Under the Bloody Flag

by John C Appleby

  The activities of a group of English adventurers who were engaged in privateering from Dunkirk provoked particular concern. One of the leading members of this group, William Cotton, was involved in sending out several English captains on voyages of reprisal. Cotton’s associates included Richard Flodde and George Phipson, who was freed from arrest during 1576 after successfully clearing himself of charges of piracy. Complaints against Cotton’s unnatural behaviour, in spoiling English vessels, were voiced during March 1576. But the rebellion in the Low Countries presented opportunities for predatory enterprise, in a godly cause, which Cotton and others eagerly exploited. William of Orange complained bitterly of English adventurers trading with Flanders, who subsequently acquired letters of reprisal, under false pretences, against the rebels. The activities of alienated and committed Catholics in the Low Countries had more dangerous implications. Thus, in January 1577, Cotton, a ‘lewd and most horrible varlet’, was portrayed as a supporter for setting up Mary, Queen of Scots, as a challenger to Elizabeth.82

  Yet it was Dutch men-of-war or privateers which continued to inflict heavy damage on English commerce during 1576. In an early indication of subsequent inflammatory disputes over flag honour in the Channel, an English vessel was spoiled off Dover by four warships of Flushing, for refusing to strike its topsails. In April it was claimed that during the course of one month privateers from Flushing had taken thirty English ships. Burghley complained of the ‘universal barbarism’ of Dutchmen, who he dismissed as a ‘rabble of common pirates, or worse, who make no difference whom they outrage’.83 The plunder of English shipping provoked repeated complaints and demands for restitution, which included allegations of the use of gratuitous violence and torture by privateering companies serving under the authority of William of Orange.

  In July 1576 Sir William Winter led a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries to complain of the activities of the privateers of Flushing, though it met with little success. William of Orange responded with Dutch grievances against the English. Later in the year, however, he acknowledged the damaging effects of the disorderly spoil by captains sailing with his commissions. The continued seizure of English ships by the Dutch, which were claimed as good prize allegedly on the grounds that they refused to strike their sails to William of Orange’s vessels, thus aroused widespread complaint. In order to deal with such losses, in November the regime suggested that the Estates of Holland and Zeeland should provide insurance for English merchants against the spoil of their goods at sea.84 Evidently the plunder of English shipping was on such a scale that the Estates were reluctant to accept an open-ended and potentially costly commitment.

  The regime struggled unsuccessfully to combat the menace of overseas piracy and privateering, particularly when it involved the Dutch. Naval patrols were sent out in an effort to improve the security of the seas, but they met with mixed success, partly as a result of widespread sympathy for the rebel cause and a concern not to alienate William of Orange. In November 1575 the Queen instructed the Lord Admiral to send out two vessels to repress pirates and free-booters in the Channel. The following year, in March 1576, the Lord Admiral was directed to arrest ships of Flushing, in retaliation for the plunder of English vessels. The instructions for Captain Henry Palmer, who was sent out in May 1576 with a fleet of six vessels, indicate that an exception was made for privateers sailing with commissions issued by the Dutch leader. Later in the year William Holstock was sent out in command of three vessels, with instructions to scour the Channel and arrest all ships of Flushing, in response to their continued attacks on English shipping. The limitations of these and other measures adopted by the council during the summer were demonstrated by complaints that thirteen men-of-war from Flushing were in Tor Bay. Yet the reaction of the council to such reports was deeply ambivalent. To some extent, moreover, this reflected a wider ambivalence towards the Dutch and their rebellion against Spain, which might be detected in the complaints of London merchants against cowardly English mariners who surrendered with little or no resistance to privateers from Flushing. While the council insisted that the allegations were an ‘infamous slander’, it also warned that those accused of cowardice would be proceeded against as traitors.85

  In the last resort, and with reluctance on the part of the Queen and Burghley, the regime authorized the issue of commissions of reprisal in retaliation for the plunder of English vessels by French or Dutch men-of-war. The number of such commissions was small and carefully controlled by the council. The recipients included Henry Jolliffe of the Isle of Wight, who was granted permission in September 1576 to send out shipping against a French pirate, Captain Gilliam, on condition that he provided bonds for good conduct at sea. Later in the month Richard Gooche received a commission for use against the ships of Flushing. In November Captain Burbaige was granted a licence to arrest vessels of Brest or Le Conquet.86

  While the Queen complained of the activities of French raiders, however, she acknowledged that they were not pirates, but lawfully commissioned men-of-war. These circumstances may have reinforced a preference for diplomacy over the use of reprisals, although the Queen warned that if English property was not restored, she would be forced to issue letters of marque.87 A similar concern to limit or avoid the issue of commissions for the plunder of overseas shipping was revealed during the negotiations with Portugal, in October 1576, for the restoration of diplomatic and commercial relations. By the terms of the ensuing treaty, both parties agreed to implement more effective measures for the suppression of piracy, while suspending the use of letters of marque or reprisal for three years.

  Despite diplomacy and the threat of reprisals, English trade and shipping remained vulnerable to attack by Dutch, Flemish and French men-of-war. In April 1576 sea rovers from Newhaven reportedly were robbing all the English ships they met at sea. During the course of discussions in August 1577, concerning the French spoil of English shipping, Sir Amias Paulet, the recently appointed ambassador in Paris, claimed that ‘for one pirate in England they had ten in France, and that … all their havens were full of rovers and thieves’.88 Earlier in the month, the Queen sent out three vessels against pirates; nonetheless, several weeks later one of her representatives, Robert Beale, who was travelling to Germany on diplomatic business, was ‘miserably spoiled by Flushingers and others, pretending to serve under the Prince of Condé’.89 To the annoyance of the regime, French captains sailing with commissions issued by the Huguenot leader, Condé, continued to use the Isle of Wight as a temporary base for their privateering ventures.

  The persistence of disorderly depredation became a source of mutual suspicion and discontent between England and France during the later 1570s. In January 1578 Walsingham expressed concern at the plunder of English ships, noting that it was an ‘opening to a plain cause of hostility’.90 One Exeter man, Richard Adern, whose case may have come to Walsingham’s attention, was twice plundered by the French, while Henry Jolliffe claimed to have been spoiled six times by French rovers. The French responded with their own complaints, though they only served to provoke righteous indignation among the English. On being informed by the governor of Calais that a group of English adventurers had been captured and brought into the harbour, one of Paulet’s servants replied, ‘if they were pirates he would do well to have them hanged, and that he might be sure they would not be received in any port in England’.91

  For Paulet the unregulated issue of letters of marque, which he described as ‘next neighbours to open hostility’, only served to encourage the plunder of English shipping by French rovers. But English complaints provoked a vicious circle of claim and counter-claim. The governor of Normandy insisted that ‘for every crown which those under his government had taken from the English, the … [latter] had spoiled them of 500’.92 Against this, Paulet estimated English losses at the hands of Norman rovers, during the two years from April 1576 to March 1578, at 33,000 crowns. The scale of the problem led to a suggestion for an Anglo-French fleet to be sent out to clear
the seas of pirates, though it met with little enthusiasm on either side of the Channel. As a result, indiscriminate attacks on English shipping by French rovers continued. By July 1579 English losses at the hands of French pirates or privateers, since July 1562, were estimated at more than £70,000 in value.93

  The threat from overseas predators during the mid-1570s diverted attention away from the persistence of domestic piracy within the waters around the British Isles. At the same time it provided favourable conditions for the maintenance of varied forms of localized depredation. While the plunder of English shipping provoked retaliation against the Spanish, French or Dutch, the disruption to commerce may have helped to swell the number of available recruits among unemployed seafarers. The prolonged lawlessness at sea in north-west Europe thus created an environment in which piracy, privateering and sea roving flourished under conditions of undeclared war. The inability of the Elizabethan regime to regulate or repress the disorder, and the opportunities available to aggressive adventurers, were reflected in the activities of men such as Captain Sawyer of Rye, who was sent out by the council on an intelligence-gathering mission to the coast of Spain in 1576, during which he spoiled a French vessel.94 In these circumstances the spread of English depredation into the Caribbean had profound implications for the future development of piracy and privateering, though in the short term it was the resurgence of local piratical enterprise, particularly in south-west England and Wales, which appeared more threatening.

  Notes

  1. APC 1558–70, pp. 337–8, 366–7; Tudor Proclamations, II, pp. 339–41.

  2. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 235, 245–6, 250.

  3. CSPS 1568–79, p. 245.

  4. CSPS 1568–79, p. 482.

  5. CSPS 1568–79, p. 329.

  6. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 288–9, 325.

  7. Dietz, ‘Huguenot and English Corsairs’, pp. 284–5; CSPS 1568–79, pp. 75–6, 253; Quinn, Explorers and Colonies, pp. 130, 258–9.

  8. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 235, 242–3, 250, 258.

  9. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 243, 263.

  10. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 263, 267.

  11. CSPS 1568–79, p. 290.

  12. APC 1558–70, pp. 386, 395; CSPF 1569–71, p. 471; CSPS 1568–79, p. 361.

  13. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 231, 243, 245; Calendar, p. 33.

  14. CSPS 1568–79, p. 277; APC 1558–70, p. 389.

  15. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 283, 288–9.

  16. APC 1558–70, p. 409; A. Spicer, The French–Speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton 1567–c.1620 (Southampton Record Series, 39, 1997), p. 131.

  17. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 351–2, 399; D.B. Quinn and A.N. Ryan, England’s Sea Empire, 1550–1642 (London, 1983), pp. 41–2.

  18. CSPS 1568–79, p. 329.

  19. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 283, 338, 347.

  20. CSPS 1568–79, p. 286; APC 1558–70, pp. 368–9, 385–6, 391–2. For the loss to customs referred to in this paragraph see C. Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the Netherlands (London, 1970), p. 25.

  21. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 291, 292, 305, 364.

  22. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 296, 341, 347, 376; Tudor Proclamations, II, pp. 357–8.

  23. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 385, 490; V. von Klarwill (ed.), The Fugger News-Letters 1568–1605 (London, 1926), pp. 13–4.

  24. CSPS 1568–79, p. 457.

  25. CSPF 1572–74, p. 259; CSPS 1568–79, pp. 456, 459, 470–1, 476.

  26. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 459, 465.

  27. CSPS 1568–79, p. 476.

  28. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 429–30, 464.

  29. APC 1571–75, pp. 64–5, 77–9; Select Pleas, II, pp. 149–50. A fleet was also despatched to scour the Channel for pirates, Williamson, Hawkins, pp. 273–5.

  30. APC 1571–75, pp. 85, 107, 110, 114, 256.

  31. CSPF 1572–74, p. 454.

  32. APC 1571–75, p. 187.

  33. APC 1571–75, pp. 191, 230; CSPS 1568–79, pp. 482, 486; Calendar, pp. 39–41. Dutch rebel rovers also remained based in English ports, such as captain David of Flushing who was based in Dover for at least four years, Pays–Bas, VII, pp. 40–1, 50, 146–7, 161–2, 451.

  34. APC 1571–75, pp. 102–3, 110, 113, 116–7 301. And for Ireland see M. O’Dowd (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Ireland: Tudor Period 1571–1575 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 11, 292, 296, 298.

  35. CSPF 1572–74, p. 454. V. W. Lunsford, Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands (New York, 2005), p. 115.

  36. APC 1571–75, pp. 150, 160, 176, 213, 222–3, 333; CSPF 1575–77, p. 151; CSPF 1572–74, pp. 511, 515, 520.

  37. APC 1571–75, pp. 253, 275–6; CSPF 1572–74, p. 537.

  38. CSPF 1572–74, pp. 511, 531. Clashes with the French persisted along the coast of Spain, Andrews, ’Thomas Fenner’, pp. 313–4.

  39. CSPF 1572–74, pp. 522, 525–7, 530–3; Bain et al. (eds.), Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland, V, pp. 8–10, 14–5, 24–8.

  40. CSPF 1572–74, pp. 522–3, 536–7, 540–1, 544; APC 1571–75, p. 293.

  41. CSPS 1568–79, p. 477.

  42. CSPS 1568–79, pp. 480–2.

  43. K.R. Andrews, Drake’s Voyages: A Re–assessment of their Place in Elizabethan Maritime Expansion (London, 1967), pp. 29–42; K.E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas 1500–1750 (Armonk, 1998), pp. 39, 44–6.

  44. Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, pp. 134–46; NAW, II, pp. 575–84.

  45. I.A. Wright (ed.), Documents concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main 1569–80 (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 71, 1932), pp. xviii–xxii, 16–7; Lane, Pillaging, pp. 33–4; Wernham, Before the Armada, pp. 349–50. On the lack of experienced English pilots for the Caribbean see Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, p. 244.

  46. Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, pp. 32–5. The most comprehensive treatment of Drake remains J.S. Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, 2 vols. (London, 1898, repr. Aldershot, 1988). Recent studies include H. Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (New Haven, 1998).

  47. Wright (ed.), Voyages, pp. 40, 46.

  48. Ibid., p. 265; PN, X, p. 76.

  49. Wright (ed.), Voyages, p. 298.

  50. Wright (ed.), Voyages, p. 298.

  51. Ibid., pp. 71, 73, 326. The actual amount of plunder from the voyage is unknowable.

  52. Ibid., p. 62.

  53. Ibid., p. 72.

  54. Ibid., pp. 93–4, 96, 98; Williamson, Hawkins, pp. 297–9.

  55. Wright (ed.), Voyages, pp. 100, 123.

  56. And for the rest of this paragraph, PN, X, pp. 82, 84, 87–8.

  57. Wright (ed.), Voyages, pp. liii, 110–11, 171–2.

  58. Ibid., p. 121.

  59. Ibid., pp. 152, 166–7, 176, 187–8.

  60. Ibid., pp. 174–5. On defence see Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, pp. 99–107, 151–6 and H. Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power 1492–1763 (London, 2002), pp. 257–64.

  61. Wright (ed.), Voyages, pp. 13, 61; Quinn and Ryan, England’s Sea Empire, pp. 30–2.

  62. Wright (ed.), Voyages, p. 7.

  63. Ibid., p. 68.

  64. Ibid., p. 50.

  65. Ibid., pp. 101, 117, 120, 187.

  66. Ibid., pp. lxiii, 217, 235, 240.

  67. These crude estimates are based on figures in Wright (ed.), Voyages, pp. 7, 36, 48, 100, 172, 196–7, 253, 327.

  68. Wright (ed.), Voyages, pp. 172, 254.

  69. Ibid., pp. xlix, 112–3, 203–6, 213, 228.

  70. Ibid., pp. 174, 254.

  71. Ibid., pp. 102–5.

  72. PN, X, p. 86; Wright (ed.), Voyages, p. 105.

  73. Ibid., p. 118.

  74. Ibid., p. 265.

  75. PN, X, p. 81.

  76. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 1–2, 67–8, 134–5. On Rogers’ mission see also Pays–Bas, VII, pp. 526–9, 531–4, 575–8.

  77. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 72–4; CSPD 1547–80, pp. 502–4.

  78. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 215–6.

  79. Tudor Proclamations, II, p. 395.

  80. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 57, 168, 190;
Pays–Bas, VII, pp. 505–6.

  81. Tudor Proclamations, II, pp. 396–7.

  82. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 128, 227–8, 309, 400–1, 491–2, 501, 518, 607–8; CSPF 1577–78, p. 3.

  83. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 259, 263–6, 269–70, 305, 310–1, 336–7, 341–2, 352–3, 370–1.

  84. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 414, 432–5, 468.

  85. APC 1575–77, pp. 172, 174, 181–3, 189.

  86. APC 1575–77, pp. 200–1, 204, 231.

  87. CSPF 1575–77, pp. 386, 388–9, 406, 408.

  88. CSPF 1577–78, p. 72.

  89. CSPF 1577–78, pp. 123, 135, 147.

  90. CSPF 1577–78, p. 457.

  91. CSPF 1577–78, pp. 468, 472, 507, 532–3.

  92. CSPF 1577–78, p. 519.

  93. CSPF 1577–78, pp. 517–20; CSPF 1579–80, pp. 13–4.

  94. CSPD 1547–80, p. 523.

  5

  The Profession of Piracy from the mid-1570s to 1585

  The growing ambition of English pirates and sea rovers was strikingly demonstrated by the contrasting experiences of the period from the mid-1570s to the outbreak of the war with Spain in 1585. Localized piracy remained an endemic problem. Its prevalence and persistence encouraged a greater degree of organization among pirate groups under the leadership of professionalized rovers, such as John Callice or his associate Robert Hicks. Operating under uncertain, but favourable, international conditions, these pirates plundered a varied range of overseas shipping, usually in an opportunistic and haphazard manner. By contrast, deep-sea plunder was increasingly and insistently anti-Spanish in focus. The threat to Spain was alarmingly revealed by Drake’s ‘Famous Voyage’ from 1577 to 1580, when he became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. This remarkable expedition, which went ahead with covert support from the monarchy, indicated the immense riches to be had from oceanic plunder. Foreshadowing a new phase in the development of English depredation, it was accompanied and followed by a rash of anti-Spanish projects that linked predatory ambitions with visions of settlement in North America. Among a small, but vocal group of Protestant warriors and colonial promoters, the plunder of Spain was projected as a patriotic duty, as a means of defending the Protestant cause while weakening the ‘great whore of Babylon’.1 In these circumstances deep-sea depredation merged with wider political and religious goals.