Callice and company: local piracy and plunder during the later 1570s
Although local spoil and pillage remained widespread during the 1570s, increasingly it was concentrated within a region encompassing south-west England, south Wales and south-west Ireland. Under a group of prominent pirate captains, it was organized as a small-scale, commercialized and profitable enterprise, which flourished with community encouragement and support. The regime struggled to combat the problem, appointing piracy commissioners for the maritime counties during the later 1570s. But the renewed campaign against piracy was inconsistent and ambiguous. Of necessity, moreover, it was focused more on the consequences rather than the causes of maritime plunder.
Conditions during these years favoured the formation of a loose brotherhood of pirates, which anticipated the development of pirate communities in bases within the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. The social organization of piracy was based on varying degrees of contact and cooperation between pirate captains and companies. It was expressed in a disorderly code of conduct which flouted convention, occasionally in behaviour that appeared to combine mockery and mimicry with robbery at sea. The pirate Captain Clarke reportedly haled vessels with a glass of wine which was thrown into the sea when empty. Pirate life may have been informed by a rich oral tradition of outlawry, as suggested by the circulation of stories about Robin Hood. For some, the sea may have served as the greenwood, with its prospect of riches, good fellowship and freedom. The vision of creating a band of good fellows was realized in the sociability and hospitality which were shared between pirate companies, often in association with friends and families ashore. The close relationship between some captains was demonstrated in a letter of June 1575 from Hicks to his ‘brother Callys’, from Milford Haven, where he had brought in a prize laden with corn, affirming that ‘all he has is at his service’.2 At sea, pirate captains were capable of combined action, operating in hunting packs of two or three ships. The James of London was attacked by the pirates Hodges, Clarke and Worald, probably during 1575, when four of the company were killed. The scale and prevalence of piracy thus suggests that these years were a formative period in the development of pirate culture, creating a lifestyle which was to be elaborated and enriched by subsequent experience.
From a range of scattered evidence it is possible to identify at least thirty pirate captains who were active during the years from 1575 to 1580. Assuming that pirate companies could range in number from twenty to seventy, this suggests that between 600 and 2,400 men were involved in piratical activity. If the total was towards the higher end of this scale, it would provide a striking comparison with subsequent outbreaks of piracy, including the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when about 2,000 pirates were active along the eastern seaboard of North America and in the Caribbean.3 Piracy on such a scale represented a serious danger to the security of the seas, and an alarming threat to trade and shipping.
The victims of the pirates were selected indiscriminately, though there was a tendency, despite the violent attack on the James, to plunder foreign, rather than English, ships. Much of this venturing took the form of short voyages to frequently haunted regions that cut across busy shipping lanes around the British Isles, including the western approaches and the Irish Sea. In January 1579 the west coast of Ireland was reportedly infested with English pirates. Later in the year Burghley was informed that around Guernsey the ‘sea was never so full of pirates’.4 This kind of small-scale depredation flourished with the assistance and cooperation of shore-based supporters, who provided markets for pirates and other rovers, exchanging provisions for a varied range of plundered commodities, including wine, salt, corn, assorted cloth, carpets and jewellery. In some areas visiting pirates supported local service industries, while encouraging the spread of disorderly drinking houses and prostitution.
As a business, however, piracy was characterised by inherent ambiguities. While maritime robbery on this scale acquired the appearance of an illicit and irregular trade which involved a significant redistribution of wealth, few of those directly engaged in it appear to have gained great profit. In part this was because ‘golden prizes come not every day’.5 But it also reflected the economics of an enterprise where the advantage usually lay with the land-based suppliers of pirates. In many cases it seems likely that the latter were able to acquire goods at cheap rates of exchange, or even as gifts, which were later sold for profit at market prices. Either through choice or necessity, pirates could be remarkably generous in giving gifts to friends or associates ashore. Such behaviour may have been one of the defining features of pirate culture. It grew out of the life cycle of poor men, often from struggling seafaring backgrounds, for whom piracy was part of a wider economy of illicit enterprise, and in which the rewards of plunder were easily dissipated in nights of ‘jubilee’.
The character of this kind of depredation is illuminated by the career of one of its leading practitioners, Callice, whose activities at sea spanned the period from about 1574 to 1585. Callice came to the attention of the council during April 1574 as a result of his capture of the Grace of God, apparently while in the service of Sir John Berkeley. The prize was brought into Cardiff where part of its cargo was sold. The remainder was disposed of in Bristol. As he came from Tintern, Callice was very familiar with the Severn region and its wider hinterland, where the maritime communities of south Wales served as safe bases and accessible entry points to widespread markets for the disposal of plundered cargoes.
According to evidence which Callice subsequently presented to Sir Francis Walsingham, as part of a plea for a pardon, during these early voyages he sailed in association with Captain Sturgis of La Rochelle, under the authority of a Huguenot commission. This veneer of legality did not last for long. In January 1576 the council ordered his arrest for various piracies, including the spoil of a Spanish vessel off the Scilly Isles in consortship with Captain William Battes. Callice went into hiding in Denbigh, north Wales. By February he was reported to be in Ireland with Battes and Heidon. In May the council turned its attention to the pirate’s supporters in Cardiff and Glamorganshire.6
These early voyages established a pattern of highly localized enterprise, based on petty plunder and raiding within the Channel, which rested on informal networks of shore-based supporters, especially in south Wales. Later in 1576 Callice spoiled four French ships, including a Newfoundland fishing vessel which was attacked off Belle Isle, allegedly worth 20,000 livres in total. Faced with complaints from the French, the council made a renewed attempt to apprehend Callice, who was haunting the coast of Wales during October. Although one of his associates, Robert Thresher, was taken in Poole, Callice successfully evaded capture. In December he was at Newport. The following month the council complained that he was allowed to escape after being ‘lodged and horsed’ in Haverfordwest.7 Six of his company were seized during February 1577 by Sir John Perrot, but Callice remained at liberty, plundering French, Danish and Scottish vessels.
This promising career of piracy was interrupted by Callice’s capture on the Isle of Wight. The council was informed of the news on 7 May. Three weeks later Callice was a prisoner in the Tower of London. In expectation that the pirate would be pardoned, one of his Scottish victims, Thomas Browne, petitioned for its award, presumably in the hope of recouping his losses. In June, however, at the council’s command he was handed over for trial to the judge of the High Court of Admiralty. The case against him was reinforced by complaints from the King of Denmark concerning the seizure of several Danish vessels in association with Hicks earlier in the year.8
Although the Queen was prepared to hand Callice over to the Scottish ambassador if a request was made for the restitution of the plunder of Scottish shipping, on her instructions in July he was brought from Bristol to the court at Havering. The visit led to his pardon, but on condition that he served with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an ambitious and well-connected adventurer from the south-west, who was assembling a large expedition for
a transatlantic enterprise with a commission from the Queen. Among Gilbert’s supporters was Henry Knollys, whose father, Sir Francis, was a member of the council and a cousin of the Queen. Knollys commanded three of his own vessels during Gilbert’s badly organized and abortive expedition, including the Elephant in which Callice and several other recruits had previously committed acts of piracy. With Walsingham acting as Gilbert’s patron, the growing strength of the anti-Spanish party within the regime was creating a more favourable environment for aggressive schemes of plunder, and opportunities for the redemption of resourceful pirates such as Callice.9
Although Walsingham may have played a part in the pardon of Callice, it may also have been the result of the pirate’s own initiative. While in custody, either on his own or with assistance, he produced an impressive case which amounted to a powerful plea for clemency. It included a contrite confession in which he offered to reveal the names of his accomplices and supporters; details of the capture of six ships, with information about the purchasers of their cargoes; as well as an account of money that was either owed to him or which remained in the hands of Hicks; and intelligence of French scheming in Ireland. It amounted to a compelling appeal, revealing the ability and ingenuity of one of the most notorious pirates of the 1570s, who might well have expected to be shown little mercy.
Callice’s carefully crafted petition to Walsingham mixed spiritual with secular concerns. Lamenting his former woeful and wicked life, he hoped for redemption through the forgiveness of God, while craving mercy from the Queen.10 If Elizabeth spared his life, he offered to clear the coasts of other pirates. With his possibly unrivalled knowledge of the regions frequented by pirates, and of their supporters ashore, Callice claimed that he would ‘do more therein then if hir Majestie shold send Shipps abroade to that end’, thus saving the Queen at least £20,000. As a sign of his good faith he identified the purchasers of the cargoes of three vessels he had taken in association with Sturgis and Battes, though he was unable to remember the names of several buyers from Gloucester who bought part of the lading of a Portuguese ship, at Penarth near Cardiff. However, he claimed to have gained little money from these transactions, receiving in exchange victuals and other supplies. In the case of a Scottish ship, claimed by Thomas Browne, he admitted to being present at its capture, but denied having any part of the cargo. The prize was taken to Cardiff and Newport, where its lading was sold by some of the servants of Sir William Morgan, who was one of Callice’s leading supporters in south Wales. Callice insisted that Morgan’s men should provide compensation for Browne. Furthermore, he offered to restore a Danish vessel which was in the hands of Hicks.
This confession was accompanied by intelligence, albeit anecdotal and uncorroborated, of French designs against the English in Ireland. In deploying this material Callice sought to portray himself as a patriotic pirate whose loyalty to the Queen was unquestionable. Thus he claimed to have been in conversation with O’Sullivan Beare, at his castle at Bearhaven, about the rebel James Fitzmaurice during which he refused to support a planned expedition to Ireland by the latter with French support. Despite the offer of gifts, to serve as a pilot for Fitzmaurice, Callice proclaimed that he ‘wold not consent or joyne with any rebel against the Quenes Majestie, but hoaped of hir mercy in tyme to come’.11 Several months before his capture, he received a similar offer from a French captain, of long-standing acquaintance, who he encountered in Tor Bay. In exchange for entering the service of the King of France, Callice was promised a pardon for his spoil of French shipping, as well as 3,000 crowns and an annual pension. But he rejected the offer, replying ‘that whatsoever shold become of me I wold never be sworne to any foren prince’, despite a warning from the French captain that he would never receive the same preferment in England.
The petition presented to Walsingham included details of Callice’s financial dealings, effectively a summary of his personal estate. The pirate claimed that he had £530 in cash, though it was with Hicks aboard one of the Danish ships they had taken. In addition he was owed about £350, much of which was accounted for by grants of money to Nicholas Herbert and Sir William Morgan, on the promise that they would secure a pardon for him. These debts included small loans to local traders, such as £5 to John Williams of Margam or £2 10 shillings to William Francklin of Swansea, and several outstanding payments from the purchasers of the pirate’s plunder. They included George Herbert, who acquired a cable and an anchor out of a French ship for £7, though Callice claimed they were worth £20 in total. Furthermore, William Herbert of Cardiff evidently held £130 in safe keeping for him. On paper this was an impressive sum of money, amounting to more than £1,000, but very little of it was in Callice’s own hands. When he was captured on the Isle of Wight, he was in possession of £20 7 shillings. While the recovery of pirate debts was difficult, by November 1579 the owners of the Danish vessel had received £505 by way of compensation, much of which may have come from Callice and Hicks.12
Callice’s case was skilfully and successfully presented. But the issue of a pardon during the summer of 1578, evidently at the suit of the regent of Scotland, failed to curtail his piratical activities. Indeed, his later career indicates how small-scale, localized piracy merged with, and reinforced, more ambitious schemes for oceanic depredation in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. During the latter part of 1578 he was involved in Gilbert’s expedition which sailed with a large number of pirates and rovers, including James Ranse, who was with Drake in 1572, and Simon Fernandes, a Portuguese renegade. Gilbert’s intentions were shrouded in secrecy, though his commission from the Queen suggested that he was planning to establish a settlement along the eastern seaboard of North America, partly modelled on the earlier example of the French in Florida.13 It was a speculative and hazardous enterprise that drew on the aggressive resources of pirate groups. A small, temporary habitation, organized by a company of private adventurers, could expect to face fierce opposition from Spain, though in the short term it might serve as a profitable base for raids on Spanish shipping, while enabling the English to acquire first-hand knowledge and experience of an unknown and potentially valuable region that would pave the way for future colonization.
Gilbert’s backers were made up of gentlemen, especially from the south-west, including members of his own family, and London merchants, such as Thomas Smith who had wide-ranging interests in overseas commerce. Although Gilbert enjoyed the patronage of Walsingham, there were few high-ranking courtiers or officials among his supporters, with the exception of the Earl of Sussex. With such support Gilbert assembled a large expedition of ten vessels and 500 men. Among the captains were Gilbert’s younger half-brother, Walter Ralegh, and Henry Knollys, who contributed three of his own ships to the expedition.
Gilbert’s venture was based on an uneasy association of potentially competitive interests. Soon after reaching the coast of Ireland, Knollys’ ships effectively abandoned the expedition in favour of piracy and plunder. Gilbert made some attempt to proceed across the Atlantic, but he was forced back by bad weather. It was an embarrassing, though revealing failure, particularly for the small and rather isolated group of promoters for American colonization. Spanish suspicions of Gilbert’s schemes appeared to be confirmed when several ships from the expedition plundered the coast of Galicia, raiding cattle and pillaging a shrine, which was followed by the spoil of French vessels.14
There can be little doubt that Callice and his associates were heavily implicated in this opportunistic resort to piracy. An inquiry of 1579 failed to investigate the matter effectively, however, leaving him free to continue his irregular roving at sea. According to a report of June 1580 he was ambushed and taken prisoner on one of the Orkney Islands, after landing to take on fresh water. Several years later, during 1583 and 1584, he provoked renewed complaints about the spoil of French shipping. By this time he was associated with Court Hellebourg, who was based on the Isle of Wight, and sailing with a commission issued by Don Antonio, the pretender to the throne of Por
tugal. Under such dubious authority, on the eve of the war with Spain, in March 1585, he was involved in attacks on Iberian shipping with William and Edward Fenner.15
The activities of Callice and others during the later 1570s demonstrated that small-scale, organized piracy had become a deep-seated problem. As in the past, it easily spread across the Irish Sea, threatening to become entangled with native resistance towards the Elizabethan regime in remote regions of Ireland. At the same time it was complicated by an upsurge in Scottish depredation, which also ranged across the Irish Sea. Although such activity depended on local support, in some areas it provoked confusing allegations and counter-allegations concerning the conduct of officials or the connivance of members of communities. Such claims raised difficult questions about the enforcement of law and order. At times they suggested also that the regime was in danger of losing control over those parts of the coast where pirates were able to operate with immunity from the threat of arrest.
A wide range of reports and complaints reveals the extent and nature of piratical activity, as well as the demands it placed on the regime. The south-west remained a fertile breeding ground and reception area for pirates and rovers. It attracted some of the most notorious pirates operating during these years, including Robert Hicks, who came from Saltash, John Piers of Padstow, and Callice. Pirates of varied backgrounds were able to congregate in favoured locations such as Tor Bay, Purbeck, Portland or the Isle of Wight, where loose bonds of community were renewed at informal social gatherings, on land and at sea, providing an opportunity for the exchange of news and gossip, the disposal of plunder and the tending of the sick or wounded. In secure locations ashore pirates indulged in prolonged drinking sessions, though entertainment and recreation could be diverse. Simon Fernandes, an associate of Callice, later boasted of his skill in horse riding, ‘a thing that few mariners can wel doe’, which he acquired ‘on a great horse at Sir William Morgayns, … when he … bremyd hym [the horse] with a cudgel abowt the beak head afore and the quarters abaft’.16 As Callice’s narrative indicated, moreover, such gatherings enabled pirate leaders to maintain contact with French rovers. Despite the disapproval of the regime, French men-of-war continued to visit the coastal waters of England and Ireland. During October 1577 Sir Arthur Champernowne, the Vice Admiral of Devon, arrested fifteen French warships off Plymouth.17
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