Under the Bloody Flag (26 page)

The support for the Huguenots in England, and the despatch of relief expeditions to La Rochelle, provoked angry complaint from Charles IX. The French claimed that between 1562 and 1573 they were spoiled of goods valued at nearly £30,000 by pirates and rovers based in England. During the summer of 1573, French suspicions were deepened by rumours of various plans for combined action at sea by the Huguenots and their Dutch and English associates. Following his return to the Isle of Wight with a fleet of privateers and several prizes, Montgomery met a representative from William of Orange, reputedly to consider an expedition to relieve the Dutch port of Haarlem. The suspicions of the Catholic party in France, regarding the intentions of the English, appeared to be confirmed in the spring of 1574 when Montgomery invaded Normandy from Guernsey, in an unsuccessful attempt to raise a rebellion, though Elizabeth denied all knowledge of it.
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English depredation was heavily overshadowed by the activities of the Dutch and French privateering fleets within the Channel, but it did not disappear from local waters. While significant numbers of English recruits served with the privateers, pirate ships continued to operate, under conditions, moreover, which deepened the confusion between lawful and unlawful plunder. This was especially the case with those adventurers who acquired foreign commissions, usually against Spain, though the practice was of uncertain legality and met with mixed responses from the regime. Claiming losses against the Spanish in the Low Countries, George Fenner sailed with a commission from William of Orange during the early 1570s. Armed with such authority, he seized a fleet of merchant vessels returning to Flanders from Portugal, laden with salt and bullion, after a running conflict which lasted for two days. The captured vessels were brought into Falmouth during October 1572. At the request of Cecil, however, the legality of the seizures was referred to a group of leading civil lawyers, who reported in November that they should be restored to their owners. Yet this failed to deter the activities of aggressive adventurers, like Fenner, who disposed of plunder overseas. Indeed, Fenner went on to raid the Spanish harbour of Munguia, thereafter sailing to the Azores where he captured several vessels returning from the Indies.
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Occasional reports and complaints to the council indicate that piracy and sea roving remained widely scattered and varied, ranging from indiscriminate pillage to the more selective spoil of Spanish and Flemish shipping. During July 1572 the council ordered the return of a Spanish vessel which had been taken and brought into Southampton by a ship of Bristol. It also instructed the Vice Admiral of Essex to arrest the pirate, Captain Blunt, and his company, who were reported to be near Harwich, after committing ‘sundrie spoiles and robberies upon the seas against the Queen’s … subjects and others’.
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The volume of complaints increased during 1573 and 1574, compelling the council to intervene in various cases of disorderly spoil and plunder. During February 1573 it responded to requests from Sandwich and Dover for a commission for the trial of pirates, partly as a result of local concern at the expense of keeping large numbers of men in prison. The following month the captain of Camber Castle near Rye was ordered to confiscate several prizes brought in by French ships-of-war, although proceeds from the plunder were to be used to offset the charge of imprisoning the companies of the latter. During May and June the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was instructed to investigate French and Flemish complaints concerning recent outrages, including the spoil of a merchant of Antwerp at Winchilsea, while taking steps to suppress pirates and their supporters within his jurisdiction.
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Much of this was the untidy legacy of the presence of the privateering fleets in English waters, which overlapped with long-standing, localized piratical enterprise. French complaints in February 1573 of the number of English pirates allegedly haunting the coasts, without restraint, were confused with angry concern at the activities of Hawkins and others, who were supporting Huguenot adventurers on the Isle of Wight as well as supplying La Rochelle with provisions and munitions. French and Scottish traders also complained of the ‘enormous interest they had to pay to certain brokers at Southampton, to redeem’ their ships and cargoes taken by pirates.
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In the south-west the following year, the mayor of Dartmouth reported the activities of a group of rovers, ‘committing robberies and piracies upon the coast, and having recourse to Torbaye’.
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They included Captain John Cole who seized a Danzig vessel which was taken to the Isle of Wight. During February or March 1574 John Callice, one of the leading pirate leaders operating during the 1570s and early 1580s, captured a prize, the cargo of which was sold in Cardiff and Bristol. In April 1574 a representative of the King of Portugal complained to the council about the spoil of a ship laden with spices which were brought into Barnstaple. At the same time the bishop of Chichester warned of pirates along the coast of Sussex. Further reports of pirates and sea robbers frequenting the south coast were made by Viscount Howard of Bindon in June. In addition, sixteen ships were reported to be fitting out at Colchester for Zeeland, by a partnership of English, Dutch and French adventurers. Later in the year ten men-of-war of Flushing arrived at Rye, to await a fleet of Huguenot raiders from Calais and other French ports.
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Small-scale depredation spread from the Channel into the Irish and North Seas, where it was entangled with Scottish and Irish piracy. Scots pirates were operating in the Irish Sea during 1573. Several were arrested and imprisoned in Ireland, and subsequently dealt with according to a special commission issued by the Lord Deputy in Dublin. During June the Lord Deputy was ordered by the council to arrest two Irish pirates, following complaints of their seizure of several vessels laden with goods claimed by French, Flemish and German merchants.
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During the summer pirates and rovers were raiding in the North Sea between England and Scotland. Their targets included vessels from Holland and Zeeland. Cornelis Willemson, the master of one such ship, complained that he was taken and tortured by English pirates near Yarmouth. After being ‘hanged until he was almost dead’, Willemson was stripped naked and cast into the sea ‘eight times tied with a rope and with stones at his legs … until they knew where his money was’.
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In November the council ordered the arrest of pirates and other suspected persons operating along the coast of Suffolk. By early December one of the pirate leaders, Phipson, was under arrest in the castle at Norwich. Another captain suspected of piracy was taken in the following month. The sheriff of Norfolk was instructed to send both men to London, so that they could be examined by the judge of the High Court of Admiralty. In March 1574 the court issued a writ for the recovery of a French vessel taken by Richard Peacock of Scarborough. Its cargo of Spanish commodities was sold in Yarmouth, Boston and other places along the coast. Peacock and his company were pursued by a French merchant, Jacques le Duc, who complained later that he ‘was not only put in daunger of his lyfe, but also sume of the buyers [of the plunder] commenced an action of slaunder against him, so that he was constrained to relinquishe his … suite’.
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In June the Scots complained of spoils committed by English pirates, some of whom haunted the Farne Islands, while others cruised off Scarborough and Flamborough Head.

The council responded to the disorder and violence along the east coast by authorizing the Lord Admiral to send out the Vice Admiral of Norfolk against the pirates. But a trading ship was plundered at sea, within sight of the Vice Admiral’s fleet. In July 1574 the council issued instructions to the president of the Council in the North, and to officials in Berwick, for the prevention of piracy. They included orders for the arrest of pirates and for an inquiry into the receivers of their goods. The council was keen to ensure that Scottish victims received speedy restitution of any spoil by pirates, though its concern was partly designed to strengthen the claims of English merchants who were the victims of Scottish depredation.
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The cliffs at Flamborough Head, Yorkshire. This dramatic landmark along the east coast was a favourite haunt for pirates. In 1523 the Admiral or Vice Admiral of the North Sea was sent out to hunt down rovers operating off Flamborough. During the later 1580s a group of locally based pirates haunted the region, disposing of their booty in nearby Hilderthorpe. (Author’s collection)

While it remained difficult to combat the threat from pirates who ranged along the east coast and into the North Sea, several rovers were apprehended in Scotland during 1574. In June the English ambassador in Edinburgh, Henry Killigrew, informed Cecil of the capture of Higgins and his company of thirty-eight men at Caithness. According to Killigrew’s report, Higgins was sailing with a licence from Sir Thomas Smith, though he added that it was ‘time to restrain such, for they would make a pique where there is no need’.
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The capture of Higgins was followed by the arrest of another rover, Robert Isted, a gentleman of Hastings, who was at Montrose with two prizes which were claimed by Flemish traders. Several of the rovers escaped, though at least fifteen remained in custody. They included Peter Fisher, a Scotsman, who admitted to various acts of piracy during the previous eight years. Isted claimed that his prizes were Spanish, and lawfully taken with a commission from William of Orange. In July, however, he and his company, with the exception of two boys who were handed over to Killigrew, were hanged in chains at Leith as an example and warning to others.
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Despite these successes, Scottish complaints against English piracy continued. Scottish vessels were spoiled, and their companies ill-treated, along the east coast. In August 1574 Killigrew warned that pirates were ‘so openly maintained’ by the inhabitants of Berwick ‘that it makes evil blood among them’ in Edinburgh.
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Later in the year the council faced further complaints against groups of rovers, led by Captains Hill and Hudson, who were bringing plundered wheat, rye and other commodities into the border town.

As this record demonstrates, the crisis at sea during the late 1560s and early 1570s was expressed in varied forms of depredation. Within the Channel the distinction between piracy and privateering was profoundly confused. In April 1574, according to report, the sea was so crowded with rovers and men-of-war that ‘no ship will escape them, unless a remedy be devised’.
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But the escalation in maritime violence and plunder, in part the result of wider political and religious divisions, was heavily focused on Spain. In England the lawlessness at sea served as a lightning rod for anti-Spanish enterprise, particularly among adventurers whose interests and ambitions were drawn westward. Within Spain there was mounting concern that the disorder and depredation threatened its Atlantic interests. Against a background of swirling rumours regarding the intentions of the Dutch and French privateering fleets, reports from London suggested that groups of adventurers, including Sir Richard Grenville, reputedly a ‘great pirate’, were involved in aggressive schemes for transatlantic raiding.
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What made such reports so alarming was their appearance at a time when English piracy, under the leadership of Drake, had exposed serious weaknesses in an acutely vulnerable region of the Spanish Caribbean.

The pirate invasion of the Caribbean during the 1570s

The spread of piracy into the Caribbean during the 1570s was an ambitious expansion of English depredation. Superficially it was provoked by the clash at San Juan de Ulua in 1568, but its origins lay deeper in the troubled history of Anglo-Spanish relations which can be traced back to the 1540s. It was also related to the vulnerability of Spanish trade and settlements in the Caribbean, which French privateers and pirates were the first to exploit. As Drake’s voyages indicate, the success of the English initially depended on cooperation with the French, as well as on the support of the cimaroons, runaway African slaves who had established autonomous communities beyond the jurisdiction of Spanish colonial authority. Their alliance with Drake had profound implications, though essentially it was based on a shared hostility towards the Spanish. In these circumstances English predatory incursions into the Caribbean initiated a small-scale, unofficial war for the riches of Spain’s empire in America. Under the resourceful leadership of Drake, who adapted the tactics of pirates and rovers across the Atlantic, initially it met with surprising success in terms of plunder and profit, creating the conditions for a more sustained assault on the region.
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The outburst of marauding in the Caribbean by the English, between 1570 and 1574, involved at least ten separate ventures, about half of which were organized by Hawkins and his associates. Thereafter the number declined. From 1574 until the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish war in 1585 evidence survives for four ventures.
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The inability of English adventurers to capitalize on the success of Drake during the early 1570s reveals the difficulties in sustaining a transatlantic campaign of plunder under unfavourable political conditions. Yet this was an experimental phase of trial and error when English rovers opportunistically probed for areas of weakness, while acquiring the confidence and experience to survive in a new and hazardous environment.