CHAPTER III.

Henry VIII. resolves to establish a permanent Royal Navy—Derives his first supply of men from English fishermen—Royal fleet equipped and despatched from Portsmouth—Its first engagement—Increase of the French fleets—Extraordinary exertions of the English to meet the emergency—The rapidity with which they supplied men and vessels—Outfit of the ships—The Great Harry—Number and strength of the fleet at the death of Henry VIII., 28 Jan., 1547—The Great Michael—Trade monopolies—Mode of conducting business—Mistaken laws—The Bridport petition—Chartered companies—Prices regulated by law, and employment provided—The petition of the weavers—State of the currency, A.D. 1549—Its depreciation—Corruption of the government—Recommendation of W. Lane to Sir W. Cecil, who acts upon it, A.D. 1551, August—The corruption of the council extends to the merchants—Accession of Elizabeth, A.D. 1558—War with Spain—Temporary peace with France, soon followed by another war—Demand for letters of marque—Number of the royal fleet, A.D. 1559—The desperate character of the privateers—Conduct of the Spaniards—Daring exploits and cruelty of Lord Thomas Cobham, and of other privateers or marauders—Piratical cruises of the mayor of Dover—Prompt retaliation of the king of Spain—Reply of Elizabeth—Elizabeth attempts to suppress piracy, 29th Sept., 1564—Her efforts fail, but are renewed with increased vigour, though in vain—Opening of the African slave trade—Character of its promoters—John Hawkins’ daring expedition—Fresh expeditions sanctioned by Elizabeth and her councillors—Cartel and Hawkins—They differ and separate, 1565—Hawkins reaches the West Indies with four hundred slaves, whom he sells to much advantage, and sails for England—Fresh expeditions, 1556—They extend their operations, 1568—The third expedition of Sir John Hawkins departs, October 1567, and secures extraordinary gains—Attacked by a Spanish fleet and severely injured—Reaches England in distress—Prevails on the Queen to make reprisals—Questionable conduct of Elizabeth—Vigorous action of the Spanish ambassador—Prompt retaliation—Injury to English trade less than might be supposed—Hatred of the Catholics—Increase of the privateers, 1570—Their desperate acts, 1572.

Beyond the encouragement afforded by Henry VIII. to the development of the maritime commerce of his own people, England is mainly indebted to that monarch for her first organised Royal Navy. Though her merchants’ ships had hitherto been her chief means of defence from foreign invasion, and had played a conspicuous part in all her naval engagements, they were frequently dangerous instruments during periods of peace. Commissioned in war “to burn, plunder, and destroy,” they were with difficulty restrained from following similar avocations on their own account when peace had been restored. The patriot of to-day too often became the pirate of to-morrow.

In his attempts, however vain, to suppress the lawless acts of his own people, as well as to clear the English Channel of foreign buccaneers, Henry, soon after his accession, saw the necessity of forming a standing royal navy. Among his many and varied abilities, he was his own engineer, and with workmanlike understanding, he likewise planned improvements in the mode of shipbuilding, conducting experiments in the construction of the hulls, and in plans for rigging and sailing. The few ships the government then possessed had fallen into decay, and a royal cruiser carrying the flag of England was rarely seen in the Channel. Ample materials, however, to man a fleet were to be found in the vast numbers of her own fishermen, and especially from among those employed in Iceland, which, before the discovery of Newfoundland, had become the chief rendezvous for these hardy men. Taught by necessity the arts of war as well as of peace, they, in following their usual peaceful employments, were always armed. Yet, though a fleet worthy of the name was built and equipped, the process, from the want of the requisite funds, was necessarily tedious, and the first result far from satisfactory.

In the meantime the war between Charles and Francis had broken out. French and Flemish cruisers captured prizes, or fought battles, in the mouths of English rivers or under the windows of English towns, and both belligerents too frequently made what they deemed lawful prey of the ships of England. Even when the courts of Brussels and Paris were making professions of good-will, the cruisers of both governments openly seized English traders, and Henry had for a time to submit, and to leave those of his subjects who resided on the coasts to such inadequate defences as they could themselves provide. So daring were the acts of these piratical cruisers that two French ships attempted even to cut out two merchantmen from the harbour of Dartmouth, and only failed in this exploit through the bravery of the mayor and inhabitants of that town, who attacked them with their boats; nay, more, the rival fleets of France and Spain did not scruple to test their strength in deadly combat in the harbour of Falmouth,[97] and not unfrequently placed, at other times, embargoes on vessels entering the Thames.

The London merchants declared that, although the country was nominally at peace, their ships could not venture out of port; but every remonstrance, though made in no measured terms at the courts of Paris and Brussels, and received with courtesy and verbal apologies, was practically ineffectual in suppressing these wanton depredations. Unfortunately, at this juncture, Henry could not afford to declare war, as his exchequer was very poorly furnished; but the country itself had not sunk so low as to be unable to defend its own coasts and its own traders. Sufficient money having, through the aid of the London merchants, been at last found for their immediate purposes, a small but admirably equipped fleet was silently fitted out at Portsmouth, secrecy being observed as far as possible, in the hope of taking the offenders by surprise. Sweeping out into the Channel, this fleet soon fell across four French ships of war which had been plundering English merchant vessels in the vicinity of Mount’s Bay, and closing against heavy odds, sunk one of them and drove the other three from the coast.[98] The time had, indeed, arrived when it became essential to the independence of England that a fleet sufficient to command the Channel should be permanently maintained. France, having resolved on open war, was straining every nerve to humiliate her old and inveterate rival. One hundred and fifty of her ships of war and twenty-five swift galleys had assembled at the mouth of the Seine ready to convoy transports with sixty thousand troops on board; the intention being to occupy the Isle of Wight as a prelude to a further attack on Portsmouth, and the destruction of the small English fleet collecting at Spithead.

To meet this imposing force Henry VIII., warmly backed by his people, made extraordinary exertions. One hundred and forty thousand English soldiers, with a few German contingents, supported his efforts; but there were only sixty available ships of all sorts, though of these several were larger than any of the French. The requisite number was, however, soon supplied. Indeed, throughout the whole history of England there is no instance on record in which her people were not prepared to make any sacrifices to provide a fleet for the protection of their shores, or to redress their wrongs; and now the fact that France was attempting to rival England on her own element, at once supplied all that was wanting. But on this, as on many previous occasions, the royal squadron, that is the ships actually the property of the Crown, formed only a small part of the naval strength of the country. So thoroughly, however, did the English people throw themselves into the scale, that they relinquished in numerous cases their ordinary occupations, and though the Iceland and Irish fishing fleets were about to sail, nearly all the fishermen who had previously been employed in these vessels entered for the navy, their wives and daughters taking their places, and keeping up the necessary supply of fish for the markets, though frequently driven into harbour by the French cruisers.[99] Numerous vessels of various sizes, belonging to Plymouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth, Fowey, Truro, Dittisham, Totnes, Poole, Rye, Bristol, and other places, which, during the winter, had been cruising as privateers, joined the royal fleet, under the Admiral at Spithead, the two services absorbing the whole of the effective male inhabitants of the seaports, amounting to sixteen thousand hands, distributed over one hundred sail of fighting vessels of one sort and another. Some of the best families in England sought employment in this fleet, and in the long muster roll there will be found, either in command of the King’s ships or of privateers equipped by themselves, names which will ever be remembered as famous in the history of their country. On the first occasion when England possessed an organised navy, we find a Russell, a Berkeley, a Clinton, a Seymour, a Dudley, a Willoughby, a Chichester, and a St. Clair proudly rejoicing to occupy their places as leaders.

It is not our province to narrate the desperate actions which ensued on the waters of the Solent, the chief scene of the struggle, or how, after terrible slaughter and numerous engagements, the French were repulsed. It is rather our object to ascertain, so far as is possible, of what nature were the vessels of which the fleets were composed.

Previously to the reign of Henry VIII. no reliance can be placed on any details with respect to English ships; indeed it was only when in his reign the royal navy became a regular and permanent branch of the government service, that any careful record was kept of the fittings of vessels so employed. Happily one of these accounts has been preserved in the Cottonian collection at the British Museum, and this document derives further elucidation from another manuscript in the Harleian collection, explaining, as this does, many antiquated or obsolete words in the former. In Appendix (3) will be found the substance of the ‘Inventory of the Great Barke,’ which is the oldest account extant of the details of an English ship; but whatever antiquaries may have written about this ‘Great Barque,’ she appears to have been simply a large merchant ship of the period, which on the sixth day of October, in the twenty-third year of the reign of Henry VIII. (A.D. 1531), was viewed or inspected by Christopher Morris, a government officer, for the purpose of being employed in the public service.

The largest and most important vessel built at this period in England appears to have been King Henry’s Harry Grace à Dieu.[100] Two representations of this ship are extant, one in the Pepysian Library in Magdalen College, Cambridge, another in an original picture of Hans Holbein, published by Allen in 1756.[101] The drawings however differ so widely that it is probable they refer to different vessels.

With the exception of the very high forecastle, an extra range of cabins on her poop, and her extraordinary rig, she does not materially differ from the wooden line-of-battle ships of much later times. All accounts agree in describing the Harry Grace à Dieu as the largest English man-of-war up to the period of her construction; but Henry VIII. had also previously built a vessel called the Regent, of one thousand tons, to carry a crew of eight hundred men, a ship, however, surpassed by a French one, the Cordilier, which carried one thousand one hundred men. The Harry Grace à Dieu was destroyed by fire when lying at Woolwich on the 27th of August, 1563.

HARRY GRACE A DIEU.—FROM PEPYSIAN LIBRARY, CAMBRIDGE.

On the death of Henry VIII. an account was taken of everything appertaining to the navy of England, and in the ‘Archæologia’ will be found the names of all the royal “shippes, galleys, pynnasses, and row-barges, with their tonnage, number of soldiers, mariners, and gunners.”[102] In this official inventory, taken by a commission specially appointed for the purpose, the Great Harry appears at the head of the list, and is there recorded as being of one thousand tons; if, however, the calculation had been made on the mode of admeasurement usual in England up to the middle of the present century, and known as the old measurement (O.M.), her capacity must have been considerably greater. Besides this great ship, twelve others of the royal navy are mentioned of from one hundred and forty to seven hundred and fifty tons, fourteen galleys of from sixty to four hundred and fifty tons, five pynnasses of from fifteen to eighty-five tons, and eleven row-barges, each of twenty tons, stationed at Portsmouth. In the arsenal at Deptford Stronde there were six vessels, the largest being four hundred and fifty tons, while four other vessels of from twenty to four hundred tons were stationed in Scotland. The crews of these vessels when fully manned consisted of one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five soldiers, seven hundred and fifty-seven gunners, and five thousand one hundred and thirty-six seamen. According to a return printed by the navy-office in 1791, the gross measurement of the fleets belonging to the Crown at the death of Henry VIII. amounted to twelve thousand four hundred and fifty-five tons, which shows that the average size of the vessels then belonging to the royal navy, including the Great Harry, was under two hundred and forty tons each. On the following page will be found an illustration of one of the galliases, called the Galley Subtille, selected from among the fourteen or fifteen curious contemporary water-colour drawings by Anthony Anthony of Henry VIII.’s vessels, preserved in the MSS. department of the British Museum.

THE GALLEY “SUBTILLE.”—FROM THE ROLL OF THE KING’S GALLIASES, 1546.

But the Scottish people previous to this time, jealous of the honour of their independent action in the matter of ship-building, constructed under James IV. a vessel of even larger dimensions than the Great Harry of England. Lindsay of Pitscottie gives a circumstantial description of her, received from Sir Andrew Wood of Largs, the quartermaster, and from Robert Bartyne her master-skipper.[103] “In 1512,” he says, “the King of Scotland, King James IV., rigged a great ship called the Great Michael, which was the greatest ship and of the most strength that ever sailed in England or France; for this ship was of so great stature, and took so much timber, that, except Falkland, she wasted all the woods of Fife, which was oak wood, besides all timber that was gotten out of Norway; for she was so strong, and of so great length and breadth, to wit, she was twelve score (240) feet of length and thirty-six feet by two within her sides. All the wrights of Scotland, and many other strangers, were at her device, by the king’s commandment, who wrought very busily upon her; but it was a year and a day ere she was complete. This great ship cumbered Scotland to get her to the sea. From the time that she was afloat, and her masts and sails complete, with ropes and ancores effiering thereto, she was counted to the king to be thirty thousand pounds of expences, besides her artillery, which was very costly to the king, and besides all the rest of her furniture.[104] She had three hundred mariners to sail her; she had six score gunners to use her artillery, and had a thousand men of war, besides her captains, skippers, and quartermasters.” The historian says further, “if any man believe that this description of the ship is not of verity as we have written, let him pass to the gate of Tillibarden, and there before the same ye will see the length and breadth of the Great Michael planted with hawthorn by the wright that helped to make her.” This circumstantial account shows that she was deemed a marvellous effort of naval architecture. “This schip lay still in the road, and the king tuik great plesour everie day to cum down and sie huir, and would dyne and sup in her sundrie tymes, and be showing his Lordes his ordour and munitioun.”[105]

The commerce of England during the reign of Henry VIII. and his immediate successor had been almost wholly monopolised by the two very powerful corporations to which we have already referred. But the association of German merchants having become unpopular, a large portion of their trade soon afterwards fell into the hands of the “Merchant Adventurers.” To this influential fraternity English merchants were admitted on payment of a small fine; the government of the day, in their ignorance of the requirements of trade and navigation, having hitherto divided the commerce so far as practicable between these two companies, attempting at the same time to fix the boundaries of their respective rights by charters. But towards the close of the reign of Edward VI., when the interests of the English merchants greatly predominated, and when a committee which had been specially appointed to inquire discovered that the Steel-Yard traders, though exempted from the alien duties, had largely defrauded the revenue by giving rights of denizenship to foreigners, the Crown deprived them of many of their most valuable privileges, and practically revoked their charter.

Nor is it surprising that foreigners should have so long held in their hands the largest share of the maritime commerce of England, though when Henry VIII. ascended the throne there were no reliable accounts of its extent. A sort of haphazard mode of conducting business was then the rule of her merchants, who had then no means of early and accurate information of what their foreign competitors were doing, or of the quantity or quality of merchandise they themselves required; moreover, their commercial laws were so ill defined and so liable to uncertain and extraordinary changes that no dependence could be placed upon them. Hence it was that Henry endeavoured to give consistency to his legislative measures, though even these (as might have been expected) were in most instances far from perfect; as, for instance, when he attempted to regulate the price of labour, and to determine by law what sum each employer should pay to the labourers and others they employed.[106] No doubt there was more pretence for such a system where, as in most parts of England, there were still large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land on which the labourer might feed a cow, where his pigs, ducks, and geese might range, and where he could obtain his fuel without charge. Moreover, in those days labour was not, as now, a marketable commodity, it being then a recognised principle of law to apportion out, so far as seemed possible, the rights of the various classes of society, and to determine the price of such labour, not according to the demand, but according to the presumed cost of the necessaries of life.

Naturally in such attempts to regulate prices, Henry VIII. and his ministers committed many ludicrous as well as palpable mistakes, and admitted the justice of demands equally indefensible. For instance, when the bailiffs and burgesses of Bridport presented, in 1529, a petition to Parliament, stating that the inhabitants of their town had been accustomed from time immemorial to manufacture the greater portion of the large cables, etc., required for the royal navy and for merchant shipping, by which their town was “right well maintained,” asserting further that “evil disposed persons” resident in the vicinity had begun to do similar work to the injury of their town, an Act of Parliament ordered that all hemp grown within five miles of the town of Bridport should be sold only in that town, and that no person within the same distance from that highly favoured seaport should manufacture any hempen goods under pain of forfeiting what they had manufactured! The first principles of sound political economy being then unknown, class interests, as a natural consequence, were protected either by the help of favoured corporations, under royal charters, or by special enactments.[107]

Of these some still survive to remind us of a period in the history of England when the favoured few had means placed at their disposal of accumulating wealth denied to the great mass of the community. Although most of these charters are now objects of no value except to satisfy the curiosity of antiquaries, others remain vesting their possessors with a power which, if ever it did, can no longer render any public service. For centuries the vast organisation of these companies penetrated the entire trading life of England. Laws were framed to protect them in all their operations, and to provide that no person should supply articles he had not been educated to manufacture, nor any manufacturer be permitted to sell what he had produced on the best terms he could obtain: the Legislature also decided for him the price at which each article was to be sold.

In London, a control council in communication with the Council and the Crown[108] attempted to regulate every branch of trade. Its duty was to determine prices and fix wages, so that each might be kept in harmony with the acts of the Legislature; to arrange the conditions of apprenticeship, and discuss all minor details. In company with the Lord Mayor and other civic dignitaries, its members inspected the shops and stores of the respective traders, and received and examined into their complaints. In connection with the municipal authorities of London there were local councils in nearly every provincial town who fulfilled similar duties, reporting to the control body or the Privy Council such matters as were to be submitted to Parliament. When these representations had been duly considered, the necessary statutes were passed and forwarded through the chancellor to the mayors of the various towns and cities. By these arrangements no person was allowed to commence any description of trade or manufacture till he had served a regular apprenticeship, and had proved himself competent to exercise his craft to the satisfaction of the authorities. But the care of the Legislature was not extended solely to able-bodied adults; attempts were made to compel every child to be brought up to some special business or calling.[109] Such a principle may have been plausible in theory, but it broke down in practice; the Legislature, however, insisted that the mayors in towns and the magistrates in counties should find means to apprentice every child to agriculture, so that they might not be drawn to “dishonest courses,” whenever the parents were unable to pay the fees for apprenticeship in other trades.

Although it may now be a matter of surprise that such laws remained so long in force, we find even in our own time considerable sections of the community who would if they could[110] have all legislation adapted to suit their own wants, like the ropemakers of Bridport, or the weavers of the whole realm, who in the reign of Philip and Mary,[111] induced the Legislature to pass an Act containing the following extraordinary provisions: “Foreasmuch as the weavers of this realm, have, as well at this present parliament as at divers other times, complained that the rich and wealthy clothiers do in many ways oppress them, some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which were brought up in the said science of weaving with their families and their households; some by engrossing of looms into their hands and possession and letting them out at such unreasonable rents as the poor artificers are not able to maintain themselves, much less to maintain their wives, families, and children; some also by giving much less wages and hire for weaving and workmanship than in times past they did, whereby they are enforced utterly to forsake their art and occupation wherein they have been brought up. It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making and dwelling out of a city, borough, market town or corporate town, shall keep or retain or have in his or their houses or possession, any more than one woolen loom at a time, nor shall by any means, directly or indirectly, receive or take any manner of profit, gain or commodity, by letting or selling any loom or any house wherein any loom is or shall be used or occupied, which shall be together by him set or let, upon pain of forfeiture for every week that any person shall do the contrary to the tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings.”[112]

In this unwise Act, the spirit of which still prevails among many of the working classes of England, and still forms in many other countries the basis of commercial legislation, another clause provided that weavers who lived in towns might have two looms but no more, so that as many persons as possible might be employed in their own houses, and, without the aid of capitalists, earn and obtain their own independent living—thus treating capital and labour as not merely distinct interests, but as opposed to each other.

The currency was then as it is now, a question on which a multiplicity of opinions were entertained; but the coins of the realm were in those days tampered with by the State to an extent sufficient to afford even a chancellor of the exchequer of our own time an excuse for attempting to mulct the sovereign of one per cent. of its gold to cover the cost of coinage and provide a seigniorage for the Crown. In 1549 a pound weight of silver was coined into 7l. 4s., out of which the Crown retained 4l. for seigniorage and cost of minting, paying the merchant only 3l. 4s. for his silver.[113] Of course the prices of all articles rose to the level of the metallic value of the current coin, and that, too, in the teeth of the numerous statutes passed to regulate prices, and in defiance of proclamations forbidding sales except on conditions specified by law. Indeed, coins of the realm became mere tokens, and though convenient enough for the people at home, were of no value abroad beyond that of the amount of pure metal they might happen to contain; hence exchanges with foreign countries ceased to be any longer intelligible. The measure of corn worth formerly, on an average, ten shillings and sixpence, sold in 1551 for six shillings and eightpence, and rose to thirty shillings in the following year.

To make matters worse, there were in those days men high in authority who reaped pecuniary advantages from the debasement of the currency. Indeed those of the Lords of the Council who had provided funds for the suppression of the rebellion adopted the following extraordinary if not nefarious means of repaying themselves. They addressed a warrant to the Master of the Mint, setting forth that “Whereas our well-beloved councillor, Sir William Herbert, in suppressing the rebels had not only spent the great part of his plate and substance, but also had borrowed for the same purpose great sums of money for which he remained indebted,” and requesting that the officers of the Mint might receive at his hands two thousand pounds weight in bullion in fine silver, the said bullion to be coined and printed into money current according to the established standard, the money so made to be delivered to the said Sir William Herbert, with all such profits as would otherwise have gone to the Crown after deducting the expenses of the coining.[114] By this transaction Sir William realised a profit of 6710l., and as similar privileges were extended to the remaining Lords of the Council, and other favoured persons about court, more than 150,000l. worth of base silver coins were thus thrown at once upon the market, producing, as might have been anticipated, numerous commercial complications and disasters. By such means as these monarchs, as well as councillors, at that period of English history paid their debts. Edward VI. records in his journal[115] that Yorke, the Master of the Mint, by a process easily enough understood by men of business, but unintelligible as described by his Majesty, had undertaken to pay all his debts, amounting to something more than 120,000l., and to remain accountable for the overplus. The description of this process will be found at length in a letter from William Lane, merchant of London, to Sir William Cecil, wherein, too, its evils are exposed, with much excellent advice for his guidance in the future.[116]

Although Sir William appears to have consigned to the official pigeon-hole this thoroughly sensible document, the common sense of the London merchant in time produced its effect upon the government; and, towards the close of the following year, the Council had no course left but to accept the advice of Mr. Lane and of other merchants of the City. However oppressive upon the people at large, there was no way of overcoming the difficulty, or of meeting the sufferings which the issue of base money had created, but by the desperate remedy of proclaiming that all the holders of coin must rest satisfied with receiving in exchange for it the value of the pure silver it contained. This loss, however, would have been so serious to many persons, the silver coin consisting of at least fifty per cent. of alloy, that the Council did not venture at first to do more than order that the shilling in future was to pass for ninepence, and the groat for threepence, a proclamation which did not remedy the evil. Every holder of coin felt that the second fall must follow sooner or later, yet, in the face of this certainty, the Council ordered a fresh issue of 80,000l. worth of silver coins, of which no less than two-thirds was alloy, and, in a fortnight afterwards, a further issue of 40,000l. in coins of which three-quarters was alloy.[117] The falling process once begun had to be completed, and the second proclamation, which appeared within two months of the first, ordered that the shilling should pass for no more than sixpence, nor the groat for more than twopence!! Proceedings such as these could not fail to seriously affect every branch of the national commerce.

English cloth had hitherto borne the palm in the markets of Europe. Genoese and Venetian shipowners had bought the woollens of England as cargoes for their vessels in preference to all other similar manufactures. Portuguese ships sailed with them from the Thames for the Brazils, Peru, and the Indies, East and West. The Germans on the Rhine, and the Magyars on the Danube, were clothed in English broadcloth. But the spirit of deception which had pervaded the Council in the debasement of its coin extended to the merchants, and the guilds became powerless because their members were corrupt. Huge bales of English goods lay unsold on the wharves at Antwerp, because they were “fraudulent in weight, make, and size.” Such was the state of commercial affairs in England when Edward VI. closed his reign, and it was only by the sale of the crown lands, and other property, that the government was enabled to remedy the many evils which a debased currency had created.

Nor did commercial affairs improve when Mary ascended the throne. Though her marriage with Philip of Spain may have given English merchants an increased knowledge of the West Indies, Mexico, and South America, that unfortunate union became the source of so much trouble, that the maritime commerce of England decreased during the five years of her reign, and, when Elizabeth succeeded her sister, was even more depressed than it had been at the death of Edward. The events that followed did not tend to improve it. The war with Spain, the immediate result of her accession, if it developed the energy and daring of English seamen, and opened wider and richer fields for buccaneering, almost annihilated for a time the now limited legitimate commerce of England.

Having broken off all political connection with Spain, and having reserved only such commercial and maritime intercourse as it was necessary to maintain between the two countries, Elizabeth found it desirable to make a hasty, though honourable, peace with France, more especially as that country had meditated the annexation of Scotland. But the death of Francis II., king of France, husband of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, changed the face of affairs, and the return of this princess to Scotland created new and harassing complications. France after his death was torn by civil and religious wars, and Elizabeth finding it necessary for her own security to support the Protestants in that country, a war again ensued, which in this instance perhaps more than in any other created immense excitement, especially among the maritime population of England. Religious sentiments, in the case of a misunderstanding with Spain, blended with the love of pecuniary gain, had raised, as in the war of the Crusades, people to a state of speculative fury against their hereditary enemies far more bitter and far stronger than had ever happened before. And when it became known that one Clarke, an English shipowner, with only three vessels, had in a cruise of six weeks captured and carried into Newhaven as prizes no less than eighteen vessels, whose cargoes were valued at 50,000l., applications to the Queen for letters of marque poured in from all parts of the kingdom.

Such applications were granted with little discrimination, a conduct easily accounted for by the fact that when England found herself actually at war with the then second power in the world, the whole of her naval force in commission consisted of only seven coast-guard vessels, the largest not exceeding one hundred and twenty tons, and eight brigs and schooners, which had been purchased from the merchant service, and fitted with guns. Besides these she had in harbour and fit for service only twenty-three vessels of war, one of them measuring eight hundred tons, and nearly new; the others, which had seen service, consisting of one vessel of seven hundred tons, together with some of from six hundred to two hundred tons, the remaining portion of the fleet being sloops, or similar small craft. These were all that were left of the royal fleet which Henry VIII. had created. Poverty-stricken through the impolitic measures adopted by Edward VI. and his improvident council, and by the contentions during the reign of Philip and Mary, England, for the time finding herself unable to create or maintain a fleet of her own which could cope with the navy of France, much less with that of Spain, had, therefore, in a great measure to depend on the privateers whom she licensed. Knowing the weakness of the government whom they professed to serve, and the importance attached to their services, the owners of these vessels felt no hesitation in far exceeding the limits of their licence, whenever they could with impunity increase their own wealth. The rich merchantmen of Spain and Flanders, although there had been no formal declaration of war, became the objects of their prey, and were much more eagerly sought after than the poor coasters of Brittany. Under the pretence of retaliation for sufferings inflicted on English subjects by the Spanish Inquisition, and often without any professions at all, English merchants and English gentlemen, whose estates lay contiguous to the sea coast, or on the creeks and navigable rivers, fitted out vessels as traders, under vague and questionable commissions, and sent them forth, heavily armed, to plunder on the high seas whatever ships, including not unfrequently those of their own countrymen, they might consider worthy of their prey.

Indeed, men belonging to the best families in England then became lawless rovers, especially as one of them, Sir Thomas Seymour, had formed the idea of establishing a private sovereignty among the Scilly Islands, where, as on the coast of Ireland, there were numerous narrow channels affording safe and convenient rendezvous for any desperate cruiser, who levied war on his own account whenever he thought the government neglected its duty, or whenever, by a fortunate chance, richly laden vessels happened to cross his path. The annals of the period[118] frequently mention traders which had sailed from Antwerp to Cadiz, never having reached their destination; no danger of the sea had impeded their progress, but, when hugging the land, they had met a mysterious stranger, who had ordered them to heave-to, and deliver their cargo: boats from the nearest shore in league with the cruiser, were frequently in attendance, and, during the course of the night, carts and waggons were ready at some sheltered nook on the beach to relieve the boats of their loads, and to convey bales of goods or tubs of spirits to the convenient cellars of the country squires.[119] Sometimes the unsuspecting trader was pounced upon during the course of the night by a lugger full of armed men, which had lain in wait for her, hidden, during the day, among the rocks or in one of the inlets on the coast.

No doubt the Spaniards had, in many instances, provoked acts of piracy by rousing a spirit of revenge for the cruel sufferings Englishmen had sustained at the hands of the Inquisition. Thus Dorothy Seely, when petitioning the Lords of Elizabeth’s Council for recovery of the losses and sufferings of her husband, who, with others of the Queen’s subjects, had been thrown into a Spanish prison, prays that she and “the friends of such of Her Majesty’s subjects as be there imprisoned, afflicted and tormented against all reason, may be allowed to fit out certain ships for the sea at their own proper charges, and to capture such Inquisitors, or other such Papistical subjects of the King of Spain, as they can take by sea or land, and to retain them in prison in England with such torment and diet as Her Majesty’s subjects had suffered in Spain.... Or that it may please Her Majesty to grant unto the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops the like commission in all points for foreign Papists, as the Inquisition has in Spain for the Protestants, that thereby they may be forced not to trouble her subjects repairing to Spain, or that there may be hereupon an interchange or delivery of prisoners.”[120]

Not the least daring of the English aristocratic freebooters were the sons of Lord Cobham of Cowling Castle. Having distinguished themselves during their youth in Wyatt’s rebellion, they had grown up after the type of their boyhood, lawless Protestants, half knight-errants of the Reformation, and half pirates roving the seas, with a combined spirit of revenge and love of plunder. Thomas Cobham, the most intrepid and daring of the sons, was one of many whom Elizabeth was, for some time, powerless to suppress, even had she been so disposed. Indeed, he was continually at war on his own account with the enemies of the truth wherever he could combine the service of the cause of Protestantism with pecuniary gain. Although in his case there may have been more of the crusader than of the marauder, he had become so desperate a rover, that Elizabeth was at last forced to proclaim him an outlaw, but she was evidently not anxious about his capture. Alike cruel and daring, Cobham had resolved not to be outdone in this respect by the Inquisitors of Spain. Froude says of him[121] that, whilst cruising in the Channel, he caught sight of a Spanish ship, which had been freighted in Flanders for Bilbao, with a cargo valued at eighty thousand ducats, and forty prisoners who were going to Spain to serve in the galleys, and that he chased her into the Bay of Biscay, where he fired into her, killed the captain’s brother and a number of his men, and, boarding her when all resistance had ceased, sewed up the captain himself and the survivors of the crew in their own sails, and flung them overboard. Having scuttled the ship, Cobham made off with the booty to his pirate’s den in the south of Ireland.

Though English hearts had often been broken with the news of brothers, sons, or husbands wasting to skeletons in the dungeons of Cadiz, or burning to ashes in the Plaza at Valladolid, the eighteen drowned bodies, with the mainsail for their winding sheet, which were washed upon the Spanish shores, tended only to increase the horrors and to magnify the punishments to which English prisoners in Spain had long been subjected.[122]