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.
[Sidenote: Certainty of war with Spain.]
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.”
[Sidenote: Secret preparations for the invasion of England, and
restoration of the Catholic faith.]
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.
[Sidenote: Philip intrigues with Hawkins, and is grossly deceived.]
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!
[Sidenote: The Spanish Armada and]
[Sidenote: England’s preparations for defence.]
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:
Ships. Tons. Mariners.
The Queen’s ships, under Admiral Lord}
Howard of Effingham, consisted of } 34 11,850 6,279
Serving with the Lord High Admiral 10 750 230
Serving with Sir Francis Drake 32 5,120 2,348
Fitted out by the City of London 38 6,130 2,710
Coasters with the Lord High Admiral 20 1,930 993
Coasters with Lord Henry Seymour 23 2,248 1,073
Volunteers with the Lord High Admiral 18 1,716 859
Victuallers (store transports?) 15 ... 810
Sundry vessels, of which particulars are}
wanting } 7 ... ...
--- ------ ------
197 29,744 15,785
=== ====== ======
[Sidenote: Destruction of the Armada, July 19, 1588.]
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]
[Sidenote: Voyages of discovery by]
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.
[Sidenote: Johnson,]
[Sidenote: Finner,]
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.
[Sidenote: and Martin Frobisher.]
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.
[Sidenote: Drake’s voyage round the world, 1577.]
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.
[Sidenote: His piratical acts, and return home, 1580.]
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 150,000_l._ 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.
[Sidenote: First emigration of the English to America.]
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.
[Sidenote: Discovery of Davis’s Strait.]
[Sidenote: 1585.]
[Sidenote: Davis directs his attention to India.]
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.
[Sidenote: Fresh freebooting expeditions.]
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.
[Sidenote: Voyage of Thomas Cavendish to India, 1591, which leads to
the formation of the first English East India Company, in 1600.]
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 30,000_l._ each voyage in foreign coin or bullion, provided
6,000_l._ 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]
[Sidenote: First ships despatched by the Company.]
The stipulated capital of 72,000_l._ 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, 45,000_l._, while their
cargoes absorbed 27,000_l._, 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.
[Sidenote: The Dutch also form an East India Company.]
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 2,400,000_l._ 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.’
[Sidenote: Extent of their maritime commerce.]
[Sidenote: They take the lead in the trade with India.]
[Sidenote: Expedition of Sir Henry Middleton.]
[Sidenote: Its failure and his death.]
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.
[Sidenote: Renewed efforts of the English East India Company.]
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]
[Sidenote: They gain favour with the Moghul Emperor of India, and
materially extend their commercial operations.]
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]
[Sidenote: Treaty between the English and Dutch East India Companies,
soon broken.]
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.
[Sidenote: Losses of the East India 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]
[Sidenote: Sir Waiter Raleigh’s views on maritime commerce, 1603.]
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 620,000_l._,
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 400,000_l._ “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.
[Sidenote: His views confirmed by other writers opposed to his
opinions.]
[Sidenote: The views of Tobias, 1614.]
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.
[Sidenote: His estimate of the profits of busses.]
A busse, measuring from sixty to eighty tons, complete for sea, with
her fishing implements and appurtenances, would cost, he estimates,
somewhere about 500_l._ 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 80_l._ 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 10_l._ per last, she would earn in the gross 1000_l._;
and as he calculates that her expenses, exclusive of tear and wear,
would not exceed 335_l._,[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.”
[Sidenote: The effect of these publications.]
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.
[Sidenote: Colonising expeditions to North America.]
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.
[Sidenote: 1625.]
[Sidenote: Charles I. assumes power over the colonies.]
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 200,000_l._ 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]
[Sidenote: English shipowners resist the demand for ship-money.]
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.
[Sidenote: Its payment enforced by law.]
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.
[Sidenote: Dutch rivalry.]
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 3000_l._, 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.
[Sidenote: Increase of English shipping.]
[Sidenote: Struggles of the East India Company.]
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 105,000_l._ 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.
[Sidenote: Decline of the Portuguese power in India.]
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.
[Illustration]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1621.]
[Sidenote: The trade of the English in India.]
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.
[Sidenote: Increase of other branches of English trade.]
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.
[Sidenote: Ships of the Turkey and Muscovy Company.]
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]
[Sidenote: The Dutch pre-eminent.]
[Sidenote: The reasons for this pre-eminence.]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[139] Froude, vol. x. p. 259, _et seq._
[140] Don Guerau to Philip, MSS. Samancas.
[141] It will be found in detail in the Cottonian MSS. at the British
Museum. The English fleet was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham,
Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher.
[142] See also Macpherson, ii. pp. 185, 186. The tables in the College
Hall of Westminster School are made of Spanish chestnut, said to have
been taken from some of the ships of the Armada.
[143] This was the second voyage round the world, but the first made by
English ships. A chair is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford
made of the wood of the _Pelican_.
[144] In ‘Maritime and Inland Discovery,’ vol. ii. p. 156, the date of
Drake’s return is given as Sept. 26, 1580; and this is also the date
given in the ‘World Encompassed,’ p. 162.
[145] There must have been strong reasons indeed to have induced
Elizabeth to have conferred such honours upon Francis Drake. On the
26th May, 1572, long before war had been declared between England
and Spain, he had set out with his brothers John and Joseph on an
expedition of pure piracy in two small vessels, manned by seventy-three
seamen almost as daring as himself. Starting from the Gulf of Florida,
he landed near St. Martha, where he built a fort and commenced an
attack on the house of the Spanish governor, which he had ascertained
contained a very large amount of bar-silver. Defeated in his designs
to plunder it, he set out with eighteen Englishmen, part of his crew,
and thirty runaway slaves, whom he had entered into his service, for
Vera Cruz, which he plundered. Thence he proceeded again toward Nombre
de Dios, capturing on the road a caravan of mules laden with silver,
appropriating as much of it as he and his gang of marauders could carry
away, and returned to England with his ill-gotten spoils in August 1573.
[146] Raleigh’s first personal expedition was in 1595; but he had
already assisted in equipping no less than seven, the earliest in 1585
(‘Maritime and Inland Discovery,’ ii. pp. 205-209).
[147] Macpherson, ii. p. 189. Sir Francis Drake commanded the naval and
Sir John Norris the military forces on this occasion.
[148] The first voyage of Cavendish is worthy of more note than it
has received. Starting in July, 1586, he circumnavigated the globe,
passing through the Straits of Magellan westwards, in eight months less
than Drake. He was the first English navigator to discern the value of
the position of St. Helena, to describe with accuracy the Philippine
Islands, and to bring home a map and description of China. He is
believed to have been only twenty-two years of age when he took the
command in his first most adventurous voyage. In a third voyage he was
shipwrecked in 1591 or 2 on the coast of Brazil, and died there.
[149] Pattern-pieces for the silver intended for circulation in the
East Indies, bearing the name of Queen Elizabeth and the date 1601,
exist in various collections. No coins, however, were actually struck
from the dies of the patterns.
[150] See further details in Macpherson, ii. pp. 216-218. The money
actually sent out he states to have been Spanish.
[151] Anderson’s ‘Annals of Commerce,’ vol. ii. p. 208, quoting
from Guicciardini. The Dutch sent fourteen ships to India in 1602.
Macpherson, ii. p. 227.
[152] It is likely that the great value of their new trade with the
Brazils led the Portuguese to care less for the rich but more distant
and dangerous trade with the far East.
[153] See Meadows Taylor’s ‘Man. of India Hist.,’ pp. 289-322; ‘Mar.
and Inl. Discov.,’ vol. ii. pp. 195-198.
[154] The tomb of Adams is still in existence, is fenced round, and
treated with the greatest respect by the Japanese people.
[155] Accounts differ in the names of the four vessels.
[156] See further details on all these matters in ‘Calendar of State
Papers, East India, 1617-1621,’ in the ‘Polls series,’ Lond. 8, 1872.
[157] The text of this treaty is given by Macpherson, ii. pp. 293-295.
[158] The English Greenland fisheries seem to have paid best between
1598 to 1612.—Macpherson, ii. p. 265.
[159] However great our objections to every form of monopoly, it may
well be questioned whether the merchant shipping of England could
at this period have made any advance against the Dutch, Spaniards,
Portuguese, Venetians, and others in their commercial intercourse
with the East unless some inducement had been offered to great
corporations to take the first and most hazardous risks of competing
with established rivals. Indeed, most persons in England at this time
felt, and not without valid reasons, that it would be impossible for
individual capitalists to cope successfully with the powerful maritime
associations which had in a great measure absorbed the most lucrative
branches of commerce throughout the world. For these reasons the East
India Company had been established, and for precisely similar reasons
the English Government had been induced in 1606 to grant a charter to a
company formed for trading to the Levant, though in this instance each
individual traded on his own account subject to general regulations
framed for the guidance of the whole of the members of the association.
[160] ‘Select observations of the incomparable Sir Walter Raleigh
relating to trade, as it was presented to King James.’—Published,
London, 1696. See also Macpherson, vol. ii. pp. 233-239.
[161] Made up thus:—a hundred last of barrels, 72_l._; salt, 88_l._;
men’s wages for four months, 91_l._; and their provisions during that
time, consisting of bread, 21_l._; beer, 42_l._; bacon and butter,
18_l._; and peas, 3_l._
[162] See miscellaneous and interesting details relative to English
trade for the year 1615, with Sir Dudley Diggs’ ‘Defence of Trade,’
etc., in Macpherson, vol. ii. pp. 279-282.
[163] Captain Gosnold had been employed in several of the previous
voyages. He appears to have traded direct with the Indians, in lat.
42°, in peltry, sassafras, and cedar-wood. He was also the first to sow
English corn in the Island of Martha’s Vineyard (so named by him). In
the following year (1603) two ships from Bristol and one from London
traded successfully to the same parts (Macpherson, ii. pp. 229-246,
etc.). The most remarkable of all these expeditions was that of
Captain John Smith, who sailed from London in 1607, and is deservedly
considered the real founder of the colony of Virginia (see ‘True
Travels, Adventures, etc., of Captain John Smith,’ Lond. 1627). Captain
Smith is the hero of a famous old ballad, called ‘The Honor of a London
’Prentice; being an account of his matchless manhood and boyhood.’
[164] Mr. Lucas has recently brought together and edited, with some
excellent notes, the most important of the ‘Charters of the Old English
Colonies in America,’ Lond. 8, 1850. Among these will be found three
charters, one to Virginia, to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island respectively, Massachusetts’ second charter, and that to New
Hampshire and Maine. With these are also the “proprietary” charters to
Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and also those of
New York, New Jersey, and Georgia. The careful study of these documents
shows clearly on what liberal terms our ancestors commenced colonising,
when we bear in mind that, according to the theory of those times,
colonies were assumed to be the property of the Crown.
[165] The first settlement of the Puritans was at New Plymouth, in
1621; the second and more important expedition secured Massachusetts,
in 1627 and 1628, under the Plymouth Company (Macpherson, ii. p. 307).
[166] It is certain that the Barbary corsairs had come to the “chops”
of the Channel and captured English merchantmen with impunity, though
this rare occurrence was used by Charles and his advisers merely as a
pretext for their questionable demands (Macpherson, ii. pp. 284 and
302). The earliest treaty between England and Algiers for the mutual
protection of shipping is dated April 10, 1682 (Hertslet, ‘Treaties,’
etc., vol. ii. p. 58).
[167] ‘Mare Clausum, 12mo. 1636.’
[168] The rajah of Bijnagar built, in 1646, for the English the
original Fort St. George, at Madras, to mount twelve guns (Meadows
Taylor, p. 389).
[169] Macpherson gives some interesting details of the respective
values of the Indian and Turkey trades, from a curious pamphlet
published by Mr. Munn, in 1621, and entitled, ‘A Treatise, wherein it
is demonstrated that the East India trade is the most national of all
trades’ (ii. pp. 297-300).
[170] Letter of advice to the King on the breach with the new Company,
Feb. 25, 1615, vol. v., p. 259.
[171] In the Appendix No. 6, will be found a list of the vessels then
employed in the trade between England and Turkey.
[172] Roberts’ ‘Map of Commerce,’ p. 270, ed. 1700, original edition
being 1638.
[173] The cargoes from England of the vessels of the Muscovy Company
chiefly consisted of the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucestershire,
Worcestershire, and Coventry, dyed and dressed; kerseys of Hampshire
and York; lead, tar, and a great quantity of Indian spices, indigo and
calicoes; their return cargoes consisting of raw silks from Persia,
Damascus and Tripoli; galls of Mosul and Tocat; camlets, grograins,
and mohairs of Angola; cotton and cotton yarns of Cyprus and Smyrna,
and sometimes the gums of India and drugs of Egypt and Arabia, with
the currants and dried fruits of Zante, Cephalonia, and the Morea.
The recital of cotton among these imports indicates that already the
English had commenced the important business of weaving calicoes; and
indeed, in a work published in 1641, Manchester is pointed out as the
place where the raw material was made up, and when manufactured into
“fustians, dimities and vermilions,” became an article of export for
her merchantmen, a branch of business which has since reached an extent
altogether unexampled in the history of commerce and navigation.
[174] Mons. Huet, in his celebrated ‘History of the Dutch Trade,’
claims for the Dutch the honour of having enjoyed their trade and
navigation for a thousand years.