In 1598 Paul Hentzner, a German visitor to England, noted that the English were ‘good sailors and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, and thievish’.1 He claimed that more than 300 pirates were hanged annually in London. This was an impressive number of executions to stage during the course of one year. Undoubtedly it exaggerated the actual number of men executed for piracy; however, it registered a response to a serious problem that appeared to be out of control. By the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth, English piracy and disorderly privateering were arousing alarm and anger in many parts of Europe. Nor was there any sign that the end of the Spanish war and the recall of men-of-war by the new monarch, James VI of Scotland, would lessen the disorder at sea. During the summer of 1603 officials in Plymouth, Dartmouth and Bristol warned the council of the persistence of robbery and spoil, while overseas complaints cast a shadow over the King’s efforts to restore peaceful relations with Spain.2
After nearly twenty years of authorized maritime depredation, involving large numbers of ships and seamen, for many the restoration of peace was an unwelcome development, which encouraged an increasing number of recruits to continue a private war against Spain by sailing under Dutch commissions. Although the new regime tried to prohibit the practice, it provided employment for groups of demobilized men who had served aboard reprisal vessels. Even so, the peace with Spain created a serious problem of unemployment which encouraged the transfer of disorder and lawlessness from sea to land. In June 1603 the mayor of Plymouth presented the council with an alarming report on the influx of a ‘great number of sailors, mariners and other masterless men, that heretofore have been at sea in men-of-war, and being now restrained from that course do still remain here and pester our town which is already overcharged with many poor people’.3 Faced with an uncertain future, many of these men resorted to stealing from boats at night-time, robbing English as well as French owners.
Among those employed in such petty piracy and theft was John Ward, who was shortly to acquire widespread notoriety as a pirate and renegade in the Mediterranean. Ward, whose unusual and challenging career after 1604 earned him celebrity and condemnation, was at the forefront of a new breed of pirates who were to re-shape, in a radical and unsettling manner, the character of English piracy. By using overseas bases, which also served as places of habitation, some of these pirates adopted a way of life that seemed to be a deliberate rejection of their origins and background. The self-avowed alienation and hostility of Ward and others, including a concern to re-create their lives in a different setting, represented a profound change in the attitudes of pirates and rovers, which became more common with the oceanic expansion of sea robbery as it spread along the maritime frontier of a wider commercial and colonial network.4
While the period covered by this book might be seen as a necessary prelude to the so-called ‘golden age of piracy’ which flourished between 1650 and 1720, it had its own distinctive character which was expressed particularly in the prevailing confusion between piracy, privateering and sea roving. From the 1520s to the 1590s the overlap between these varied forms of maritime depredation became ever more confused. Piracy flourished during these years, but as an ambiguous enterprise. It was maintained with widespread community support and with varying degrees of connivance on the part of successive regimes. While the monarchy was concerned to protect its jurisdiction and to defend its honour at sea, there was no sustained campaign against pirates or their supporters during the period of Tudor rule. At sea, naval patrolling was expensive, irregular and often ineffective. On land the establishment of piracy commissioners during the 1560s and 1570s represented important initiatives in local government and policing, but they were short lived and unsuccessful. Despite the apparent rigour of the law, an increasing number of recruits were prepared to participate in sea robbery, either in the hope that they would not be caught or in the expectation of a pardon.
The Jolly Roger flying over Studland beach. It testifies to the modern fascination with pirates and piracy, though the subject is often perceived in a very romantic or nostalgic fashion. Flags such as this were not used until the later seventeenth century. Most pirates active during the earlier period rarely revealed their identities in such a public or threatening manner, though the use of the ‘bloody flag’ may have been proliferating. (Author’s collection)
Under these conditions the growth of piracy and other forms of maritime depredation was marked by an underlying shift in its range and vigour, which was accompanied by short-term upsurges in the incidence of local spoil and plunder. The revival of small-scale piracy around the British Isles during the 1520s and 1530s was powerfully reinforced by the spread of disorderly privateering during the 1540s. This created an opportunity for the growth of more organized, long-distance plunder, the success of which was strikingly demonstrated by Reneger’s raid off Cape St Vincent. A traditional form of indiscriminate, petty piracy and spoil thus became linked with more ambitious and increasingly anti-Iberian enterprise. During the 1550s and 1560s aggressive commercial venturing to Guinea, which blurred the boundary between trade and plunder, served as an outlet for this predatory force, attracting the interest of men such as Frobisher and Strangeways. In combination with an upsurge in piracy and sea roving within the Channel and along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, which were justified as legitimate, if irregular reprisals, these developments led to the pirate invasion of the Caribbean during the 1570s. Led by Drake, the spread of English piracy was encouraged and favoured by external forces. Exploiting the weaknesses of Spain and Portugal, it followed in the wake of French raiders, while it was most successful when undertaken in alliance with the cimaroons.
The tension between potentially contradictory and complementary forms of plunder, linked to its widening range, was acutely exposed during the 1570s and early 1580s. Under the leadership of captains such as Callice, Hicks and Piers, a large number of pirates and rovers made a living from organized, but essentially localized, piracy, while activity within the Caribbean appeared to falter. Nonetheless, Drake’s voyage from 1577 to 1580 revealed the rich rewards to be gained from preying upon vulnerable regions of the Spanish Empire. Oceanic plunder encouraged far-reaching predatory commercial schemes, while it also strengthened the appeal of anti-Spanish colonial and military projects. In these circumstances the outbreak of the war with Spain during 1585 was followed by the transformation of privateering into a large-scale business, especially in the hands of merchants and shipowners. Under the dubious legitimacy of reprisal venturing, the war provided an opportunity for the consolidation of previous practices and structures, while charting a new direction in the development of long-distance plunder. But the loose regulation of privateering on this scale produced widespread disorder and illegal depredation.
Against a crowded and confused background, therefore, the period from the 1520s to the 1590s was a crucial stage in the development of English piracy and privateering. While local, short-distance piracy flourished almost unchecked, it was during these years that organized, long-distance depredation emerged. As this study demonstrates, both were woven into the fabric of English seafaring enterprise. For thousands of seafarers and others, robbery and plunder at sea were a form of employment. For some, it was a way of life, the basis for an embryonic culture which was to develop during the second half of the seventeenth century. At a time when the early modern English state was compelled to compromise with unruly predatory forces, piracy, privateering and sea roving acquired an unusual significance. Maritime depredation served varied commercial and military purposes, occasionally providing the shock troops for an embattled and beleaguered regime, although it was impossible to control and regulate effectively. Consequently, the export of organized violence and criminality, which was under way at the close of the sixteenth century, inaugurated a new phase in the history of English piracy, culminating in the creation of a community of outcasts whose survival challenged the commercial and colonial interests of an expanding seaborne empire.5
Notes
1. W.B. Rye (ed.), England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First (London, 1865), p. 110.
2. HMC Salisbury, XV, pp. 151, 168, 170, 202–3, 253; G.V. Scammell, ‘The Sinews of War: Manning and Provisioning English Fighting Ships, c. 1550–1650’, Mariner’s Mirror, 73 (1985), pp. 360–1 reprinted in Ships, Oceans and Empire.
3. HMC Salisbury, XV, p. 151.
4. For a recent study of Ward see G. Bak, Barbary Pirate: The Life and Crimes of John Ward (Stroud, 2006), and on Jacobean piracy see C.M. Senior, A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in its Heyday (Newton Abbot, 1976).
5. Rediker, Villains of All Nations, pp. 19–37.