Under the Bloody Flag (11 page)

English piracy and disorderly depredation remained a persistent problem during the period from the end of Henry VIII’s war with France to the closing years of the reign of his daughter, Mary I, when renewed conflict with the French led to the loss of Calais. The intervening years were a profoundly difficult period for the Tudor regime, which was marked by weak royal rule, religious rivalries and mounting economic and social tension. International conflict, social unrest and rebellion created a fertile environment for seaborne plunder in many parts of north-west Europe, undermining the ability of rulers to deal with the threat of lawlessness at sea, while commercial crisis and change, including the decline and disruption of the fishing trades in England, helped to expand the recruiting grounds for piracy and privateering. To a considerable degree the maintenance of English plunder during these years was an elaboration of patterns of activity that were established during the 1520s and 1530s. Consequently piracy and other forms of maritime depredation varied in intensity and scale. Casual, opportunistic and locally based spoil remained a widespread and persistent menace, but it was overlaid by more organized enterprise, especially within a region linking the West Country and south Wales with southern Ireland. The combination of domestic weakness and external threat encouraged the spread of disorderly plunder, but in a way which reflected a broader shift in English overseas relations. The rapid growth of anti-Spanish hostility promoted predatory venturing to the coasts of Spain and Portugal, where richer prizes were readily available. At the same time, the activities of an ill-assorted group of rebellious rovers and privateers, operating from bases in France against the Marian regime, indicated that under certain conditions piratical enterprise could acquire a political purpose that was also patriotic and popular.

Piracy, sea roving and privateering during the later 1540s and 1550s

The mid-Tudor regimes struggled to contain the spread of maritime disorder during the later 1540s and 1550s. Although Henry VIII had created one of the largest navies in Europe, it struggled to deal with the spread of small-scale depredation. For much of the period English, Scottish and French rovers remained active in the Channel, indulging in indiscriminate petty spoil. The haphazard and apparently erratic nature of such activity conceals subtle distinctions between different types of sea roving, which ranged across a spectrum of dubious legality. Although piracy and privateering continued to be confused, officially the state sought to maintain a clear distinction between legitimate and illegitimate plunder, partly in response to overseas complaint, but also in order to retain a lawful means of redress and reprisal. Nonetheless, privateering was becoming an established expedient for waging war at sea, though it was difficult to regulate effectively. As the experience of the 1540s indicated, inexorably it led to the growth of disorderly plunder and piracy.

Undercover, or in the guise, of lawful depredation, piratical activity grew increasingly organized and purposeful. One of the most striking developments of the later 1540s and 1550s was the emergence of a group of pirate captains who appear to have made a career out of plunder. Such men, including John Thompson, Henry Strangeways and Richard Coole (or Cole), formed a loose network of rovers and pirates, though they were as much potential competitors as partners. These groups of rovers operated in fairly well-defined hunting grounds, supported by an informal exchange economy, that is almost hidden from view, in markets on either side of the Irish Sea, encouraging the use of temporary bases in southern Ireland. Though publicly proclaimed as notorious pirates, men like Thompson were capable of skirting the boundaries between illegal and legal enterprise, serving as captains of pirate ships and men-of-war. While the activities of these ‘head pirates’ were sustained by a favourable social and economic environment, their survival also owed much to the weaknesses of the mid-Tudor monarchy.
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Among the most pressing problems facing the new regime of Henry’s successor, the boy-king Edward VI, was the persistence of lawlessness in the Channel and the western approaches, and along the east coast. In addition the regency government inherited protracted disputes concerning the spoil of the Emperor’s subjects during the 1540s, which were costly and diplomatically damaging. In an important gesture of goodwill, at the end of 1547 the booty which Robert Reneger had seized and placed in the Tower was returned to the Spanish. Reneger, a leading member of the merchant community of Southampton, was awarded £250 by the council towards the cost of resolving the dispute.
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In response to growing complaints against the piracies of Thompson and other English rovers, during September 1547 the council tried to regulate the activities of private men-of-war. It prohibited the sending out of such vessels without a special licence from the Lord Admiral. The owners were also required to take out bonds for the good behaviour of their ships at sea. Furthermore, at the direction of the Lord Admiral and the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, local officials were to take similar bonds from the owners of all vessels engaged in trading and other voyages. The council expected that bonds would be taken in every port and creek by local officials, in ‘suche summes of money as they shall think’ necessary, though there is little evidence for the implementation of this unusual and possibly unworkable scheme to tackle maritime disorder.
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The need for more effective regulation at sea grew urgent during the later 1540s as the regime faced increasing complaints against the activities of English pirates and rovers. These included the plunder of a Lübeck vessel by the servants of Robert St Leger, and the spoil of several French vessels in the Channel, as well as a case of piracy and murder near Deal Castle. Along the east coast the plunder of shipping provoked conflicting claims to prizes taken by English and Scottish rovers. Complaints of English piracy continued into 1548. In May the Lord Admiral issued sweeping instructions for the examination of all vessels entering the realm, following the spoil of French ships in the Channel which were freighted with merchandise by a group of London merchants. Greater vigilance in some regions may have persuaded pirate groups to resort to more remote bases in Ireland. In July, for example, officials in southern Irish ports, including Youghal, Cork and Kinsale, reported the growing presence of English pirates, who were attacking French, Spanish and local vessels.
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Yet the regime was so alarmed at the rival dangers of Scots and French raiding that in August 1548 the council authorized the Lord Admiral to send out armed vessels from Devon and Cornwall, against ‘the Scots, pirates and the King’s other enemies’.
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This revival of the western adventurers was partly in response to the growing attack on English shipping by the French which included the recent seizure of five vessels, three of which were burnt and their crews committed to the galleys. The victims of such plunder also complained that they were unable to obtain justice in France. As during the 1520s, French men-of-war claimed to be operating with Scottish commissions. When Pietro Strozzi, the Italian adventurer in the employ of the French King, was challenged by one of his English victims, he replied, ‘that he and the rest were, for the time of their stay there, Scots’.
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In an effort to control the activities of the western adventurers, the council issued the Lord Admiral with orders for their regulation. They included provision for taking bonds from shipowners and captains, and for a record to be kept of all vessels that were licensed to go to sea, a copy of which was to be sent to the council. While publicly acknowledging peace with France, however, the council’s orders gave warrant to the adventurers in the south-west for a private war at sea. Thus the owners of men-of-war, their captains and masters, were ‘to be told secretly that, besides Scots and pirates, they may stay the French fleet with the Newfoundland fish and any other French ships, saying that they have previously been spoiled by Frenchmen and could have no justice, or pretending that victuals or munitions in any such French ships were sent to aid the Scots’.
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All captured prizes were to be returned to an English port, where inventories and valuations were to be made of them, so that if the peace continued and the French offered redress for English claims, they might be restored. The administration of these regulations was left in the hands of the Lord Admiral, his Vice Admirals, Sir Peter Carew and John Grenefeld, and other officials in Devon and Cornwall.

These secret instructions demonstrated an early appreciation of the strategic value of private enterprise in disrupting the transatlantic trade of a rival and potential enemy. They also anticipated the outbreak of war with France during August 1549. The conflict witnessed a short-lived revival of privateering which drew on the experience of the Henrician wars with France. In the south-west a wide range of promoters, including shipowners, traders and lesser landowners, were involved in sending out vessels from ports such as Dartmouth, Exmouth and Plymouth. They included Thomas Winter, mariner and shipowner, of Stonehouse near Plymouth, and a varied group of adventurers from Exmouth and the neighbouring region, such as Gregory Cary, a local Admiralty official who was involved in several ventures with Walter Ralegh and his sons, John and George. Elsewhere, armed vessels were sent out from ports along the south coast, particularly Rye, as well as from Calais across the Channel. London and some of the east-coast ports were also involved in the sea war. In addition, vessels operating from Irish ports participated in the spread of opportunistic privateering and plunder.
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Although the sea war with France was too short for the sustained development of private maritime enterprise, which may have been disrupted in parts of the south-west by the outbreak of popular rebellion against religious change, it was unruly and piratical in nature. Alarmed at the increase in piracy the regime issued a proclamation early in 1549 which extended the death penalty to the supporters of pirates, though there is no evidence that it was ever implemented. In any case, the underlying problem was disorderly plunder by lawful men-of-war. Walter Ralegh and Gilbert Drake were partners in victualling a vessel which illegally seized a Spanish ship of San Sebastián. It was ransacked of much of its cargo of wine, by the wives of the mariners, after its return to Exmouth. Following Spanish complaints, the vessel was restored. Later in the year two small men-of-war, of about 30 or 35 tons, from Plymouth and Waterford, brought a Biscayan prize laden with wine into Youghal. The Plymouth vessel was reportedly owned by John Ellyot, merchant, though he later claimed to have sold it to Griffith Vaughan of south Wales. The Irish vessel, under the command of James Gough, was owned by David Power and James Fitzgerald, 14
th
Earl of Desmond. The captors claimed that the prize was found at sea ‘with no creature aboard her’.
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However, several Biscayan mariners, who were in Youghal on a trading voyage, while noting the absence of Spaniards either aboard the prize or the men-of-war, recognized it as a vessel from Plasencia which had been involved in a fishing expedition off Baltimore, further along the coast, in the year previously.

Flemish vessels in the Channel were also the target of disorderly depredation. Towards the end of 1549 a variety of Flemish-owned commodities, taken by an adventurer known as Irish George of Calais, were recovered by one of the King’s ships. At the same time French trade and shipping were legitimate prey for men-of-war. During the year French prizes laden with varied cargoes such as fish and salt were brought into Rye and other ports along the south coast. But the limitations of this short-range, and low-cost, form of plunder are suggested by the need of Thomas Woddman, captain of the
Falcon
Grey
, set out by Sir Thomas Grey, to borrow money in Youghal to re-victual his ship.
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The confusion between legitimate and disorderly depredation, particularly in the south-west, encouraged the spread of piratical activity across the Irish Sea. The problem grew more severe during the 1540s. Although local officials complained repeatedly about the threat to trade and shipping, pirates and rovers were supported by coastal communities which benefited from a vigorous trade in plundered cargoes. Within a region where the authority of the Tudor regime was demonstrably weak, Irish Sea trades, undertaken in small, often unarmed and poorly manned vessels, were acutely vulnerable to the pirate menace. The local maritime conditions and environment, with open and remote coastlines and islands, also favoured the growth of piracy. Islands such as Caldey, off south-west Wales, may have played a crucial role in the operation of this kind of scattered roving, not least in providing cover for surprise attacks. The Isle of Man, which lay beyond the jurisdiction of the Lord Admiral, was frequently visited by pirates of varied backgrounds. The spread of English piracy widened the hinterland for the disposal of plunder, within a dangerously exposed maritime region that was irregularly patrolled by the King’s ships, while potentially directing the attention of pirates and rovers towards the Atlantic.