FRANCE, SPAIN, AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
The trade between England and France during the first half of the
sixteenth century falls into two divisions: the local cross-channel
traffic between Normandy and Brittany and the southern ports of England,
and the wine trade with Bordeaux. There was at that time no regular
commerce between England and the Mediterranean coast of France. Of the
two sections above mentioned the second was by far the more important,
since Bordeaux was the outlet for the merchandise of southern France,
which could not be obtained elsewhere, while the northern seaboard of
that country, similar in climate to the south of England, differed
little from it in agricultural products, and had, if the weaving of
sail-cloth in Brittany be excepted, no surplus manufactures to dispose
of. Hence the elements of an important commerce with it were wanting.
The Bordeaux trade was one of the oldest channels of English enterprise
beyond the seas. The town itself, coming under the authority of English
kings with the accession of Henry II, in 1154, had survived all the
vicissitudes of war until 1453, when the defeat of Talbot at Chatillon
involved its permanent transference to the Crown of France. During the
three centuries of English rule continual commerce was maintained with
Bristol, London, and the intervening ports on the English coast, and the
taste for Bordeaux wines became a national habit. As the cloth
manufacture increased in England, another valuable commodity, used in
dyeing and known as Toulouse woad, was also in demand, and was obtained
exclusively from Bordeaux. The loss of the town at the disastrous close
of the Hundred Years’ War did not, like that of Calais in 1558, involve
any diversion of trade, since it did not coincide with any industrial or
economic changes such as those which exterminated the wool export. The
Bordeaux trade, therefore, was continued, but seems largely to have
passed out of English hands during the Wars of the Roses, which, or the
rumours of which, recurred sporadically from 1455 until the accession of
Henry VII.
It was natural that in a period of unrest and anarchy commercial
interests should be neglected by governments engaged in a struggle for
bare existence; and thus we find the preamble of Henry VII’s Navigation
Act of 1489 lamenting the great decay of English shipping engaged in the
wine trade. It has been said that preambles to Acts of Parliament
invariably exaggerate the grievances which they design to amend, but
this one at least must have had some foundation in fact, as is evidenced
by the diminished volume of Bristol trade at the beginning of Henry’s
reign and the rapid recovery of English shipping which resulted from his
policy. The Act itself, which extended and rendered permanent a
temporary measure of 1485, provided that Gascony wines and Toulouse woad
should only be imported into England in English, Irish, or Welsh bottoms
manned by crews of the same nationalities. Its importance cannot be
over-estimated. It remained in full operation for more than sixty years,
and, besides producing a mercantile revival, it provided a
training-ground for the seamen and navigators whose services were so
essential to the defence of the realm in the stormy times of the
sixteenth century. It must be remembered that, in the days when the
Mediterranean trade was in its infancy, the voyages to Bordeaux and
Spain were the only ones habitually made by the English outside the
North Sea, and that they demanded the use of larger ships than were
commonly employed by traders from east-coast ports. In addition, such a
policy had its moral significance; it was a blow to foreigners, and it
gave Englishmen a sense of privilege which was gratifying to their
pride; it supplied at once a cause and a testimony of the relations of
enthusiastic admiration which undoubtedly existed between the Tudor
sovereigns and their seafaring subjects.
The traffic thus re-established flourished continuously under Henry VII
and his son. The French wars of the latter produced interruptions, but
their actual duration was not of great extent, and the merchants on
either side were only too eager to resume business as soon as politics
allowed. Every autumn, as soon as the vintage was complete, the wine
ships set out from all English ports between London and Bristol,
together with a few from Wales and Ireland, and, uniting into fleets for
protection from the voracious rovers who infested the havens of the
French coast, sailed across the tempestuous Bay to the mouth of the
Gironde. There they were obliged to anchor and send ashore the chambers
of their cannon so that no surprise attempt might be made on the richest
port of France, some of whose citizens looked back with regret on the
golden days of English rule, when business was brisk and taxes few. The
last stage of the journey then commenced with the toilsome seventy
miles’ struggle with the swift yellow stream before anchor could be
dropped in front of the embattled walls of the wine city.
In a busy year, when the whole wine fleet had arrived, there were as
many as seven or eight thousand Englishmen in the town at one
time—merchants, factors, clerks, and seamen—and no doubt they made the
place exceedingly lively; it must have been a depressing winter for the
Bordelais when war prevented their coming. After two or three months
spent in completing cargoes by the leisurely business methods of the
time, the homeward voyage was begun in January or February.[186] The
sailor of early Tudor times probably differed little from the type
described by Chaucer a century before:
A schipman was ther, woning fer by weste:
For ought I woot, he was of Dertemouthe.
He rood upon a rouncy as he couthe,
In a gowne of faldyng to the kne.
A dagger hanging on a laas hadde he
Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun.
The hoote somer had maad his hew al broun;
And certainly he was a good felawe.
Ful many a draught of wyn had he y-drawe
From Burdeuxward, while that the chapman sleep.
Of nyce conscience took he no keep.
If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand,
By water he sente hem hoom to every land.
But of his craft to reckon well his tydes,
His stremes, and his dangers him besides,
His herbergh, and his mone, his lodemenage,
Ther was non such from Hulle to Cartage.
Hardy he was and wys to undertake;
With many a tempest hadde his berd ben shake.
He knew wel al the havenes, as they were,
From Scotland to the Cape of Fynestere,
And every cryk in Bretayne and in Spayne;
His barge y-clepud was the _Maudelayne_.
It had been in accordance with Henry VII’s indirect methods of taxation
to grant licences to foreigners to infringe the navigation laws, for
which licences they were obliged to pay sums of ready money. The
expenses of the first war with France, coupled with the temporary
restraint of English trade to Bordeaux which it involved, tempted his
successor to do the same to such an extent that serious discontent was
aroused among the mercantile community, and a discontinuance of the
practice was demanded. Accordingly, Parliament passed an Act in 1515
revoking all licences granted to foreigners to import French wines and
woad in foreign ships. Thenceforward the grant of such licences became
much less frequent, and the English monopoly was more firmly
established. It is indicative of the inertness with regard to commercial
matters which prevailed in France that such an arrangement should have
continued so long unchallenged. For French merchants were included in
the scope of the law; they could not send their own wines to England
save in English ships. They were also subjected, in common with other
foreigners, to irritating restrictions in England, of which the most
irksome was the prohibition of taking more than ten crowns in money out
of the realm. In pursuance of this law, they complained, they were
searched to their shirts on departure.
In 1531 the Navigation Act of Henry VII was amended by a new Act
providing that all existing regulations should be maintained, and with
the addition that no wine was to be imported from France between
Michaelmas and Candlemas (February 2). The reason for this was
apparently to discourage navigation at the dangerous season of the year
by preventing the too early return of keenly competing merchants. The
French took offence at the interference with trade, and detained several
English ships by way of reprisal. Henry VIII explained that his action
was due to the numerous losses of ships on the voyage, but promised to
remove the offending regulation, as he was empowered to do by a later
Act of 1534.[187] An international crisis due to religious changes was
impending, and he was obliged to conciliate the French. He even spoke of
abrogating the Navigation Act altogether, although it is not likely that
he really intended to do anything of the kind. There is evidence,
however, that the administration of the laws was relaxed and infractions
connived at. The new Navigation Act of 1540 expressly referred to those
of 1489 and 1531 and stated that, although they had been neglected, they
were now to be fully confirmed and regulations as to prices and freights
enforced. For every tun of wine from Bordeaux the freight was fixed at
18_s._, and no one was allowed to retail French wine in England at more
than 8_d._ per gallon. A tun contained 252 gallons and might thus be
sold for more than £8, so that the freight was not excessive as compared
with the value of the goods. The import duty, or tonnage, was also
comparatively slight, being but 3_s._ per tun.
In September 1542 the third French war of Henry VIII was in sight, and
was heralded by acts of commercial hostility. The French, who had
hitherto not protested against the last Navigation Act, suddenly
discovered that they were injured by it, and a proclamation was issued
that no goods were to be brought from England to France except in French
ships.[188] This was copying English methods with a vengeance. The
French proclamation, if enforced, would have involved the stoppage of
the wine fleet, as, Englishmen being forbidden to export money, they
could not pay for French wines if they were not allowed to do so with
English goods. Nevertheless, the situation became more easy for a time,
and the wine fleet sailed as usual. On their return in January 1543
sixteen of the laden vessels were taken by four Scottish privateers who
waited for them in the neighbourhood of Brest. Orders were sent for
those which had not yet left the Gironde to wait until an escort could
be provided.[189] In April 1543 war with France had become a certainty,
and Henry refused to allow twenty French ships with wine and woad to
proceed up the Channel to the Netherlands, as it would put such a large
sum of money into the enemy’s pockets. The Netherlands Government had
requested a safe-conduct for the wine, as it was for the use of the army
which was to act against France, but the king maintained that he
personally would rather drink beer, or even water, than permit his own
subjects to have wine from the French, to say nothing of allowing it to
pass to oblige foreigners.[190]
In 1551–2 the first breach in the Tudor navigation policy was made by
the selfish and improvident Council-government of which Northumberland
was becoming the moving spirit. An Act of that year effected a partial
repeal of previous laws by allowing the importation of wine and woad in
the ships of any friendly nation between February 1 and October 1. Of
course the English still had the privilege of selling, without
competition, the first cargoes of the season which were brought home in
December and January, but it was nevertheless very injudicious to remove
any measure of protection from English shipping at a time when the naval
defences of the country were being allowed to deteriorate. The reason
alleged for taking this step was the dearness of wine and woad; the
probable explanation being that the London retailers brought pressure or
bribery to bear upon the Council, while the seamen and merchants engaged
in the Bordeaux trade had no such corporation to stand up for their
interests as had those who did business with the Low Countries. An Act
of 1563 restored the full navigation law of Henry VII, and thenceforward
there is no record of any subsequent legislation with regard to this
traffic, from which it would appear that the English monopoly was
allowed gradually to die out. As other liquors obtained a greater hold
upon public favour, French wines lost their relatively important
position; while changes in the methods of dyeing rendered obsolete the
use of Toulouse woad in the cloth industry.
The commercial intercourse between England and Spain, of ancient origin
and the subject of careful negotiations on the part of Henry VII,
continued to expand under his successor until religious cleavage arising
between the two nations threatened it with extinction. It was
advantageous to both countries, although the Spaniards complained that
all the gold which changed hands went from Spain to England and nothing
but cloth came in return. The reign of Henry VIII opened with the
Anglo-Spanish Alliance against France, in which the sea power of both
England and Spain was utilized to blockade the French coast. Although
Henry was bitterly mortified at his desertion by his ally in 1514, he
smothered his resentment so far as to conclude a commercial treaty in
the following year, which repeated the agreement made by his father in
1489. Commerce in each country was to be free, without necessity for
licence or safe-conduct.[191] ‘Freedom’ of trade meant, of course, not
the abolition of duties, but a guarantee of fair treatment.
Casual and isolated traders visited the northern ports of Spain, more
especially during the period of the English expedition to the north-east
corner of that country in 1512, but internal communication in the
Peninsula was so bad that the products of the south were only accessible
to ships reaching the ports of Andalusia. Accordingly, the majority of
English merchantmen sailed to Cadiz, to San Lucar at the mouth of the
Guadalquivir, and to Seville higher up the same river. The hereditary
lords of San Lucar were the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, who, before the
centralization of government had been effected, exercised an almost
regal authority. English trade became sufficiently important to justify
the merchants in asking for extensive privileges, which were granted by
the then duke, Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, on March 14, 1517. The
charter set forth that, in accordance with the petition of the English
trading to his town of San Lucar de Barrameda, the duke granted them a
piece of ground on which to build a Church of St. George; protection
from the customs officials of Seville, Cadiz, and Xerez, who oppressed
them because they preferred to land goods at San Lucar; restriction of
the duties to amounts agreed upon in previous privileges; a promise to
enforce payment of debts by Spaniards to Englishmen, the latter having
suffered losses through the partiality of the law courts; protection to
the English so that they might not be killed or molested, nor their
goods sequestered; permission to the English to carry weapons by night
and day; and several other minor concessions.[192] Some expressions in
the document indicate that the English had already a governor and
council, although the original charter of incorporation, if one ever
existed, is not to be traced. Henceforward, San Lucar became the English
head-quarters in Spain, being suitably situated for tapping the wealth
of the southern part of the country, for the collection of merchandise
from the Canaries and the West Indies, and for the transhipment of
Mediterranean produce to English bottoms.
Matters proceeded smoothly until the divorce of Henry from Katherine of
Aragon and the political reformation in England sounded the death-knell
of the old friendship between the two countries. During this period
Englishmen made fortunes in the Spanish trade, as may be judged from the
example of Robert Thorne, who left £17,000, although he died
comparatively young. Some of them even maintained factors in the
jealously guarded Spanish colonies in the west. But ere long religious
hatred was permanently to affect their position in the country. As early
as 1528 a rupture was thought to be imminent between England and Spain,
and the English were advised to withdraw their goods.[193] The expected
struggle was avoided, but the merchants took steps to strengthen their
position by a closer union among themselves and by obtaining renewed
promises from the Spanish Government. On September 1, 1530, Henry VIII
granted a licence to his subjects trading in Spain and Andalusia, who
desired to associate for mutual relief and redress of grievances, to
assemble once a year, or oftener if need were, and to elect one or more
councillors with twelve ‘ancient and expert persons’ to be their
assistants. The meeting might be held at Seville, Cadiz, or San Lucar,
and the merchants of London, Bristol, and Southampton were to be
represented. The councillor or governor (only one was actually elected
at a time) was to be paid for his services and to be removable at the
pleasure of his constituents. He and the twelve assistants were
empowered to levy imposts and make ordinances for the welfare of the
Company.[194] It will be seen that, in its general outlines, the
constitution of the Spanish Company resembled that of the Merchant
Adventurers. There was no hint of monopoly; any Englishman might engage
in the trade so long as he paid the prescribed fees to the governor.
Confirmation of the above licence was obtained from Charles V, and the
next step was to demand a renewal of the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s
privileges of 1517, which had apparently not been maintained. On October
15, 1530, Richard Cooper, the newly-elected governor of the English,
appeared before the justice of San Lucar and demanded fulfilment of the
grant, which the judge ordered to be publicly proclaimed on two
successive days.[195] The Church of St. George had already been built.
In the years following the incorporation of the Company the position of
the English in Spain was not a happy one. They became unpopular with the
people and still more with the Church. According to Spanish complaints
the quality of English cloth fell off considerably, while an English
letter of 1538 confesses that, owing to the use of many devices to
defraud the customs, English credit was not so good as it had formerly
been. Reference has been made, in the chapter devoted to Henry VII’s
commercial policy, to a Spanish Navigation Act prohibiting the lading of
foreign ships while native ones were lying idle in Spanish ports.
Originally, the English were exempted from the operation of this law,
but their privilege seems to have lapsed after the death of Henry VII.
The law was not continuously enforced, but was revived from time to time
after lying dormant, much to the hindrance of English trade. Another
law, the enforcement of which was continuously held as a threat over
English heads, forbade the import of ‘false’ cloths into Spain. The
Spaniards frequently asserted that all the English cloth of this period
was ‘false’ in the sense of the statute. It was not to the interest of
Spain to put either of these laws into constant operation, but they
served nevertheless as excellent pretexts for a sudden embargo on
English trade. Such stoppages became increasingly frequent as time went
on.
In spite of all disadvantages the volume of traffic was considerable.
The Andalusian trade resembled that to Bordeaux, in that the bulk of the
English vessels made their outward voyage in the autumn, arriving about
the middle of October. The trading season was determined by the nature
of the commodities obtained, the chief of which were wines, raisins,
figs, oil, and salted meats. In one month sixty English ships were
expected to arrive on the Andalusian coast.[196]
On April 24, 1539, the merchants at San Lucar assembled in the Church of
St. George and confirmed the election of William Ostrigge or Ostrich,
chosen as governor in the previous December. In accordance with the
charter of Henry VIII they invested him with full powers of
administration, and fixed a scale of dues to be paid to the Company by
all English and Irish traders.[197] It was not long before Ostrich, who
proved himself a capable governor, had matters of the utmost importance
to deal with. Already, as early as 1534, Englishmen in Spain had been
troubled by the Inquisition. In 1539 and 1540, the former of which years
had been a time of the utmost tension between England and the Empire,
there was a regular epidemic of persecution. Henry VIII had now finally
repudiated the authority of the Pope, had abolished the smaller
monasteries, had put down the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of
Grace with the utmost barbarity, and was in process of exterminating the
remaining religious houses. His minister, Thomas Cromwell, was a known
supporter of the Protestants, and was negotiating a matrimonial alliance
intended to link England with the cause of the Protestant princes of
Germany. Spanish bigotry had therefore every incentive to a savage
persecution of such Englishmen as it could lay hands upon; and Charles
V, who alone had the power to prevent it, held his hand and allowed
matters to take their course.
In March 1539 it was reported, although the story lacks confirmation,
that three English merchants were burnt in Spain, and that the Pope had
granted remission of sins to any one who should kill an English
heretic.[198] A letter from Henry VIII to Wyatt, who had been sent as
ambassador to Spain in 1537,[199] explained that Flemish and Spanish
ships had been arrested in England because ‘in sundry parts of the sea
coast of Spain, English subjects are much molested at the instigation of
slanderous preachers suborned thereto by the Bishop of Rome’s
adherents’.[200] Relations were temporarily ameliorated by the
inauguration, in April 1539, of the free trade policy by which foreign
merchants had their duties reduced to the same amounts as those paid by
Englishmen. But in January of the next year Wyatt wrote from Spain that
the king should warn all English merchants that they traded to Spain at
their own risk, for that there was a power there which depended upon
their adversary the Pope. The Emperor refused to modify the action of
the Inquisition.[201] Wyatt went so far as to threaten that if the
Inquisition did not cease from troubling Englishmen commerce with Spain
must cease.
The usual method of entrapping an Englishman was to engage him in
conversation with regard to the Pope’s authority over Christendom. If he
admitted it he was infringing the Act of Supremacy, which declared Henry
to be the supreme head of the Church in England; if he denied it he was
haled before the inquisitors, a heretic confessed. It speaks much for
the loyalty and patriotism of Englishmen that they held firm on what was
to most of them a purely political quibble, even when the shores of
England were far away, and the dungeons of the Holy Office gaped close
at hand.
The case of Thomas Pery furnishes a good illustration of inquisitorial
methods. Writing from a Spanish prison to one of Cromwell’s servants, he
describes how a priest got him into argument as to whether the king were
a good Christian or no. On his maintaining that he was, he was arrested
and taken to the Castle of Triana in Seville. He underwent numerous
examinations, with and without torture, on the matter of the king’s
orthodoxy, and was also pressed to say whether he thought the
suppression of the monasteries was good or bad. Finally he, with four
other Englishmen whom the Holy Office had seized for the same cause,
were forced to do public penance, and sentenced to six months’
imprisonment with forfeiture of all their goods. At the time of writing,
he says, he was in prison without a blanket or garment to his back.[202]
Ultimately, however, he was released, and came home to England to lay
his complaint before the Council. The latter communicated with the
Emperor, but it does not appear that any compensation was ever
recovered.
William Ostrich convened a meeting of the merchants at San Lucar to
protest against the treatment they were receiving, and a detailed
complaint was transmitted to England. Thomas Pery and his companions had
by this time been released, and had related their sufferings in person
at San Lucar:
‘The said Thomas doth allege and say that by force of torment he was
compelled to declare and say as the judge would he should say....
Divers merchants of England, prisoners with the said Thomas, have
declared before divers of us that they were present when the said
Thomas was so tormented.... Furthermore it shall please you to
understand here, that of long time past and unto this day, all we that
hereunder have firmed our names have lived and do live in great peril
and fear of our persons and goods, and not only we but all others of
our nation trading these parts of Andalusia, for fear of the extreme
punishment and cruel intreating of the fathers of the Inquisition and
their deputies, which be in all places where our trade doth lie.’[203]
Matters were not improved by the passing of the English Navigation Act
of 1540, limiting the free trade privilege granted to foreigners in the
previous year to those who shipped in English vessels. However, after a
prolonged diplomatic struggle, in which either side fired off all its
heavy guns, consisting of embargoes, restrictions, and revivals of
obsolete statutes, Henry agreed to exempt both Spaniards and Flemings
from the Act. A new alliance against France was shortly afterwards
concluded between England and the Empire, and the Inquisition relaxed
its activities against the heretic islanders. This early persecution in
Spain was undoubtedly the germ of much that bore great fruit in the next
generation. The sons of the men of 1540 were the sailors and merchant
adventurers of Elizabeth’s reign; and their contemptuous hatred of the
Spaniard did not arise exclusively from the events of their own day. The
seafarers also became, on the whole, the most staunchly Protestant
section of the community, which may be accounted for, on the principle
of contrariety, by the torments inflicted on those who, while not
themselves Protestants, denied the Pope’s supremacy. It cannot be
pretended that any man in Henry’s reign experienced any religious
fervour in asserting that his king was supreme head of the Church.
Thomas Pery and his friends upheld the royal supremacy because they were
loyal Englishmen who were commanded so to do; but their sufferings at
the hands of the Papists engendered a hatred of the Catholic form of
priestcraft, and inclined them to a corresponding sympathy with
Protestantism.
The new alliance between Henry and the emperor was not of long duration.
After making war in concert with the English in 1544, and failing to
achieve any very decisive results, the emperor unexpectedly made peace
with France at Crespi on September 18. England was left to carry on the
struggle alone. In 1545 and 1546 the war was largely naval, the
privateers of both countries ravaging the Channel and the Atlantic
coasts of Europe, to the great annoyance of neutrals. Relations with
Spain again became bad, particularly after the capture by an English
privateer of an enormously rich Spanish ship from the West Indies, an
act which, although justified by specious excuses, was nothing but rank
piracy. As a result, orders were given in March 1545 for the arrest of
all English merchants and ships in Spain. The arrest was of long
duration, extending over more than eighteen months; in fact the affair
was not satisfactorily cleared up before Henry’s death. The Inquisition
again began to arrest Englishmen, who were refused a hearing in the
civil courts on the ground that they were heretics. In June an
Englishman was sentenced to be burnt at Seville, and a ship’s captain
who was driven by stress of weather into San Sebastian was promptly
seized by the Holy Office.[204]
When Henry VIII died the Council, under the control of the Protector
Somerset, effected a settlement of the quarrel with Spain, and trade was
resumed. The English at San Lucar obtained a restoration of their
privileges after lodging a complaint in 1548 to the effect that the
functions of their governor had been usurped by a Spaniard, who was
collecting the dues rightfully belonging to their Company.[205] The
troubles with France during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary rendered
the Spanish voyage very unsafe. In 1552 the Council ordered that the
ships should return from Spain in companies of not less than ten or
twelve at a time.[206] Privateering, once set on foot by the French war
of 1544–6, was not stamped out until the close of the century; and the
privateers never hesitated to become pirates if the stakes were
sufficiently large.
Under Mary and a restored Catholic régime in England there was naturally
a period of better relations; and, surprising as it may seem, throughout
the long period of veiled hostilities prior to the dispatch of the
Armada, English merchantmen continued to resort to Spanish ports. John
Hawkins, in 1568, actually put into Vigo to refit on his return from his
disastrous third voyage, when his fleet was scattered by the Spaniards
at St. Juan de Ulloa. In spite of the war to the death which was carried
on in American waters, trade was maintained in Europe until 1585, when a
treacherous attempt to seize English ships at Bilbao at length
precipitated an official declaration of war.
Some light is thrown on the conditions of English residence in Spain and
the Indies by a relation in Hakluyt of the adventures of one Robert
Tomson, a merchant who went to Seville in the year 1553. He was
possessed with a desire to wander and see the world, but first
determined to make himself master of the Spanish tongue. For this
purpose he resided for a year at the house of John Field, an Englishman,
who had lived at Seville for close on twenty years, and who had a wife
and family in that city. Seeing the ships arrive with rich cargoes from
the Indies, Tomson determined to make his way thither, and persuaded
Field to share in the enterprise. Field purchased a licence for himself,
his family, and his friend to sail in the next fleet for New Spain. They
made all preparations for departure, providing their own victuals and
necessaries for the voyage. Before sailing, however, the fleet was
stayed by the king’s command, and the two Englishmen, unwilling to wait,
shipped themselves in February 1555 in a caravel going from San Lucar to
the Canaries, where they knew the Indies fleet would touch for water.
At Grand Canary they found some Englishmen, factors of Anthony Hickman
and Edward Castlyn, merchants of London, who gave them good
entertainment. After they had waited nearly eight months the Indies
fleet at last appeared. Tomson and Field went aboard a ship of Cadiz,
belonging to an Englishman named John Sweeting, residing in that city,
and commanded by another Englishman, Leonard Chilton, son-in-law of
Sweeting. One of the other passengers in the same ship was also an
English merchant. The fleet touched at San Domingo and then proceeded to
San Juan de Ulloa, the principal port of Mexico. Before reaching that
place, however, the ship in which the Englishmen had taken passage
sprang a leak and foundered in a gale at sea, all her people being
rescued by one of her consorts.
On April 16, 1556, Tomson and his friends landed in Mexico, much
distressed by the loss of all their goods in the shipwreck. They were
very generously treated by a Spaniard, an old friend of John Field’s,
who lent them clothes, horses, and money for their journey to the city
of Mexico. Disaster still dogged their footsteps. On the road Tomson
fell sick with an ague, from which he did not recover for six months;
while John Field and three of his family died of the same disease soon
after reaching the capital. On his recovery Tomson fell in with a
Scotsman, Thomas Blake, more than twenty years resident in the country,
and by his assistance obtained employment with a rich Spaniard, who had
been one of Cortes’s original _conquistadores_. After twelve months’
prosperity Tomson was foolish enough to give vent at a dinner-table to
some Protestant opinions. An ill-wisher reported his words to the Bishop
of Mexico. He was arrested and kept seven months in prison, and then,
together with an Italian also charged with heresy, was forced to do open
penance in the great church at Mexico. The Italian was sentenced to
imprisonment for life, and Tomson for three years. They were sent down
to the coast and put aboard a ship bound for Spain, but the Italian
contrived to escape at one of the islands of the Azores by swimming
ashore. He ultimately made his way to England and died in London. Tomson
served his sentence in the Inquisition at Seville, and, on his release,
was fortunate enough to marry the heiress of a rich Spaniard who had
died on the homeward voyage from Mexico. He says: ‘The marriage was
worth to me 2500 pounds in bars of gold and silver, besides jewels of
great price. This I thought good to speak of, to shew the goodness of
God to all that put their trust in him, that I ... should be provided at
God’s hand in one moment, of more than in all my life before I could
attain unto by mine own labour.’ And here, to the chink of the precious
metal, his story ends.
What is particularly striking in this account is the number of
Englishmen encountered by this one traveller in the Spanish seas and
colonies. When the Indies were first discovered Castilians alone were
permitted to resort to them. After the death of Isabella they were
thrown open to all Spaniards; and it would appear that in later days
Englishmen had little difficulty in making their way unobtrusively
wherever they wished so long as they sailed under the Spanish flag, and
were sound on religious matters. Other Englishmen, known to have been
early voyagers to Spanish America, will be referred to in the next
chapter.
Throughout the Middle Ages Englishmen had intermittently engaged in
mercantile adventures to the Mediterranean, although it was not until
the end of the fifteenth century that any regularly frequented trade was
begun.[207] The stirrings of the Renaissance in England and the
accompanying social changes developed a growth of the demand for
luxuries such as only the East could supply. Prior to 1498, the year of
Vasco da Gama’s epoch-making voyage to Calicut, the only avenue of
approach to the marts of eastern merchandise lay through the Straits of
Gibraltar. The discovery of the sea voyage to Asia was destined to
revolutionize utterly the conditions of the trade, but the change was
slow to accomplish itself, and for half a century to come the
Mediterranean route was able to hold its place in competition with the
long, dangerous navigation round half the circumference of the globe.
Consequently it seemed well worth while to contemporary Englishmen in
the days of the early Tudors, ignorant as they were of the vast
significance of the discoveries of their time, to make strong efforts to
capture a share of the traffic of the Levant.
Hitherto the galleys of Venice and the carracks of Genoa had supplied
practically all the eastern goods which England could pay for with
surplus wools and cloth, but early in the reign of Henry VII we find
evidence, in his tariff dispute with Venice, of a regular voyage of
English ships to Candia, Chios, and possibly other Venetian
dependencies, to load cargoes of the sweet malmsey wines which were
becoming popular in England. The proposal, at the same period, to
establish an English wool staple at Pisa has already been described. If
carried out, it would have caused an immense disturbance to trade and
would probably have ruined the whole Italian colony in London, with
diplomatic consequences which Henry must have had little desire to face;
but the project was no chimaera, and was sufficiently within the scope
of practicabilities to cause intense alarm to the Venetian Government,
who concluded the quarrel with Henry on his own terms.
Once established and diplomatically supported, English commerce throve
exceedingly in the Levant. Many of the most prominent commercial
families—the Gonsons, the Lockes, and the Greshams—took part in it.
Hakluyt, speaking on the authority of the old ledgers of the merchants
concerned, relates that, as early as 1511, ‘divers tall ships of London
... with certain other ships of Southampton and Bristol, had an ordinary
and usual trade to Sicily, Candia, Chios, and somewhiles to Cyprus, as
also to Tripoli and Beyrout in Syria’. The goods which they took out
with them were hides and various kinds of cloth, while the homeward
cargoes consisted of silks, chamlets, rhubarb, malmseys, muscadels and
other wines, sweet oils, cotton wool, Turkey carpets, galls, pepper,
cinnamon and other spices, everything in fact which advancing material
civilization, spurred on by the quickened imagination of the time, could
demand.[208] An extensive use was also made of local Mediterranean
shipping, which seems to imply the presence of numerous resident English
merchants or their factors in those regions.[209]
Concomitantly with the advance of English trade in the Mediterranean,
the mercantile marine of Venice declined under stress of wars with the
Turk and the Italian powers who were jealous of her success. The
Flanders galleys came less and less frequently to England, ceasing
altogether before the end of the reign of Henry VIII. The commerce of
Genoa had already fallen before the attacks of her great rival, and the
trend of events rendered impossible any revival of Italian seaborne
trade. Consequently the English vessels not only bore the goods of their
own merchants, but also developed a carrying traffic on behalf of the
Italian factors and agents in London, who had to forward in some way the
wools and rough fabrics which provided employment for the population of
the great cities, indispensable now that their commerce was deserting
them.[210] When the Mediterranean trade became well established, consuls
were appointed at Chios and Candia with full authority over English
merchants while in port,[211] but otherwise the trade was absolutely
free, and there was never anything resembling an incorporation of the
merchants interested until the granting of a Charter to the Turkey
Company by Queen Elizabeth in 1581. By that date the conditions had
entirely changed; the trade had languished and had then been revived,
while the hostility of Spain and the necessity of negotiating with the
Turks had rendered co-operative working and mutual support with capital
and armed force essential to success.
In the first half of the century, on the other hand, Turkish sea power
was not yet at its height in the Mediterranean, while the length of the
voyage and the diversity of the places visited made it difficult for the
merchantmen to sail in fleets. At that period the ships generally
proceeded alone or, at most, in pairs, and the immense risks were no
doubt compensated by corresponding profits. The freedom of trade did
not, of course, extend to raw wool and the other articles constituting
the Staplers’ monopoly, for which special licences had to be obtained.
So lucrative was the trade that these licences were sought after by the
most prominent men in the land, and maritime adventure must have
received a great stimulus from their participation. In 1510 a syndicate
composed of Sir Edward Howard, son of the Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas
Knyvet, Charles Brandon (afterwards Duke of Suffolk and brother-in-law
of the king), and Sir Edward Guldeford obtained permission to export
wool, leather, lead, tin, &c., for three years in a ship called the
_Mary and John_ of London.[212] Sir Edward Howard was killed in the
attack on Brest in 1513, but we find his brother, Thomas Howard, Lord
Admiral and Duke of Norfolk, engaging in the same trade about 1540, when
he had a factor at Chios.
Voyages such as these, which occupied on an average a full year from
departure to return, necessitated the use of larger ships than were
customary in the older and more local trades. It was obviously more
economical to employ one well-armed and capacious vessel with a large
crew than to send two or three smaller ones which would be liable to
part company on a long trip, and would be much more open to peril from
storms and pirates. The same considerations had caused the Venetians to
build merchantmen of 1,000 tons burden, and they undoubtedly assisted in
the development of naval architecture in England which was so remarkable
between the accession of Henry VII and the defeat of the Armada. There
was more essential difference between the unwieldy basin-shaped ‘cog’ of
the fifteenth century and the vessels with which Drake outmanœuvred the
Spaniards, than there was between Drake’s ships and those of Nelson at
Trafalgar.
In times of peace the ships of the navy, heavily armed and stoutly
built, were sometimes employed on Mediterranean voyages. The _Regent_,
afterwards lost in the fight off Brest in 1512, was sent with wool to
Italy in 1510; and as late as 1552 two king’s ships, the _Jesus of
Lubeck_, of 800 tons, and the _Mary Gonson_, of 600, were chartered by
merchants for £1,000 for a voyage to ‘Levants-end’.[213] In 1515 the
_Christ_, a ship which had served against the French in the war just
concluded, made a most unfortunate voyage to the Mediterranean. She was
chartered by three London merchants and laden with wools and other
merchandise for Italy. After leaving London she was driven by a storm on
the coast of Zealand, arrested for tolls by the authorities, and
released after much delay on security being given. Proceeding on the
voyage, she was captured by the Moors off the Barbary coast. The ship
and cargo were of course hopelessly lost, and the crew were held to
ransom, for the payment of which a certain John Hopton received a
licence to gather alms for three years in England.[214]
This begging to raise the ransom of captive friends was a common custom.
In 1510 two Provençal merchants were licensed to ask alms for the ransom
of nineteen of their comrades who still survived out of twenty-eight
taken by the Turks two years previously; and indulgences were granted by
the Pope to all who should aid them. Another instance was that of
Isabella Lascarina, ‘a gentlewoman of Greece’ who was trying to raise
1,300 ducats for the ransom of her four children, taken by the Turks ten
years before. As long as the Turkish power flourished in the
Mediterranean the aid of the charitable continued to be invoked for such
cases.
Hakluyt, writing at the end of the century, was able to get into touch
with a veteran survivor of these early voyages, and obtained from him
many interesting particulars.[215] This man, John Williamson by name,
was living in 1592 in the parish of St. Dunstan’s in the East, and had
sailed as cooper in one of Gonson’s ships. In 1534, he says, a voyage to
Candia and Chios was made by two ships named the _Holy Cross_, of 160
tons, and the _Matthew Gonson_, of 300 tons. The latter was commanded by
Richard Gonson, a son of William Gonson, the paymaster of Henry VIII’s
navy. Richard Gonson died at Chios in the course of this, his first
voyage. The two vessels brought home cargoes consisting of the usual
Levant goods, together with some ‘very excellent muscatels and red
malmesey, the like whereof was seldom seen before in England’. The
double journey occupied a full year, and was the last made by the _Holy
Cross_, ‘which was so shaken in this voyage, and so weakened, that she
was laid up in dock, and never made voyage after’. In 1535 the _Matthew
Gonson_ made another voyage alone, commanded this time by Captain
Richard Gray, who afterwards died in Russia. William Holstocke, who in
later days rose to be Controller of Elizabeth’s navy, sailed as purser,
having been the captain’s page in the previous voyage. The ship was
evidently well armed, for the crew numbered 100 and included six
gunners. There were also four trumpeters who all deserted at Messina,
‘and gat them into the galleys that lay near unto us, and in them went
to Rome’. The voyage was finished in eleven months, and in that time
only one man died of sickness. The _Matthew Gonson_ was still trading to
the Mediterranean in 1553.
Another narration,[216] that of Roger Bodenham, captain of the _Barke
Aucher_, goes more into detail, and gives a vivid picture of the perils
of Mediterranean trading. Leaving Tilbury on January 6, 1551, after long
delay by reason of contrary winds, they proceeded in charge of a pilot
to Dover, whither Sir Anthony Aucher, the owner, had journeyed to bid
them farewell. On the 11th they arrived at Plymouth, whence they
departed two days later and sighted Cape Finisterre on the 16th. On
January 30 they entered the harbour of Cadiz, discharged part of their
cargo, and took in fresh goods, not leaving that port until February 20.
After being delayed five days by contrary winds among the Balearic
Islands, they passed in sight of Sardinia and arrived at Messina on
March 5, discharging ‘much goods’ there. Thenceforward the dangerous
part of the voyage was entered upon as ‘there was no going into Levant,
especially to Chios, without a safe-conduct from the Turk’. The
principal owner of the cargo, a foreigner named Anselm Salvago, had
promised to obtain such a safe-conduct and have it ready for the ship at
Messina, but it was not forthcoming, and Bodenham was obliged to go on
to Candia without one. There he was assured he would find a safe-conduct
to continue the voyage to Chios, the destination of most of the
merchandise. Reaching Candia without mishap he was again disappointed,
and on sending a messenger to Chios to ask for a safe-conduct, received
answer that the Turks would give none. As a fleet of Turkish galleys was
then at sea he announced his determination not to proceed any further,
in spite of the urging of the merchants who owned the cargo.
Certain small Turkish vessels which were in the port made sail that day
for Turkey, carrying the news that a rich English ship was in Candia and
intended to remain there. Perceiving that this might afford a chance of
slipping through to Chios, Bodenham changed his plan and made sail the
same evening, trusting that the Turks would not be on the look-out for
him. He had some trouble to induce the crew to set out on such a risky
enterprise, but finally won them all over except three, whom he sent
ashore. At the last moment they also begged so hard to be received on
board again that he was constrained to take them with him. When in the
midst of the Archipelago the wind failed and he was obliged to anchor
for ten or twelve days at an island called Micone, where he picked up a
Greek pilot who undertook to bring the ship to Chios. The voyage was
resumed, and Chios was sighted in the afternoon, but Bodenham decided to
stand off for the night as he preferred to enter the port in the
morning. A number of small Greek vessels, however, which had accompanied
him from Chios, decided to make for the harbour that night. Shortly
after they had parted company three ‘foysts’ full of Turks were seen
preparing to attack them. The Greek pilot, who had a son in one of them,
entreated Bodenham to go to the rescue. This he did, and the pirates
were driven off by a single effective shot from one of his guns.
Next morning the _Barke Aucher_ was lying off the mole of Chios, and
Bodenham sent in his boat with word to the merchants that if they wanted
their goods they must come out and fetch them, as otherwise he would
take them back to Candia. Finally he allowed himself to be persuaded,
and entered the harbour on receiving a bond from the city for 12,000
ducats as a guarantee of his safety for twenty days. He was making haste
to get his business done, fearing the approach of the Turkish fleet,
when some of the citizens informed him privately that he was in great
danger, and that they had no means nor intention to defend him, living
as they did entirely at the mercy of the Turk. Bodenham, realizing the
condition of affairs, determined to make off at once, but the merchants,
who had not completed their cargoes, tried to prevent him by instigating
the crew to demand payment of their wages and an opportunity to spend
the same ashore. The men, who had before been so backward in face of
danger, were now in a reckless mood, and there was fresh trouble before
the ship could depart.
To continue in the captain’s own words:
‘But God provided so for me, that I paid them their money that night,
and then charged them, that if they would not set the ship forth, I
would make them to answer the same in England, with danger of their
heads. Many were married in England and had somewhat to lose, those
did stick to me. I had twelve gunners: the master gunner, who was a
mad-brained fellow, and the owner’s servant had a parliament between
themselves, and he upon the same came up to me with his sword drawn,
swearing that he had promised the owner, Sir Anthony Aucher, to live
and die in the said ship against all who should offer any harm to the
ship, and that he would fight with the whole army of the Turks and
never yield. With this fellow I had much to do, but at the last I made
him confess his fault and follow mine advice. Thus with much labour I
got out of the mole of Chios into the sea by warping forth, with the
help of Genoese boats and a French boat that was in the Mole; and
being out, God sent me a special gale of wind to go my way. Then I
caused a piece to be shot off for some of my men that were in the
town, and with much ado they came aboard, and then I set sail a little
before one of the clock.’
He was only just in time, for, not two hours afterwards, seven Turkish
galleys arrived to capture the ship, and next day a hundred more. A
great fleet in fact, consisting of 250 sail, was at sea with the
intention of proceeding against Malta. Three days afterwards Bodenham
got into Candia, which proved to be a safe refuge. The Turkish fleet
sailed past in sight of the town, but the inhabitants had made good
preparations for defence, and they were left undisturbed. After loading
with wines and other goods the _Barke Aucher_ set sail for Messina,
rescuing by the way some Venetian vessels which were being attacked by
Turkish galleys. From Messina she sailed in safety through the Straits
to Cadiz and thence home to London. Richard Chancellor, afterwards the
first Englishman to reach Moscow, was one of the crew, as was also
Matthew Baker, who became chief shipwright to Queen Elizabeth.
Anthony Jenkinson, another pioneer of Russian and Asiatic travel, was
also engaged in the Mediterranean trade in his earlier years. In 1553 he
obtained a patent from the Sultan Solyman, granting him full liberty to
travel and trade throughout the Turkish dominions, with protection for
his factors and goods. But, notwithstanding the Sultan’s goodwill, from
this time onwards the traffic declined, probably owing to the lawless
state of the Levant waters; and Hakluyt relates that it was ‘utterly
discontinued, and in manner quite forgotten, as if it had never been,
for the space of twenty years and more’. But about the year 1575 some
London merchants sent two representatives overland through Poland to
Constantinople to obtain a fresh safe-conduct, whereupon trade was
resumed and the Turkey Company received its letters of incorporation
from the queen in 1581.
-----
Footnote 186:
_Add. MSS._, 11716 (_Letters and Papers_, ii, No. 3521) contains a
contrast between the treatment of merchants in France and in England,
embodying many of the above details.
Footnote 187:
Various references in _Letters and Papers_, ix and x.
Footnote 188:
_Letters and Papers_, xvii, No. 555.
Footnote 189:
Ibid., xviii, part i, No. 33.
Footnote 190:
_Letters and Papers_, xviii, part i, No. 416.
Footnote 191:
_Foedera_, xiii. 520.
Footnote 192:
_Letters and Papers_, iv, part iii, No. 6686.
Footnote 193:
_Venetian Cal._ vi, App. 78.
Footnote 194:
_Letters and Papers_, iv, part iii, No. 6654.
Footnote 195:
Ibid., No. 6686.
Footnote 196:
_Letters and Papers_, xvi, No. 1126.
Footnote 197:
_Harl. MSS._, 297, f. 249. There is in the Record Office (_S. P.
Misc._, No. 107) a manuscript volume containing transcripts of the
proceedings on April 24, 1539, the Letters Patent of Henry VIII in
1530, the privileges granted by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the
complaint of the merchants on March 15, 1548, and of certain
negotiations with Spain at the end of Elizabeth’s reign.
Footnote 198:
_Letters and Papers_, xiv, part i, No. 466.
Footnote 199:
G. F. Nott, _Works of Howard and Wyatt_, ii, p. xxxiv.
Footnote 200:
_Letters and Papers_, xiv, part i, No. 487.
Footnote 201:
Ibid, xv, No. 38.
Footnote 202:
_Letters and Papers_, xv, No. 281.
Footnote 203:
_R. O., S. P. Hen. VIII_, § 161, ff. 76–82.
Footnote 204:
_Letters and Papers_, xx, part i, Nos. 459, 494, 981, 1003; part ii,
No. 874; xxi, part ii, Nos. 371, 509.
Footnote 205:
_Cotton MSS._, Vesp. C viii, f. 56.
Footnote 206:
_A. P. C._, iv, p. 138.
Footnote 207:
In the Parliament of 1514–15 an amendment was passed to an Act of
Richard III which rendered it obligatory on all merchants bringing
goods from the Mediterranean to import therewith a proportionate
number of bowstaves. Certain Englishmen had been proceeded against for
failing to comply with this law, and the amendment made it plain that
it was henceforth only to apply to aliens. This seems to indicate that
in the time of Richard III there were few or no Englishmen engaged in
the Mediterranean trade, since no discrimination was thought necessary
in the original Act. If Richard III’s Act had been intended to apply
to both Englishmen and aliens it would most probably have been
expressly so stated.
Footnote 208:
Hakluyt, vol. v, p. 62.
Footnote 209:
In Hakluyt’s pages some of these factors are mentioned by name:
William Heith, factor of John Gresham at Candia; John Ratcliffe,
factor of the same in Portugal; William Eyms, factor of Sir William
Bowyer, the Duke of Norfolk and others at Chios; Robert Bye and Oliver
Lesson, also factors at Chios.
Footnote 210:
Various references to this trade: _Letters and Papers_, i, pp. 46 and
120; xiv, part i, No. 538, &c.
Footnote 211:
_Foedera_, xiii, 353; xiv. 424, 703.
Footnote 212:
_Letters and Papers_, i, p. 186.
Footnote 213:
_Journal of Edward VI_, p. 61. The tonnage is given as there stated,
but is probably exaggerated.
Footnote 214:
_Letters and Papers_, ii, Nos. 738, 811.
Footnote 215:
Hakluyt, v. 67–8.
Footnote 216:
Hakluyt, v. 71.