Much of the initial uncertainty over the war at sea reflected the concern of the Queen and members of her council to prevent the piratical spoil of Flemish and Spanish shipping. In response to complaints from the Duchess of Parma, the Spanish regent in the Low Countries, in September 1563 the Queen ordered the captains of naval vessels and private ships-of-war to allow the subjects of the King of Spain to trade and fish freely. Furthermore, if Flemish or Spanish ships were attacked by French men-of-war, they were commanded to aid and defend them, as if they belonged to her natural subjects.30
Royal commands did little to stop attacks on Spanish or Flemish vessels, which were justified by claims that they were carrying goods either for or to the enemy. Such claims raised bitterly contested issues regarding neutral rights during wartime which were ill-defined, and subject to strategic and political considerations as much as to a rudimentary code of international law. Efforts to clarify these issues were undermined by the disorderly and piratical behaviour of men-of-war. In February 1563, for example, a Flemish merchant complained of the plunder of a French ship at Bordeaux, laden with wine and feathers, by an English vessel. The Flemish merchant had freighted the French ship, the master of which was able to demonstrate that its cargo belonged to subjects of the King of Spain. Nonetheless, the prize was brought into Tenby, where the wine was sold for £8 per tun. This kind of irregular plunder provoked angry demands for restitution, exposing the limited administrative and regulatory authority of the High Court of Admiralty.31
Disorderly privateering in the Channel and off the coast of Spain soon became confused with piratical activity. Both drew on anti-Spanish hostility, damaging the interests of English merchants in Spain, who faced the prospect of retaliation and reprisal. In June 1563 Hugh Tipton, the English agent in Seville, reported a recent attack by two small vessels on a Spanish ship returning from Puerto Rico, off Cape St Vincent. The rovers, who the Spanish claimed were English, ‘for that they shot so many arrows that they were not able to look out’, plundered the ship of 3,000 coin pieces, ten chests of sugar and 200 hides, as well as its ordnance, cables and anchors. Concerned that English property in Seville would be arrested if the plunder persisted, Tipton informed Spanish officials that the rovers were ‘Scots and Frenchmen, and some Englishmen amongst them, a sort of thieves gathered to go a robbing’.32
Attacks on Spanish shipping by the English increased during the year. By December 1563 Philip II remonstrated that the spoil of his subjects had reached an intolerable level. According to complaints from Bilbao, within the previous three months English rovers had captured four French prizes laden with Spanish goods, valued at 49,000 ducats, in addition to the seizure of a Spanish vessel in Santander by Phetiplace. A vessel of Bilbao, laden with wool for Flanders, was also spoiled by five English men-of-war off Ushant. Three or four of the crew, including a friar, were killed during the skirmish. The violence at sea spread further south. Tipton reported an incident off Gibraltar in November, when an English vessel attacked a French ship, with loss of life on both sides, which had serious diplomatic repercussions. The English vessel was one of eight trading ships which were ready to depart from Spain laden with wines, raisins, almonds and other commodities. The attack on the French ship was defended as a legitimate act of war. For the Spanish, however, it appeared to be another example of English piracy which was increasingly threatening their trade with America. Consequently, they claimed that all eight vessels were corsairs who had spoiled ships returning from the Indies. Soon after the attack, they were seized by galleys sent out from Cadiz. While the French ship was left unmolested, the Spanish ‘took the English banners and hanged them out at the stern of the galleys, dragging them along in the water, as though they had taken their enemies’.33 At the end of the year several hundred English mariners were reported to be prisoners of the Spanish, shackled aboard galleys, subsisting on a diet of bread and water.
The incident off Gibraltar seemed to confirm the fears of Sir Thomas Challoner ‘that the licentiousness of a few adventurers will be the cause that a number of honest merchants shall be undone’. The arrest of the English ships, and the accusation of piracy, fuelled Anglo-Spanish hostility. The English insisted that the ships were peaceful traders, blaming the French for the clash off Gibraltar. It was not until June 1564 that Philip II ordered the release of the English ships, while thirty mariners remained in captivity at least until August.34
Despite Challoner’s comments, the spread of English depredation along the coast of Spain could not easily be explained away as the ‘licentiousness of a few adventurers’. In particular, an increasing number of English men-of-war, which haunted the Bay of Biscay in search of French prizes, resorted to the plunder of Spanish and other vessels. An English trader in Bilbao reported early in 1564 that there were twenty-five English vessels off the coast of northern Spain, some of which were compelled by contrary winds to bring their French prizes into the Spanish port, where they were arrested on suspicion of piracy. Although English prisoners were reportedly dying daily, the Spanish ‘will not let them be buried but abroad in islands’.35
Among those involved in the plunder of the Spanish was Thomas Cobham, the brother of Lord Cobham who was a member of the Queen’s council. During the latter part of 1563 Cobham was cruising in the Bay of Biscay with three men-of-war, plundering Spanish vessels returning from Flanders. Following his seizure of one vessel, laden with goods valued at 80,000 ducats which were carried off to Waterford, officials in Bilbao and neighbouring ports arrested all English vessels on the coast. The activities of rovers such as Cobham and Stukely, who was involved in a midnight attack on a Portuguese ship in Bayonne during which three of the crew were killed, provoked a furious response from the Spanish. Anger at being attacked ‘as if they were mortal enemies’ was inflamed by religious hostility. In March 1564 John Cuerton, an English trader resident in Bilbao, reported a growing feeling among Spanish victims ‘that what hurt they do to Englishmen they get to Heaven by it’.36 In these circumstances the difficulties facing English seafarers in Spain seemed to multiply. Oliver Harris and other seamen were arrested and imprisoned in irons at Tolosa, following accusations that they were members of Phetiplace’s company. After eight months in prison, during which half of the prisoners died, while the survivors were abused and abhorred as Turks, Harris managed to contact Cecil, begging for assistance. Although they denied the charges of piracy, Harris and four others were sentenced to death.
In February 1564 the Queen tried to curtail the plunder of Spanish and Flemish shipping by proclamation. While claiming that some Spanish ships were carrying French goods, the decree acknowledged that English men-of-war had been too aggressive in searching the vessels of the subjects of the King of Spain for contraband. Accordingly the Queen appointed commissioners to hear and determine complaints of unlawful plunder, while providing rapid redress for the victims. At the same time, the proclamation openly recognized the difficulty in trying to prevent future attacks on the Spanish or Flemings, because of the number of armed vessels at sea and ‘specially considering the daily coloring of the French wares by the said King’s subjects’. As a result, officials in England and Ireland were ordered to apprehend anybody who was suspected of attacking the subjects of Philip II. If local officers failed to arrest such suspects, they faced punishment ‘as abettors to the offenders’. The owners, captains or masters of men-of-war were also instructed to provide sureties for the compensation of the victims of the plunder of Spanish ships or the vessels of friendly rulers. In response to recent complaints, men-of-war were instructed to be particularly careful in their conduct towards Scottish subjects.37
The proclamation demonstrated the determination of the regime to curb the piratical activities of men-of-war and other rovers. Its revival of commissioners for depredations, with extensive powers, also showed its concern to respond to overseas complaints about delays in the administration of justice. But the translation of these orders into effective action remained dependent o
n the cooperation and consent of local officials and communities. The lack of evidence for the proceedings of the commissioners, which may itself be revealing, makes it difficult to determine their effectiveness in implementing royal commands. In practice the attempt of the regime to control seaborne plunder rested on self-regulation among the promoters and companies of ships of war.
The inability of the regime to control or regulate the activities of men-of-war was reflected in the continued plunder of Spanish, Flemish and other shipping during the closing stages of the conflict with France. According to overseas complaints the disorder was accompanied by the use of torture against the masters of neutral vessels, to force them into false confessions. Captain Courteney tortured a Flemish master, John Petersen, with manacles until he confessed that he was a Frenchman. Although Courteney was condemned by the commissioners for depredations, and ordered by the council ‘to be punished with some corporall paine for examples sake’, he responded with a legal suit of his own against Petersen, for damages of £2,000, though it was halted in January 1565 at the intervention of the Spanish ambassador.38
The restoration of peace with France in April 1564 failed to stop the lawlessness at sea. In the aftermath of the war English rovers continued to plunder French vessels in the Channel. The vulnerability of French commerce to attack was underlined by a report in May of the spoil of several traders of France, to the value of more than 5,000 crowns, by an English rowing boat. During an uncertain and ambiguous period, that characterised the slow restoration of more peaceful conditions at sea, the council dealt with widespread complaints of illegal plunder. In August it instructed Sir William Godolphin, John Killigrew and others to restore goods plundered out of a Spanish ship in the south-west, or to compel the offenders to appear before the commissioners for depredations. The following month Sir Thomas Gargrave, vice president of the Council in the North, and other officials were ordered to assist two Frenchmen in the recovery of goods which had been taken and brought into Hull by Percival Wheteley, William Wentworth and their associates. About the same time it dealt with allegations against Sir John Perrot, Deputy Vice Admiral of Pembrokeshire, regarding the arrest of members of the company of Thomas Cobham in Tenby. Several days later the council took the unusual step of appointing searchers for spoils committed on the Spanish along the coasts of Wales, Devon and Cornwall. Sir Peter Carew and Sir John Chichester were subsequently paid £40 for their services in Devon and Cornwall over a period of thirty-four days.39
Ineluctably disorderly plunder became confused with piracy, particularly within the Channel. In August the Spanish ambassador reported that the region was still infested with thieves. The ‘worst feature of these particular matters’, he informed Philip II, ‘is that most of the people that are called pirates are simply rogues without means who spend what they steal and after they are condemned at a cost of much trouble and money have not the wherewithal to pay’.40 In these circumstances the victims of piracy preferred to recover their property, by arrangement with the pirates, rather than pursuing them through the High Court of Admiralty. Although the ambassador was undeniably impressed with the Queen’s determination to deal with piracy, the regime struggled to contain the problem during 1564 and 1565.
In an attempt to reassure Spain of its good intentions, in September 1564 the council provided a vessel to convoy a ship of Antwerp, which seems to have taken sanctuary in Plymouth harbour from pirates haunting the south-west, on the last leg of its homeward voyage from Spain. It also sent out two vessels to clear the coasts of Devon and Cornwall of rovers. In another gesture of its resolve to tackle the problem, Sir Peter Carew, one of the Vice Admirals in the south-west, was ordered to arrest Edmond Coke of Plymouth and other men from Falmouth and neighbouring havens, who were accused of victualling pirates. Later in the year Thomas Maynarde of Plymouth was commanded to appear before the commissioners for depredations, after he admitted receiving stolen booty from a pirate, Robert Thirkett. In November, after consulting with the judge of the High Court of Admiralty, the council authorized the mayor and corporation of Bristol to send out ships to apprehend pirates who were haunting the sea between the River Severn and the Scilly Isles. In the following month it issued instructions to the Vice Admirals in the south-west for the arrest and trial of pirates who had been active since the peace with France. The council complained that pirates had been arrested, but none were punished or executed. The Vice Admirals were instructed, therefore, to hold sessions for the speedy trial of suspected malefactors. Those found guilty were ‘to be executed upon sum cliffs nere to the sea side, to the example of others’.41 Officials in the south-west were also ordered to arrest a group of eight men, including John Heidon and John Hope, who were suspected of piracy, and to hold them in custody until they were able to clear themselves of the allegations.
Piratical activity remained concentrated in, but by no means confined to, the south-west. In December 1564 the mayor of Dover was commanded by the council to investigate complaints that a local ship had spoiled a French vessel of a lading of herring. Later in the month it ordered the arrest of three men in Southampton on suspicion of piracy. During January 1565 the Spanish ambassador complained of the robbery of a Flemish ship by Edward Cooke of Southampton. Evidently the plunder was secretly carried ashore by night, to Cooke’s house, when some of the robbers were captured, though their leader escaped.42
Despite vigorous and vigilant supervision by the council, the spoil of overseas shipping persisted in local waters, while plunder was dispersed across widely scattered coastal regions of England, Wales and Ireland. In April 1565 Carew informed the council of the arrest of one of Stukely’s ships at Cork, though a group of other pirates, including Heidon, escaped to the castle at Bearhaven, under the protection of O’Sullivan Beare. In trying to limit depredation at sea, the regime was compelled to rely on short-term expediency, which dealt with the consequences rather than the causes of such disorder, while it struggled to forestall complaints about partiality and slackness in the application of justice. In March 1565 the commissioners in Cornwall were commanded to execute three pirates, unless the assize judges advised otherwise. They were also instructed to send to London a jury of twelve men who had recently acquitted one suspect of piracy, together with the evidence presented during the trial. This concern was to ensure that the trial and punishment of pirates was accompanied by provision for the recovery and restoration of stolen goods, which relied on the cooperation of local officials. In April 1565 Sir Arthur Champernowne, Vice Admiral for Devon, was instructed to assist two Scotsmen in the recovery of their goods which had been spoiled at sea, while Sir Peter Carew was ordered to deliver a vessel, at Dartmouth, to John Petersen of Zeeland, in accordance with a process issued out of the High Court of Admiralty. In May officials in Dorchester were commanded to seize goods, on suspicion that they had been taken by pirates from Frenchmen.43 But the restoration of pirate booty repeatedly involved the council and the High Court of Admiralty in allegations against the proceedings of local officers, which pointed to wider and deeper weaknesses in the response to piracy.
Yet the regime achieved several striking successes in its campaign against piracy. By May 1565 two of the most notorious adventurers, Thomas Cobham and Thomas Stukely, were under arrest, leading one of Cecil’s agents in Bordeaux to claim that there was ‘no English pirate left upon the sea’, despite French complaints of continued raiding in the Channel.44 Cobham and Stukely were the leading figures among a group of adventurers whose ambitions for self-promotion and enrichment sustained a wave of speculative and opportunistic plunder along the coasts of Spain and Portugal during the 1560s. Neither Cobham nor Stukely explicitly identified themselves with the pirates who continued to infest the Channel and the coastal waters of the British Isles, although they drew on localized piracy for support and recruitment. But the search for honour, glory and wealth, which characterized the ambitions of such adventurers, the restless and rootless younger sons of landowners, was overshadowed by
their mercenary motives at sea.
Stukely, an extreme example of the type, fashioned a wayward career of divided allegiances and activities, ranging from England and Ireland to Spain and the Mediterranean, which included intermittent piratical venturing from the later 1550s to the mid-1560s. A younger son of Sir Hugh Stukely of Affeton Castle in Devon, though reputedly an illegitimate child of Henry VIII, he acquired extensive experience as a military adventurer before flirting with the attractions of maritime depredation. During the closing months of Mary’s reign he was engaged in privateering against the French, which spilled over into the disorderly plunder of Spanish shipping. In June 1563 he was involved in a scheme for a joint Anglo-French expedition with Jean Ribault. Though the expedition was apparently intended for Florida, Stukely’s aim was essentially predatory. When the venture failed to proceed as planned, he turned to raiding the coasts of France and Spain from bases in south-west England and Ireland. Stukely’s activities provoked angry complaints from the Spanish monarchy. In January 1564 Philip II ordered his ambassador in London to seek redress for his attack on a Portuguese vessel in Bayonne, during which three of the crew were killed. According to Portuguese reports, Stukely sailed with a ship and a smaller vessel, described as a smack, ‘under the guise of a merchantman for greater security’, preying upon small trading and fishing vessels. During the latter part of 1563 he seized a Portuguese fishing vessel, valued at 1,500 ducats, which had sought shelter in the port of Munguia. On leaving, he captured a Biscayan ship, laden with iron and money, worth 3,800 ducats. He also seized another vessel off Pontevedra, with a cargo of wine, before returning to Ireland.45
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