 206–22. For a vivid overview of piracy during the 1570s see Williams,
The Sea Dogs
, pp. 152–65.

  
3.
  These estimates should be interpreted cautiously. They are based on a wide range of evidence which is used in this chapter. Evidently more than 900 men were tried for piracy during 1578, though only three were executed, Williams,
The Sea Dogs
, p. 150. For the later period see M. Rediker,
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo
–
American Maritime World, 1700
–
1750
(Cambridge, 1987), pp. 256–7.

  
4.
  
CSPD Addenda 1566
–
79
, p. 563;
CSPI 1574
–
85
, p. 157.

  
5.
  H. Doh (ed.),
A Critical Edition of Fortune by Land and Sea by Thomas Heywood and William Rowley
(New York, 1980), pp. 225, 277 (for the jubilee). D. Mathew,
The Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe
(London, 1933), pp. 296–304 for the links between England, Wales and Ireland. For evidence of richer pickings from piracy see Scammell, ‘Shipowning in the Economy and Politics of Early Modern England’, pp. 401–2.

  
6.
  
APC 1576
–
77
, pp. 73–4, 89, 127–30; C. L’Estrange Ewen,
The Golden Chalice: A Documented Narrative of an Elizabethan Pirate
(Paignton, 1939); HCA 1/40, ff. 22–5.

  
7.
  
APC 1576
–
77
, pp. 209, 219, 240, 267–8, 293–4; HCA 13/21, ff. 29v–30.

  
8.
  
APC 1576
–
77
, pp. 337, 351, 357, 365;
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 57–8, 106, 146;
CSPF 1577
–
78
, p. 275; HCA 1/40, ff. 17–20.

  
9.
  
CPR 1575
–
78
, p. 537; Bain et al. (eds.),
Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland
, V, p. 308. On Gilbert see
NAW
, III, pp. 181–257.

10.
  SP 15/25/60, I–III.

11.
  And for the rest of the paragraph SP 15/25/60, III.

12.
  SP 15/25/60, II; SP 12/135/167; HCA 1/40, f. 36v;
APC 1575
–
77
, p. 357;
APC 1578
–
80
, pp. 300–1.

13.
  Andrews,
Trade, Plunder and Settlement
, pp. 188–9; D.B. Quinn,
England and the Discovery of America, 1481
–
1620
(London, 1974)
,
pp. 248–51 on Fernandes. D.B. Quinn (ed.),
The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert
, 2 vols. (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 83 & 84, 1938–39), I, pp. 33–46, 198, 201–4, 222–3.

14.
  
CSPF 1579
–
80
, p. 67; Quinn (ed.),
Voyages
, I, pp. 225–9; II, pp. 498–509. A plan c. 1580 for taking control of the Straits of Magellan envisaged using Clarke, the pirate. E.P. Cheyney,
A History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth
, 2 vols. (London, 1914–26, repr. New York, 1948), I, p. 430.

15.
  Bain et al. (eds.),
Calendar of the State Papers relating to
Scotland,
V, p. 449;
CSPF 1582
, p. 130;
CSPF 1584
–
85
, p. 522;
CSPF 1585
–
86
, pp. 3–4.

16.
  E.S. Donno (ed.),
An Elizabethan in 1582: The Diary of Richard Madox, Fellow of All Souls
(Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 147, 1976), p. 192; Rowse,
Tudor Cornwall
, pp. 390–2.

17.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 48–9.

18.
  
APC 1575
–
77
, p. 377;
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 18, 33, 36–7, 71, 141; SP 12/135/83, 89.

19.
  
CSPI 1574
–
85
, pp. 130, 150, 162, 167–9;
Calendar
, pp. 41–3.

20.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, p. 14; HCA 13/23, ff. 239–9v.

21.
  SP 15/25/54, I. Other pirates were active along the east coast of Yorkshire,
CPR 1575
–
78
, p. 429.

22.
  SP 15/25/54, 1; SP 12/135/15. BL, Additional MS 12505, f. 352.

23.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 28, 36–7, 156, 260;
HMC Salisbury
, II, p. 150; SP 12/135/28–33.

24.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 26–7, 89–90, 102;
APC 1578
–
80
, pp. 65, 68–9, 90–1; SP 12/135/20.

25.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 22, 156.

26.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 59, 221, 263, 271, 273, 276, 279;
APC 1578
–
80
, p. 109.

27.
  Bain et al. (eds.),
Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland,
V, pp. 375–6;
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 193–4, 277–80.

28.
  
APC 1577
–
78
, pp. 318, 332, 361–2, 429.

29.
  SP 12/122/6; Williams,
Tudor Regime
, pp. 245–6; A. Hassell Smith et al. (eds.)
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey
(Norwich, 1979), pp. 229–30, 247–8; A. L. Rowse,
Sir Richard Grenville of the ‘Revenge’
(London, 1937), pp. 146–7, 165–8.

30.
  SP 12/123/24, 38, 40.

31.
  SP 12/122/59; Hassell Smith et al. (eds.),
Papers
, pp. 267–8, 271.

32.
  SP 12/123/44.

33.
  O. Ogle (ed.),
Copy
–
Book of Sir Amias Paulet’s Letters Written during his Embassy to France
(Roxburghe Club, London, 1866), p. 82;
CSPF 1577
–
78
, pp. 468, 517–20.

34.
  Ogle (ed.),
Copy
–
Book
, pp. 83, 94–5, 137, 213. For Bristol losses see Vanes (ed.),
Overseas Trade of Bristol
, p. 113.