Matthias (d. 1619)
Ferdinand II (d. 1637)
Ferdinand III (d. 1657)
Regents of the Netherlands or Low Countries
(Seventeen provinces ruled by the House of Burgundy and including
Flanders, Holland, Utrecht, Brabant, Gelderland, and Zeeland)
Margaret of Austria (1480-1530)
Mary of Hungary (1505-1558)
Margaret of Parma (1522-1586); replaced in 1567
Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva (1507-1582); recalled in 1573
Note: There was an ongoing war of liberation in the Low Countries from 1572 to 1610. William I, Prince of Orange, who led the rebels and the Union of Utrecht (1581), was assassinated in 1584. In 1648 the sovereignty of the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces was finally recognized, under the leadership of William II of Orange (1626-1650).
Portugal
Emmanuel I (d. 1521)
John III (d. 1557)
Sebastian (1534-1578)
Henry (d. 1580)
Philip II (Philip III of Spain)
Russia
Ivan III (1440-1505)
Basil III (1479-1533)
Ivan IV, the Terrible (1530-1584)
Fyodor I (1557-1598)
Boris Godunov (d. 1605)
Dmitry I (d. 1606)
Basil IV (d. 1612)
Michael Romanov (1596-1645)
Scotland
James IV (1473-1513)
James V (1513-1542)
Marie of Guise (1515-1560), Regent for Mary
Mary (1542-1587); abdicated 1567
James VI (1566-1625) (James I of England)
Spain
Ferdinand (1452-1516) and Isabella (d. 1504)
Charles V (1500-1558); abdicated 1556
Philip II (1527-1598)
Philip III (1578-1621)
Philip IV (1605-1665)
Popes
Alexander VI (1431-1503)
Julius II (1443-1513)
Leo X (1475-1521)
Clement VII (1478-1534)
Paul III (1468-1549)
Paul IV (1476-1559)
Pius IV (1499-1565)
Pius V (1502-1572)
Gregory XIII (1502-1585)
Clement VIII (1536-1605)
Paul V (1552-1621)
SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
April 28, 1513: Battle of Conquet Bay (France).
August 16, 1513: Battle of the Spurs (France).
September 9, 1513: Battle of Flodden (Scotland).
November 23, 1542: Battle of Solway Moss (Scotland).
September 10, 1547: Battle of Pinkie Cleugh (Scotland).
August 10, 1557: Battle of Saint-Quentin (France).
January 8, 1558: Fall of Calais.
1562: Treaty between Elizabeth and the Huguenot faction in France during the French Civil War.
1564: Anglo-French peace.
August 20, 1585: Treaty of Nonsuch promises 5,000 foot soldiers and 1,000 horse soldiers to the Dutch in return for possession of the towns of Flushing and Brill. This meant open war with Spain. The earl of Leicester led an expedition to the Low Countries in December.
1588: Spanish Armada defeated.
1596: The earl of Essex’s attack on Cadiz.
1597: The Islands Voyage to the Azores.
August 14, 1599: Battle of Yellow Ford (Ireland).
1604: Peace of London signed with Spain.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cruickshank, C.G. Elizabeth’s Army. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
Cruickshank, Charles. Henry VIII and the Invasion of France. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Ellis, Steven C. Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and Conflict of Cultures 1470-1603. London and New York: Longman, 1985.
Quinn, David Beers. The Elizabethans and the Irish. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1966.
Russell, Joycelyne G. The Field of Cloth of Gold: Men and Manners in 1520. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969.
CHAPTER TWELVE: A SEAFARING NATION
By the end of the sixteenth century, around 50,000 Englishmen earned their living from the sea. English ships had sailed all over the world. Along with contemporary accounts of such voyages, several twentieth-century projects have yielded a detailed picture of shipboard life in the period from 1485 to 1649.
King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose sank in the waters of the Solent, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, in 1545. This vessel was recovered by underwater archaeologists in 1982. More than 17,000 artifacts were found on hoard, everything from 2,500 arrows and 139 longbows to a barber-surgeon’s chest containing sixty-four items commonly used by sixteenth-century medical men.
The Mayflower II, docked at Plymouth, Massachusetts, is not a replica of the original Mayflower but she was modeled after an actual seventeenth-century merchantman, the Adventure of Ipswich. She was built in England in 1957 and sailed across the Atlantic in fifty-three days, an average seventeenth-century crossing time.
Other accurate reproductions of early ships are the Matthew, docked in Bristol, England, and the Golden Hinde, docked in London.
LIFE AT SEA
Food
Close to shore, crews might enjoy a great variety of foods. The salvaged
Mary Rose contained peas still in the pod, pits from wild cherries and plums, hazelnut shells, and the bones of fish, venison, beef, and mutton. Her sailors ate from wooden plates and drank their beer from wooden drinking vessels. The officers used pewter.
On long sea voyages, however, the food was uniformly bad. Supplies often ran low, even with careful planning, and ship’s biscuit had to be considered edible even when it was rotting and infested with weevils. Along with the dried biscuits, the basic rations on any voyage were beer and beef or pork cured in brine. Other provisions might include oatmeal pottage, buttered peas, salted eggs, salted fish, bacon, neats’ tongues in bran or meal (neats were oxen, bullocks or other cattle), and “bag pudding,” made with raisins and currants.
The sea provided fresh fish to augment this diet. On a voyage in 1591, John Davys had his crew kill and salt penguins before starting through the Strait of Magellan. Porpoises were sometimes harpooned and hauled aboard to be butchered on deck. Porpoise liver, boiled and soused in vinegar, compared favorably to beef, but fried porpoise tasted like “rusty” bacon.
A ship might have a cook or the cooking chores might be rotated from man to man, but cooking could only be done when the seas were calm. Some ships used an open fire, insulated from the timbers by a bed of sand. Others had a brick fireplace in the forecastle, which had an opening in the roof to let smoke out. Cooking was also done on charcoal stoves in the tiller flat.
The statute of 1585, which fixed the wages of mariners on royal ships at 10s. per month (up from 6s. 8d.), also specified a daily ration of one gallon of beer, one pound of biscuit, and two pounds of pork and peas (or beef) four days a week. They ate fish the other three. This rate was in effect until 1625. Sailors on merchantmen, in addition to their keep, earned almost 20s. per month and those on privateers might hope to do even better by receiving a share of the profits. On a profitable voyage each might receive 40s. in addition to the normal pay.
Since perishable fruits and vegetables were difficult to keep aboard ship, scurvy was a constant problem. Most seafarers suffered from aching joints, painful gums, and general lassitude. Some ships carried lemons as a cure for the most severe cases. On a passenger ship in the 1630s, a passenger’s servant was whipped naked at the capstan with a cat-o’-nine-tails for filching nine lemons out of the surgeon’s cabin and eating them rind and all.
Living conditions
The ships were small by modern standards, since any ship 100’ long was considered fairly large in the sixteenth century. A typical main deck measured only 75’x 20’. The captain, or master, of the ship had a cabin, but the twenty to thirty crewmen aboard a ship of the Mayflower’s size slept in blankets on straw mattresses on the bare decks or in hammocks. Clearance b
etween decks was barely six feet and every available inch would be filled with cargo or passengers. The hold and ’tween decks were dank, uncomfortable, foul-smelling, and infested with rats and roaches. Latrine buckets added to the stench, since the beakhead, the area used as a seagoing “pissing place,” was usually awash for most of a voyage.
Mariners were constantly wet. Cold water not only sloshed in the bilges with the constant rolling of the ship, it also dripped down through leaking decks and topsides. After storms, there were always more leaks. Repairs were made by stuffing cracks with clothing, bedding, animal hides, and sail cloth. Bailing was augmented by pumps, which were worked by two men in much the same fashion as a hand car on a railroad. All too frequently bad stowage, misplaced ballast, or the use of inappropriate sails would swamp a ship.
Routine Aboard Ship
Ships of this period were steered by a helmsman using a whipstaff to work a rudder. He kept on course by watching a magnetic compass suspended on gimbals in a wooden case (illuminated by an oil lamp at night) and by listening to the reports called down from the mate on watch on the deck above. Each watch was four hours long.
Sailing necessitated using a zigzag pattern and storms frequently blew ships off course, but dead reckoning was still the favored method of getting somewhere. One established position in terms of distance, sailed along a known compass bearing, and used a chip log to determine speed. This was a lead-weighted log on a knotted line which was tossed over the stern to measure a ship’s speed. The length of the measured line paid out in a minute (a number in knots) and multiplied by sixty gave sailors the distance they’d sailed in one hour. The course and speed were recorded on a log-board and transferred to the log book every twenty-four hours.
Although there were some specialized jobs, such as ship’s carpenter, and a grommet (ship’s boy) was responsible for turning the half-hour glass, most of the work involved handling the huge, square sails, which needed to be trimmed to match wind speed. As many as nine men at one time might be required to control a single sail, each on a separate line. In stormy weather all hands had to go aloft in order to take in the sails quickly enough. They got their orders from the boatswain, who used a whistle to signal such commands as “Pull harder” or “Let go!”
The Matthew had a crew of between eighteen and twenty men and, probably, one cat. Since all ships swarmed with rats, a ship's cat was an essential member of most crews. Under John Cabot, the Matthew also sailed with a priest and a barber.
Whipping crewmen with the boatswain’s rod was a regular Monday morning event aboard some vessels. Keel-raking (later called keelhauling) was reserved for those who committed the most heinous crimes, since the punishment, which involved being dragged down one side of the keel, under the ship and up the other, left few survivors.
COMMON SIZES OF ENGLISH VESSELS
type of ship
size in tons
pinnace
10, 20 or 30
bark
50 to 70
caravel
100 to 150
hulk
300 to 400
galleon; carrack
800 and up
MARINERS’ SUPERSTITIONS
Storm-driven ships were believed to be bewitched and anyone suspected of being a witch might be thrown overboard. Evil could also be driven away by nailing two red-hot horseshoes to the main mast.
A frog could sense both the direction of land and the approach of a storm. If a frog was dropped into a barrel of water aboard a ship, it would swim toward land. If good weather was on the way, the frog swam near the top of the barrel. If a storm was coming, it swam at the bottom.
Among sailors it was often a point of honor not to learn to swim lest they be thought to lack faith in their ship’s ability to return safely to port.
FLAGS
English ships flew the Cross of St. George, a red cross on a white ground, and the Lord Admiral, when in command of the fleet in 1588, also flew the royal standard (three lilies and three lions). James I's standard added a Scottish lion and an Irish harp and this was flown by the Lord Admiral in 1625. The “Union Jack,” representing the union of England and Scotland, appeared after 1603. Ships from English ports hoisted the union flag on the maintop and flew St. George’s cross at the foretop. Those from Scottish ports hoisted St. Andrew’s flag. In 1634, Charles I restricted use of the union flag at sea to the Royal Navy.
Pirate ships in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries never flew the Jolly Roger, a flag with white skull and crossbones on a black ground, but a few late seventeenth-century pirates did use a plain red flag. The color was supposed to symbolize the blood that would be spilled if the intended victim did not surrender.
MERCHANT SHIPS
Commercial vessels carried all kinds of cargoes. One booming industry was the East Coast collier traffic. Sea-coal mined above Newcastle was loaded onto barges to be taken to the mouth of the Tyne, then reloaded into seagoing vessels below Newcastle Bridge. From there it was shipped to both English and foreign ports where it was in great demand because of a shortage of firewood.
With the Mediterranean and Baltic periodically closed off to English ships, the Muscovy Company was founded to establish trade with Russia as well as to look for a northeast passage to the Orient. The East India Company, which sent ships the long way around to the Far East, was granted the monopoly on the English spice trade in 1600. The Levant Company, founded to trade with Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, braved the Mediterranean to reach Venice and Constantinople.
FISHING FLEETS
In 1563, Parliament declared that every Wednesday was an extra fish day, giving a huge boost to the fishing industry. In addition to regular fishing grounds closer to home, English fishing fleets also operated in the waters off Newfoundland, but Icelandic fishing grounds had been closed to England since the end of the fifteenth century.
PIRATES AND PRIVATEERS
By the end of the fifteenth century, piracy was a highly organized venture, especially in the areas around the Cinque Ports, the Scilly Isles, and the south of Ireland. In the reign of Henry VII, an attempt was made to rid the English Channel of pirates, but the Navigation Act was only moderately successful. According to one estimate there were still 400 pirates plying their trade in the Narrow Seas in 1558.
Pirate vs. Privateer
The practice of privateering predates the creation of all national navies. By the start of the sixteenth century, privateers were regularly used to augment the English navy. The distinction between pirate and privateer often became blurred. In 1511, for example, Henry VIII gave orders for the capture of the Scots pirate, Barton. The Scots protested that Barton was a privateer. Ultimately, this disagreement, along with other differences, gave England and Scotland an excuse to declare war on each other. In 1544, Henry himself licensed privateers to attack French and Scots shipping. These English privateers also preyed on ships from Spain and the Netherlands and a prize taken “by mistake” was rarely returned.
By the Elizabethan era, Spain stopped bothering to distinguish between pirates and privateers and declared that all English “Sea Dogs” were piratas. In England, whether a particular English ship was a pirate or a privateer depended upon England’s foreign policy at the time. During periods when no new letters of marque or commissions of reprisal were issued, English privateers suddenly became pirates, even though they did no more than continue to operate in exactly the same way they had been.
Under English law, piracy was illegal and punishable by death, but most homegrown pirates were never tried before the Admiralty Courts, let alone hanged at the “pirates’ gallows” at Wapping. Frequently, they were aided and abetted in their activities by the local gentry, who financed the ventures and shared in the spoils.
Elizabethan Pirates
Organized bands of pirates operated out of havens along the coasts of Dorset, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland throughout the sixteenth century. In the area of Falmouth, taking ships was the primary business of
one of Cornwall’s leading families, the Killigrews, who held Pendennis Castle, at the entrance to Falmouth harbor, for the Crown. At the Killigrew family seat, Arwennack House, the women of the family received stolen goods and stored them until they could be sold for profit. Sir John Killigrew became Commissioner for Piracy in Cornwall in 1577, sworn to capture and prosecute pirates, but it was after that date that Lady Killigrew participated in at least two overt acts of piracy, on one occasion stealing bolts of cloth from a ship at anchor in Falmouth harbor and on another seizing two barrels containing Spanish pieces of eight.
One of the best known pirates of the Elizabethan era was also a woman, Grace, or Grania, O’Malley of Ireland. She was captured at least twice, and when she was tried in 1586 for plundering Aran Island, she was sentenced to hang. Sir John Perrot, Commissioner for Piracy in Pembrokeshire, secured a pardon for her from the queen.
Among English pirates, remarkably few fit the stereotype of the black-hearted villain. An exception was Stephen Heynes. When Heynes brought the Salvator of Danzig into Studland Bay in Dorset as a prize and attempted to force her master to reveal where treasure was stowed away by sticking lighted matches under his fingernails, Heynes’s own men went down on their knees and begged their captain to spare them having to witness such atrocities.
Finding Work as a Pirate
Before 1583, when two of the queen’s ships raided the anchorage there and seized seventeen pirate ships, Studland Bay was the place to go to join a pirate crew. In the early years of the seventeenth century, would-be pirates could find a ship at Leamcon, on Roaring Water Bay in Ireland. Many sailors, however, broke into the business simply by getting together with a few other like-minded fellows and stealing a ship.
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England Page 17
