Under the Bloody Flag (46 page)

Piracy was confused with the spoil and pillage of foreign shipping. Along the east coast groups of pirates attacked Scottish and other overseas vessels, provoking repeated complaints. According to the Deputy Vice Admiral for Yorkshire, most of the members of one group, who ‘have reigned too long upon that poor coast’, were fugitives.
⁶⁶
Under Francis Concette, captain of the
Doe
of London of 50 tons, in October 1586 they plundered a vessel off Flamborough Head, of furs, stockings, silk lace, pearls, as well as 500 or 600 dollars and fourteen pieces of gold. Most of the booty ended up in the hands of William Concette, a yeoman of Hilderthorpe further south along the coast, who was the only member of the group ‘of ability to make satisfaction’ to the victims.

At the same time the council heard a growing number of cases and complaints against the activities of other pirates and rovers. During 1587 it was informed that Melchior Strangewich and Fox piratically seized a Danish ship which was brought into Helford, where the cargo was sold. Another Danish vessel was taken by John Mers, a rover who was sent out by Sir Walter Leveson, the Deputy Vice Admiral of north Wales. Mers, who boldly took the prize in a Danish harbour, was also involved in the spoil of Dutch fishermen in the North Sea. The Dutch subsequently complained that he and his associates spoiled three fishing boats off the Scottish coast, plundering them of goods valued at £2,850; furthermore, some of the fishermen were ‘murdered and buried in the sands near the Isle of Wight, “not as Christians, but as dogs”’.
⁶⁷
About the same time Lawrence and Thomas Dutton, set forth by their father, John Dutton of Dutton Hall in Cheshire, piratically spoiled a French vessel.

The council acted promptly to deal with these and other complaints, partly out of concern at the prospect of overseas retaliation. A servant of Edward Seymour, who purchased Danish goods in Helford, was summoned to London, while his master was ordered to compensate the Danes for their losses. Dutton and Leveson were also instructed to appear before the council. The registers of council meetings demonstrate its concern to deal with the disorder at sea, and its determination to support the legitimate complaints of neutral traders against unruly English men-of-war and pirates. Yet there were limits to what the council could achieve. Josias Calmady, a gentleman who sent out Diggory Piper, claimed that he was too poor to answer a bond for good behaviour. Piper was also acquitted of piracy by two juries. Although Strangewich was captured during 1587, two years later the council was investigating his escape from custody in Dorset. In some cases attempts to deal with these and other problems were threatened by long-standing claims to Admiralty jurisdiction in ports such as Southampton and Newcastle. In November 1589 the judge of the High Court of Admiralty, Sir Julius Caesar, put forward a novel plan for a yearly circuit to try matters of piracy, which might have resolved these issues, but little came of it.
⁶⁸

The Armada campaign appears to have brought a brief respite to the disorder at sea, though it did not disappear. In April 1588 Margaret Johnson petitioned for the recovery of a vessel which was taken by a group of pirates, who killed her husband. The following month William Pitts robbed a vessel off Hilbre Island bound for Dublin. During August the Lord Admiral informed Burghley of his capture of a pirate in the west. When ‘charged … with his piracies, he cursed, and said he had dealt against none but Frenchmen; and he said he was forced to it, for he had complained two years together of his losses by Frenchmen’.
⁶⁹
Several French vessels had recently been taken by other pirates, including a group led by Robert Smyth, and their cargoes of wine sold in Galway and Kinsale. In response, during September the council authorized two merchants of Bristol to send out ships to apprehend pirates and recover French goods. Later in the year another French ship was taken and brought into Helford by Captain Harwell, and its cargo of corn sold. In December the council appointed commissioners to assist in the search for pirate plunder, partly in response to reviving French and Danish complaints.
⁷⁰

Hilbre Island, Cheshire. Though the island can be reached by foot at low tide today, it was occasionally frequented by pirates and rovers during the sixteenth century, who preyed on the trade of Chester and Liverpool. (Author’s collection)

The Dee estuary, Cheshire. Pirates and rovers were attracted to the region by the trade of Chester across the Irish Sea. They ranged across the coast of north Wales, to Holyhead and beyond. (Author’s collection)

The failure of the Armada was followed by a resurgence of English depredation, as adventurers sought to take advantage of Spanish weakness. The war of reprisals reached a new level of intensity, throwing into relief the confusion between lawful plunder, disorderly spoil and piracy. Men-of-war of varying legality crowded the coasts of Spain and Portugal. In January 1589 Venetian vessels were reportedly afraid to leave Lisbon, for fear of capture by English pirates. Later in the year rovers were swarming off the islands of the Azores, preying particularly upon vulnerable Portuguese ships returning from Brazil. In addition the Channel and western approaches continued to attract a large number of seaborne raiders of varied backgrounds, who attacked local and coastal traffic while lying in wait for the return of fishing vessels from Newfoundland.
⁷¹

Attempts by the regime to justify the seizure of foreign ships failed to convince or appease most neutral traders. Responding to the Armada as an act of open war, later in 1588 Elizabeth warned the merchants of Hamburg that she would not allow them or other members of the Hanseatic ports to carry gunpowder, provisions or ordnance and other weapons to her enemies. At the same time the regime’s efforts to clarify and regulate the sea war, by prohibiting attacks on French, Scottish and other friendly vessels, and through the issue of a revised list of prohibited goods in 1592, met with little success. Indeed, as the council continued to be inundated with overseas complaints, during the 1590s there was a real danger that the rising tide of disorder and piratical activity would overshadow, if not discredit the legitimacy of the war at sea.
⁷²

French shipping remained the most common target for unruly English men-of-war and pirates, though the seizure of Danish vessels continued to provoke controversy and complaint. French prizes were regularly taken during 1589 and beyond. In June and July the council heard complaints concerning the seizure of a vessel bound for Spain with grain and munitions by Captain Thomas Maye, who was sailing with a commission from the King of Navarre, and of the plunder of a cargo of wines claimed by a merchant of La Rochelle. In August Sir Walter Ralegh and one of his captains, John Chidley, were ordered to restore two vessels of Cherbourg. The issue of letters of reprisal against the Catholic League in France provided a coating of legality for some of this spoil. For many French merchants and shipowners, however, English activity was essentially piratical in nature, which was aggravated by lengthy legal suits for the recovery of ships and cargoes. In an attempt to limit the damage, during 1591 the French ambassador requested that English men-of-war should be prohibited from attacking French vessels without a new commission from the Lord Admiral and himself, ‘on pain of being treated as pirates and having their ships confiscated’.
⁷³
Under prevailing conditions, it had little chance of being accepted.

The vulnerability of French vessels remained an irresistible temptation for disorderly reprisal ships and pirates. In October 1591 the Princess of Navarre complained to the Queen and Burghley about the seizure of a vessel, carrying her passport, which was returning from North America with a cargo of fish, oil and a large quantity of rich furs. In June 1592 the port of Bayonne claimed to have suffered losses to English pirates of at least 50,000 crowns. Despite the French King’s threat to issue letters of reprisal to the victims, a few months later at least twenty warships were reported to be cruising between the Scilly Isles and Ushant, waiting to intercept fishing vessels returning from Newfoundland to Bayonne and other ports.
⁷⁴

Attacks on Danish and Dutch vessels also led to angry and persistent complaints. In both cases, the response of the regime was influenced by wider political and strategic interests affecting the common cause against the enemy. Thus in August 1589 the council ordered that Danish complaints in the High Court of Admiralty were to be handled with extraordinary favour. It also ordered the restoration of a ship recently seized by Strangewich, and a search for concealed Danish plunder in London. In response to protests from Christian IV against the plunder of Danish ships in Norwegian havens, dating back to 1587, the Queen promised prompt action. By the end of 1589 commissioners in England were dealing with at least fourteen cases of disorderly spoil, in some cases stretching back over twelve years. On the defensive, the regime insisted that some of the malefactors had been executed for piracy. Further complaints to the council during the early 1590s indicated that Danish vessels remained targets for English men-of-war or pirates. While a representative for Elizabeth reassured the Danish King in 1590 that ‘his subjects should be treated with the highest favour in her realms’, he warned that pirates of different backgrounds ‘infested English waters and some Englishmen, especially in war time, attacked Englishmen and others indifferently’.
⁷⁵

The seizure and spoil of Dutch shipping strained Anglo-Dutch relations, despite their shared hostility towards Spain. Although the Dutch defended their commerce with Spain on the grounds of economic necessity, doing business with the enemy was a contentious and divisive issue. Reports of 1589 indicated that Dutch traders were shipping various commodities to Spain around Scotland, contrary to Admiralty warnings, because of the profit from the trade. The scale of the English attack on Dutch trade thus aroused widespread anger in Holland and Zeeland. By 1589 the High Court of Admiralty and other agencies were hearing at least forty Dutch claims concerning disorderly or illegal depredation. According to the States-General, Dutch losses amounted to 1.6 million florins. One solution to the problem, put forward during 1589, was to allow the Dutch and other traders from northern Europe to trade with Spain in what was described as non-harmful goods, while paying for licences to sail unmolested through the Channel. It was anticipated that more than £200,000 would be raised by these means for the benefit of the Queen and the Dutch. The States-General showed some interest in the scheme, but it attracted little or no support from the Dutch merchant community.
⁷⁶

Despite the Queen’s frustration and annoyance, the Dutch insisted on their right to maintain commercial relations with Spain. The English maintained that it was ‘a strange kind of war, both to traffic and make war with your enemy’, but their own position was undermined by evidence of the supply of contraband to Spain by English merchants.
⁷⁷
This tangled issue thus provoked mutual complaints, though on the Dutch side it was inflamed by reports that English captains, including Cumberland, tortured their victims into confessing that they were carrying goods belonging to the enemy. In 1592 Dutch traders claimed losses of more than £60,000 in three vessels taken by the English. Such ‘continual spoils and cruelties at sea threatened … ports’, such as Middelburg, ‘with ruin’.
⁷⁸
The Dutch demonstrated their determination to deal swiftly and severely with unruly and unlawful predators by executing about forty members of the company of the
Diamond
of Bristol for piracy, despite a plea for clemency from the council.

Although the regime tried to limit the damage to neutral and friendly states, the disorderly activities of English men-of-war spread to include shipping from northern and southern Europe. The publication of a remonstrance in July 1589 against the ports of the Hanseatic League supplying Spain with provisions for war, which coincided with the return of Drake from Lisbon with more than thirty Hanseatic vessels, aroused widespread anger and resentment. The diplomatic damage, and strident demands for retaliation in Hamburg and Lübeck, subsequently led to the release of the ships and their cargoes. But the seizure of vessels from Lübeck, Emden, Danzig, Stettin, Hamburg and ports in the Baltic continued. The English used international law and custom to defend the prohibition of war supplies to Spain, but as in the case of the Dutch and the Danes, there was serious disagreement over the definition of contraband. Complaints from Lübeck in 1590 about the spoil of shipping carrying lawful goods were followed by the seizure of four vessels from Hamburg by Cumberland’s fleet of men-of-war. About the same time the
Red Lion
of Bremen was taken by John Perryman and other notorious pirates and brought into Chester, where its cargo was illegally sold.
⁷⁹