Under the Bloody Flag (6 page)

Adams’ activities at sea formed part of an unsettled career of petty, part-time criminality which spanned sea and shore. Prior to turning to piracy, he was a member of a gang of thieves who operated along the Thames and its hinterland. Under the leadership of Reynolde, a draper of London, and in company with four other men, he admitted to robbing a house in Essex. Allegedly, he was persuaded to take part in the robbery by a well-chosen appeal from Reynolde: ‘“Adams … I know thou art in necessity and thou art in great debt. … And”, saith he, “if thou wilt do as we do it will be worth to thee a 100 mark; and if thou wilt not meddle, stand by and look upon us”. And with that one of them burst open a wall and went in’, although Adams claimed he ‘tarried still without and one other’.
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The robbers got £24, of which Adams received £4, though this was some way short of what he had been promised to take part in the venture. Adams struggled to defend his actions at sea, insisting that he ‘thought never to rob Englishmen’, claiming instead that he was enticed into piracy by another member of the company. But the successes of this small band of rovers and thieves, who took at least four vessels during a brief spell of river and coastal plunder, revealed the availability of easy prey, within sight of the shore, which a growing number of seafarers and others found difficult to resist.

In an effort to improve the law regarding piracy, during 1536 Parliament passed legislation which was intended to remedy shortcomings in the legal procedure of the High Court of Admiralty. According to civil law, under which pirates were tried, it was only possible to impose the death penalty on offenders either through their own confession or by the testimony of witnesses, who were difficult to find. Consequently the act placed the criminal jurisdiction of the court, including ‘treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies’, in the hands of specially appointed commissions, ‘in like form and conditions as if any such offence’ had been committed on land.
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By these means criminal offences committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty were transferred to commissions of oyer and terminer, operating in accord with the common law of the realm. At the same time the act denied all offenders, including pirates, the use of benefit of clergy or sanctuary.

On paper the new legislation demonstrated the resolve of the Henrician regime to improve the law concerning piracy. In the short term, at least, it seems to have led to an upsurge in condemnations for piracy. Nonetheless, the law was unable to tackle the root cause of the problem or the political expediency which it was occasionally subject to. In March 1537 the regime was embarrassed by complaints of the seizure of a Portuguese vessel off the coast of Wales by a band of thirty-five pirates. The captured vessel was taken to Cork where it was sold to the mayor and others. The case coincided with other complaints concerning the disposal of pirate goods in the lordship of St David’s, and may have provoked the Lord Admiral into a very public assertion of his legal responsibilities and jurisdiction later in the year, when he condemned eleven mariners for piracy in the Guildhall of London. Within weeks, however, and in the same surroundings, the Lord Admiral pardoned Thomas Skye, a yeoman of Brompton in Norfolk, and four others, for piracy on a Scottish ship off Sunderland. The attack was justified as retaliation for the previous spoil of the Scots, though Skye also claimed that it was undertaken against his will, at the command of the master, Giles Carre, who warned him ‘to be contentyd or ellys he wold caste hym into the Sea’.
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Skye’s pardon was followed in July 1537 by another for Edward Foster of London, alias John Gryffyn of East Smithfield, mariner, and others, for committing piracy on a vessel at Tilbury, along the Thames.

To some extent this apparent inconsistency may have been a reaction to the persistent threat from overseas raiders in English waters. While many of these rovers were lawfully commissioned men-of-war, their search for plunder easily spilled over into piratical attacks on vulnerable English trading ships. Faced with increasing complaints from his subjects, and angered by the infringement of the Crown’s maritime jurisdiction, Henry VIII resorted to a combination of public and private methods to protect trade and shipping. In effect, the strict implementation of the new legislation against piracy was qualified by wider considerations of policy and practicality.

Both the scale and intensity of overseas depredation in English waters increased during the later 1530s as a result of international rivalry and conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and France. During 1536 Flemish vessels seized several Breton ships off Southampton. The following year Breton and French vessels were reported to be haunting the coast of Wales, ‘robbing all the English ships they could, and coming on land to steal sheep’.
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Among the vessels attacked was the
Mary
Fortune
of Hull, the master of which, John Crowne, claimed to have been badly handled by his captors. The French compelled Crowne to admit, falsely, that his vessel was laden with Flemish goods. To combat such disorder the Vice Admiral was sent out with instructions to take any French or Imperial vessels suspected of spoiling English shipping. But it was difficult to contain the spread of coastal raiding by either side, especially as it was occasionally supported by the King’s own subjects. In October 1537 Henry was informed of the activities of various French ships which were plundering in English waters without commissions; one of them carried the red cross of England and included English pilots and mariners among its company, ‘the rather to train men into their danger’.
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In addition to the depredations of the French and Flemish, Spanish Biscayners were reported to have attacked several English vessels and tortured one of the masters.

Under these conditions the distinction between friend and enemy threatened to dissolve. Henry saw the attack on shipping in English harbours by French and Imperial raiders as a matter that touched on his honour. He authorized private ships-of-war to defend English shipping, with permission for their owners or masters to retain pirate plunder. In March 1538 Lord Lisle was informed that if any of his ships took a pirate in the Channel who had ‘no merchants’ goods on board to bear the charge, the King will bear the burden of it’.
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Indeed, Lisle’s rescue of an English vessel, and seizure of its French captor, earned him much respect and renown at court.

Although these initiatives met with some success, they also encouraged piratical enterprise under cover of legitimate retaliation against the French. The seizure of a Breton vessel by the
Clement
of London during 1538 was justified on the grounds of reprisal, although at least one of the company was reported to have spoken out against the plunder of the vessel. Much of this small-scale scavenging was carefully planned, organized and deliberately targeted on French shipping. The
Mary
Thomas
of 30 tons, for example, was sent out with the purpose of seeking recompense from the French for losses sustained by Henry Davy and others of London, in a venture which appeared to be a form of unauthorized privateering or reprisals. John Broke, a member of the company, was recruited by Thomas Lyllye, the master, ‘to goe on Rovyng with hym upon the Sea’.
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Broke subsequently related that he attended a dinner, organized by Davy at a tavern, the Goat in Cheapside, after which Lyllye and William Scarlett, the purser, ‘shewyd ther mynds from one to one, that they purposyd to goe to the Sea, and theruppon dyvers of them brake bred and dyd ete it, promesyng therby that they wold be trewe’. Sailing down the Thames, additional recruits came aboard the vessel; with several others joining at Rye, the company amounted to about twenty men. Broke, however, left the ship at the Isle of Wight to seek treatment for an infection which he had acquired from a woman before leaving London. The
Mary
Thomas
went on to seize a Breton ship near Guernsey, the cargo of which was disposed in Looe, Falmouth and neighbouring havens. Following the sale of the goods, Scarlett assembled the company, and presented each member with a share of twenty shillings, and thirty shillings for the master and officers. Although six of the company were able to go ashore to hear mass, near Falmouth the rovers fled when a large group of about 100 countrymen came down towards the ship. Scarlett returned home to his wife and children, but was taken, with £10 in money and household stuff, after seeking sanctuary in St Michael’s Church, Cornhill.

The official response to the disorder at sea demonstrated that small-scale plunder and piracy were a widespread problem. During 1538 the Lord Admiral ordered the judge of the Admiralty court to investigate French complaints against Walter Soly of the West Country, concerning a piratical attack on the
Mary
of St Malo. The French ship, of 28 tons burden and with a crew of twelve mariners, was returning home from Carlingford with a lading of hides and herrings, when it was forced to seek shelter along the coast near Dublin. The ship was seized about midnight by Soly and his company, ‘in a greate shippe with [two] tops’, who resorted to casting stones and using swords on their victims.
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The French crew were kept as prisoners under the hatches for ten days, after which they were set ashore on the Isle of Man.

The Smugglers Cott, Looe, Cornwall. The building dates from the fifteenth century, when men from Looe were regularly engaged in piracy. It was evidently restored with timber from a Spanish fleet which reached the coast of Cornwall in 1595. (Author’s collection)

Cromwell also continued to be concerned with cases of piracy and spoil. During 1538 he urged Bishop Rowland Lee to apprehend a group of pirates from south Wales. Later in the year he was informed of an attack by pirates on an English or Flemish vessel returning from Ireland. Although the pirates escaped to the Isle of Wight and then into the West Country, by the middle of September they had been captured. In April 1539 a Breton ship was brought into Dartmouth with only two men and a boy aboard; although the circumstances were obscure, the case aroused such concern that the pirates were ordered to London so that either Cromwell or the Lord Admiral could investigate and determine it. Several weeks later, Cromwell was investigating complaints of piracy against Will Swadell, a servant of Sir William Godolphin, the sheriff of Cornwall. In his correspondence with Cromwell the latter was compelled to deny any involvement in the activities of Swadell, rebutting rumours that he received the goods of an Irishman, allegedly worth £500.
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Piracy and spoil were endemic problems in English waters throughout the 1530s. While the Bretons regularly raided the exposed entrance to the River Severn, and inflicted widespread damage on Irish Sea trades, the Scots plundered shipping along the east coast and in the North Sea. At the same time, the Channel swarmed with sea robbers of varying nationalities, including a growing number of English pirates and rovers, who ranged along the south coast and into the Irish Sea. The Thames also remained a favoured haunt for river thieves and petty piracy. One group of men, who were intending to rob a vicarage in Essex close to the river, boarded a small boat manned with four men, ‘with ther weapons drawen, and sayd good fellows be of good chere, we will do you no harme, but take parte of your goods’.
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Two of the company informed the robbers that ‘their money was in a barrel standing upon the hatches’. The robbers departed with £12 in cash, a loaf of sugar and a new cap, though they stayed long enough to drink with their victims, while leaving them forty shillings. Such was the nature of the problem that, on occasion, officials may have been forewarned about, but still ill-equipped to deal with, the menace. In February 1539 Lisle warned one of his officers at Calais about the departure of an English pirate from the Thames, who intended to pillage the friends and allies of the King. The pirate ship, described as a galleon of 35 tons with a company of thirty men, was ‘an entirely new ship and hath long time been maintained in areadiness and equipped as for war’.
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Many of these pirate companies were composed of small groups of mariners, operating in ambiguous circumstances over short distances, and in vessels which were often weakly armed. Thomas Skye was at sea in the
Mary
Walsingham
of 55 tons, with twelve mariners and one boy, six of whom were concealed under the hatches. The company was armed with two hand guns, four or five bows, twenty-four sheaves of arrows, two or three rusty bills, three swords and three cases of wild fire.
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Yet the activities of these rovers posed a serious threat to trade and shipping. During the later 1530s the Merchant Adventurers requested the use of one of the King’s ships to convoy their vessels across the Channel. The request was reinforced by a report from Sir Thomas Wriothesley to Cromwell, concerning the fears of English merchants about pirate attack. Although Wriothesley suggested that three or four of the King’s ships be sent out to scour the seas, another of Cromwell’s correspondents, while noting that small trading vessels were ‘fatt booty’, informed the merchants that ‘they should provide for themselves against pirates’.
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