Like the trade off which it fed, piracy within the British Isles fluctuated widely in scale and intensity. Random and opportunistic spoil occurred almost anywhere and at any time during this period; however, more organized and business-like enterprise was closely associated with war and linked with lawful reprisals or privateering. Although rarely used by Henry VII, the exploitation of reprisal venturing for economic or strategic purposes became a feature of war at sea under the early Tudor monarchy. Henry VIII’s wars with France created a fertile breeding ground for the growth of maritime plunder in various guises. Indeed, the period from the 1520s to the 1540s was a transitional stage in the expansion of English seaborne plunder, during which well-established methods of depredation were revitalized and renovated by the opportunities presented by Anglo-French rivalry and conflict. The resurgence of piracy during these years drew on a long tradition of cross-Channel raiding, heavily focused on French targets, which also led to the increasing spoil of Spanish trade and shipping. In confusing and chaotic conditions, English depredation began to develop a pattern of activity that would profoundly influence its subsequent character and direction.
Later medieval traditions and contexts
The development of English piracy and other forms of depredation during this period grew out of varied traditions of maritime plunder which were maintained during the later Middle Ages. From an early date piracy was supported by members of local communities, including merchants and mariners as well as landowners, and sustained by aristocratic warlords or chieftains who possessed private fleets that were used for a variety of purposes. Furthermore, in exploiting and exposing the limitations of the medieval state, the growth of maritime depredation was assisted by conflicting and ambiguous attitudes, which continued to undermine attempts to deal with the problem of piracy well into the seventeenth century. Crucially such limitations were reflected in a lack of continuity in the development of a royal navy, and in an uncertain appreciation of its use at sea, reinforced by concern at the cost of deploying large numbers of warships. During the 1420s and 1430s, for example, Henry VI effectively sold off his navy at a time when the author of the Libel of English Policy was urging the King to secure lordship over the sea.1
In these circumstances two distinct traditions of depredation evolved within the British Isles, reflecting differences in geography and socio-economic structures that were mediated through local or regional political systems. Thus a crude, though fundamental distinction can be drawn between the commercialized seaborne plunder which was characteristic of much of England, Wales, lowland Scotland and the pale of Ireland, and the subsistence sea raiding that flourished in the north-west Gaelic regions of Scotland and Ireland.
Despite some superficial similarities, there were profound differences between these traditions. Within the maritime economy of Gaelic Scotland and Ireland piracy was part of a wider, regular and socially accepted form of raiding. In the western highlands the Halloween raid was seen as an appropriate time to acquire additional provisions to get through the winter. Among poor highland and island communities, where economic opportunity was restricted by the barrenness of the environment, raiding may have been an inherent feature of the life cycle for most males. It was undertaken in fleets of galleys, small vessels with sails and oars, which grew out of the Viking longboat tradition of shipbuilding; and it was endemic in parts of the western islands, and northern and western Ireland. Under the leadership of clan chiefs, sea raids resembled subsistence expeditions, during which much-needed supplies of cattle or clothing were plundered from rival groups or from vulnerable ships sailing along the coast or crossing the Irish Sea. These economic purposes reflected the needs of remote and isolated regions. But raiding also fulfilled various social and cultural functions. It provided the opportunity for leaders to win glory and renown, while maintaining loyalty among followers through feasting and the re-distribution of booty as gifts. At the same time it provided an outlet for male aggression and revenge among feuding clans. The violence was sanctioned by Gaelic rulers, and its leading protagonists were subsequently celebrated in stories and verse. Gaelic sea raiding persisted into the sixteenth century. In 1545, for example, Donald Dubh reportedly led an expedition to Ireland made up of 180 galleys which were manned with 4,000 men from the Hebrides.2 But its continued survival was threatened by the centralizing and civilizing ambitions of the English and Scottish monarchies, which came to identify its participants and supporters as outlaws and rebels, as well as pirates.
St Mawes Castle and Falmouth Bay, Cornwall. Favoured by geography and local tradition, Falmouth and its neighbouring ports were notorious havens for pirates and rovers. The distant harbour of Helford was known as Stealford for its reputation in supporting piracy. (Author’s collection)
Elsewhere in the British Isles a different tradition of plunder developed, as expressed in the growth of piracy and legitimate reprisals. Although there were local differences of emphasis in the scale and structure of such enterprise, and wide fluctuations in its intensity over time, it tended to be commercialized in nature, becoming more so partly as a result of international rivalry and conflict. Much of it was small scale, short distance and often highly localized, based on opportunistic depredation in the Channel by heavily manned small sailing ships, operating alone or in association with another vessel. At its most basic, it resembled indiscriminate petty robbery by loosely organized bands of thugs. While war encouraged an increase in lawlessness at sea, it also generated more organized forms of enterprise. At times of intense activity, nonetheless, widespread confusion prevailed: cross-Channel hostility cut across local feuds along the south coast, in both cases initiating disputes that could last for generations. In the south-west, Plymouth and Dartmouth built up a mixed reputation for their promotion of maritime plunder; Fowey earned notoriety as a pirate haven, while the harbour of Helford was widely known as Stealford as a result of local involvement in maritime robbery. But across the south coast, ports and havens were heavily involved in the spoil of shipping in the Channel. As well as the seizure of ships at sea, moreover, this activity included the robbery of vessels within English harbours, the cargoes of which were often disposed locally. 3
Medieval monarchs met with limited success as they struggled to control maritime plunder and violence. Lacking the means, if not the will, to maintain the law and custom of the sea, rulers tended to adopt inconsistent, short-term policies that were qualified by an overt recognition of the value of sea rovers during periods of war. As a result maritime plunder and policy were increasingly entangled. Officially-sanctioned depredation was, in any case, a long-standing and widely acknowledged practice through the use of reprisals, which enabled merchants and shipowners to recoup losses or damages suffered at the hands of foreigners. The issue of commissions by sovereigns or their representatives, authorizing voyages of reprisal, was an accepted means of redress, which may have contained potentially aggressive commercial disputes. But without strict regulation, which was beyond the means of medieval monarchies, it was also open to abuse. During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, monarchs repeatedly authorized private venturing of this nature, with little or no control, as a way of damaging enemy trade and shipping.
The blurring of legal distinctions, especially during periods of conflict, created opportunities that adventurers in the south-west readily seized. During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries merchants like John Hawley of Dartmouth turned maritime depredation into a profitable and patriotic business. The attraction of earning profit and honour at sea encouraged the participation of gentry and aristocratic adventurers, notably among those who were owners or part-owners of shipping. The scale of activity, and the basis for mutual cooperation between commercial and landed interests, increased dramatically during the civil wars of the 1450s and 1460s. Political crisis, the decay of good lordship and the collapse of sea-keeping led to widespread and endemic disorder. Powerful magnates and aristocratic families pursued rivalries and vendettas at sea, creating a cover for indiscriminate plunder and piracy. The successes of experienced rovers, including John Mixtow of Fowey or William Kyd of Exmouth, attracted the attention of prominent members of the Cornish gentry. Men such as Thomas Bodulgate or Richard Penpons, who were deeply implicated in piracy, used their local power and influence to shelter themselves from investigation or legal proceedings. Members of the Courtenay family, the head of which was the Earl of Devon, were also regularly involved in piratical venturing from bases in the south-west. With a fleet of men-of-war operating from Calais under the auspices of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Channel became dangerously infested with pirates and rovers of uncertain legality.4
Despite the recovery of royal authority and the revival of the King’s Navy, varied forms of maritime depredation persisted into the later fifteenth century. The records of the central government, though based on cases which provoked complaint, indicate that English, Welsh and Irish pirates were operating during the 1470s and 1480s at locations in southern Ireland, Devon, Cornwall, Sussex, Hampshire and Essex. In February 1479 the Crown ordered an investigation into complaints that a Breton vessel had been seized by pirates at the entrance to the River Thames and subsequently taken north. Although much of this activity appears to be irregular, and random in its targets, some ports, such as Fowey, were repeatedly engaged in more purposeful piratical enterprise. The persistence of what seems to have been an unofficial little war of plunder against Breton and Iberian vessels was sustained by small-scale entrepreneurs, including ship masters and owners, who probably combined commerce with plunder in short voyages into the Channel. During 1483 John Davy and Stephen Bull, with a company of pirates aboard the Nicholas of Fowey, seized several Iberian vessels. The following year Captain Tege Smale, in the Kateryne of Fowey, captured a French ship, and in 1485 John Morys, master and part-owner of the Little Anne, described as a ship-of-war of Fowey, seized a Breton vessel laden with wines and salt in the port of Southampton. 5
The social and economic dimensions of piratical enterprise were equally varied. The essential concern of most sea rovers was all too evident from their behaviour: captured ships and crews were ransacked of their possessions. An English vessel seized off Bearhaven in Ireland during 1477 was spoiled of goods worth £60. The pirates, led by one Pykerd from Minehead, stripped the company ‘and put them naked ashore at Kinsale’.6 During the 1470s the Mary London, a large vessel of 320 tons which had transported a large party of 400 pilgrims from Ross in Ireland to Santiago in northern Spain, to celebrate the jubilee of St James, was seized on its return voyage by three ships owned by Nicholas Devereux and others of Waterford, which were reportedly manned with a force of 800 men. The Mary London and its passengers were taken into Youghal and plundered. The owner of the vessel was robbed of 140 marks and allegedly imprisoned for three years. As this unusual case suggests, pirates and other sea rovers were prepared to use extortion and ransoming when it served their purpose. In May 1483 Mathew Cradock of Swansea, captain of a ship-of-war, seized a Breton vessel off Ilfracombe with the assistance of local pirates. The vessel and its cargo were then put to ransom for £50. Collectively these cases demonstrate the localized and opportunistic nature of piratical activity which was encouraged by the prospect of securing profitable captures, such as the Spanish ship laden with a cargo of cloth valued at 40,000 crowns, seized along the coast of Hampshire during 1483 by Sir John Arundell.7
Fowey harbour, Cornwall. During the later Middle Ages Fowey acquired notoriety as a pirate refuge. Like other ports and havens in the region, it continued to be visited by pirates in search of recruits and provisions. In the later 1530s the companies of some rovers even went ashore to attend mass in local churches. (Author’s collection)
The monarchy attempted to take firm action against pirates and sea rovers during these years. Commissions of inquiry were issued to investigate complaints of spoil and plunder. The Crown ordered the arrest and imprisonment of men accused of piracy, and the restitution of plundered cargoes. In some cases offenders were commanded to appear before the King and council. At times compensation was awarded to foreign merchants who were the victims of English pirates. In 1484 the sheriffs were ordered to publish a proclamation concerning the regulation of ships-of-war, which were not to put to sea without their owners ‘first making oath and finding surety for good bearing towards the King’s subjects, friends and confederates and all under the King’s safeguard or safe-conduct’.8
But royal regulation met with mixed success. Incidents such as the plunder of a Breton vessel, carrying letters of safe conduct from the Admiral of England, by three ships from Topsham, starkly revealed the limitations of the late medieval monarchy in trying to curb the piratical tendencies of seafaring and seashore communities.9 The inability of the Crown to deal with the piracies of its subjects at sea was linked with the coastal plunder of vessels cast ashore by bad weather. In many parts of England landowners appear to have seen such vessels as legitimate casualties of the sea, though the use of violence against the surviving companies of wrecks sometimes looks like a form of land piracy. Despite recent improvements to the King’s Navy, it proved difficult to provide for the regular patrolling of the coasts. Although the navy was restored to a total of sixteen vessels under Edward IV, the financial and physical problems in maintaining it were reflected in its subsequent decline. Thus, in 1485 Henry VII inherited a force of seven ships.10 Under these conditions the monarchy could do little more than attempt to contain, rather than eradicate, the problem of piracy. Nor was this a problem limited to England. Political and diplomatic relations in north-west Europe, combined with the rudimentary development of international law, constituted a favourable environment for the widespread maintenance of maritime depredation of varying shades of legality.
The safety of the seas during peace and war from the 1480s to the 1520s
During the early decades of Tudor rule the Crown’s growing concern with the safety of the seas was reinforced by the demands of domestic and dynastic security. Henry VII’s cautious foreign policy and support for naval development were accompanied by a firm approach towards piracy. This was reinforced by the careful control of the issue of letters of reprisal, which helped to contain the potential for disorder at sea. Furthermore, the continued expansion of overseas trade, despite short-term fluctuations, may have limited the economic and social pressures that encouraged maritime depredation. By the 1520s, however, these conditions were beginning to change as a result of the problems and opportunities presented by Henry VIII’s aggressive diplomacy and overseas ambitions. The onset of Anglo-French hostilities was accompanied by a resurgence of cross-Channel plunder and raiding by Scottish sea rovers, which paved the way for widespread disorder at sea.
The persistence of piracy during the 1480s and Henry VII’s handling of it were demonstrated by the prompt response to overseas complaints against English depredation. During February 1486 the new King issued two commissions concerning attacks on foreign shipping. The first concerned the seizure of a French vessel by two English men-of-war. The crew of the French prize were put ashore in Normandy, and the vessel was taken to the Isle of Wight where its cargo was divided up and distributed among the captors. Sir Edward Woodville, captain of the Isle, was instructed to arrest those involved and to ensure that the plunder was restored; if the latter refused to cooperate, they were to be brought before the King and council. Several weeks later the bishop of Exeter and other commissioners were ordered to investigate complaints from several Hanseatic merchants about the seizure of two vessels from Hamburg, off the coast of Cornwall, by a group of rovers from Fowey led by John Gaye and William Bruer. The commissioners were commanded to arrest the vessels and their cargoes, which had been brought into the Cornish port. Moreover, Gaye, Bruer and their followers were to be imprisoned until either restitution or compensation was made. In an effort to contain the spread of piracy, Henry issued a proclamation in November 1490 which ordered the punishment of pirates who spoiled Spanish and Imperial shipping. In addition the purchasers of plundered commodities were warned that they faced the forfeiture of property and imprisonment at the King’s will.11
As in the past, piracy provoked retaliation and reprisals at sea. Henry, however, was unwilling to sanction the widespread or indiscriminate use of letters of reprisal, preferring to rely on diplomacy and other means of seeking redress. The treaty between the King and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1489 thus revoked all letters of reprisal; in future, if justice was denied, the ‘King of the injured party must twice demand redress from the sovereign of the party which has done the damage before he deliver letters of marque and reprisal.’12 Commissions of reprisal were issued only after careful consideration, and usually under strict conditions, especially when compared with later practice. Thus in October 1495 Richard Wele and others of King’s Lynn were authorized to seize ships of Dieppe, following their inability to obtain satisfaction from the Admiral of France for the capture of their vessel off the coast of Norfolk by two ships from the French port. The following year two London merchants received a letter of reprisal after they were unable to gain compensation for the loss of goods laden aboard a ship in Falmouth, which was plundered by a French vessel. Unwilling to act precipitately, Henry postponed the issue of the commission until diplomatic efforts to gain redress were exhausted. After long delay and deliberation, the King granted a commission, authorizing the recipients to recover the amount of £700 from the French. The proclamation announcing the peace treaty with France of August 1498 sought to reduce such lengthy delays by establishing a new and speedier procedure for dealing with cases of spoil and robbery between the two countries.13 Though the initiative was not developed, it was a further indication of Henry VII’s concern to use letters of reprisal as a last resort. For most of his reign, indeed, there was neither the opportunity nor the need to promote large-scale reprisals at sea or other forms of licensed plunder.
Although these conditions limited the growth of organized piracy, the ability of the early Tudor regime to tackle the problem rested on an uncertain combination of naval power and patrolling with the support and cooperation of local officials and communities. None of these could be taken for granted. Outrageous cases of spoil continued to take place on the Thames, exposing serious weaknesses in the policing and internal security of the river. In March 1502 a commission of oyer and terminer was issued to the Lord Admiral, for the investigation of an attack on a vessel anchored between Ratcliffe and St Katherine’s by William Palmer, Richard Bray and others, who reportedly ‘threw the mariners in the river and so drowned them and plundered the ship’.14 River piracy was a long-standing problem which was nurtured by the growing size and commercial significance of the port of London. The vulnerability of shipping along the Thames attracted organized gangs and opportunist thieves who provided a potential recruiting ground for more ambitious piratical enterprise.
The gradual improvement in the security of the sea, which appears to have reflected changes in the level and intensity of maritime depredation during the later fifteenth century, was not sustained. It may appear paradoxical that the reign of Henry VIII, which witnessed impressive naval development, should also experience a striking increase in piracy and maritime spoil. But the roots of both lay in the rapidly changing international environment. The new King’s aggressive foreign policy revived Anglo-French rivalry and conflict. Hostilities from 1512 to 1514, followed by renewed conflict between 1522 and 1525, led to widespread disorder at sea.
During the early decades of the reign, English enterprise was heavily overshadowed by the activities of French and Flemish men-of-war in the Channel, as well as by the raiding of Scottish rovers sailing with commissions from James IV. In 1512 Henry VIII was reported to be deeply perplexed and annoyed at the actions of the Scots. Despite the peace between the two countries, Scottish adventurers, including close associates of James, such as David Falconer or the Barton brothers, supported the French in the spoil of English shipping. To the anger of Henry, moreover, when ‘James’s subjects attack Henry’s, they call themselves the French King’s servants, when taken as pirates, in company of Frenchmen, they are James’s subjects’.15 The English responded by seizing Scottish ships. In July 1512 James complained about attacks on his subjects’ shipping and the capture of Scottish merchants, some of whom were dubbed ‘the Pape’s men’ and sent to London for trial. The prisoners included Falconer, though James persuaded Henry to defer his execution, ‘notwithstanding his manifold piracies, for which he well deserved to die’.16
The confusion between Scottish and French depredation posed serious problems for the English. During 1515 Henry VIII was faced with growing complaints from English merchants against French pirates and rovers who were masquerading as Scots. In reality the French were operating with Scottish commissions. Nonetheless, by August 1515 Henry was prepared to issue letters of reprisal if his subjects were unable to obtain redress in France. At the same time attempts were made to deal with the issue by diplomatic means. This included the appointment of English and French commissioners, who met at Calais and Boulogne during 1517, to resolve disputes over piracy and disorderly plunder. The English also proposed an exchange of pirates and other rovers, probably because of the cost of maintaining foreign prisoners. However, negotiations between the commissioners were hindered by ‘their ignorance of the language, and the absence of necessary documents’.17 Nor did the subsequent treaty with France, of 1518, end the attacks on English shipping. Continued complaints against French raiding were accompanied by reports that the Chancellor of France objected to the restoration of English property. In such circumstances Henry issued a proclamation, proffering compensation to the victims of French piracy if proof was provided.18
The disorderly activities of men-of-war at sea were accompanied, if not sustained, by localized spoil and pillage. Much of this was opportunistic and random in nature. It was also disorganized and often amateurish, as indicated by an abortive attempt by a group of stowaways to persuade the owner and master of a vessel, sailing down the Thames, to turn to piracy. According to William Bochether, one of the ship’s company, the owner found four mariners, who had been secretly taken aboard by other members of the crew, hiding in the hold. The stowaways urged the owner to abandon the voyage in favour of robbery along the river or at sea: ‘We are good fellows that will strike a hand’, they declared, ‘if you will consent with us’.19 When he refused, they appealed to Bochether for assistance. But the latter replied that ‘he had a good occupation [and was] able to get his living with truth’. Thereafter the owner put the four men ashore. Bochether, who was apparently sick, appears to have followed them. During the night the four mariners used the vessel’s boat to take a Breton ship, with which they put to sea. Bochether recovered and returned aboard the vessel; however, when it arrived at Harwich, he was arrested and imprisoned in Colchester Castle, for complicity in the seizure of the Breton ship. From prison, ‘laden with irons, lying on the bare ground without meat and drink’, he begged relief from the Lord Admiral and constable of the castle.20
The attraction of robbery at sea, at a time of such disorder, may have been widespread and capable of wider development. A carefully prepared, though abortive, pioneering expedition to North America, led by John Rastell in 1517, was partly sabotaged by the mariners’ overriding interest in the prospect of piracy. Shortly after putting to sea Rastell was urged to seize an Irish pirate, Henry Mongham, in order to take a Portuguese ship which the pirate had captured. At least one of Rastell’s officers also advised him to turn to robbery at sea.21 In fact the venture was abandoned at Waterford, in a manner that foreshadowed the predilection for piracy or illicit plunder among English mariners engaged in long-distance voyages beyond Europe.
The regime tried to respond swiftly, and in a varied manner, to the threat of sporadic piracy. In March 1515 a commission of oyer and terminer was issued to the Lord Admiral and his deputy to investigate the alleged piracies of John Baker, John Brigenden and their followers. Several years later, during 1519, the King granted another commission to the Lord Admiral and others, to determine all civil cases of spoil between England and France in accordance with the recent treaty. The navy was also employed to combat pirates and rovers, though with mixed results. In 1519 Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, captured a group of Scottish pirates. But successful expeditions against pirates in the seas around the British Isles required small, speedy and specialized vessels which did not always meet the vision or requirements of the King’s fleet. During 1523, for example, Sir Anthony Poyntz, the commander of a naval force patrolling the sea between Wales and Ireland, hired a ship for £1 to reconnoitre the coasts of the Isle of Man and Scotland.22
The presence of foreign men-of-war in English waters increased during the 1520s, despite an agreement between the King and Charles V for more naval patrols against pirates and enemies. At varying times Spanish, French and Flemish predators haunted the coasts of southern England and Ireland, seeking prizes or disposing of plundered cargoes. The confusion and disorder at sea presented opportunities for a diverse collection of adventurers, whose activities undermined the pretensions of rulers to defend maritime jurisdictions against the danger of legal and illegal raiding. To some extent the increase in depredation during these years may have been more apparent than real, reflecting growing concern among monarchs, such as Henry VIII, with their rights and responsibilities as sovereigns over vaguely defined home waters. Under tense international conditions, efforts to assert such rights, without adequate coastal and naval defences, ran the risk of inviting retaliation.
Growing complaints about piracy thus occurred against a background of confused competition and cooperation. In November 1525 Queen Margaret of Scotland complained about the seizure of a ship belonging to Robert Barton by one Flemish and two English vessels. Two years later local officials in Southampton were powerless to prevent three large Flemish vessels entering the port and seizing a merchant ship. As the Channel became crowded with men-of-war during the later 1520s, the threat to peaceful commerce and shipping intensified. During April 1528 an English naval patrol daily met with French and Flemish ships-of-war seeking prizes. According to a subsequent report from the Low Countries, if war broke out, there were 10,000 mariners ready to rig out vessels, at their own charge, against the English. Concerned at the dangers of renewed conflict, Henry attempted to maintain English neutrality, in an effort to limit the threat of French and Imperial coastal raiding. But there was little that the King could do to keep overseas spoil at arm’s length. By December 1528 the Spanish were complaining of attacks on their vessels, in English waters, by the French. Allegations of English complicity fuelled demands for the issue of letters of reprisal against France and England.23 The ensuing disruption to trade and shipping encouraged the growth of maritime depredation at an acutely sensitive time for England’s relations with the rest of Europe.
Peace and plunder: disorder at sea during the 1530s
During the 1530s, against a threatening international background, piracy and disorderly plunder became a more menacing problem in the seas around the British Isles. To some extent the nature of the problem, and the response to it, were influenced by a shifting concern with domestic and international security. Unavoidably both were linked with Henry VIII’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon and the subsequent break with Rome. The anxiety of the regime about the danger of internal disorder and rebellion was thus reflected in its handling of the problem of maritime depredation. Pirates and rebels could be easily identified as a common threat to Henrician rule, particularly at a time when the risk of foreign invasion seemed to be growing. It is possible, therefore, that the striking increase in the volume of evidence concerning piracy may be partly the result of the greater seriousness with which it was viewed by an insecure and embattled regime. In such circumstances new legislation to deal with piracy was passed by Parliament in 1536, in order to strengthen and clarify the existing law.
It was in Ireland that the prospect of rebellious subjects taking to the seas emerged as a danger. In the later 1520s James Fitzgerald, 11th Earl of Desmond, who was reported to be at sea with certain English vessels, appealed to Emperor Charles V for assistance against his enemies, including the English. In exchange, he offered to attack the Emperor’s rivals, while expelling them from Ireland. Regardless of the Emperor’s response, the death of Desmond effectively neutralized the prospect of organized maritime action against the English in Ireland. Nonetheless, the dangers of discontented and feuding magnates resorting to continental intrigues alarmed the Tudor monarchy. Only a few years later, two Spanish ships laden with munitions of war were reported to have reached Ireland.24 At a time when the Tudor regime was trying to extend its authority over Ireland, it may have been particularly prone to confuse piracy and rebellion, creating a climate of fear and expectation that was to recur with the raiding of the O’Malleys and O’Flahertys along the west coast during the later sixteenth century.
The widespread activities of pirates, especially within the Channel and the Irish Sea, underlined the continuing insecurity of the seas during the 1530s. In 1531 Lord Lisle, the Vice Admiral of England, and others were authorized to investigate and determine cases of piracy. Later in the year it was reported that Kilmanton, a sea rover, intended to seize Sir William Skeffington, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, during his passage to England, and hold him to ransom for the King’s pardon. Kilmanton was captured in the Isle of Man, though other members of his company managed to escape aboard a vessel bound for Grimsby. The following year a group of Bretons claimed to have been robbed at sea by English rovers, some of whom came from Plymouth. But the Channel was infested with French and Scottish, as well as English, rovers. In March 1532 John Chapman, master of a London vessel, reported continually sighting men-of-war in search of prey. He encountered two Breton vessels coming from the west, one of which surrendered after he prepared to board it. According to Chapman the vessel was of 150 tons burden, full of ordnance and manned with a mixed company of ‘Frenchmen, Bretons, Portingales, Black Moors, and others’. 25
Equally alarming were the activities of the Scots. A merchant of Fowey informed Chapman about the seizure of fourteen English vessels, and one Scottish ship laden with English commodities, by four Scottish rovers. To the consternation of the English, the Scots refused to offer any of their prisoners for ransom, breaking with a well-established custom of the sea. In these conditions Chapman complained that he had ‘much ado to keep ... [his] company together, for they ... [were] not inclined to go further, except for war’.26 By February 1533 Scottish rovers were operating along the east coast, ranging as far south as the River Humber, and disrupting the supply of Berwick. According to the emperor’s representative in London, the English were ‘astonished at the number of ships the Scots have, and suspect they receive help elsewhere’.27 But the King was so concerned with his marital affairs, that he showed little interest in dealing with the problem.
Bardsey Island and Bardsey Sound, Gwynedd. This island off the Llyn peninsula has many legendary and real associations with pirates. It was regularly visited by pirates during the 1560s and 1570s, when it may have served as a convenient haven for the disposal of booty to local landowners, including the Wynn family. According to tradition the celebrated Welsh pirate and poet, Tomos Prys, built a house on the island on the site of a derelict monastery. (Author’s collection)
St Tudwal’s Road, Gwynedd. This remote region served as a resort for pirates and other rovers who preyed on shipping in the Irish Sea and the Channel. During the later 1590s it was a base for Hugh Griffiths, who was involved in the disorderly plunder of foreign vessels. On one occasion he brought in a French prize, laden with canvas and a great chest of treasure. But when the chest was brought ashore, possibly to the house of Griffiths’ father, it provoked a tumult among Griffiths’ company. (Author’s collection)
Companies of English pirates, usually acting independently of each other, were heavily engaged in coastal plunder during the 1530s. In October 1533 the King and council expressed great displeasure at the seizure of a Biscayan ship by pirates off the west coast of Ireland. About the same time a French vessel was robbed, while anchored off Pevensey, by pirates who seized a trunk and parcel containing cloth, jewellery and other wares valued at £24 1s 4d. By its very nature this kind of petty scavenging, which commonly depended more on surprise than superiority in numbers or armaments, was not always a success. In March 1534 Michael James confessed to a local Admiralty official in Southampton that Henry Holland and others had seized a ship of St Jean de Luz anchored at Calshot. The robbers put the crew below deck, under the hatches, but they broke out, regained control of the ship and carried it off to Brest. Swift action by officials could also be an effective response to small-scale piracy. During 1534 Skeffington encountered a pirate company, led by Broode, as he crossed the Irish Sea. Broode’s vessel was driven ashore near Drogheda, and he and his men were taken by the mayor of the town. By February 1535 the pirate leader and other members of his company had been hanged, drawn and quartered.28
Much of this small-scale coastal and Channel plunder depended on widespread community support, which enabled pirates and rovers to operate from secure land bases and to dispose of booty in safe markets among buyers who were unconcerned with their provenance. In 1534 the King’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, was informed of a pirate based in the Isle of Wight, whose recent captures included an English vessel returning from Guernsey and a French ship sailing out of Portsmouth. The remote coastal regions of Wales, which were haunted by rovers attacking Breton and other vessels, provided an opportunity for pirates to dispose of plunder, though sometimes in ambiguous circumstances. During 1535 members of the local community in the lordship of St David’s purchased salt and wine from the pirate Thomas Carter, ‘thinking him to be a true man’.29 Carter and his men were subsequently arrested in north Wales, but they refused to confess to the disposal of the goods. Though placed in the custody of the constable of Caernarvon Castle, five of the pirates managed to escape. Two years later the chanter of St David’s was indicted as an accessory to piracy, in a case that exposed the rivalry and potential conflict between the jurisdiction of the bishop and the deputy justice.30
These conditions increased the difficulties of the regime in dealing with localized piratical activity. But it was impossible for the early Tudor state to eradicate piracy, particularly given its social roots. For many it was part of a way of life, adopted by necessitous members of seafaring communities, as well as by some of the more resourceful or adventurous representatives of the poor in general. The confession of Adams, a pirate operating during the early 1530s, illuminates the economic and social context of piracy, demonstrating its opportunistic character. Adams admitted that he and seven other mariners took a small boat at St Katherine’s which they rowed down the Thames until they were within two miles of Gravesend, where they seized a vessel of 30 tons with only one man and three boys aboard. The pirates sailed their new vessel along the coast to Southampton. At Portsmouth and Southampton the company was joined by a master, several mariners and servants. Somewhere off the Isle of Wight they anchored close to a group of five vessels of Spanish, French and English ownership. During the night one of the Breton vessels, laden with salt and parchment, was boarded and taken. Sailing west, the pirate company was forced by wind into Portland Bay. When two Breton vessels also sought sanctuary in the bay, the pirates seized ‘the lesser as being the better sailer’.31 Lacking sufficient men to handle their new prize, they gave the Bretons the ship taken off the Isle of Wight with its cargo of salt, retaining the more valuable and less bulky parchment. Bad weather subsequently forced the pirates into Brixham. The sale of one of the ships aroused local suspicions. As a result several of the pirates were arrested ashore. Adams escaped with four others. He later reached Newcastle, where he sold the Breton ship, since which time he had ‘been where as pleased God’.
Adams’ activities at sea formed part of an unsettled career of petty, part-time criminality which spanned sea and shore. Prior to turning to piracy, he was a member of a gang of thieves who operated along the Thames and its hinterland. Under the leadership of Reynolde, a draper of London, and in company with four other men, he admitted to robbing a house in Essex. Allegedly, he was persuaded to take part in the robbery by a well-chosen appeal from Reynolde: ‘“Adams … I know thou art in necessity and thou art in great debt. … And”, saith he, “if thou wilt do as we do it will be worth to thee a 100 mark; and if thou wilt not meddle, stand by and look upon us”. And with that one of them burst open a wall and went in’, although Adams claimed he ‘tarried still without and one other’.32 The robbers got £24, of which Adams received £4, though this was some way short of what he had been promised to take part in the venture. Adams struggled to defend his actions at sea, insisting that he ‘thought never to rob Englishmen’, claiming instead that he was enticed into piracy by another member of the company. But the successes of this small band of rovers and thieves, who took at least four vessels during a brief spell of river and coastal plunder, revealed the availability of easy prey, within sight of the shore, which a growing number of seafarers and others found difficult to resist.
In an effort to improve the law regarding piracy, during 1536 Parliament passed legislation which was intended to remedy shortcomings in the legal procedure of the High Court of Admiralty. According to civil law, under which pirates were tried, it was only possible to impose the death penalty on offenders either through their own confession or by the testimony of witnesses, who were difficult to find. Consequently the act placed the criminal jurisdiction of the court, including ‘treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies’, in the hands of specially appointed commissions, ‘in like form and conditions as if any such offence’ had been committed on land.33 By these means criminal offences committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty were transferred to commissions of oyer and terminer, operating in accord with the common law of the realm. At the same time the act denied all offenders, including pirates, the use of benefit of clergy or sanctuary.
On paper the new legislation demonstrated the resolve of the Henrician regime to improve the law concerning piracy. In the short term, at least, it seems to have led to an upsurge in condemnations for piracy. Nonetheless, the law was unable to tackle the root cause of the problem or the political expediency which it was occasionally subject to. In March 1537 the regime was embarrassed by complaints of the seizure of a Portuguese vessel off the coast of Wales by a band of thirty-five pirates. The captured vessel was taken to Cork where it was sold to the mayor and others. The case coincided with other complaints concerning the disposal of pirate goods in the lordship of St David’s, and may have provoked the Lord Admiral into a very public assertion of his legal responsibilities and jurisdiction later in the year, when he condemned eleven mariners for piracy in the Guildhall of London. Within weeks, however, and in the same surroundings, the Lord Admiral pardoned Thomas Skye, a yeoman of Brompton in Norfolk, and four others, for piracy on a Scottish ship off Sunderland. The attack was justified as retaliation for the previous spoil of the Scots, though Skye also claimed that it was undertaken against his will, at the command of the master, Giles Carre, who warned him ‘to be contentyd or ellys he wold caste hym into the Sea’.34 Skye’s pardon was followed in July 1537 by another for Edward Foster of London, alias John Gryffyn of East Smithfield, mariner, and others, for committing piracy on a vessel at Tilbury, along the Thames.
To some extent this apparent inconsistency may have been a reaction to the persistent threat from overseas raiders in English waters. While many of these rovers were lawfully commissioned men-of-war, their search for plunder easily spilled over into piratical attacks on vulnerable English trading ships. Faced with increasing complaints from his subjects, and angered by the infringement of the Crown’s maritime jurisdiction, Henry VIII resorted to a combination of public and private methods to protect trade and shipping. In effect, the strict implementation of the new legislation against piracy was qualified by wider considerations of policy and practicality.
Both the scale and intensity of overseas depredation in English waters increased during the later 1530s as a result of international rivalry and conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and France. During 1536 Flemish vessels seized several Breton ships off Southampton. The following year Breton and French vessels were reported to be haunting the coast of Wales, ‘robbing all the English ships they could, and coming on land to steal sheep’.35 Among the vessels attacked was the Mary Fortune of Hull, the master of which, John Crowne, claimed to have been badly handled by his captors. The French compelled Crowne to admit, falsely, that his vessel was laden with Flemish goods. To combat such disorder the Vice Admiral was sent out with instructions to take any French or Imperial vessels suspected of spoiling English shipping. But it was difficult to contain the spread of coastal raiding by either side, especially as it was occasionally supported by the King’s own subjects. In October 1537 Henry was informed of the activities of various French ships which were plundering in English waters without commissions; one of them carried the red cross of England and included English pilots and mariners among its company, ‘the rather to train men into their danger’.36 In addition to the depredations of the French and Flemish, Spanish Biscayners were reported to have attacked several English vessels and tortured one of the masters.
Under these conditions the distinction between friend and enemy threatened to dissolve. Henry saw the attack on shipping in English harbours by French and Imperial raiders as a matter that touched on his honour. He authorized private ships-of-war to defend English shipping, with permission for their owners or masters to retain pirate plunder. In March 1538 Lord Lisle was informed that if any of his ships took a pirate in the Channel who had ‘no merchants’ goods on board to bear the charge, the King will bear the burden of it’.37 Indeed, Lisle’s rescue of an English vessel, and seizure of its French captor, earned him much respect and renown at court.
Although these initiatives met with some success, they also encouraged piratical enterprise under cover of legitimate retaliation against the French. The seizure of a Breton vessel by the Clement of London during 1538 was justified on the grounds of reprisal, although at least one of the company was reported to have spoken out against the plunder of the vessel. Much of this small-scale scavenging was carefully planned, organized and deliberately targeted on French shipping. The Mary Thomas of 30 tons, for example, was sent out with the purpose of seeking recompense from the French for losses sustained by Henry Davy and others of London, in a venture which appeared to be a form of unauthorized privateering or reprisals. John Broke, a member of the company, was recruited by Thomas Lyllye, the master, ‘to goe on Rovyng with hym upon the Sea’.38 Broke subsequently related that he attended a dinner, organized by Davy at a tavern, the Goat in Cheapside, after which Lyllye and William Scarlett, the purser, ‘shewyd ther mynds from one to one, that they purposyd to goe to the Sea, and theruppon dyvers of them brake bred and dyd ete it, promesyng therby that they wold be trewe’. Sailing down the Thames, additional recruits came aboard the vessel; with several others joining at Rye, the company amounted to about twenty men. Broke, however, left the ship at the Isle of Wight to seek treatment for an infection which he had acquired from a woman before leaving London. The Mary Thomas went on to seize a Breton ship near Guernsey, the cargo of which was disposed in Looe, Falmouth and neighbouring havens. Following the sale of the goods, Scarlett assembled the company, and presented each member with a share of twenty shillings, and thirty shillings for the master and officers. Although six of the company were able to go ashore to hear mass, near Falmouth the rovers fled when a large group of about 100 countrymen came down towards the ship. Scarlett returned home to his wife and children, but was taken, with £10 in money and household stuff, after seeking sanctuary in St Michael’s Church, Cornhill.
The official response to the disorder at sea demonstrated that small-scale plunder and piracy were a widespread problem. During 1538 the Lord Admiral ordered the judge of the Admiralty court to investigate French complaints against Walter Soly of the West Country, concerning a piratical attack on the Mary of St Malo. The French ship, of 28 tons burden and with a crew of twelve mariners, was returning home from Carlingford with a lading of hides and herrings, when it was forced to seek shelter along the coast near Dublin. The ship was seized about midnight by Soly and his company, ‘in a greate shippe with [two] tops’, who resorted to casting stones and using swords on their victims.39 The French crew were kept as prisoners under the hatches for ten days, after which they were set ashore on the Isle of Man.
The Smugglers Cott, Looe, Cornwall. The building dates from the fifteenth century, when men from Looe were regularly engaged in piracy. It was evidently restored with timber from a Spanish fleet which reached the coast of Cornwall in 1595. (Author’s collection)
Cromwell also continued to be concerned with cases of piracy and spoil. During 1538 he urged Bishop Rowland Lee to apprehend a group of pirates from south Wales. Later in the year he was informed of an attack by pirates on an English or Flemish vessel returning from Ireland. Although the pirates escaped to the Isle of Wight and then into the West Country, by the middle of September they had been captured. In April 1539 a Breton ship was brought into Dartmouth with only two men and a boy aboard; although the circumstances were obscure, the case aroused such concern that the pirates were ordered to London so that either Cromwell or the Lord Admiral could investigate and determine it. Several weeks later, Cromwell was investigating complaints of piracy against Will Swadell, a servant of Sir William Godolphin, the sheriff of Cornwall. In his correspondence with Cromwell the latter was compelled to deny any involvement in the activities of Swadell, rebutting rumours that he received the goods of an Irishman, allegedly worth £500.40
Piracy and spoil were endemic problems in English waters throughout the 1530s. While the Bretons regularly raided the exposed entrance to the River Severn, and inflicted widespread damage on Irish Sea trades, the Scots plundered shipping along the east coast and in the North Sea. At the same time, the Channel swarmed with sea robbers of varying nationalities, including a growing number of English pirates and rovers, who ranged along the south coast and into the Irish Sea. The Thames also remained a favoured haunt for river thieves and petty piracy. One group of men, who were intending to rob a vicarage in Essex close to the river, boarded a small boat manned with four men, ‘with ther weapons drawen, and sayd good fellows be of good chere, we will do you no harme, but take parte of your goods’.41 Two of the company informed the robbers that ‘their money was in a barrel standing upon the hatches’. The robbers departed with £12 in cash, a loaf of sugar and a new cap, though they stayed long enough to drink with their victims, while leaving them forty shillings. Such was the nature of the problem that, on occasion, officials may have been forewarned about, but still ill-equipped to deal with, the menace. In February 1539 Lisle warned one of his officers at Calais about the departure of an English pirate from the Thames, who intended to pillage the friends and allies of the King. The pirate ship, described as a galleon of 35 tons with a company of thirty men, was ‘an entirely new ship and hath long time been maintained in areadiness and equipped as for war’.42
Many of these pirate companies were composed of small groups of mariners, operating in ambiguous circumstances over short distances, and in vessels which were often weakly armed. Thomas Skye was at sea in the Mary Walsingham of 55 tons, with twelve mariners and one boy, six of whom were concealed under the hatches. The company was armed with two hand guns, four or five bows, twenty-four sheaves of arrows, two or three rusty bills, three swords and three cases of wild fire.43 Yet the activities of these rovers posed a serious threat to trade and shipping. During the later 1530s the Merchant Adventurers requested the use of one of the King’s ships to convoy their vessels across the Channel. The request was reinforced by a report from Sir Thomas Wriothesley to Cromwell, concerning the fears of English merchants about pirate attack. Although Wriothesley suggested that three or four of the King’s ships be sent out to scour the seas, another of Cromwell’s correspondents, while noting that small trading vessels were ‘fatt booty’, informed the merchants that ‘they should provide for themselves against pirates’.44
The prolonged nature of the disorder at sea encouraged more ruthless and violent methods among some pirates and rovers. William Swadell and his followers captured two small prizes off the Scilly Isles, the companies of which were thrown overboard with their hands bound behind their backs. In May 1539 the representative of the French King in London complained of the seizure of a Breton ship by English pirates, who drowned all of the company except one, ‘who, as if by a miracle, swam six miles to shore’.45 Within two weeks of the complaint, the pirates were captured and condemned: six were executed immediately, while another eight were kept in custody to be confronted by their alleged accomplices who had been recently arrested. The violence may have been the product of long-standing feuds and grievances across the Channel, but in some cases it was inflamed by incipient religious rivalry. Robert Reneger, a Southampton merchant who was to be heavily involved in privateering during the 1540s, complained of the spoil of one of his ships, returning from Spain, by a French man-of-war, claiming that his factors were cruelly treated and libelled, with the rest of the company, as ‘erronyouse lutheryans’.46
The demands of war: privateering and piracy during the 1540s
Endemic piracy and sea roving during the 1530s were superseded by the growth of organized privateering enterprise during the Anglo-French war from 1542 to 1545. Royal encouragement of private plunder on this scale represented a new departure for the early Tudor monarchy, though it was part of a wider re-shaping of English maritime enterprise in which the predatory dynamism of the seafaring community became more focused on Iberian trade and shipping. It was no accident that this shift was accompanied by radical religious change. During the 1540s and 1550s traditional cross-Channel competition was overlaid by inflammatory religious rivalries. In a deeply divided Europe, the combination of Protestantism and patriotism served to mobilize powerful forces in the pursuit of plunder. Under the cover of legitimate privateering against France, some English adventurers launched a piratical campaign against Spain, laying the foundations for a new pattern of maritime predation which ranged beyond the Channel into the eastern Atlantic.
Hostility towards Spain was manifest in the uneasy relationship between transatlantic trade and piracy, even though the English were only finding their way in a difficult and dangerous enterprise. The disorderly voyage of the Barbara of London in 1540, which was intended as a peaceful venture to Brazil to lade dyewood, ended with the seizure of a Spanish vessel off Santo Domingo in the Caribbean. The London merchants who promoted the venture instructed the company of the Barbara that ‘they shulde do no robbery but folowe ther voyage like honeste men’.47 Off Cape St Vincent, nonetheless, several vessels were spoiled, while another was plundered near the Canary Islands. Although the company acquired small amounts of dyewood and cotton wool, as well as parrots and monkeys, along the coast of Brazil, they faced hostility from rival French traders and the native inhabitants. The trading venture was abandoned following an attack by a group of natives, when at least one member of the company was killed, cut up, cooked and eaten. Many others died from sickness or a lack of provisions. The Barbara returned with thirteen healthy men, out of an original complement of ninety four, who were arrested to face charges of piracy before the High Court of Admiralty. The voyage may have discouraged and delayed interest in transatlantic depredation, at least until the later 1560s and 1570s. In any case, during the 1540s Anglo-French rivalry and conflict provided more secure prospects of plunder within the Channel.
The war with France was preceded by a spate of cross-Channel disputes over spoil and plunder, which to some extent both justified and shaped the maritime conflict. English complaints of rough and cruel justice in France were offset by French grievances over delays in securing relief or compensation in England. According to a report of 1540 one Breton merchant had spent six or seven years vainly suing for assistance across the Channel; his appeal for a commission of reprisal was rebuffed, apparently because the French King did not wish to antagonize Henry.
Such complaints and experiences were widespread, reflecting the deterioration in international relations within western Europe during these years. In September 1540 the council of Spain demanded compensation from Henry for the seizure of a Spanish carvel by an English rover. Spanish officials also warned that the owners of the vessel, a group of merchants of Seville, requested the right to recover their losses by reprisals on the English. About the same time, the Emperor demanded justice from the Scottish King, James V, for the piracies of Robert Fogo on fishermen of Ostend. He also complained bitterly about the activities of other Scottish rovers who were operating with letters of reprisal, demanding that James ‘put an end to these illicit and piratical exploits’.48 The Scottish King disowned Fogo’s actions, arresting him when he returned to Scotland, though he had already sold his booty in England. Several weeks later, James revived a long-standing complaint of the Barton family against the Portuguese, concerning a case of spoil that was more than fifty years old. Although the Bartons had been awarded a commission of reprisal, previous monarchs had suspended its execution. At the request of the family descendants, however, James intended to ratify the old commission, to the concern of the King of Portugal. James was likewise requesting justice from the Emperor, in a case of piracy on a Scottish vessel that occurred more than twenty years previously.49 By the early 1540s it seemed that rulers in north-west Europe were lining up to issue letters of reprisal on behalf of their subjects.
The activities of pirates and rovers thus intensified the international tension and insecurity at sea, provoking grievances that rival monarchs made use of for diplomatic or political purposes. As war between France and the Empire loomed, in August 1542 Henry prepared to send out ships-of-war to deal with the danger of French raiding in English waters. The French complained about the lack of English neutrality, claiming that the Flemish were able to use English ports at will. But the King’s actions were partly a response to the plunder of English shipping by French rovers, which included the recent seizure of a London vessel at the mouth of the Thames. By September 1542 the Emperor’s agent in London reported that Henry’s ships had almost cleared the coast of French men-of-war. For their part the French complained angrily about the ill-treatment of their mariners at the hands of the English, alleging that lawful men-of-war were treated like pirates, while objecting to the way in which Francis I was derided as a Turk by unruly crews of piratical Englishmen.50
The Anglo-French conflict coincided with widespread maritime disorder, and in circumstances which encouraged the Henrician regime to rely on private enterprise for supporting the war at sea. Even so, the war was a very costly business, involving large-scale expeditions to Scotland in 1542 and to France in 1544. It was also risky, exposing England to the dilemma of fighting on two fronts. The dangers were starkly revealed by the seizure of seven English vessels off the coast of Normandy, early in 1542, by Scottish warships manned with French seamen. Given the experience of the 1530s the combatants resorted to reprisals, licensing private adventurers to plunder the trade and shipping of the enemy. In England the regime sought to channel the indiscriminate predatory activities of sea rovers into more effective and targeted raiding, with the intention of alleviating the pressure on the King’s Navy while weakening its opponents. The Privy Council noted during a meeting in 1544 that it was ‘over burdensome that the King should set ships to defend all parts of the realm, and keep the Narrow Seas’.51 Consequently, it was prepared to sanction a private war of plunder, which was to serve as an important precedent for the subsequent development of organized privateering.
Although this strategy needed no justification, it raised questions regarding the control and direction of private enterprise. During the early stages of the war the regime attempted to regulate the issue of letters of reprisal, though in a manner which betrayed uncertainty or inexperience. While the Lord Admiral issued commissions to adventurers who claimed losses at the hands of the French or Scots, it was the council which took recognizances or bonds for good behaviour at sea. In April 1543, for example, Thomas Guillett, vintner, and George Doddes, fishmonger, acted as sureties for a group of adventurers in Rye, on condition that they would only plunder French or Scottish vessels. However, there appears to have been no attempt to restrict such seizures to a specified amount. Robert Borough was awarded a commission in March 1543 in response to the injuries he had received from the French, which allowed him to take as many French ships as he could. These regulations were relaxed further by a proclamation of December 1544 which authorized any of Henry’s subjects to send out vessels against the enemy. Officials in port towns were enjoined to ensure that it met with a favourable response.52
It is impossible to gauge the scale of English privateering from 1543 to 1546, though a cautious estimate for the annual number of vessels at sea on legitimate reprisal ventures probably lies between thirty and sixty. The number may have increased significantly after December 1544. The development of privateering during these years was facilitated by the strong tradition of predatory enterprise in the south and south-west. It was within this region, moreover, that the commercial consequences of the war with France were most damaging. Though the evidence is scrappy, it suggests that merchants and shipowners in provincial ports, such as Rye, Southampton and Plymouth, were prominent among those who received letters of reprisal prior to their replacement by the proclamation of December 1544.
Between 28 March and 28 April 1543 at least eleven or twelve commissions were issued to adventurers authorizing them to seize the ships of France or Scotland. They included John Ball of Winchilsea; John Fletcher, John Reynolds and Thomas Fugler of the neighbouring port of Rye; Robert Reneger of Southampton; and John Burgh of Devon.53 The most notable adventurer was Sir John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, a leading courtier who was appointed Lord Admiral in 1540 and Lord Privy Seal in 1542. Russell possessed considerable landed property in the West Country, which included 30,000 acres formerly owned by the monastery at Tavistock. He was also a shipowner with varied commercial interests. In this capacity he seems to have acted as a representative for a group of promoters in Plymouth and other ports, who were known as the adventurers in the west. Traders and shipowners in London and east-coast ports, particularly Hull, which were exposed to raids by Scottish rovers, were also among the recipients of commissions. During April 1543 the craft guilds of London were reported to be sending out several ships with a licence from the King. Later in the year Miles Myddleton, a yeoman of the guard, was authorized to go to sea with two vessels from Hull, to annoy the enemy and take prizes.54
The opening months of the war thus met with an encouraging response from private adventurers, though most of the vessels sent out were probably small, if heavily manned, non-specialized craft. The four vessels of Rye, which John Ball and John Reynolds intended to send out in April 1543, were of 20 tons burden. To a considerable extent, the tonnage of such shipping dictated tactics at sea, restricting most adventurers to hit-and-run raids over short distances. As Russell informed the council later in the conflict, most of the vessels from the south-west were ‘too small to encounter men-of-war, their usage being to keep along the shore and meddle only with merchants’.55 The bulk of the ships sent to Portsmouth in July 1545 by the adventurers in the west were between 30 and 40 tons; ten shallops from the West Country, employed in patrolling the Channel in March 1546, amounted to 450 tons burden, though they carried a total complement of 400 men.
Among merchants and shipowners, privateering was a business which developed a commercial infrastructure that was designed to share the cost of fitting out ships-of-war among a group of adventurers, while reducing the risks of an uncertain and dangerous enterprise. The uncertainty was also qualified by limiting the investment to a specific voyage, after which any captured prizes were shared out among the adventurers. Although it became commonplace for this to include shipowners, victuallers and crew, who usually served on the understanding that their wages were dependent on prizes taken during the voyage, there was room for flexibility. An agreement for a privateering voyage, based on a formal indenture of January 1544, between William Bulley (owner of the Martin Bulley of London), Sir John Gresham (merchant and alderman), and William More and William Hollande (the captain and master of the vessel respectively), demonstrates the structure of these ventures. According to the terms of the indenture, it was agreed that ‘with the fyrste good wynde and wether … [the ship] shall dyrectlie saile into the seas there to have warre of the Kinge’s enemyes at the onely adventure of … William Bulley’.56 The charge for victuals, powder and munitions was shared between Gresham (who was responsible for one-third of the total), More and Hollande (who were responsible for one-quarter), and Bulley (who accounted for the remainder). All prizes were to be divided between the adventurers in accordance with their investment in the voyage. Before the division of the prizes, however, the gunners were to receive a special reward of eighteen shares. Furthermore, the adventurers agreed that if any mariners were unwilling to serve for a share in the voyage, they were to be paid wages as in the King’s fleet.
Under the guise of such ventures the adventurers in the west, including William Hawkins, an enterprising merchant of Plymouth, seized the opportunity to conduct a private war of plunder at sea. This combined depredation with other duties. In September 1544 the council issued a commission to Hawkins and others, to send out between four and eight vessels at their own charge, to annoy the enemy and to assist in the defence of the realm. The adventurers were also authorized to levy mariners and soldiers, and to take up victuals and artillery in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset.57
As a result of such arrangements the maritime conflict was characterized by an uneasy partnership between the regime and private enterprise. But the results were striking. In November 1544 the council reported that during the year the ports of the south-west had between twelve and sixteen ships-of-war at sea, which seized prizes worth at least £10,000. At the same time, adventurers in Rye had three or four vessels at sea ‘and gained much by it’.58 John Stow subsequently reported that 300 French prizes were taken during 1544. It seemed, therefore, that for a modest investment, the business of plunder was capable of yielding a profitable return.
The reliance on private enterprise by the state was as much defensive as it was offensive. In part it was intended to meet the twin threat of French and Scottish raiding in English waters. On the one hand, Scottish rovers were a serious menace to trade and fishing along the east coast. On the other hand, the presence of French men-of-war on the coast of Ireland provoked concern that the Bretons ‘will be lords between Brittany and Scotland’, without an adequate defensive force at sea.59 Although the regime managed to shift some of the costs of defence onto the shoulders of private adventurers in the south and south-west, it met with less success in the port towns of the east coast. In November 1544 the council rebuked Newcastle for not sending out vessels to defend its trade. Local leaders claimed that there were insufficient mariners in the port to send out ships; most were either employed in the King’s service or had fled to Norfolk and Suffolk to avoid a recent outbreak of sickness. Prominent northern magnates, such as Francis Talbot, 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, were also used to put pressure on port towns to support the war at sea. In response to promptings from Shrewsbury, who served on the Anglo-Scottish border during 1544 and 1545, officials in Hull insisted that most of their principal shipping was unavailable for service. Local merchants and shipowners had ‘been at importunate costs in manning three ships of war’ during the year.60 Two had guarded the north coast until they were driven off by a fleet of Scottish vessels, the third was forced into Dover by bad weather. Nonetheless, the Hull men offered to send out two ships if Shrewsbury granted them a commission to take prizes. Their neighbours in Scarborough agreed to send out two small vessels if they were supplied with guns, powder and shot. Further north, Whitby was in no position to respond to the urgings of Shrewsbury: following the decay of the harbour, local traders and shipowners had sold their vessels.
The proclamation of December 1544 was an attempt to deal with local recalcitrance by authorizing privateering without the need for letters of reprisal. This was a gamble, resting on the effectiveness of self-regulation among promoters, whose overriding concern with prize taking generated potential conflicts of interest in the conduct of the war at sea between their own priorities and the objectives of the regime. The dangers of disorderly activity at sea, by naval officers as much as by private adventurers, were self-evident. The previous year the council had been forced to reprimand a captain in the King’s Navy for stopping friendly vessels at sea. The King’s anger at this practice provoked a sharp letter from the council, with instructions to the captain to behave in such a way ‘as itt might nott appere that his Grace were in hostilitie wyth all the worlde’.61 But the proclamation of 1544 encouraged the growth of maritime disorder, including the spoil of neutral trade and shipping, which led to a storm of diplomatic protest. Within months of its publication, Henry was reported to be so annoyed at the English seizure of Spanish ships that he intended to recall all men-of-war.
Although the growth of privateering drew on the strength of localized piracy, it was shaped by deeper undercurrents which linked predatory overseas commercial expansion with anti-Spanish hostility. Commercial and religious rivalries lent new direction to seaborne depredation, with far-reaching consequences for the development of piracy and privateering. Merchants and shipowners in the provincial ports of the south and south-west played a key role in what was to become a prolonged, intermittent assault on Spanish trade and shipping. The leading figures in this rising tide of organized plunder during the 1540s included William Hawkins of Plymouth and Robert Reneger of Southampton, both of whom had extensive trading interests in the Iberian Peninsula. Hawkins was one of the pioneers of English commercial enterprise in the Atlantic, developing interests in the Brazil and Guinea trades during the 1530s. Reneger was also involved in the Brazil trade. The character of this expansion was inherently aggressive, attracting not just prominent provincial traders but also ambitious adventurers of dubious reputation, such as Thomas Wyndham, who were tempted into the illicit spoil of Iberian shipping during the 1540s. Wyndham was a naval commander with experience of serving aboard private ships-of-war, including one owned by Lord Russell. The anti-Spanish interests of these adventurers were shared by a younger generation of courtiers, particularly Sir Thomas Seymour, who were part of an increasingly powerful group of evangelical, if not Protestant sympathisers.62 Several of Seymour’s captains came to the attention of the council during these years for their attacks on ships belonging to the Emperor’s subjects, Flemish as well as Spanish.
Drake’s Island and Plymouth Sound, Devon. Formerly known as St Nicholas’ Island, it acquired the name of Drake’s Island during the later sixteenth century. The island was fortified in 1549 to defend the port against overseas attack. As well as the link with Drake, Plymouth was the home of the Hawkins family. (Author’s collection)
The prospect of richer Iberian prizes, laden with cargoes of American treasure, lured English raiders into the Atlantic, laying the foundations for the emergence of long-distance plunder. Reneger’s seizure of the San Salvador, off Cape St Vincent, laden with gold, sugar and pearls valued at 19,315 ducats, provoked a crisis in relations with Spain, but it also demonstrated the attraction of this kind of enterprise. On his return to England, Reneger informed the Privy Council of the incident and placed some of the plunder in the Tower of London. In June 1545 the Imperial ambassador in London complained that Reneger, instead of ‘being punished like a pirate, was treated like a hero’. Furthermore, he warned that ‘the English mean to seize everything they meet at sea as French and then refer claimants to the Admiralty’.63 Within weeks Reneger was reported to have seized a French vessel laden with Spanish commodities, returning from the Levant.
Although reports that the King intended to recall privateers and halt the issue of commissions of reprisal were premature, the council tried to limit the danger of indiscriminate plunder by instructing officials in provincial ports, like Bristol, to take bonds of adventurers not to attack the subjects of the Emperor. However, these instructions did little to reduce the volume of complaint to the council from Spanish and Flemish merchants whose vessels continued to be seized by English raiders of varying legality. Early in July 1545 the council issued orders for the release of three Spanish vessels brought into Plymouth by the King’s ships. Later in the month, William Hawkins was imprisoned at the council’s command during the course of a bitterly contested dispute over the ownership of plundered commodities, which were eventually restored to their Spanish owners.64
The problem of disorderly depredation, while showing no sign of abating during 1545, was an inescapable consequence of the conduct of the war at sea. Faced with fighting an expensive conflict on two fronts, the regime was compelled to rely on private adventurers to undertake various duties at sea which were subsidized by the returns from plunder. But the difficulty in implementing this strategy was underlined by the lukewarm, if not indifferent, response from the east-coast ports to the council’s persuasions in 1544. After further negotiations, by February 1545 Shrewsbury informed the council that the port of Hull was prepared to send out six vessels at its own charge. According to Shrewsbury the ships would perform a combination of public and private duties, enabling the Hull men to keep open their trade while frustrating the enemy. Their success might also encourage others. Indeed, within a few weeks officials in Newcastle indicated that they were willing to send out two ships.65
Though these arrangements were intended to alleviate the pressure on the King’s Navy, the main priority of private adventurers was profit. During April and May 1545 ships of Hull seized neutral vessels from the Low Countries and elsewhere on the grounds that they were carrying Scottish cargoes. John Dove, one of the leading adventurers in Hull, plundered several vessels from Pomerania and Denmark, as well as a Flemish ship reportedly carrying Scottish goods and a passenger bearing letters from the Pope. Several weeks later a vessel of Bremen was forced into Newcastle by bad weather, where it was plundered of provisions and tackling by John Iven of Hull. The plunder amounted to less than £10 in total, but it included a range of useful accessories such as an anchor and cable; a compass and lead line; eight bow staves, five axes and a sword; ten hats and two caps; four pairs of shoes and one pair of boots; a doublet and a pair of hose. Yet the actions of men-of-war along the east coast failed to contain the spread of Scottish depredation. By April 1545 Scottish privateers, who were using bases in Normandy and Brittany, were reported to have taken plunder from the English, valued at between 30,000 and 40,000 crowns.66
In a further attempt to encourage and organize private enterprise at sea, the King issued a proclamation in April 1545, appointing ‘John of Calais’ as the captain of ‘Ships of Marque’, with the power to levy recruits on both sides of the Channel ‘as shall offer themselves to serve at their own adventure’.67 Soldiers, servants and apprentices were ineligible for service without a special licence from their masters or captains. But the proclamation had a limited impact. Shortly after its publication the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Anthony St Leger, informed the council that John Hill seized two French prizes off the Irish coast; however, like many others he seems to have been operating independently of government control, though he was seeking a commission to levy men and provisions. His request was supported by St Leger whose brother, Robert, had a ship furnished for war which he intended to send out in consort with Hill.68
The uneasy relationship between the early Tudor regime and private adventurers encouraged the growth of aggressive spoil at sea, blurring the distinction between legal and illegal plunder. At the same time it contained inherent weaknesses which were demonstrated during the crisis of July 1545, when a French naval force sailed into the Solent after raiding Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The regime struggled throughout the summer to assemble a fleet off Portsmouth. Orders were sent to the ports of the south-west recalling adventurers from the sea and for a press of all mariners, but they met with a tardy response. A varied force of vessels from the region reached Portsmouth by early August; nonetheless, there were complaints that many had failed to respond to demands from London. Moreover, some of those already at Portsmouth abandoned the service. The Lord Admiral complained that many were ‘wholly given to pillage and robbery’.69
Although the King came under pressure from the council to make peace with France, the war lingered on until June 1546, becoming increasingly disorderly at sea during its closing stages. The seizure of Spanish and Flemish ships persisted, despite the concern of Henry and his diplomatic representatives. Scattered reports and complaints to the council demonstrate the extent of these attacks. Despite the emphasis of such evidence on the unruly and uncontrolled nature of the war at sea, privateering, loosely defined and regulated, was an organized business based on extensive networks of suppliers for the provisioning and fitting out of men-of-war. It was heavily concentrated in the port towns of the south and south-west, and Calais on the other side of the Channel. While provincial shipowners and traders were deeply involved in the business, it attracted the interest of some London merchants as well as officials and courtiers, including the Lord Admiral, John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, who had extensive interests in shipping. Under the shadow of the wars with France and Scotland, the regime had called into being a voluntary force of seaborne predators which it could neither control nor direct effectively.
During 1545 the council instructed privateers to use the Emperor’s subjects in a ‘gentle sort’, but shipping from the Low Countries and Spain continued to bear the brunt of English aggression at sea.70 Throughout the summer the council was forced to intervene in cases of spoil, in response to complaints from Flemish, Iberian and other neutral traders. Early in June it ordered the return of a lading of canvas plundered by Freeman of Calais out of a ship bound for Flanders; later in the month it issued orders for the restoration of the Mary of Dunkirk which had been brought into Plymouth. Despite this, and other interventions, the council was unable to stop the seizure of neutral shipping at sea.
The persistence of such unruly depredation invited retaliation. In September 1545 the council heard complaints concerning the detention of a Chester ship in Spain. Several months later it received a petition from Robert Thorne of Bristol on behalf of Walter Roberts, the captain of a local ship, who had been driven by bad weather into San Sebastián with five French prizes, where he was arrested and imprisoned by officials of the inquisition. The arrest of English ships in Spanish ports complicated the council’s efforts to prevent attacks on Iberian vessels. In any case the disciplining of disorderly captains was occasionally tempered by public and private circumstances. In December 1545 George Butshed was freed from a long spell of imprisonment, for unruly spoil at sea, after ‘shewing himself very repentant for his lewdness committed by rage of youth without due consideracion, and promessing to be hereafter of honest behavour’.71
During the later stages of the conflict the council was faced with a growing number of cases concerning irregular spoil which were essentially piratical in nature. In January 1546 it established an inquiry into the seizure of a Flemish ship, taken by English adventurers and reportedly sold in Ireland. A few weeks later it faced complaints about the plunder of a Spanish ship off Plymouth. In this case the council acknowledged that the attack was piracy; those involved, who had been taken, were to be handed over to the deputy of the Lord Admiral for punishment. At the end of March it ordered the arrest of John Thompson following complaints of the plunder of several Flemish vessels laden with pepper and other goods valued at 40,000 ducats. Several weeks later it investigated reports of the robbery of two Spanish ships by a Falmouth vessel, the captain of which ‘was said to keep an inn there and to be blemished in one eye’.72 According to the governor of Calais, ‘every Spaniard, Portugall or Fleming that comes from the South is robbed by our adventurers, some calling themselves Scots and some with vizers’.73
In response to the growing volume of complaint, in April 1546 the council issued instructions to officials in the Cinque Ports and in the south-west to detain men-of-war in port and to recall those at sea. It also ordered the arrest of several of the leaders involved in the spoil of neutral shipping in the Channel, including William Trymel of Rye and John Thompson, one of the western adventurers based in Calais. In May, Trymel was committed to the Tower, under instructions from the council that he was to be denied any visitors. But the regime found it difficult to apply an effective remedy to the problem of illicit plunder and piracy, not least because of the increasing number of ‘wandering freebooters’ of varying nationalities who were operating in the Channel.74
As the activities of Trymel and Thompson indicated, English rovers used local ports as bases for their raids, exploiting the potential of Calais as a cross-Channel haven, while disposing of plunder in markets scattered across the coastal regions of southern England and Ireland. As during the 1450s and 1460s there was a lively, informal trade in plundered cargoes which supported piracy and privateering. Plunder brought into Ilfracombe and Barnstaple by Thompson and Trymel was purchased by local merchants, including Roger Worthe, John Hollond, Henry Cade, Robert Cade and John Shapter (alias Butler), who re-sold part of it to ‘sundry other gentilmen and others farre under the just valewe of the same’.75 On investigating the case, the council ordered the restoration of the stolen goods. It also commanded those purchasers who had acquired the goods below their market value, to pay an additional sum of two shillings for every pound of pepper, cloves or sugar to the owners, partly to dissuade men of their status from dealing in pirates’ plunder.
Despite the order recalling men-of-war, the regime continued to allow adventurers to put to sea on lawful voyages of reprisal. In May 1546 the King licensed John Frencheman of Rye to set out for the North Sea with two small vessels and a row boat on condition that he ‘behave well towards the King’s subjects and friends and … register all prizes at the first English port’.76 Later in the month the council issued a licence to Henry Golding, captain of the Bark Ager, for a similar voyage with two pinnaces of Plymouth manned with eighty men. Yet the inability of the regime to control the activities of such vessels was exposed by the disorderly depredations committed by ships-of-war sent out by members of Henry’s increasingly divided and factionalized court, including the Lord Admiral and the Seymour brothers who were uncles of the King’s son and heir. One of the Lord Admiral’s vessels, under Captain Richard Gray, seized a Flemish prize laden with sugar and wines off the coast of Barbary, with the assistance of a ship of Sir Thomas Seymour, under the command of Richard Hore, an experienced sea captain. Hore led an expedition across the Atlantic in 1536, apparently with the purpose of exploring the region beyond Newfoundland. According to a later account, however, the expedition ran out of provisions, leading some of the company to resort to cannibalism; in harrowing circumstances, Hore and the survivors returned to England aboard a French vessel which they seized in exchange for their own ship. Another of Seymour’s captains, Robert Bruse, came to the attention of the council for his attacks on neutral shipping in the Channel. Following the plunder of a merchant of Antwerp, the council issued orders for Bruse’s arrest in June 1546. In addition Seymour’s brother, Edward, 1st Earl of Hertford, was also involved in cross-Channel raiding and pillaging. During May 1546 he informed the King that one of his vessels had brought in three small prizes laden with victuals, after a brief cruise along the coast of France.77
As Lisle predicted, the attack on neutral trade and shipping provoked angry protests from the Emperor’s subjects. However, it was the council, not the ageing King, which increasingly had to deal with the problem. Although some cases of spoil were passed on to the High Court of Admiralty, the diplomatic and political implications of the plunder of neutral traders compelled the council to take a leading role in handling complaints and resolving disputes, in an effort to limit the damage of English excesses at sea. Thus it sought to restore illegally plundered cargoes; it issued orders for the arrest of unruly captains, such as Bruse; and it ordered the investigation of suspected cases of piracy.
The pressure of such business consumed more of the council’s time during the final months of the war. Towards the end of May 1546 it instructed the Lord Admiral to recall two adventurers, Robert and John Bellyne, who were allegedly attacking vessels of Flushing. At the same time it dealt with complaints against John Malyne of Calais, who was ordered to appear before the council on charges of piracy and spoil following the disposal of plundered commodities in Ireland. Several days later it issued letters of assistance for the recovery of goods taken by English adventurers out of a Spanish vessel. The following month it issued orders for the arrest of various rovers or pirates who had seized a vessel of Lübeck off the coast of Cornwall, and set the master and company adrift in the ship’s boat. By mid-June it was investigating complaints against an English captain who was accused of selling booty in Cork with the connivance of the mayor.78
Much of this maritime activity was in the form of petty marauding by small vessels carrying a variety of armaments, which produced modest returns from the plunder of shipping in local waters, as is suggested by several cases dealt with by the High Court of Admiralty during the latter part of the war. In April 1546, for example, a small man-of-war, the Mary Anne, plundered a Spanish ship off Dursey Head of wines and other goods which were owned by Frenchmen. According to the master of the Mary Anne, the proceeds of the spoil amounted to £100. Out of this total the purser retained £18 for the owners of the ship to purchase victuals; the remainder was divided among the ship’s company. The master’s own share amounted to 13s 4d in cash, and included a sword, crossbow and a pair of horns. A few months later another Spanish vessel, the Sancta Maria del Guadeloupe, laden with iron and woad for various merchants of Chester, was attacked by a small ship under the command of Michael James. The English assaulted the Spanish ‘very fiercely with guns and arrows’, plundered the cargo and left the ship four leagues from land.79 Though the Spanish sailed on to Waterford, within sight of the harbour they were approached by another small vessel, manned by a group of rovers led by Leonard Sumpter. When the latter got within gun shot of the Sancta Maria the crew apparently fled in fear for their lives, taking with them some of the iron. Sumpter seized the abandoned ship, carried it off to Penarth in south Wales and subsequently claimed it as a casualty of the sea.
The restoration of peace during the summer of 1546 failed to halt the disorder at sea, which continued to claim the attention of the council. In July it ordered the return of a French prize taken since the peace by John Frencheman of Rye. In August John Donne of Rye, captain of the Dooe, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for seizing cloth out of a Spanish vessel. Later in the year John Thompson was still reportedly robbing Spanish ships in the Channel. Early the following year the accomplices of Cornelius Bellyne of Calais were executed for plundering Flemish vessels. Bellyne remained at sea, and was reported to be robbing the Flemish daily.80
The disorganization of the war at sea created profound difficulties for the Henrician regime. But they were a consequence of the military weaknesses of the early Tudor state which led it to promote privateering as a means of sharing the cost of the maritime conflict with private enterprise. The confusion between public and private interests that followed from this strategy was compounded with the spread of illegal and legal depredation. In effect the war at sea produced a varied pattern of indiscriminate and disorderly spoil. Small-scale, opportunistic raiding, involving short-distance voyages into the Channel and its approaches, including the North Sea and the Irish Sea, remained a characteristic feature of the conflict. But it was accompanied by the emergence of longer-distance venturing into the eastern Atlantic, which was larger in scale and ambition. Inevitably the emergence of Atlantic privateering and piracy was focused on the spoil of Iberian trade. The vulnerability of Spanish and Portuguese commerce during these years was underlined by the plunder of four Portuguese vessels in the harbour of Munguia by English adventurers during March 1546. The English seized a rich haul of sugar, and carried off one vessel laden with oil, ivory, pepper and other commodities of great value. However, the boldness of the attack provoked unease and disunity among the raiders. The master of the John of Kingswear was derided by some of the company as a coward who was more suited to keep sheep than to be a master of a man-of-war.81
Although these private actions of plunder provoked widespread complaint, they were supported by leading officials and courtiers in a way that served to sanction the activities of men such as Reneger and Wyndham. Under these conditions the predatory activities and ambitions of the English were re-shaped and re-directed during the 1540s with profound consequences for their subsequent development. The scale and intensity of the disorder at sea unavoidably confused the distinction between piracy and privateering. Although piracy was overshadowed, if not obscured, by the spread of disorderly plunder, it did not disappear from the waters of the British Isles. But the kind of opportunistic and localized piracy which flourished during the 1530s, and which persisted in some regions, seems to have been displaced by competing forms of licensed and unlicensed privateering. In some cases the change was little more than cosmetic. The war created more opportunities for small-scale rovers to exploit, as demonstrated by the attack on the John of Middelburg in the harbour of St Aubin, in Jersey, during July 1546. At the same time, the economic potential of privateering provided an opportunity for larger-scale venturing to flourish, organized in a more business-like fashion by merchants and shipowners. Moreover, some of this venturing was sustained by an extensive and illicit commerce in plundered commodities. Shore-based networks of supporters were essential to the maintenance and elaboration of English depredation during these years. Merchants such as Thomas Edmunds of Scarborough, who purchased goods ‘under very suspicious circumstances … for much less and smaller sums and prices than they were worth’, provided markets for rovers, in concealed transactions that took place in unusual conditions, sometimes at night and usually involving a rapid re-sale to hinder detection.82 By these and other means the appeal of maritime depredation was widely and deeply scattered during the 1540s.
Notes
1. Sir G. Warner (ed.), The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: A Poem on the Use of Sea–Power 1436 (Oxford, 1926), pp. 32, 41–2; M. Opp. enheim, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy and of Merchant Shipp. ing in Relation to the Navy from 1509 to 1660 (London, 1896, repr. Aldershot, 1988), pp. 15–18; D. Loades, The Tudor Navy: An Administrative, Political and Military History (Aldershot, 1992), pp. 25–8; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 145–7.
2. I.F. Grant, Highland Folk Ways (London, 1961), pp. 253–5; Rev. J. MacInnes, ‘West Highland Sea Power in the Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 48 (1972–74), pp. 529–45; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 166–8; Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, trans. H. Palsson and P. Edwards (London, 1978), pp. 215–6 for an account of a ‘good Viking trip’ which indicates the early significance of feasting, plunder and gifts. For raiding and the persistence of piracy into the early seventeenth century see A. I. Macinnes, Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603–1788 (East Linton, 1996), pp. 33–5, 64–5, 68.
3. A.L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall: Portrait of a Society (London, 1941), pp. 108–9; F.E. Halliday (ed.), Richard Carew of Antony: The Survey of Cornwall (London, 1953), pp. 210, 226–7.
4. C.L. Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England (Oxford, 1925, repr. London, 1962), pp. 87–102. For earlier examples see Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery): Volume VII 1422–1485 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 27–8, 38, 89–91, 93–6, 124–5, 131–4; C.F. Richmond, ‘The Earl of Warwick’s Domination of the Channel and the Naval Dimension to the Wars of the Roses, 1456–1460’, Southern History, 20–21 (1998–99), pp. 6–14.
5. CPR 1476–85, pp. 146, 355–6, 517–8, 545.
6. CPR 1476–85, p. 79.
7. CPR 1476–85, pp. 78–9, 356, 370–1.
8. CPR 1476–85, pp. 493–4; Kingsford, Prejudice, pp. 105–6.
9. CPR 1476–85, p. 520.
10. Kingsford, Prejudice, pp. 105–6; S. Cunningham, Henry VII (London, 2006), pp. 261–2.
11. CPR 1485–94, pp. 105, 108; Tudor Proclamations, I, pp. 25–6.
12. G. Connell–Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A Study of English Trade with Spain in the early Tudor Period (London, 1954, repr. Westport, CT, 1975), pp. 38, 58.
13. CPR 1494–1509, pp. 44, 61; Tudor Proclamations, I, pp. 44–5. The Magnus Intercursus of 1496 also included provision for dealing with piracy and reprisals in a diplomatic way. C.H. Williams (ed.), England under the Tudors 1485–1529 (London, 1925), pp. 254–5; Loades, Tudor Navy, pp. 46–7.
14. CPR 1494–1509, p. 290.
15. LP 1509–14, I, pp. 289, 593, 599, 605; I.F. Grant, The Social and Economic Development of Scotland before 1603 (Edinburgh, 1930), pp. 342–3.
16. LP 1509–14, I, pp. 593, 605; II, p. 1425.
17. LP 1515–18, I, pp. 221–2; II, pp. 1118, 1124, 1182–4, 1232, 1374–5; J.A. Williamson, Maritime Enterprise 1458–1558 (Oxford, 1913), p. 365.
18. LP 1515–18, II, pp. 1374–5; LP 1519–23, I, p. 91; Tudor Proclamations, I, p. 131.
19. LP 1509–14, I, p. 718 (the petition was dated 1513).
20. LP 1509–14, I, p. 718.
21. NAW, I, pp. 160–71; D.B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620 (London, 1973), pp. 163–8.
22. LP 1515–18, I, p. 72; LP 1519–23, I, pp. 75, 131; II, p. 1392. As the King’s lieutenant in Ireland, Surrey also responded vigorously to the threat from pirates, Brewer et al. (eds.), Carew Manuscripts, I, pp. 11, 20.
23. LP 1524–26, p. 791; LP 1526–28, pp. 1627, 1852, 1886; LP 1529–30, pp. 2172, 2257, 2264; M. St Clair Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters, 6 vols. (London, 1981), I, pp. 183–4, 396–7.
24. LP 1529–30, pp. 2650–1, 3193; LP 1534, p. 447.
25. LP 1531–32, pp. 14, 190, 198, 424–5, 707.
26. LP 1531–32, pp. 424–5; Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, I, pp. 258, 545, 663.
27. LP 1533, pp. 54, 66–7, 75, 110, 129, 175.
28. LP 1533, p. 512; LP 1534, pp. 85, 135, 535, 587; LP 1535, I, pp. 75, 87, 89, 175; Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, II, pp. 72–4, 101–2, 111, 189. The report of Broode’s execution indicated that it was for treason rather than piracy.
29. LP 1535, II, pp. 291, 354, 365, 377; HCA 1/33, f. 9.
30. LP 1535, II, p. 354; LP 1537, I, p. 274; LP 1540–41, pp. 446, 448; H.A. Lloyd, The Gentry of South–West Wales, 1540–1640 (Cardiff, 1968), pp. 161–2.
31. LP Addenda, I, part 1, p. 339; Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, II, pp. 112–3.
32. LP Addenda, I, part 1, pp. 339–40.
33. G.R. Elton (ed.), The Tudor Constitution (2nd edition, Cambridge, 1982), pp. 158–9; P. Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), pp. 244–5.
34. LP 1537, I, pp. 339, 421, 525; II, pp. 81–2, 90, 167; HCA 1/37, ff. 1, 9, 16v–9v; HCA 1/33, ff. 16–9v; Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, IV, p. 293.
35. LP 1536, II, pp. 115, 122, 442–3; LP 1537, II, pp. 225–6.
36. LP 1537, II, pp. 159, 220–1, 224, 305; Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, IV, pp. 273–6, 367, 415. Pirates were also active off the coast of Kent and the Isle of Wight, D. Childs, The Warship Mary Rose: The Life and Times of King Henry VIII’s Flagship (London, 2007), p. 151.
37. Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, V, pp. 38, 55; LP 1538, II, p. 158.
38. LP 1538, p. 61; HCA 1/33, ff. 60–70v and for the rest of this paragraph.
39. Select Pleas, I, pp. 73–4. Pirates and rovers used stones, fireworks and a variety of small weapons, G.V. Scammell, ‘European Seamanship in the Great Age of Discovery’, MM, 68 (1982), p. 368 reprinted in Ships, Oceans and Empire: Studies in European Maritime and Colonial History, 1400–1750 (Aldershot, 1995).
40. LP 1538, p. 431; LP 1539, I, pp. 365, 436; II, p. 43. About the same time, a Breton ship was attacked by pirates off the Scilly Isles, and members of the company were bound and cast overboard, HCA 1/33, ff. 47–8.
41. HCA 1/33, ff. 41–5.
42. Byrne (ed.), Lisle Letters, V, p. 387; LP 1539, I, p. 97.
43. HCA 1/33, ff. 16–8v.
44. LP 1539, I, pp. 27, 105, 111, 127.
45. LP 1539, I, pp. 436, 455, 477; HCA 1/33, ff. 47–8.
46. Connell–Smith, Forerunners, p. 140; HCA 1/33, ff. 10–11.
47. R.G. Marsden (ed.), ‘Voyage of the Barbara to Brazil, A.D. 1540’ in Naval Miscellany II (Navy Records Society, 40, 1912), pp. 3–66.
48. LP 1540, pp. 365, 502; LP 1540–41, pp. 21, 70–1, 160, 165; R.K. Hannay (ed.), The Letters of James V (Edinburgh, 1954), pp. 401–2, 407, 413.
49. LP 1540–41, p. 493; Hannay (ed.), Letters, pp. 401, 430–1, 407, 413.
50. LP 1542, pp. 343, 369–70, 456, 531. (Hereafter referred to as council).
51. LP 1544, II, p. 337.
52. LP 1543, I, pp. 186, 189, 231, 239; Connell–Smith, Forerunners, pp. 130–2; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 182–4.
53. LP 1543, I, pp. 199, 231, 282, 287; APC 1542–47, pp. 108–10, 112, 115. In 1522 Fletcher was described as one of the ‘wisest masters within the town of Rye’, C.S. Knighton and D. Loades (eds.), Letters from the Mary Rose (Stroud, 2002).
54. LP 1543, I, p. 245; II, p. 3; Connell–Smith, Forerunners, pp. 134–6; ODNB, ‘Sir John Russell’.
55. LP 1545, I, p. 622.
56. Select Pleas, I, pp. 139–41.
57. LP 1544, II, p. 177; J.A. Williamson, Sir John Hawkins: The Life and the Man (Oxford, 1927), pp. 9–19.
58. LP 1544, II, p. 337; Oppenheim, Administration, p. 88; Knighton and Loades (eds.), Letters, p. 108.
59. LP 1544, I, pp. 122, 128.
60. LP 1544, II, pp. 337, 359, 361–2, 370–1, 379.
61. APC 1542–47, p. 123; LP 1544, II, p. 456; Tudor Proclamations, I, pp. 345–6. On the damage to fishing see W.G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII 1509–1547 (London, 1976), pp. 185–7.
62. APC 1542–47, pp. 158, 176–7, 187–8; Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 265–8, 270–5; Williamson, Hawkins, pp. 26–30; Connell–Smith, Forerunners, pp. 137–8.
63. LP 1545, I, pp. 454–5, 533–5; Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 272–3; Connell–Smith, Forerunners, pp. 141–52.
64. LP 1545, I, pp. 460, 612; APC 1542–47, pp. 220–1.
65. LP 1545, I, pp. 105, 130, 145; G.V. Scammell, ‘War at Sea under the Early Tudors: Some Newcastle upon Tyne Evidence’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 38 (1960), pp. 95–6.
66. LP 1545, I, pp. 234, 245, 331; Select Pleas, I, pp. 136–7.
67. Tudor Proclamations, I, p. 348; Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 130.
68. LP 1545, I, p. 636; CSPI 1509–73, pp. 72, 74; HCA 1/34, ff. 22–2v, 26v, 30–1v.
69. LP 1545, I, pp. 631, 653; II, pp. 3, 66, 153; Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 392–3. It has been argued that cheaper iron ordnance aided the spread of piracy after 1544, P. E.J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke, 2003), p. 80.
70. APC 1542–47, pp. 206, 208, 210–11.
71. APC 1542–47, pp. 275, 282. The arrest of Irish shipping in Spain also led to demands for reprisals against Spanish and Flemish ships, CSPI 1509–73, p. 72.
72. LP 1546, I, pp. 203, 229, 289–90, 371, 378.
73. LP 1546, I, p. 275.
74. LP 1546, I, pp. 371, 373; APC 1542–47, pp. 363–4, 383, 386, 402–3.
75. APC 1542–47, pp. 427–30; HCA 1/34, ff. 19–22; A.K. Longfield, Anglo–Irish Trade in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1929), pp. 157–8, 179.
76. LP 1546, I, p. 360; APC 1542–47, p. 398.
77. LP 1546, I, pp. 363, 471, 490, 519, 539, 662, 697–8; II, p. 55; APC 1542–47, pp. 438–9, 441; NAW, I, pp. 207–15 for Hore.
78. LP 1546, I, pp. 454, 667; APC 1542–47, pp. 431–2, 452, 455–6.
79. Calendar, pp. 3–4; Connell–Smith, Forerunners, pp. 165–8; G.V. Scammell, ‘War at Sea under the Early Tudors– Part II’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 39 (1961), pp. 180–1 for a description of a small man–of–war.
80. LP 1546, I, p. 698.
81. LP 1546, I, p. 497; APC 1542–47, p. 446; Connell–Smith, Forerunners, pp. 158–63.
82. Select Pleas, I, pp. 141, 236–7.