Under the Bloody Flag (9 page)

The persistence of such unruly depredation invited retaliation. In September 1545 the council heard complaints concerning the detention of a Chester ship in Spain. Several months later it received a petition from Robert Thorne of Bristol on behalf of Walter Roberts, the captain of a local ship, who had been driven by bad weather into San Sebastián with five French prizes, where he was arrested and imprisoned by officials of the inquisition. The arrest of English ships in Spanish ports complicated the council’s efforts to prevent attacks on Iberian vessels. In any case the disciplining of disorderly captains was occasionally tempered by public and private circumstances. In December 1545 George Butshed was freed from a long spell of imprisonment, for unruly spoil at sea, after ‘shewing himself very repentant for his lewdness committed by rage of youth without due consideracion, and promessing to be hereafter of honest behavour’.
⁷¹

During the later stages of the conflict the council was faced with a growing number of cases concerning irregular spoil which were essentially piratical in nature. In January 1546 it established an inquiry into the seizure of a Flemish ship, taken by English adventurers and reportedly sold in Ireland. A few weeks later it faced complaints about the plunder of a Spanish ship off Plymouth. In this case the council acknowledged that the attack was piracy; those involved, who had been taken, were to be handed over to the deputy of the Lord Admiral for punishment. At the end of March it ordered the arrest of John Thompson following complaints of the plunder of several Flemish vessels laden with pepper and other goods valued at 40,000 ducats. Several weeks later it investigated reports of the robbery of two Spanish ships by a Falmouth vessel, the captain of which ‘was said to keep an inn there and to be blemished in one eye’.
⁷²
According to the governor of Calais, ‘every Spaniard, Portugall or Fleming that comes from the South is robbed by our adventurers, some calling themselves Scots and some with vizers’.
⁷³

In response to the growing volume of complaint, in April 1546 the council issued instructions to officials in the Cinque Ports and in the south-west to detain men-of-war in port and to recall those at sea. It also ordered the arrest of several of the leaders involved in the spoil of neutral shipping in the Channel, including William Trymel of Rye and John Thompson, one of the western adventurers based in Calais. In May, Trymel was committed to the Tower, under instructions from the council that he was to be denied any visitors. But the regime found it difficult to apply an effective remedy to the problem of illicit plunder and piracy, not least because of the increasing number of ‘wandering freebooters’ of varying nationalities who were operating in the Channel.
⁷⁴

As the activities of Trymel and Thompson indicated, English rovers used local ports as bases for their raids, exploiting the potential of Calais as a cross-Channel haven, while disposing of plunder in markets scattered across the coastal regions of southern England and Ireland. As during the 1450s and 1460s there was a lively, informal trade in plundered cargoes which supported piracy and privateering. Plunder brought into Ilfracombe and Barnstaple by Thompson and Trymel was purchased by local merchants, including Roger Worthe, John Hollond, Henry Cade, Robert Cade and John Shapter (alias Butler), who re-sold part of it to ‘sundry other gentilmen and others farre under the just valewe of the same’.
⁷⁵
On investigating the case, the council ordered the restoration of the stolen goods. It also commanded those purchasers who had acquired the goods below their market value, to pay an additional sum of two shillings for every pound of pepper, cloves or sugar to the owners, partly to dissuade men of their status from dealing in pirates’ plunder.

Despite the order recalling men-of-war, the regime continued to allow adventurers to put to sea on lawful voyages of reprisal. In May 1546 the King licensed John Frencheman of Rye to set out for the North Sea with two small vessels and a row boat on condition that he ‘behave well towards the King’s subjects and friends and … register all prizes at the first English port’.
⁷⁶
Later in the month the council issued a licence to Henry Golding, captain of the
Bark
Ager
, for a similar voyage with two pinnaces of Plymouth manned with eighty men. Yet the inability of the regime to control the activities of such vessels was exposed by the disorderly depredations committed by ships-of-war sent out by members of Henry’s increasingly divided and factionalized court, including the Lord Admiral and the Seymour brothers who were uncles of the King’s son and heir. One of the Lord Admiral’s vessels, under Captain Richard Gray, seized a Flemish prize laden with sugar and wines off the coast of Barbary, with the assistance of a ship of Sir Thomas Seymour, under the command of Richard Hore, an experienced sea captain. Hore led an expedition across the Atlantic in 1536, apparently with the purpose of exploring the region beyond Newfoundland. According to a later account, however, the expedition ran out of provisions, leading some of the company to resort to cannibalism; in harrowing circumstances, Hore and the survivors returned to England aboard a French vessel which they seized in exchange for their own ship. Another of Seymour’s captains, Robert Bruse, came to the attention of the council for his attacks on neutral shipping in the Channel. Following the plunder of a merchant of Antwerp, the council issued orders for Bruse’s arrest in June 1546. In addition Seymour’s brother, Edward, 1
st
Earl of Hertford, was also involved in cross-Channel raiding and pillaging. During May 1546 he informed the King that one of his vessels had brought in three small prizes laden with victuals, after a brief cruise along the coast of France.
⁷⁷

As Lisle predicted, the attack on neutral trade and shipping provoked angry protests from the Emperor’s subjects. However, it was the council, not the ageing King, which increasingly had to deal with the problem. Although some cases of spoil were passed on to the High Court of Admiralty, the diplomatic and political implications of the plunder of neutral traders compelled the council to take a leading role in handling complaints and resolving disputes, in an effort to limit the damage of English excesses at sea. Thus it sought to restore illegally plundered cargoes; it issued orders for the arrest of unruly captains, such as Bruse; and it ordered the investigation of suspected cases of piracy.

The pressure of such business consumed more of the council’s time during the final months of the war. Towards the end of May 1546 it instructed the Lord Admiral to recall two adventurers, Robert and John Bellyne, who were allegedly attacking vessels of Flushing. At the same time it dealt with complaints against John Malyne of Calais, who was ordered to appear before the council on charges of piracy and spoil following the disposal of plundered commodities in Ireland. Several days later it issued letters of assistance for the recovery of goods taken by English adventurers out of a Spanish vessel. The following month it issued orders for the arrest of various rovers or pirates who had seized a vessel of Lübeck off the coast of Cornwall, and set the master and company adrift in the ship’s boat. By mid-June it was investigating complaints against an English captain who was accused of selling booty in Cork with the connivance of the mayor.
⁷⁸

Much of this maritime activity was in the form of petty marauding by small vessels carrying a variety of armaments, which produced modest returns from the plunder of shipping in local waters, as is suggested by several cases dealt with by the High Court of Admiralty during the latter part of the war. In April 1546, for example, a small man-of-war, the
Mary
Anne
, plundered a Spanish ship off Dursey Head of wines and other goods which were owned by Frenchmen. According to the master of the
Mary
Anne
, the proceeds of the spoil amounted to £100. Out of this total the purser retained £18 for the owners of the ship to purchase victuals; the remainder was divided among the ship’s company. The master’s own share amounted to 13s 4d in cash, and included a sword, crossbow and a pair of horns. A few months later another Spanish vessel, the
Sancta Maria del Guadeloupe
, laden with iron and woad for various merchants of Chester, was attacked by a small ship under the command of Michael James. The English assaulted the Spanish ‘very fiercely with guns and arrows’, plundered the cargo and left the ship four leagues from land.
⁷⁹
Though the Spanish sailed on to Waterford, within sight of the harbour they were approached by another small vessel, manned by a group of rovers led by Leonard Sumpter. When the latter got within gun shot of the
Sancta
Maria
the crew apparently fled in fear for their lives, taking with them some of the iron. Sumpter seized the abandoned ship, carried it off to Penarth in south Wales and subsequently claimed it as a casualty of the sea.

The restoration of peace during the summer of 1546 failed to halt the disorder at sea, which continued to claim the attention of the council. In July it ordered the return of a French prize taken since the peace by John Frencheman of Rye. In August John Donne of Rye, captain of the
Dooe
, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for seizing cloth out of a Spanish vessel. Later in the year John Thompson was still reportedly robbing Spanish ships in the Channel. Early the following year the accomplices of Cornelius Bellyne of Calais were executed for plundering Flemish vessels. Bellyne remained at sea, and was reported to be robbing the Flemish daily.
⁸⁰

The disorganization of the war at sea created profound difficulties for the Henrician regime. But they were a consequence of the military weaknesses of the early Tudor state which led it to promote privateering as a means of sharing the cost of the maritime conflict with private enterprise. The confusion between public and private interests that followed from this strategy was compounded with the spread of illegal and legal depredation. In effect the war at sea produced a varied pattern of indiscriminate and disorderly spoil. Small-scale, opportunistic raiding, involving short-distance voyages into the Channel and its approaches, including the North Sea and the Irish Sea, remained a characteristic feature of the conflict. But it was accompanied by the emergence of longer-distance venturing into the eastern Atlantic, which was larger in scale and ambition. Inevitably the emergence of Atlantic privateering and piracy was focused on the spoil of Iberian trade. The vulnerability of Spanish and Portuguese commerce during these years was underlined by the plunder of four Portuguese vessels in the harbour of Munguia by English adventurers during March 1546. The English seized a rich haul of sugar, and carried off one vessel laden with oil, ivory, pepper and other commodities of great value. However, the boldness of the attack provoked unease and disunity among the raiders. The master of the
John
of Kingswear was derided by some of the company as a coward who was more suited to keep sheep than to be a master of a man-of-war.
⁸¹

Although these private actions of plunder provoked widespread complaint, they were supported by leading officials and courtiers in a way that served to sanction the activities of men such as Reneger and Wyndham. Under these conditions the predatory activities and ambitions of the English were re-shaped and re-directed during the 1540s with profound consequences for their subsequent development. The scale and intensity of the disorder at sea unavoidably confused the distinction between piracy and privateering. Although piracy was overshadowed, if not obscured, by the spread of disorderly plunder, it did not disappear from the waters of the British Isles. But the kind of opportunistic and localized piracy which flourished during the 1530s, and which persisted in some regions, seems to have been displaced by competing forms of licensed and unlicensed privateering. In some cases the change was little more than cosmetic. The war created more opportunities for small-scale rovers to exploit, as demonstrated by the attack on the
John
of Middelburg in the harbour of St Aubin, in Jersey, during July 1546. At the same time, the economic potential of privateering provided an opportunity for larger-scale venturing to flourish, organized in a more business-like fashion by merchants and shipowners. Moreover, some of this venturing was sustained by an extensive and illicit commerce in plundered commodities. Shore-based networks of supporters were essential to the maintenance and elaboration of English depredation during these years. Merchants such as Thomas Edmunds of Scarborough, who purchased goods ‘under very suspicious circumstances … for much less and smaller sums and prices than they were worth’, provided markets for rovers, in concealed transactions that took place in unusual conditions, sometimes at night and usually involving a rapid re-sale to hinder detection.
⁸²
By these and other means the appeal of maritime depredation was widely and deeply scattered during the 1540s.

Notes

  
1.
  Sir G. Warner (ed.),
The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: A Poem on the Use of Sea
–
Power 1436
(Oxford, 1926), pp. 32, 41–2; M. Opp. enheim,
A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy and of Merchant Shipp. ing in Relation to the Navy from 1509 to 1660
(London, 1896, repr. Aldershot, 1988), pp. 15–18; D. Loades,
The Tudor Navy: An Administrative, Political and Military History
(Aldershot, 1992), pp. 25–8; Rodger,
Safeguard of the Sea
, pp. 145–7.

  
2.
  I.F. Grant,
Highland Folk Ways
(London, 1961), pp. 253–5; Rev. J. MacInnes, ‘West Highland Sea Power in the Middle Ages’,
Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness
, 48 (1972–74), pp. 529–45; Rodger,
Safeguard of the Sea
, pp. 166–8;
Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney
, trans. H. Palsson and P. Edwards (London, 1978), pp. 215–6 for an account of a ‘good Viking trip’ which indicates the early significance of feasting, plunder and gifts. For raiding and the persistence of piracy into the early seventeenth century see A. I. Macinnes,
Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603
–
1788
(East Linton, 1996), pp. 33–5, 64–5, 68.