Under the Bloody Flag

by John C Appleby

  Nevertheless, small groups of pirates operated intermittently during the later years of the war. They were involved in small-scale, opportunistic piracy and sea roving. As an enterprise that was distinct from the disorderly actions of ships sailing on voyages of reprisal, it continued to attract the attention of the regime. In February 1596 the council heard a complaint concerning the arrest in Scotland of the Hopewell of Dunwich by Patrick Stewart, the lord of the Orkney Islands, ‘upon pretence of some wrongs done him … by Gwin, an English pirate and fugitive’.131 One year later it dealt with the complaints of two merchants against Matthew Drew and other pirates, who boarded a vessel in the night at Christmas time, and spoiled it of iron. In May 1597 it was informed of an act of piracy by Captain Thomas Venables and company on the John of Waterford. The plunder, including goods owned by Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, was later sold in the Isle of Man and at Chester. Several months later it pardoned George Green, who was accused of piracy for stealing two anchors and two cables valued at forty shillings. In August it ordered the arrest of a group of pirates, as well as the buyers and receivers of their goods, in south Devon. Another warrant for the apprehension of pirates, who spoiled the Judith of Guernsey of a cargo of Newfoundland fish, followed in January 1598.132

  Several years later there were signs of a revival in Ireland of coastal raiding by Gaelic rovers, who had previously been identified as rebels as well as pirates. In October 1600 a Scottish trader was spoiled by Tibbot ne Long, the son of Grainne O’Malley, along the coast of Mayo. Yet the activities of such raiders were circumscribed by the presence of one of the Queen’s ships, the Tremontana, under the command of Captain Charles Plessington, which was patrolling the coast of Connacht and Ulster to prevent the supply of rebel forces by Spain. During a cruise of two months in 1601, the only vessel sighted by Plessington was a galley ‘with thirty oars, and … 100 good shot’, sent out by the O’Malleys on a raiding voyage against the McSweeneys around Lough Swilly and Sheep Haven.133 It was forced ashore after a brief skirmish with the English. The decline of this form of sea raiding did not indicate an end to Irish piracy or roving. In November 1601 a Scottish ship was taken, near the harbour of Cork, by Captain Myagh, Walter Bethell and others. For Myagh this was the start of a piratical career which was to flourish after 1603, sometimes in association with English pirates who returned to haunt the coast of south-west Ireland following the war with Spain.134

  During these same years, however, English men-of-war and pirates faced increasing competition from a growing number of overseas rovers, especially of Dutch and Flemish origin. Dutch privateering vessels provided strong competition for the English, particularly in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. In January 1599 the Dutch were reported ‘to laugh to see the English … keep this river [at Lisbon], while they may take the Indies’.135 More alarmingly, men-of-war from Dunkirk, sailing under Spanish authority, made sweeping raids along the east coast, occasionally straying into the Irish Sea, disrupting local and coasting trades. Sailing in packs of three or four vessels, and occasionally operating in larger fleets of between nine and twelve, the Dunkirkers dramatically exposed the vulnerability of English waters to external attack. Their growing presence along the east coast aroused fears that they intended a landing at Scarborough in 1599 and an assault on Harwich the following year.136

  The war with Spain was still raging when Elizabeth died in March 1603. Her successor, James VI of Scotland, brought the conflict to an end with the peace of 1604. The sea war had been a formative experience for English maritime enterprise, with profound consequences for its predatory aspects. It encouraged a rapid and sustained growth of privateering, under the guise of reprisal venturing, which seemed to be accompanied by a decline in piracy. Yet this surprising development was more apparent than real. The organization and operation of the sea war, based on a dynamic but unstable coalition between public and private interests, led to widespread disorderly spoil and plunder. The way in which the conflict was conducted also confused the distinction between piracy and lawful depredation. Even in its dying days, adventurers of varied backgrounds, such as Pierce Griffith in north Wales, embarked on unlicensed voyages during which neutral shipping was subject to spoil or capture. Griffith’s attack on a vessel of Hamburg was followed by his seizure at Cork, and his subsequent trial and imprisonment. John Ward of Plymouth, who earned renown and infamy during the reign of James I as a pirate who ‘turned Turk’, was also involved in piracy on the ‘Spanishe seas’, which included the plunder of French and Danish ships.137 Over the course of the long war with Spain, therefore, reprisal enterprise served to re-direct and re-shape piratical activity. But the scale of the ensuing assault on overseas shipping earned the English an unenviable reputation as a nation of pirates among maritime communities across Europe.

  Notes

  1. The war created a myth of naval power in which English sea power was expressed as the ‘nation in arms’. N.A.M. Rodger, ‘Queen Elizabeth and the Myth of Sea–Power in English History’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 14 (2004), pp. 156–7; Loades, England’s Maritime Empire, pp. 122–31.

  2. J.S. Corbett (ed.), Papers relating to the Navy during the Spanish War 1585–1587 (Navy Records Society, 11, 1898), p. 36; Law and Custom, I, pp. 236–41.

  3. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 22–31; Law and Custom, I, p. 251; R.W. Kenny, Elizabeth’s Admiral: The Political Career of Charles Howard Earl of Nottingham 1536–1624 (Baltimore, 1970), pp. 44–8, 67–71.

  4. Corbett (ed.), Spanish War, p. 35. Flood or Fludd was sailing with a commission from Don Antonio in 1584, Calendar, pp. 50–2.

  5. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 96–7; D.B. Quinn (ed.), The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590, 2 vols. (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 104 & 105, 1955), I, pp. Ix, 24–32; I.A. Wright (ed.), Further English Voyages to Spanish America 1583–1594 (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 94, 1951), pp. 46, 195; G.T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland 1577–1660 (Toronto, 1969), pp. 24–5, 47–8; NAW, IV, pp. 47–55.

  6. M.F. Keeler (ed.), Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage 1585–1586 (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 148, 1981), pp. 141–6, 150.

  7. Ibid., pp. 76–108; Wright (ed.), Further English Voyages, p. 134.

  8. Keeler (ed.), Drake’s West Indian Voyage, p. 197. Drake expected a ransom of 500,000 ducats, Corbett (ed.), Spanish War, p. 71.

  9. Monson’s Tracts, I, p. 130.

  10. Keeler (ed.), Drake’s West Indian Voyage, pp. 200–2; NAW, V, pp. 39–52. A ransom of 1 million ducats was expected, Corbett (ed.), Spanish War, p. 71.

  11. Quinn (ed.), Roanoke Voyages, I, pp. 480–8; II, pp. 497–8, 555–6, 580–98; Keeler (ed.), Drake’s West Indian Voyage, p. 171.

  12. Wright (ed.), Further English Voyages, pp. 179, 213, 217–8; CSPF 1586–88, pp. 1, 42, 341.

  13. Wright (ed.), Further English Voyages, p. 122; Keeler (ed.), Drake’s West Indian Voyage, pp. 275–6.

  14. Corbett (ed.), Spanish War, p. xv.

  15. Keeler (ed.), Drake’s West Indian Voyage, p. 212. The voyage was widely reported, CSPF 1586–88, pp. 1, 42.

  16. Corbett (ed.), Spanish War, p. 102. The expedition has been described as ‘privateering writ large’, Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p. 94.

  17. C. Hopper (ed.), ‘Sir Francis Drake’s Memorable Service done against the Spaniards in 1587. Written by Robert Long, gentleman’, Camden Miscellany, V (Camden Society, 87, 1864), pp. 12, 15–6, 19, 22; PN, VI, pp. 438–41; CSPF 1586–88, pp. 280, 286.

  18. Hopper (ed.), ‘Drake’s Memorable Service’, pp. 21–2.

  19. And for the following quote, Corbett (ed.), Spanish War, pp. 109, 112, 194–5. Drake had written to Foxe during the circumnavigation, Nuttall (ed.), New Light, p. 357.

  20. In their absence, Boroughs and the ringleaders were sentenced to death by a court held aboard the Elizabeth Bonaventure, BL, Additional MS 12505, ff. 241–6v. As Corbett commented, for some, Drake was little better than a ‘par
doned pirate’, Spanish War, p. xlvi.

  21. One of the best studies of the Armada campaign, among a rich selection, is C. Martin and G. Parker, The Spanish Armada (2nd edition, Manchester, 2002) and on strategy G. Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, 1998), pp. 179–268.

  22. J.K. Laughton (ed.), State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 2 vols. (Navy Records Society, 1 & 2, 1894), I, pp. 59–61; II, p. 214; Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, p. 127.

  23. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, I, p. 94. There was a demand for open war in the parliament of 1589, Cheyney, History of England, II, pp. 212–3, 227–8.

  24. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, I, pp. 124–5, 147–9, 165–7.

  25. Ibid., I, pp. 130, 135–6, 143–5, 151–3, 160–1.

  26. According to one tradition the Armada was first sighted by the pirate, captain Flemyng, Monson’s Tracts, I, p. 170. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, I, pp. 255, 283–4, 321 for supply problems. A Spanish report claimed that Elizabeth could send out 200 ships against the Armada, but ‘most part of them are more fit for piracy than to fight a real battle’, CSPF 1586–88, p. 342.

  27. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, II, pp. 102–3; Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, pp. 130–1; McDermott, Frobisher, pp. 353–5, 363–6.

  28. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, II, pp. 11, 54; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 261–71; G. Parker, ‘The Dreadnought Revolution of Tudor England’, MM, 82 (1996), pp. 273–4. On rate of fire see also N.A.M. Rodger, ‘The Development of Broadside Gunnery, 1450–1650’, MM, 82 (1996), pp. 313–6.

  29. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, II, p. 95.

  30. Ibid., II, pp. 163–5, 183–4, 239, 261–2, 272–3; Loades, Tudor Navy, pp. 253–4.

  31. R.B. Wernham (ed.), The Expedition of Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake to Spain and Portugal, 1589 (Navy Records Society, 127, 1988), pp. 27–31; Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, pp. 136–8.

  32. Wernham (ed.), Expedition, p. 83.

  33. Ibid., pp. 56–7, 133–8, 343–52.

  34. Ibid., pp. 141–54, 162.

  35. Ibid., pp. 177, 179.

  36. Ibid., pp. 222–4, 248–9, 285, 296–9; Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, pp. 143–6.

  37. Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 278–81.

  38. Andrews, ‘The Expansion of English Privateering and Piracy’, pp. 210–7.

  39. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 100–2, 225–30; R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 19–20, 47–9.

  40. EPV, pp. 40–2; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 76–7, 104–9; R.T. Spence, The Privateering Earl: George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, 1558–1605 (Stroud, 1995), pp. 146–70.

  41. Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, pp. 162–3; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 185–6, 219–24.

  42. Ibid., pp. 70, 75–9; G.C. Williamson, George, Third Earl of Cumberland (1585–1603): His Life and His Voyages (Cambridge, 1920), pp. 240–3; Law and Custom, I, pp. 278–80.

  43. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 32–4; Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men, pp. 102–8. English men–of–war also sailed with French or Dutch commissions, including those issued by Leicester when he was in the Low Countries, CSPF 1586–88, p. 297.

  44. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 30–5.

  45. Ibid., pp. 76–8, 107, 218, 252.

  46. Fugger News–Letters, pp. 219–20; CSPF 1586–88, pp. 503, 560; CSPF 1588–89, p. 66.

  47. Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, p. 156; EPV, p. 173.

  48. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 164–8; EPV, p. 95; BL, Additional MS 12505, ff. 467–9.

  49. EPV, pp. 44–8, 59–67, 107–12.

  50. Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, p. 259; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 124–49.

  51. BL, Additional MS 12505, ff 351–1v. In 1589 Sir William Herbert complained that Munster ‘is made a receptacle of pirates’, CSPI 1588–92, pp. 190–2.

  52. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 73, 127–8, 131–2; Monson’s Tracts, I, pp. 290–5; A. Latham and J. Youings (eds.), The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (Exeter, 1999), pp. 76–80, 87–8.

  53. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 68, 147–9.

  54. CSPF 1586–88, pp. 28–30; Monson’s Tracts, I, pp. 269–74; Cheyney, History of England, I, pp. 463–5, 477–9, 482–6.

  55. CSPF 1586–88, pp. 89, 114–5, 169, 280, 654.

  56. Ibid., p. 214.

  57. And for the rest of the paragraph, CSPF 1586–88, pp. 483, 556, 565–6, 613, 632–3.

  58. CSPF 1586–88, pp. 57–8, 90, 295–6, 300–1.

  59. CSPF 1586–88, pp. 295–6, 357–8, 371.

  60. CSPF 1586–88, pp. 494, 568–9.

  61. Select Pleas, II, pp. 163–5.

  62. Hatfield House, CP 16/2. I am grateful to Mr Robin Harcourt Williams for a copy of this document.

  63. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, II, pp. 172–3.

  64. APC 1586–87, pp. 143–4, 168, 203.

  65. APC 1586–87, pp. 167, 198–9, 212, 215, 255–6; Calendar, p. 57.

  66. HMC Salisbury, III, pp. 193–6, 200–3, 222–3, 288, 372, 378–9; XIII, p. 322.

  67. CSPF 1588–89, p. 149; APC 1587–88, pp. 59–60, 236–7, 309, 316. Leveson was involved in various disorderly ventures. In 1590 he was imprisoned for debt; he escaped, was re–captured and later died in prison. Tudor Proclamations, III, p. 59; N.E. McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1939), I, pp. 56–7, 169.

  68. APC 1586–87, pp. 236–7, 331; APC 1588, pp. 12–3, 365–6, 371–2; CSPD 1581–90, p. 635.

  69. Laughton (ed.), State Papers, II, p. 172: Calendar, pp. 61–2.

  70. APC 1588, pp. 228–9, 236, 254, 268, 385–6, 414–5.

  71. On this phase of the sea war see R.B. Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe 1588–1595 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 235–60; Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 241–55.

  72. CSPF 1588, p. 227.

  73. List and Analysis 1590–91, pp. 321–2; List and Analysis 1591–92, p. 338; Calendar, p. 62; APC 1588–89, pp. 260–1; APC 1589–90, pp. 28–9; APC 1591–92, pp. 22, 35–6, 65–6.

  74. List and Analysis 1591–92, pp. 351, 360, 369–70, 372–3; List and Analysis 1592–93, pp. 300–4, 325–6, 329–32.

  75. List and Analysis 1589–90, pp. 419–20, 423–30, 434; BL, Cotton MS Nero B III, ff. 294–5.

  76. List and Analysis 1589–90, pp. 195–7, 214–5, 227–8, 232; Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the Netherlands, p. 115.

  77. List and Analysis 1591–92, pp. 6–11, 158–62; List and Analysis 1590–91, pp. 119, 177–81; Law and Custom, I, pp. 262–5.

  78. List and Analysis 1590–91, pp. 199–203, 207–12; List and Analysis 1591–92, pp. 162–3; List and Analysis 1592–93, pp. 141–2; Tudor Proclamations, III, pp. 83–6; HCA 1/45, ff. 4–5.

  79. APC 1588–89, pp. 352, 358–60, 370–410 passim on the hulks; Calendar, p. 63; Fugger News–Letters, pp. 207–8.

  80. APC 1592–93, pp. 356–7, 385–93; Tudor Proclamations, III, pp. 71–4; Fugger News–Letters, pp. 222–3, 255–6. Seckford’s ships were also involved in attacks on Venetian vessels, Maxwell, ‘Henry Seckford’, pp. 392–5.

  81. APC 1588–89, pp. 48–9; APC 1589–90, pp. 66, 209–10, 433; APC 1590, p. 104; APC 1592–93, pp. 469–70; HMC Salisbury, XIII, pp. 386, 435.

  82. APC 1589–90, pp. 367–8.

  83. HMC Salisbury, IV, p. 72; XIII, p. 434; APC 1590, p. 367.

  84. APC 1591, pp. 226, 302–3, 341–2; APC 1592, p. 230; APC 1592–93, pp. 312–3, 481–2.

  85. Proclamations issued during 1591, 1592 and 1594 tried to regulate the war at sea, Tudor Proclamations, III, pp. 99–101, 109–10, 137–8.

  86. The most comprehensive treatment of the sea war after 1595 remains J.S. Corbett, The Successors of Drake (London, 1900).

  87. List and Analysis 1591–92, p. 118. About 1580 merchants o
f Chester claimed to have suffered losses of about £12,000 to piracy since 1570, D.M. Woodward, The Trade of Elizabethan Chester (Hull, 1970), pp. 45–6, 87–8.

  88. List and Analysis 1590–91, pp. 380, 389; List and Analysis 1592–93, pp. 359–60.

  89. CSPD 1595–97, pp. 21, 34, 40, 51. There may have been as many as fifty privateering vessels operating from the port between 1584 and 1586, V.W. Lunsford, Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands (New York, 2005), p. 31.

  90. Ibid., pp. 130–3; P. E.J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 212–4, 241–2; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 282–5.

  91. K.R. Andrews (ed.), The Last Voyage of Drake & Hawkins (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 142, 1972), pp. 23–4.

  92. Ibid., pp. 29, 76–8.

  93. Ibid., p. 106.

  94. Ibid., pp. 158–9.

  95. Ibid., pp. 93–5.

  96. Ibid., pp. 98–100.

  97. Ibid., pp. 100–2 and ensuing quote.

  98. Ibid., p. 246; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 283–4; Rodger, ‘Development of Broadside Gunnery’, p. 310.

  99. Andrews (ed.), Last Voyage, pp. 106, 257–8. It is doubtful, as Rodger points out, whether a base in the Caribbean could have been maintained by the English, Safeguard of the Sea, p. 284.

  100. HCA 1/45, ff. 80–1.

  101. CSPD 1595–97, pp. 533–4; Hammer, Polarisation, pp. 257–60.

  102. CSPD 1595–97, pp. 232–4; G.F. Warner (ed.), The Voyage of Robert Dudley to the West Indies, 1594–1595 (Hakluyt Society, Second Series, 3, 1899), p. 25.

  103. Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, pp. 282–5; Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, pp. 196–9. BL, Cotton MS Otho E IX, ff. 336–8 for Essex’s apology for proceedings at Cadiz.