CHAPTER IV.

Certainty of war with Spain—Secret preparations for the invasion of England, and restoration of the Catholic faith—Philip intrigues with Hawkins, and is grossly deceived—The Spanish Armada, and England’s preparations for defence—Destruction of the Armada, July 19, 1588—Voyages of discovery by Johnson—Finner and Martin Frobisher—Drake’s voyage round the world, 1577—His piratical acts and return home, 1580—First emigration of the English to America—Discovery of Davis’s Straits—Davis directs his attention to India—Fresh freebooting expeditions—Voyage of Cavendish to India, 1591, which leads to the formation of the first English India Company, in 1600—First ships despatched by the Company—The Dutch also form an East India Company—Extent of their maritime commerce—They take the lead in the trade with India—Expedition of Sir Henry Middleton—Its failure and his death—Renewed efforts of the English East India Company—They gain favour with the Moghul emperor of India, and materially extend their commercial operations—Treaty between English and Dutch East India Companies—Soon broken—Losses of East India Company—Sir Walter Raleigh’s views on maritime commerce, 1603—His views confirmed by other writers opposed to his opinions—The views of Tobias, 1614—His estimate of the profits of busses—The effect of these publications—Colonising expeditions to North America—Charles I. assumes power over the colonies—English ship-owners resist the demand for ship-money—Its payment enforced by law—Dutch rivalry—Increase of English shipping—Struggles of the East India Company—Decline of Portuguese power in India—The trade of the English in India—Increase of other branches of English trade—Ships of the Turkey and Muscovy Company—The Dutch pre-eminent—The reasons for this pre-eminence.

It was impossible for Philip to endure any longer the insults and injuries sustained by his people. Their patience had become exhausted; no wonder! The flag of Spain, they said with much truth, no longer afforded them protection. To make matters worse, the English minister at the court of Madrid, during the whole of the time that these wrongs were being perpetrated by English cruisers, was professing the most sincere friendship in the name of his Queen. “It was she,” he said, “who had the greatest reason to complain, as the Duke of Alva, without the slightest provocation, had arrested English ships and goods in the harbours of the Low Countries.”

But, though anxious to avoid war with England, Philip was not to be deceived by the professions of friendship and fair words of her minister. He, however, waited his time. When that time came he proposed to himself measures of retaliation which he conceived to be worthy of the proud and powerful Spanish nation. With this view ever before him, he kept his secret and matured his arrangements until he felt that he could accomplish effectually his plans. To be slow and silent, to take every precaution for success, and then to deliver suddenly and unexpectedly the blow so long seriously but vaguely impending, was the policy he intended to pursue. When he did strike, he said to himself, the blow he intended should be terrible. His coasts had been plundered, his commerce destroyed, his colonies outraged by English desperadoes, in whose adventures he had heard that the Queen herself had become a partner. The seizure of his treasure he felt and knew was simply piracy on a gigantic scale, committed by the government itself. English harbours had been the home of a Dutch privateer fleet; ships built in England, armed in England, and manned by Englishmen had held the Channel under the flag of the Prince of Orange; and if Alva attempted to interfere with them, they were sheltered by English batteries. Dover had been made a second Algiers, where Spanish gentlemen were sold by public auction. The plunder of the privateers was openly disposed of in the English markets, even royal purveyors being occasionally its purchasers. Philip felt, and not without cause, that he was free in equity from any obligations to a nation which had set at defiance the usages of civilised countries, or to a government which had permitted and even aided these piratical expeditions. Open war would have been the legitimate remedy; but that did not suit his policy, and he thought that the wrongs and insults his people had sustained demanded a retribution of a more terrible character. He had also his own ends to serve on behalf of the Catholic faith, and he knew that if, while inflicting a summary though revolting punishment upon England, he could restore the people to the Church of their fathers, Catholic Europe would applaud his conduct, while the Pope would of course readily grant him pardon for any crimes he might commit for so just an end. In a word, the design he had been so long secretly maturing was nothing short of an invasion of England, the murder of Elizabeth, and the establishment of Mary Queen of Scots on the throne of that country.

Some of the old aristocracy of England, including the Duke of Norfolk, had too readily become converts to his views of restoring the supremacy of the Catholic Church. Froude in his ‘History of England’ relates with even more than his usual ability[139] an extraordinary intrigue whereby Philip thought he had secured for his scheme the services of Sir John Hawkins! The greatest freebooter of that freebooting age, with whose reputation Philip had become so terribly familiar that he had never read his name on a despatch without scoring opposite to it a note of dismay, had, by some unaccountable means, worked upon his credulity to such an extent that this negro hunter, who had sacked Spanish towns and plundered Spanish churches, was supplied by Philip with large sums of money to fit out a naval expedition, with the full conviction that he would render material aid to the cause of Spain in the invasion of England, and in the restoration of the Roman Catholic supremacy! Even the Spanish ambassador resident in England, who had no suspicion of treachery, was delighted at so important an acquisition to the Catholic cause, “and told the king that he might expect service from Hawkins of infinite value,”[140] as he had “sixteen vessels, one thousand six hundred men, and four hundred guns, all at his disposition, ready to go anywhere and do anything which his Majesty might command, so long as it was in the Queen of Scots’ service.” With this fleet increased to twenty vessels, and equipped with Philip’s money, and manned in part with English seamen, whom he had further duped Philip into releasing from the Seville dungeons, Hawkins sailed for the Azores to lie in wait for the Mexican gold fleet!

Cherishing the vain hope that the English freebooter would render him powerful assistance, Philip despatched, after three years’ careful preparation, his famous Armada, comprising all the naval forces then at the disposal of the Peninsula. He had the most perfect confidence in the result. The invasion and subjugation of England were to his mind matters that could not admit of doubt; nor had the government and people of this country much hope of resisting so formidable a fleet, consisting as it did of one hundred and thirty-two ships and twenty caravels, amounting together to fifty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty tons, exclusive of four galliasses and four galleys, the whole manned by thirty-two thousand seven hundred and nine men of all ranks, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. But, though the defence appeared to be hopeless, the feeling of despair seems never to have entered the minds of the English people, who with one accord made the most strenuous efforts to meet this apparently overwhelming force. London, ever foremost in its loyalty, furnished Elizabeth with large sums of money, the citizens rivalling with each other in the amounts they raised, and furnishing double the number of ships and men required by the royal edict. The same patriotic spirit pervaded the whole of the country, especially the seaport towns and the merchant marine. The collective force of the English fleet has often been published,[141] and in abstract may be stated as follows:

This return shows that almost two-thirds of the comparatively small force, which achieved in less than twenty-four hours the destruction of the Armada of Spain, consisted of merchant vessels, many of which must have been small craft, for though the number of vessels exceeded those of Spain, the tonnage and proportion of their crews were only about one half; yet so thoroughly complete was the defeat of the great fleet which Philip had been so many years in preparing, that out of the one hundred and thirty-eight sail despatched from the Tagus to invade England, only fifty-three returned to Spain, the remainder being either sunk, destroyed, captured, or wrecked upon the English coasts.[142]

While events were maturing which, with the assistance of Hawkins, ultimately led to the complete overthrow of the Spanish intrigues, English seamen were exploring seas then unknown, in search, it may be, of plunder, like their compeers in the English Channel, but professedly, though not in all cases ostensibly, to discover other lands, and to develop new sources of commerce. The spirit of enterprise which had fitted out fleets of privateers was equally ready to adapt itself to more laudable, if not in every instance to more legitimate sources of gain, and, during the whole of the disreputable exploits and expeditions to which we have briefly alluded, the rage in England for commercial adventure had become quite as great as that which had a century before prevailed in Spain and Portugal.

The voyages of Hawkins to the coast of Guinea and to the West Indies in 1562 and 1563 had given fresh vigour to the spirit of adventure. In 1565 Richard Johnson, Alexander Kitching, and Arthur Edwards were sent by the Russia Company into Persia by way of the Caspian Sea, a journey in those days of great peril and of the most tedious character, where they obtained for their employers numerous commercial privileges. In December of the following year, George Finner, a shipowner of Plymouth, set sail on his own account with three ships and a pinnace to Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands, where he had a desperate but successful encounter with seven large Portuguese vessels off Terceira.

In 1576 the celebrated Martin Frobisher equipped an expedition with the view of reaching China by a north-west passage. It consisted of only the Gabriel of twenty-five tons, and of another vessel of similar size, the Michael, with a pinnace of ten tons; yet the difficulties to which the English merchant ships were exposed, by reason of the length of the voyage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, combined with the hostile policy of the Portuguese and Spaniards, induced this daring and skilful seaman to venture upon this perilous undertaking. But though it failed, as all similar undertakings have failed, Frobisher discovered Greenland, and reached the straits which now bear his name in 63° 8´ north latitude.

In 1577 Francis Drake, the colleague of Hawkins, and alike famous and notorious, undertook his memorable voyage round the world.[143] Two years before Oxenham had, it is true, but unknown to Drake, built a pinnace in which he sailed down one of the streams flowing into the Pacific, and had the honour of being the first English navigator who had ventured upon the waters of that great ocean; to Sir Francis, however, is due the credit of its more complete exploration. For this distant and hazardous voyage he had been provided with five vessels: the Pelican, of one hundred tons, commanded by himself as admiral, the Elizabeth of eighty tons, the Swan of fifty, the Marigold of thirty, and the Christopher, a pinnace, of fifteen tons; the crew of the whole amounting to one hundred and sixty-four men. With these small vessels, having cleared out ostensibly for Alexandria in Egypt, on the 3rd of December, 1577, he reached the river La Plata on the 14th of April, 1578, and entered Port St. Julian, where Magellan’s fleet had anchored a few years before, on the 20th of June of the same year, and having passed the Straits of Magellan was driven back southwards to Cape Horn.

It is not our province, much less our pleasure, to furnish details of Drake’s piratical proceedings on the coasts of Chili and Peru. We may merely state that the capture of a Spanish vessel with 150,000l. of silver on board, off Payta, crowned all his previous successes of that character. Resolving to return home by a north-west passage, he sailed one thousand four hundred leagues without seeing land, a marvellous expedition in those days, until, in 48° north latitude, he fell in with the American continent, making thence one of the Pellew Islands and the eastern coast of Celebes. After encountering many perils, and failing of course to find any passage to the North, he reached the Cape of Good Hope, and finally arrived in England on the 3rd of November, 1580. A large portion of the treasure he had captured was sequestered by government at the instance of the Spanish ambassador, and restored to its rightful owners, but a considerable surplus remained to satisfy the exploring freebooter, and to stimulate the cupidity of fresh adventurers.[144]

The success of Drake paved the way to a new and more brilliant epoch in the history of maritime commerce. The love of adventure mingled with hopes, however vain, of obtaining incalculable wealth, combined with the knowledge that the Queen, shutting her eyes to Drake’s heinous delinquencies, had dined on board his ship and conferred on him the honour of knighthood,[145] all tended to incite hosts of enterprising mariners to offer to undertake remote and hazardous expeditions. In the course of sixteen years from the date of his return, no fewer than six of these were equipped and despatched to the southern seas, the commanders mingling the peaceful pursuits of trade with the depredations of pirates whenever circumstances tempted them to plunder; but by these successive voyages the general outline of the main continents of Asia and America became tolerably well understood.

Somewhere about this period Sir Walter Raleigh[146] furnished the first accurate information respecting the eastern sea-board of North America. In an expedition consisting of two small barks, fitted out by him, Sir Richard Greville, and others, the configuration of the coasts of Florida and Virginia became known, and as these districts were represented as “scenes laid open for the good and gracious Queen to propagate the gospel in,” the natives being “soft as wax, innocent, and ignorant of all manner of politics, tricks, and cunning,” a fresh expedition, headed by Sir Richard Greville, himself laid the foundation of many practical plans for their colonisation. These were happily attended, even in their infancy, with considerable success. Indeed the many inducements offered in the shape of a rich soil, pliable natives, hopes of gold, and of the propagation of the Protestant faith could hardly fail to encourage emigration on, for those times, a tolerably extensive scale.

It was also about this period that John Davis made the discovery of the straits which bear his name, Convinced that a north-west passage to India must sooner or later be discovered, the merchants of London fitted out two small vessels, the Sunshine of fifty tons with twenty-three hands, commanded by Davis himself, and the Moonshine of thirty-five tons and nineteen men, commanded by Captain William Bruton. These vessels sailed from Dartmouth on the 7th of June, 1585, and reached as far north as latitude 66° 40´, discovering the straits justly named after him. A second voyage during the following summer inspired Davis with such hopes of success that he wrote to one of his owners, William Sanderson, a mathematical instrument maker, “that he had gained such experience that he would forfeit his life if the voyage could not be performed, not only without further charge, but with certain profit to the adventurers.” In his third voyage, during which he sailed with open water up the same straits as far as 73° north latitude, he was equally sanguine of success, and on his return to England, after again failing in his object, he writes, “The passage is most probable, and the execution easy,” an opinion which, more or less, prevailed even until our own time. But his fourth voyage was altogether so unsuccessful that the owners of the ships under his charge were led to direct their attention to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and to these regions Davis made no less than five voyages, but was, unfortunately, killed in his last voyage by some Japanese pirates off the coast of Malacca, in December 1605.

The destruction of the Spanish Armada, somewhere about the close of Davis’s last attempt to discover a north-west passage to India, had rendered the voyage to that favoured land by way of the Cape of Good Hope a much less perilous undertaking than it had previously been. England had now become “Mistress of the seas,” and her people embraced the maritime position they had achieved in their characteristic manner. Many more freebooting expeditions were now launched than had previously been attempted. The fleets of Spain and Portugal having for the time been swept from the seas, the shipowners of London, who had lent their aid to destroy the Armada, quickly followed up the blow by an expedition on their own account against the country whose vessels of war they had destroyed. Other cities and towns, too, eagerly joined them in their daring adventures. Ipswich, Harwich, and Newcastle sent their quota of vessels, and Elizabeth herself, subscribing sixty thousand pounds, furnished six ships towards this very questionable expedition, the whole fleet numbering one hundred and forty-six vessels.[147] Not satisfied with ravaging the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and capturing a great number of the ships of the enemy, these too enterprising shipowners captured sixty sail of vessels belonging to the Hanse Towns destined for the Peninsula.

A private expedition of this character so deeply mortified the Spaniards that Elizabeth, though a very prominent participator in it, at first thought of releasing the vessels belonging to the Hanse Towns; but on ascertaining that the Hanseatic League meditated serious designs of revenge for the loss of their shipping privileges in England (having held a meeting at Lubeck to take hostile measures against England), she ordered the whole of the ships and property which had been captured to be condemned, with the exception of two of the smallest vessels, which were despatched to carry the unwelcome news to the Hanse Towns of the misfortunes of their comrades.

Amid the many cruises now made in search of gain not the least important, however unfortunate, was the voyage undertaken to the East Indies by Thomas Cavendish[148] in 1591; its object, like most of the expeditions of the period, being to cruise against the Portuguese, who by this time had formed there important and valuable settlements, especially at Ormuz and along the coast of Malabar. Although his expedition proved a failure, the merchants of London ascertained from those who had been engaged in it, more fully than they had done from any previous navigators, the immense value of the Eastern trade and the vast profits realisable by its systematic development. Their representations urged the establishment of factories and the carrying on by such agencies a very extensive and lucrative trade. Each successive voyage added to the experience of the shipowning classes, and hence various private individuals undertook similar enterprises, incited, perhaps, as much by the love of adventure as by the hope of profit.

Such were the preludes to the East India Company, by far the largest and most important commercial undertaking recorded in history. Through Mr. Thorne, an English merchant, whom we have already noticed as resident at Seville while Cabot was chief pilot of Spain, a complete knowledge was obtained of the course of the Spanish and Portuguese trade with the East, as he furnished a report on this subject to certain merchants resident in London, many of whom had for some time considered the project of establishing direct relations of their own with India. Consequently in the year 1600, on the petition of Sir John Hart of London, Sir John Spencer, Sir Edward Micheburn, William Candish or Caundish, and more than two hundred other merchants, shipowners, and citizens of London, this great company was formed, having a common seal as a body corporate, under the title of the Governor and Company of merchants trading to the East Indies. The Company was allowed many powers and privileges by the Crown, including that of punishing offenders either in body or purse, provided the mode of punishment was not repugnant to the laws of England. Its exports were not subjected to any duties for the four first voyages, important indulgences were granted in paying the duties on imports, and liberty was given to export 30,000l. each voyage in foreign coin or bullion, provided 6,000l. of this sum passed through the Mint. But not exceeding six ships, and an equal number of pinnaces, with five hundred seamen, were allowed to be despatched annually to whatever station might be formed in India, with the additional provisoes that the seamen were not at the time required for the service of the royal navy, and that all gold or silver exported by the Company should be shipped at either London, Dartmouth, or Plymouth.[149]

The stipulated capital of 72,000l. having been raised, almost as soon as the association had been mooted, the Company equipped five vessels to open the trade, consisting of the Dragon, of six hundred tons, her commander, according to the practice of the day, receiving the title of “Admiral of the Squadron;” the Hector, of three hundred tons, with the vice-admiral in command; two vessels of two hundred tons each; and the Guest, a store ship of one hundred and thirty tons.[150] The men employed in this expedition were four hundred and eighty, all told; the cost of the vessels and their equipment, 45,000l., while their cargoes absorbed 27,000l., the whole of the remaining capital of the Company. They had on board twenty merchants as supercargoes, and were fully provided with arms and ammunition—an exceedingly necessary precaution in those days. The voyage proved successful; relations were formed with the king of Achin, in Sumatra, and a pinnace having been despatched to the Moluccas and a factory established at Bantam, the ships returned to England richly laden.

But the English East India Company soon found in their trade with India a much more formidable rival than either the Spaniards or Portuguese. The people of the Netherlands had long been successful navigators. They had for more than a century carried on a large and profitable commercial intercourse with England, and, at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, the value of the trade between the two countries was estimated at 2,400,000l. per annum, then considered so large that the merchants engaged in it were said to “have fallen into the way of insuring their merchandise against losses by sea by a joint contribution.”[151] This is the first notice of any mutual assurance association in England, though the principles and practice of insurance were probably known to the ancients, and would seem to be referred to in the compilation popularly known by the name of ‘The Rhodian Law.’

The separation of the Dutch provinces from the crown of Spain had induced their merchants to seek more distant and more lucrative channels of employment for their ships, while their superior information respecting Spanish and Portuguese affairs gave them a marked advantage over their English competitors in the valuable trade of the East. They had now supplanted the Portuguese[152] in the Moluccas, driven them out of their most valuable trade with Japan, and become the predominant naval power in the Indian seas, a power they long maintained. Finding England, however, a more stubborn rival, they employed all their influence and artifices to molest the ships of the Company and other English traders. Just, in fact, as the Moors had endeavoured to ruin the Portuguese in the opinion of the native princes of India, so the Dutch, having expelled the Portuguese from the chief trade of the East, now resorted to any expedient, either by secret intrigue or open force, to drive the English merchant vessels from the same localities. But the profits realised in their first expedition had inspired the London merchants with fresh energy. Having obtained a new charter (31st of May, 1609) for fifteen years, the Company set about constructing the Trades’ Increase, of one thousand two hundred tons, the largest ship hitherto built for the English merchant service. At her launch, and at that of her pinnace, of two hundred and fifty tons, bearing the equally appropriate name of the Peppercorn, the Company gave a great banquet, at which the dishes were of china-ware, then a novelty in England. With these vessels, and a victualling bark of one hundred and eighty tons, and the Darling, of ninety tons, Sir Henry Middleton, who had been placed in command, set sail for Mocha, on the Red Sea, where, ensnared on shore by the Muhammedans, eight of his crew were massacred, sixteen others disabled, and he himself severely wounded. Proceeding thence to Bantam, the Trades’ Increase was unfortunately wrecked, and here Middleton, broken down by misfortunes and disasters, died, thus closing one of their most unfortunate expeditions on record.

The Company, however, persevered in their Eastern undertakings, and in 1611 despatched two other expeditions to the Indies; one consisting of a single ship, the Globe, which, though absent for nearly five years, owing to the artifices of their opponents, realised two hundred and eighteen per cent. on the capital invested; the other, consisting of the Clove, the Hector, and the Thomas, comparatively small vessels, which, though absent only three years, was even more successful: another expedition, which immediately followed, though absent only twenty months, earned in that time a profit of no less than three hundred and forty per cent.[153]

Having opened negotiations with the Moghul emperor of India, Jehangir, the Company obtained the privilege of establishing a factory at Surat, and in return for the payment of certain fixed custom duties, secured their vessels and property against the hostility of the Portuguese, and their still more formidable rivals the Dutch. They also contrived to obtain a footing in Japan, through the influence of one William Adams, a native of Kent, who, having been pilot in one of the earliest Dutch expeditions, had settled there, and had gained the confidence of the emperor, from whom he received many favours. It is to be regretted that the intercourse thus formed was allowed to fall into abeyance after the death of Adams[154] in 1631, and that Europe, during the long period since, has, till quite recently, derived little or no benefit from a commerce likely to become second only to that of China.

When, in 1614, the English Company despatched the New Years Gift, of six hundred and fifty tons; the Hector, of five hundred; the Merchant’s Hope, of three hundred; and the Solomon,[155] of two hundred tons, they for the first time consolidated their profits into one common stock. In this expedition they were fortunate enough to repel the Portuguese in their attack upon one of the ports belonging to the Moghul emperor, thus materially strengthening their relations with that powerful Indian monarch. An event so fortunate was promptly followed by the despatch of Sir Thomas Roe as ambassador from England to his court, where he resided until the year 1619. Numerous privileges were then granted to the Company, whose ships now traded with Achin, Tambee, and Jewa, in Sumatra, where they established factories, as well as to Surat, in the dominion of the Moghul, to Ferando in Japan, and to Bantam and Batana, in Java. They also carried on trading operations, to a greater or less extent, with Borneo, Banda, Malacca, Siam, Celebes, and the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel.[156]

So prosperous had their affairs now become, that in 1617, when the stock of the Company had reached a premium of two hundred and three per cent., the Dutch East India Company were induced to suggest an amalgamation of the two companies, with a view to crush their common enemy, the Portuguese, and to exclude all other shipping from obtaining a footing in India. Though this scheme was never carried into effect, the two companies concluded, in 1619, a treaty of trade and friendship, whereby they should cease from rivalry, and apportion the profits of the different branches of commerce between them.[157] But the treaty, like most others of a similar character, was made only to be broken, and in the course of the following year the Dutch governor-general really, though erroneously, under the impression that the English had gained undue advantages, attacked their possessions of Lantore and Pulo-Penang. A long series of hostile acts ensued, including the massacre of various Englishmen by the Dutch in Amboyna, and numerous conflicts between the merchant vessels of both countries, resulting in the exclusion of the English from the valuable trade of the Archipelago, and in losses most disastrous to the Company.

Thus, in a few years after the conclusion of a treaty which professed so much and performed so little for the benefit of either party, the Dutch had gained so complete an ascendency over the English traders, that, notwithstanding their valuable acquisition of the island of Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, and the prospect of still being able to conduct a lucrative trade with the East, the Directors seriously meditated relinquishing all they had gained, and liquidating the affairs of the Company. They had already abandoned their scheme of the Greenland[158] fishery, which had been incongruously intermingled with their East Indian adventures, and had withdrawn from Japan, notwithstanding the great encouragement they had received for the prosecution of its valuable trade. With an increased capital of more than one million and a half, their stock had decreased one half in value, and so powerful had the Dutch now become, that the Company for the time seems to have lost all hope of being able to compete against them and the Portuguese, who still maintained an important position in India. This great rivalry for maritime supremacy, which commenced during the reign of Elizabeth, formed one of the most important subjects for discussion during the whole lifetime of her successor.[159]

Sir Walter Raleigh gives a graphic account[160] of the state of things then existing, and of the condition of the English mercantile marine shortly before the union of the crowns of England and Scotland. In this remarkable paper, which contains many commercial principles far in advance of the age in which the author lived, Sir Walter states that the merchant ships of England were not to be compared with those of the Dutch, and that while an English ship of one hundred tons required a crew of thirty men, the Dutch would sail such a vessel with one third that number. Illustrative of the wise and progressive policy of the Dutch, he enumerates various instances where that country had an immense advantage over England, and where, following the example of ancient Tyre and of more modern Venice, Holland became the depôt of numerous articles “not one hundredth part of which were consumed” by the Dutch, while she gave “free custom inwards and outwards for the better maintenance of navigation and encouragement of the people to that business.”

Directing attention to the liberal policy of some other of the nations of his time, Sir Walter mentions the fact that France offered to the vessels of all nations free custom twice and sometimes three times each year, when she laid in her annual stock of provisions, and also in such raw materials as were not possessed by herself in equal abundance, adding that La Rochelle was an entirely free port, a small toll levied for the repair of the harbour alone excepted. Denmark also granted free custom throughout the year, with the exception of one month between Bartholomew-tide and Michaelmas. The merchandise of France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, and England were then transported chiefly by the Dutch into the east and north-east kingdoms of Pomerania, as well as into Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Russia, and some other countries of the south. Sir Walter, with great force, adds, “and yet the situation of England lieth far better for a store-house to serve the south-east and the north-east kingdoms than theirs do, and we have far the better means to do it if we apply ourselves to do it.”

Sir Walter says with equal truth that, although the greatest fishery in the world is on the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Holland despatches annually to the four great towns on the Baltic, Königsburg, Elbing, Stettin, and Dantzig, herrings worth 620,000l., while England does not send a boatload; nor even a single herring up the Rhine to Germany, whose people purchase annually from the Dutch fish to the value of 400,000l. “We send,” remarks this enlightened statesman, “into the east kingdoms yearly only one hundred ships, and our trade chiefly depends on Elbing, Königsburg, and Dantzig,” while “the shipowners of the low country send thither about three thousand ships, trading with every city and port and town, making their purchases at better rates than we do on account of the difference of coin.” “The Hollanders,” he continues, “send into France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, from the east kingdoms, passing through the Sound yearly, with Baltic produce, about two thousand merchant ships, and we have none in that course. They traffick into every city and port around about this land with five or six hundred ships yearly, and we, chiefly, to three towns in their country and with forty ships; the Dutch trade to every port and town in France, and we only to five or six.” Sir Walter estimated, that the Low Countries at the time he wrote (1603-4) possessed as many vessels of all sorts as eleven kingdoms of Christendom, including England; that they built one thousand ships annually, and “yet have not a tree in their whole country;” and that all their home products might be carried in a hundred ships. Nor does his complaint end here. He alleges that “our Russian trade was going to ruin,” and that, though for seventy years the English had carried on a very considerable commercial intercourse with Moscow, they had only four vessels engaged in that trade in the year 1600, and only “two or three” in 1602, whereas the Hollanders, who, about twenty years previously, had only two ships in the trade, had now increased the number of their vessels to thirty or forty, and were still increasing.

Making every allowance for the spirit of exaggeration adopted, doubtless with the laudable intention of inciting English merchants and shipowners to greater exertions, “so that our ships and mariners might be trebled,” there is, nevertheless, in the paper he presented to King James a very large amount of valuable information with regard to the merchant shipping of the period, and much still more valuable advice. It is manifest from what he states that in consequence of the laws which even then greatly favoured foreign shipping, the English stood no chance of competing with the Dutch. But though the shipowners of England were loud in their complaints against the privileges granted to foreign nations, neither their rulers nor they themselves were disposed to entertain Raleigh’s liberal policy. They preferred that of one “Tobias, gentleman fisherman and mariner” [what a number of Tobiases we have had since then!] who afterwards published a pamphlet entitled “The best way to make England the richest and wealthiest kingdom in Europe,” in which he recommends the construction of one thousand busses upon a “national design,”—“each ward in London to provide one Busse, every company, and, if needs be, every parish, one,” in order to compete with the Dutch. To encourage these investments he furnishes an estimate of the capital required and of the probable profits.

A busse, measuring from sixty to eighty tons, complete for sea, with her fishing implements and appurtenances, would cost, he estimates, somewhere about 500l. sterling, and such a vessel, he calculated, would hold good for twenty years with very little expenditure in the way of repairs, and only about 80l. annually for the wear and tear of her tackle, ropes, masts, and sails. Presuming that the busse caught herrings equal to one hundred last of barrels, which he values at 10l. per last, she would earn in the gross 1000l.; and as he calculates that her expenses, exclusive of tear and wear, would not exceed 335l.,[161] he shows a large and tempting profit to those corporations, companies, and parishes who might be induced to act on his advice. Having satisfied, as he conceives, all pecuniary considerations, he appeals to their patriotism by showing the advantage to the nation of having ready for its service in the hour of need “lusty-fed younkers bred in the Busses, who could furl a top-sail or sprit-sail, or shake out a bonnet in a dark and stormy night, and not shrink from their duty like the surfeited and hunger-pinched sailors who made the southern voyages.” Nor were the proverbial remarks of the Dutch forgotten, who taunted the English with the sneer, “that they would make them wear their old shoes.”

Although this appeal did not produce the desired patriotic effect, it directed public attention to the depressed state of the merchant shipping interest of England, which reached so low an ebb in 1615 that there were only ten ships belonging to the port of London of more than two hundred tons burthen.[162] In that year the corporation of the Trinity House presented a petition to the King pointing out, in very strong terms, the evil results which would ensue from a perseverance of such neglect of the shipping interest, and recommending a highly protective policy; but numerous persons who were deeply interested in maintaining the merchant navy in a high state of prosperity, opposed altogether any measure prohibiting, as had been proposed, the export of British commodities in foreign bottoms. When, however, extremes meet, the necessity of a change becomes apparent, and the unfair advantages so long granted to foreign nations as against English shipping had at length roused the people to adopt those retaliatory measures of legislation which, ignoring Raleigh’s sound advice, eventually culminated in the highly protective maritime laws of Cromwell.

But amid the depression which then prevailed, English shipowners did not overlook the advantages to be derived from trading with the newly discovered world of North America. Though the expeditions to that country, promoted by Sir Walter Raleigh and his relations, had terminated disastrously, the merchants of London and Bristol frequently despatched small vessels thither with trinkets and articles of little value, exchanging them profitably for the skins and furs of the native Indians. In 1602 Captain Gosnold[163] made for the first time the voyage direct across the Atlantic, without sailing by way of the Canaries round the West Indies and through the Gulf of Florida, as had been the previous practice of navigators. In 1606, two maritime companies, under charter from King James, were authorised to colonise and plant the American coast within the 34th and 41st degrees of latitude. One of these, known as the South Virginia Company, afterwards formed the provinces of Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina; and the second, the “Plymouth Adventurers,” was empowered to establish plantations as far as the 45th degree of latitude, their assignment of territory embracing Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and other New England towns. In the same year the “London Company” sent out two ships and founded “James-Town” in Virginia; and in 1612 Bermuda was also settled.

When Charles I. ascended the throne he commenced putting into execution one of those doubtful prerogatives of the crown which, pushed too far, led to a fatal revolution. Either under the pretence or conviction that the government of the transatlantic colonies could be more advantageously carried on by himself and his council, through the intervention of a governor resident on the spot and appointed by the Crown, he assumed the direct government of Virginia, and not only treated the charter of the Company as annulled, but broadly declared that colonies founded by adventurers, or occupied by British subjects, were essentially part and parcel of the dominion of the mother country.[164] The Company very justly complained that they had expended 200,000l. in the Virginian undertaking alone, and as yet had not received any returns. Nevertheless the whole of that province, as also the West India Islands not previously taken possession of and colonised, were occupied, under the authority of the Crown of England, within a few years afterwards. About that period also the Bahama Islands were appropriated, together with North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the southern part of Louisiana. This immense territory was granted to Robert Heath and his heirs, and afterwards conveyed by him to the Earl of Arundel. In like manner Maryland, previously considered a part of Virginia, became the property of Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, a grant afterwards productive of deep religious animosities, when the Puritans were driven to Virginia. In 1641 Lord Willoughby made a settlement at Surinam on the southern continent of America. The commercial results of these colonisation schemes were at first slow and unsatisfactory, but they eventually exercised a vast influence on merchant shipping, and contributed essentially to the gradual consolidation and greatness of England.

The French, whose commercial navy was now beginning to emerge from obscurity and insignificance, formed settlements in Acadia, the present Nova Scotia, and extended their dominion into the territory now known as the New England States. But in 1620 both they and the Dutch, who had founded the town of New Amsterdam (now the city of New York and capital of the province), were dislodged by English adventurers.[165]

Passing on to events in England connected with merchant shipping, by far the most conspicuous about this period were the attempts of that unwise and unfortunate monarch Charles I. to burden the mercantile community with the expense of a fleet which his, perhaps natural, anxiety to support the Palatinate had rendered necessary. Demanding from the city of London and from the other seaports the requisite number of ships or their equivalent in money, the people of the maritime towns not actually dependent upon trade passively resisted, thereby making the burden yet more intolerable to those who remained on the coast. The proclamation which consequently followed, commanding the parties who had withdrawn to return to their dwellings, brought about the famous struggle of Hampden, who resisted the writs as illegal. The first writ recited that certain “Thieves, pirates, and robbers of the sea, as well Turks,[166] enemies of the Christian name, as others, gathered together and wickedly took by force, and spoiled the ships, goods, and merchandise, not only of the King’s subjects, but the subjects of our friends in the sea, which hath been defended by the English nation.” The writ went on to recite how men “were carried away into captivity, and the merchant shipping of the kingdom endangered by the preparations made to molest our merchants. Accordingly, the Princely honour of the King required that force should be employed to defend the kingdom, guard the seas, and give security to shipping.” Upon these grounds Ship-money was demanded by the King, without the sanction and authority of Parliament, and, out of this unconstitutional proceeding arose the quarrel which had so fatal a termination for that ill-advised monarch. The city of London petitioned the King, setting forth that they were exempted by their privileges from the demand. But the King persevered; Hampden was defeated in the courts of law, which, under the influence of corrupt judges, pronounced the writ legal, and thus the levy of Ship-money, at first peculiar to the maritime towns, was imposed upon the entire kingdom.

This great struggle was no doubt the proximate cause of the final severance of the merchant vessels from the royal navy, as, after the Restoration, the constitutional action of Parliament provided the requisite funds for the maintenance of a royal navy on a permanent footing, so that the shipowners were relieved from duties which at intervals pressed heavily on their class, and only contributed to the cost of a national navy in a rateable proportion together with their fellow subjects. Combined with other concurring causes which supervened, these legislative measures gave hereafter no ordinary impulse to the merchant shipping of England. But they engendered a sanguinary civil war, besides a series of much more sanguinary struggles with the Dutch, to disenthrall the English merchant service from the state of dependence in which it had lingered during many ages.

While England was fighting for political freedom, the Dutch, having already become a free republic, were the real masters of the seas. They were now at the height of their maritime glory. Their merchant ships penetrated to every quarter of the globe. No wonder then that they openly and derisively claimed the dominion of the Narrow Seas. We may now smile at such absurd pretensions, but these were then the cause of deep alarm and excitement in England, for statesmen well knew that the dominion of the Narrow Seas was an attribute of real and material power. It was at this period that the great Selden wrote his celebrated work,[167] which was honoured with every mark of royal approbation and popular commendation. The Dutch, having a vast number of merchantmen afloat, feared the increasing naval power of England, but nevertheless made all the encroachments they dared. Their busses fished on her coasts and were fired upon, but at last paid the stipulated sum of 3000l., tribute to the King, to obtain his consent to their prosecution of the coast fisheries for one summer, undertaking to continue the payment annually. This personal bribe to the King did not, however, render the proceedings of the Dutch more palatable to the parties who conceived themselves damnified.

Sir William Monson states that the shipping of the port of London had so augmented during the first fifteen years of the reign of Charles I. that it was now able to supply a hundred sail of stout vessels capable of being converted into men-of-war; while ten large ships had during that period been added to the effective force of the Royal Navy; but that, so far as regards the East India Company, there was no improvement. Their commanders in the Indian seas had still to fight their way harassed and outraged by the Dutch and the Portuguese at every point. Whatever may have been the state of the relations of the sovereigns of the various European subjects who trafficked in India, it was the proverb of the sailors of those days, “that there was no peace beyond the line.” Sanguinary encounters were constantly taking place, and the trade of the English to India at the period to which we refer had become so precarious that the most enterprising of her capitalists could hardly be induced to embark in it. Even in 1646, when the Company obtained possession of Madras,[168] which for a long period was the chief seat of their commerce and power, only 105,000l. was subscribed for the new stock rendered necessary by this acquisition. It was feared that the Company would not, in their commercial operations, be able to contend successfully with the formidable Dutch and Portuguese monopolies which had been established in the East, and, though Portugal and Spain were then beginning to decline from the exalted position they had so long held, Holland, in possession of public liberty and a wise system of commerce, was in the zenith of her commercial and maritime greatness, and proved a rival whom the most enterprising of English merchants might well hesitate to encounter.

But by this time the rapacious extortions of the Portuguese, combined with their cruelties, had so excited the natives of India against them, that there was great rejoicing when the overwhelming naval power of the Dutch dealt a fatal blow to their ascendency in the East. When, however, the Dutch power predominated, the people of India, in shaking off the yoke of their former tyrants, found that they had only changed their oppressors. In 1638 the Dutch expelled the Portuguese from the trade of Japan, and in 1656 Ceylon was surrendered to them. Their settlements at the Cape of Good Hope formed from an early period a convenient point whence they could direct their shipping eastwards; and the most common vessels they then employed in the trade (as may be seen from the imperfect sketch on next page) were so much in advance of even the best vessels then in the service of the English East India Company, that it is not, for these and other reasons, surprising that the Company should have had considerable difficulties in competing successfully with the Dutch, and at times in raising capital sufficient for their purposes.

In a return presented to Parliament on the 29th of November, 1621, there will be found an account of the trade carried on by the Company with the East Indies during the previous twenty years, and of the difficulties they had then to encounter. Out of eighty-six ships which they had in that time despatched, eleven were surprised and seized by the Dutch, nine were lost, five were worn out by long service, going from port to port in India, and only thirty-six had returned home with cargoes, the remaining twenty-five being then in India, or on their way home. Indeed it is surprising that they were able to maintain any position whatever in India in opposition to the Dutch, whose settlements at that time prove that they enjoyed a virtual, and sometimes a real, monopoly of the trade in spices, cloves, nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon, the products exclusively of their Eastern possessions, including the Banda Islands, Moluccas, Ceylon, Sumatra, Tonquin, with part of Bengal and along the coast of Coromandel, besides stations at Surat and Gombroon, and important factories on the Malabar coast.[169]

But though the Dutch have the credit of first introducing tea into general use in Europe, they were unfortunate in their attempts to establish themselves in China. The expensive embassy they sent to Pekin proved of no service to them, and although they afterwards took possession of Formosa, they soon got involved in a war with the Chinese in which they were so rudely handled by the Governor of Tchi-chieng, that they were compelled to evacuate it, and all their attempts to displace the Portuguese, who since 1517 had carried on a trade between the Chinese ports and Europe, proved unavailing.

Although unsuccessful in the East, as compared to of other the Dutch, the maritime commerce of England now rapidly increased in other quarters. The Merchant Adventurers’ Company still carried on a successful trade, having not yet shaken off the old prejudices in favour of associations, though Lord Bacon had made it a reproach “that trading in companies was most agreeable to the English nature, which wanteth that same general vein of a republic which runneth in the Dutch, and serveth them instead of a company.”[170] The Turkey Company now conducted an important and profitable commercial intercourse with the Levant;[171] London having in a great measure superseded Venice in that valuable traffic, even supplying that city with articles of Indian produce. By this time, also, English merchants had become importers of Indian produce into Constantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and many other Mediterranean ports.

The Turkey Company alone despatched their ships, not yearly, but monthly, indeed almost weekly, thus securing a large proportion of that important trade;[172] while the Muscovy Company, on the other hand, in virtue of their exclusive monopoly, enjoyed with their own ships almost undisputed possession of the maritime commerce of the Baltic.[173]

But though English merchant shipping now stood higher than ever it had done, the Dutch were still far in advance of England, as of all other nations. Their commercial marine had been gradually arriving at its then high state of prosperity, through the efforts of many centuries;[174] the commerce of the north of Europe having, as we have seen, concentrated itself at a somewhat remote period in the Low Countries, and more especially in Holland, where after the destruction of Antwerp, when the States shook off the yoke of Spain, a fortunate combination of circumstances, improved by industry and economy, concurred to render them thus powerful in their commercial marine. No doubt the freedom of her government, tended materially to improve these natural, physical, and adventitious causes. Her fisheries formed a nursery for her seamen, from which her fleets could be constantly reinvigorated with hardy and able sailors. In addition to these highly favourable circumstances, Holland, during the long period that other nations of Europe were engaged in intestine or international wars, contrived generally to avoid intermingling in their affairs or quarrels, moreover was often able to adhere to this policy, partly through her prudence, and, still more so, as her comparatively small territory inspired little jealousy in surrounding nations. Like Tyre of old and Venice in her earlier history, Holland escaped from kindred causes convulsions which overthrew more powerful neighbours.

But apart from other considerations, the maintenance of the power of Holland may be ascribed in great measure to the care with which she always preserved her navy, so necessary in those times, if not to create, at least to maintain her commercial and maritime prosperity. While Spain and Portugal, either from internal corruptions, the supineness of their rulers, or national decay, neglected their navies, Holland zealously maintained a predominating naval force at sea, and was thereby enabled, if not to perpetuate her naval greatness, at least to retard its decline and fall. To her own people and to every foreigner who sought an asylum in her territories, she granted the fullest religious and political freedom, and though it is difficult to trace any special free-trade enactments, as regards her navigation, to which her maritime success can be ascribed, abundant reasons for that success may be seen in her policy of non-intervention with the affairs of other nations, and in the facilities she afforded for the importation of every material suitable for ship-building purposes, and of the wool for her manufactures, which the English people preferred parting with to working it up at home. But, above all, the Dutch owed their success in maritime pursuits to many of the ancient laws of England, which, as we have seen in numerous instances, actually forbad any English exports in home bottoms, thus enabling the Dutch to grasp and keep to themselves large and valuable portions of the carrying trade, and thus laying the foundation of their wealth and greatness.

When the English were at last awakened by the advice of Sir Walter Raleigh and other writers who followed him to a full consciousness of their own strength and of their previous legislative errors, they, with characteristic energy, resolved to adopt the most effective measures then in their power to remedy existing evils, although in attempting to remove the yoke which ancient custom, combined with their own inconsistent and absurd laws, had imposed, they by rushing into the opposite extreme laid the foundation for those stringent navigation laws which, curiously enough, a republic was the first to enforce.

That they had maritime opponents of no ordinary kind to contend against, may be seen in the illustrations of some of the Dutch ships of the period which have been preserved. In the Print-room of the British Museum there will be found a drawing by Hollar of the stern of one of their largest and finest Indiamen, from which the above is a copy.

No doubt this vessel was built, like the English Indiamen of much more modern times, so as to be applicable for war when the necessity arose, as well as for the ordinary purposes of commerce; but neither England nor any other nation possessed at that period any vessel engaged in commerce which could be compared to her either in dimensions, construction, or equipment. Indeed the finish of the stern of one of the finest modern vessels of the English navy, The Asia, constructed towards the close of the first quarter of the present century, and of which this cut is an illustration, shows no very marked improvement during the two centuries which had elapsed.