Produced by Paul Murray, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
ENGLISH SEAMEN
IN
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
_LECTURES DELIVERED AT OXFORD EASTER TERMS 1893-4_
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
New Edition
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1896
[_All rights reserved_]
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNGAY.
CONTENTS
LECTURE PAGE
I. THE SEA CRADLE OF THE REFORMATION 1
II. JOHN HAWKINS AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 35
III. SIR JOHN HAWKINS AND PHILIP THE SECOND 68
IV. DRAKE'S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD 102
V. PARTIES IN THE STATE 141
VI. THE GREAT EXPEDITION TO THE WEST INDIES 176
VII. ATTACK ON CADIZ 207
VIII. SAILING OF THE ARMADA 238
IX. DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA 272
LECTURE I
THE SEA CRADLE OF THE REFORMATION
Jean Paul, the German poet, said that God had given to France the empire
of the land, to England the empire of the sea, and to his own country
the empire of the air. The world has changed since Jean Paul's days. The
wings of France have been clipped; the German Empire has become a solid
thing; but England still holds her watery dominion; Britannia does still
rule the waves, and in this proud position she has spread the English
race over the globe; she has created the great American nation; she is
peopling new Englands at the Antipodes; she has made her Queen Empress
of India; and is in fact the very considerable phenomenon in the social
and political world which all acknowledge her to be. And all this she
has achieved in the course of three centuries, entirely in consequence
of her predominance as an ocean power. Take away her merchant fleets;
take away the navy that guards them: her empire will come to an end; her
colonies will fall off, like leaves from a withered tree; and Britain
will become once more an insignificant island in the North Sea, for the
future students in Australian and New Zealand universities to discuss
the fate of in their debating societies.
How the English navy came to hold so extraordinary a position is worth
reflecting on. Much has been written about it, but little, as it seems
to me, which touches the heart of the matter. We are shown the power of
our country growing and expanding. But how it grew, why, after a sleep
of so many hundred years, the genius of our Scandinavian forefathers
suddenly sprang again into life--of this we are left without
explanation.
The beginning was undoubtedly the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Down to that time the sea sovereignty belonged to the Spaniards, and had
been fairly won by them. The conquest of Granada had stimulated and
elevated the Spanish character. The subjects of Ferdinand and Isabella,
of Charles V. and Philip II., were extraordinary men, and accomplished
extraordinary things. They stretched the limits of the known world; they
conquered Mexico and Peru; they planted their colonies over the South
American continent; they took possession of the great West Indian
islands, and with so firm a grasp that Cuba at least will never lose the
mark of the hand which seized it. They built their cities as if for
eternity. They spread to the Indian Ocean, and gave their monarch's name
to the _Philippines_. All this they accomplished in half a century, and,
as it were, they did it with a single hand; with the other they were
fighting Moors and Turks and protecting the coast of the Mediterranean
from the corsairs of Tunis and Constantinople.
They had risen on the crest of the wave, and with their proud _Non
sufficit orbis_ were looking for new worlds to conquer, at a time when
the bark of the English water-dogs had scarcely been heard beyond their
own fishing-grounds, and the largest merchant vessel sailing from the
port of London was scarce bigger than a modern coasting collier. And yet
within the space of a single ordinary life these insignificant islanders
had struck the sceptre from the Spaniards' grasp and placed the ocean
crown on the brow of their own sovereign. How did it come about? What
Cadmus had sown dragons' teeth in the furrows of the sea for the race to
spring from who manned the ships of Queen Elizabeth, who carried the
flag of their own country round the globe, and challenged and fought the
Spaniards on their own coasts and in their own harbours?
The English sea power was the legitimate child of the Reformation. It
grew, as I shall show you, directly out of the new despised
Protestantism. Matthew Parker and Bishop Jewel, the judicious Hooker
himself, excellent men as they were, would have written and preached to
small purpose without Sir Francis Drake's cannon to play an
accompaniment to their teaching. And again, Drake's cannon would not
have roared so loudly and so widely without seamen already trained in
heart and hand to work his ships and level his artillery. It was to the
superior seamanship, the superior quality of English ships and crews,
that the Spaniards attributed their defeat. Where did these ships come
from? Where and how did these mariners learn their trade? Historians
talk enthusiastically of the national spirit of a people rising with a
united heart to repel the invader, and so on. But national spirit could
not extemporise a fleet or produce trained officers and sailors to match
the conquerors of Lepanto. One slight observation I must make here at
starting, and certainly with no invidious purpose. It has been said
confidently, it has been repeated, I believe, by all modern writers,
that the Spanish invasion suspended in England the quarrels of creed,
and united Protestants and Roman Catholics in defence of their Queen and
country. They remind us especially that Lord Howard of Effingham, who
was Elizabeth's admiral, was himself a Roman Catholic. But was it so?
The Earl of Arundel, the head of the House of Howard, was a Roman
Catholic, and he was in the Tower praying for the success of Medina
Sidonia. Lord Howard of Effingham was no more a Roman Catholic than--I
hope I am not taking away their character--than the present Archbishop
of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. He was a Catholic, but an English
Catholic, as those reverend prelates are. Roman Catholic he could not
possibly have been, nor anyone who on that great occasion was found on
the side of Elizabeth. A Roman Catholic is one who acknowledges the
Roman Bishop's authority. The Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth, had
pronounced her deposed, had absolved her subjects from their allegiance,
and forbidden them to fight for her. No Englishman who fought on that
great occasion for English liberty was, or could have been, in communion
with Rome. Loose statements of this kind, lightly made, fall in with the
modern humour. They are caught up, applauded, repeated, and pass
unquestioned into history. It is time to correct them a little.
I have in my possession a detailed account of the temper of parties in
England, drawn up in the year 1585, three years before the Armada came.
The writer was a distinguished Jesuit. The account itself was prepared
for the use of the Pope and Philip, with a special view to the reception
which an invading force would meet with, and it goes into great detail.
The people of the towns--London, Bristol, &c.--were, he says, generally
heretics. The peers, the gentry, their tenants, and peasantry, who
formed the immense majority of the population, were almost universally
Catholics. But this writer distinguishes properly among Catholics. There
were the ardent impassioned Catholics, ready to be confessors and
martyrs, ready to rebel at the first opportunity, who had renounced
their allegiance, who desired to overthrow Elizabeth and put the Queen
of Scots in her place. The number of these, he says, was daily
increasing, owing to the exertions of the seminary priests; and plots,
he boasts, were being continually formed by them to murder the Queen.
There were Catholics of another sort, who were papal at heart, but went
with the times to save their property; who looked forward to a change in
the natural order of things, but would not stir of themselves till an
invading army actually appeared. But all alike, he insists, were eager
for a revolution. Let the Prince of Parma come, and they would all join
him; and together these two classes of Catholics made three-fourths of
the nation.
'The only party,' he says (and this is really noticeable), 'the only
party that would fight to death for the Queen, the only real friends she
had, were the _Puritans_ (it is the first mention of the name which I
have found), the Puritans of London, the Puritans of the sea towns.'
These he admits were dangerous, desperate, determined men. The numbers
of them, however, were providentially small.
The date of this document is, as I said, 1585, and I believe it
generally accurate. The only mistake is that among the Anglican
Catholics there were a few to whom their country was as dear as their
creed--a few who were beginning to see that under the Act of Uniformity
Catholic doctrine might be taught and Catholic ritual practised; who
adhered to the old forms of religion, but did not believe that obedience
to the Pope was a necessary part of them. One of these was Lord Howard
of Effingham, whom the Queen placed in his high command to secure the
wavering fidelity of the peers and country gentlemen. But the force, the
fire, the enthusiasm came (as the Jesuit saw) from the Puritans, from
men of the same convictions as the Calvinists of Holland and Rochelle;
men who, driven from the land, took to the ocean as their natural home,
and nursed the Reformation in an ocean cradle. How the seagoing
population of the North of Europe took so strong a Protestant impression
it is the purpose of these lectures to explain.
Henry VIII. on coming to the throne found England without a fleet, and
without a conscious sense of the need of one. A few merchant hulks
traded with Bordeaux and Cadiz and Lisbon; hoys and fly-boats drifted
slowly backwards and forwards between Antwerp and the Thames. A fishing
fleet tolerably appointed went annually to Iceland for cod. Local
fishermen worked the North Sea and the Channel from Hull to Falmouth.
The Chester people went to Kinsale for herrings and mackerel: but that
was all--the nation had aspired to no more.
Columbus had offered the New World to Henry VII. while the discovery was
still in the air. He had sent his brother to England with maps and
globes, and quotations from Plato to prove its existence. Henry, like a
practical Englishman, treated it as a wild dream.
The dream had come from the gate of horn. America was found, and the
Spaniard, and not the English, came into first possession of it. Still,
America was a large place, and John Cabot the Venetian with his son
Sebastian tried Henry again. England might still be able to secure a
slice. This time Henry VII. listened. Two small ships were fitted out at
Bristol, crossed the Atlantic, discovered Newfoundland, coasted down to
Florida looking for a passage to Cathay, but could not find one. The
elder Cabot died; the younger came home. The expedition failed, and no
interest had been roused.
With the accession of Henry VIII. a new era had opened--a new era in
many senses. Printing was coming into use--Erasmus and his companions
were shaking Europe with the new learning, Copernican astronomy was
changing the level disk of the earth into a revolving globe, and turning
dizzy the thoughts of mankind. Imagination was on the stretch. The
reality of things was assuming proportions vaster than fancy had dreamt,
and unfastening established belief on a thousand sides. The young Henry
was welcomed by Erasmus as likely to be the glory of the age that was
opening. He was young, brilliant, cultivated, and ambitious. To what
might he not aspire under the new conditions! Henry VIII. was all that,
but he was cautious and looked about him. Europe was full of wars in
which he was likely to be entangled. His father had left the treasury
well furnished. The young King, like a wise man, turned his first
attention to the broad ditch, as he called the British Channel, which
formed the natural defence of the realm. The opening of the Atlantic had
revolutionised war and seamanship. Long voyages required larger vessels.
Henry was the first prince to see the place which gunpowder was going
to hold in wars. In his first years he repaired his dockyards, built new
ships on improved models, and imported Italians to cast him new types of
cannon. 'King Harry loved a man,' it was said, and knew a man when he
saw one. He made acquaintance with sea captains at Portsmouth and
Southampton. In some way or other he came to know one Mr. William
Hawkins, of Plymouth, and held him in especial esteem. This Mr. Hawkins,
under Henry's patronage, ventured down to the coast of Guinea and
brought home gold and ivory; crossed over to Brazil; made friends with
the Brazilian natives; even brought back with him the king of those
countries, who was curious to see what England was like, and presented
him to Henry at Whitehall.
Another Plymouth man, Robert Thorne, again with Henry's help, went out
to look for the North-west passage which Cabot had failed to find.
Thorne's ship was called the _Dominus Vobiscum_, a pious aspiration
which, however, secured no success. A London man, a Master Hore, tried
next. Master Hore, it is said, was given to cosmography, was a
plausible talker at scientific meetings, and so on. He persuaded 'divers
young lawyers' (briefless barristers, I suppose) and other
gentlemen--altogether a hundred and twenty of them--to join him. They
procured two vessels at Gravesend. They took the sacrament together
before sailing. They apparently relied on Providence to take care of
them, for they made little other preparation. They reached Newfoundland,
but their stores ran out, and their ships went on shore. In the land of
fish they did not know how to use line and bait. They fed on roots and
bilberries, and picked fish-bones out of the ospreys' nests. At last
they began to eat one another--careless of Master Hore, who told them
they would go to unquenchable fire. A French vessel came in. They seized
her with the food she had on board and sailed home in her, leaving the
French crew to their fate. The poor French happily found means of
following them. They complained of their treatment, and Henry ordered an
inquiry; but finding, the report says, the great distress Master Hore's
party had been in, was so moved with pity, that he did not punish them,
but out of his own purse made royal recompense to the French.
Something better than gentlemen volunteers was needed if naval
enterprise was to come to anything in England. The long wars between
Francis I. and Charles V. brought the problem closer. On land the
fighting was between the regular armies. At sea privateers were let
loose out of French, Flemish, and Spanish ports. Enterprising
individuals took out letters of marque and went cruising to take the
chance of what they could catch. The Channel was the chief
hunting-ground, as being the highway between Spain and the Low
Countries. The interval was short between privateers and pirates.
Vessels of all sorts passed into the business. The Scilly Isles became a
pirate stronghold. The creeks and estuaries in Cork and Kerry furnished
hiding-places where the rovers could lie with security and share their
plunder with the Irish chiefs. The disorder grew wilder when the divorce
of Catherine of Aragon made Henry into the public enemy of Papal Europe.
English traders and fishing-smacks were plundered and sunk. Their crews
went armed to defend themselves, and from Thames mouth to Land's End the
Channel became the scene of desperate fights. The type of vessel altered
to suit the new conditions. Life depended on speed of sailing. The State
Papers describe squadrons of French or Spaniards flying about, dashing
into Dartmouth, Plymouth, or Falmouth, cutting out English coasters, or
fighting one another.
After Henry was excommunicated, and Ireland rebelled, and England itself
threatened disturbance, the King had to look to his security. He made
little noise about it. But the Spanish ambassador reported him as
silently building ships in the Thames and at Portsmouth. As invasion
seemed imminent, he began with sweeping the seas of the looser vermin. A
few swift well-armed cruisers pushed suddenly out of the Solent, caught
and destroyed a pirate fleet in Mount's Bay, sent to the bottom some
Flemish privateers in the Downs, and captured the Flemish admiral
himself. Danger at home growing more menacing, and the monks spreading
the fire which grew into the Pilgrimage of Grace, Henry suppressed the
abbeys, sold the lands, and with the proceeds armed the coast with
fortresses. 'You threaten me,' he seemed to say to them, 'that you will
use the wealth our fathers gave you to overthrow my Government and bring
in the invader. I will take your wealth, and I will use it to disappoint
your treachery.' You may see the remnants of Henry's work in the
fortresses anywhere along the coast from Berwick to the Land's End.
Louder thundered the Vatican. In 1539 Henry's time appeared to have
come. France and Spain made peace, and the Pope's sentence was now
expected to be executed by Charles or Francis, or both. A crowd of
vessels large and small was collected in the Scheldt, for what purpose
save to transport an army into England? Scotland had joined the Catholic
League. Henry fearlessly appealed to the English people. Catholic peers
and priests might conspire against him, but, explain it how we will, the
nation was loyal to Henry and came to his side. The London merchants
armed their ships in the river. From the seaports everywhere came armed
brigantines and sloops. The fishermen of the West left their boats and
nets to their wives, and the fishing was none the worse, for the women
handled oar and sail and line and went to the whiting-grounds, while
their husbands had gone to fight for their King. Genius kindled into
discovery at the call of the country. Mr. Fletcher of Rye (be his name
remembered) invented a boat the like of which was never seen before,
which would work to windward, with sails trimmed fore and aft, the
greatest revolution yet made in shipbuilding. A hundred and fifty sail
collected at Sandwich to match the armament in the Scheldt; and
Marillac, the French ambassador, reported with amazement the energy of
King and people.
The Catholic Powers thought better of it. This was not the England which
Reginald Pole had told them was longing for their appearance. The
Scheldt force dispersed. Henry read Scotland a needed lesson. The Scots
had thought to take him at disadvantage, and sit on his back when the
Emperor attacked him. One morning when the people at Leith woke out of
their sleep, they found an English fleet in the Roads; and before they
had time to look about them, Leith was on fire and Edinburgh was taken.
Charles V., if he had ever seriously thought of invading Henry, returned
to wiser counsels, and made an alliance with him instead. The Pope
turned to France. If the Emperor forsook him, the Most Christian King
would help. He promised Francis that if he could win England he might
keep it for himself. Francis resolved to try what he could do.
Five years had passed since the gathering at Sandwich. It was now the
summer of 1544. The records say that the French collected at Havre near
300 vessels, fighting ships, galleys, and transports. Doubtless the
numbers are far exaggerated, but at any rate it was the largest force
ever yet got together to invade England, capable, if well handled, of
bringing Henry to his knees. The plan was to seize and occupy the Isle
of Wight, destroy the English fleet, then take Portsmouth and
Southampton, and so advance on London.
Henry's attention to his navy had not slackened. He had built ship on
ship. The _Great Harry_ was a thousand tons, carried 700 men, and was
the wonder of the day. There were a dozen others scarcely less
imposing. The King called again on the nation, and again the nation
answered. In England altogether there were 150,000 men in arms in field
or garrison. In the King's fleet at Portsmouth there were 12,000 seamen,
and the privateers of the West crowded up eagerly as before. It is
strange, with the notions which we have allowed ourselves to form of
Henry, to observe the enthusiasm with which the whole country, as yet
undivided by doctrinal quarrels, rallied a second time to defend him.
In this Portsmouth fleet lay undeveloped the genius of the future naval
greatness of England. A small fact connected with it is worth recording.
The watchword on board was, 'God save the King'; the answer was, 'Long
to reign over us': the earliest germ discoverable of the English
National Anthem.
The King had come himself to Portsmouth to witness the expected attack.
The fleet was commanded by Lord Lisle, afterwards Duke of
Northumberland. It was the middle of July. The French crossed from Havre
unfought with, and anchored in St. Helens Roads off Brading Harbour.
The English, being greatly inferior in numbers, lay waiting for them
inside the Spit. The morning after the French came in was still and
sultry. The English could not move for want of wind. The galleys crossed
over and engaged them for two or three hours with some advantage. The
breeze rose at noon; a few fast sloops got under way and easily drove
them back. But the same breeze which enabled the English to move brought
a serious calamity with it. The Mary Rose, one of Lisle's finest
vessels, had been under the fire of the galleys. Her ports had been left
open, and when the wind sprang up, she heeled over, filled, and went
down, carrying two hundred men along with her. The French saw her sink,
and thought their own guns had done it. They hoped to follow up their
success. At night they sent over boats to take soundings, and discover
the way into the harbour. The boats reported that the sandbanks made the
approach impossible. The French had no clear plan of action. They tried
a landing in the island, but the force was too small, and failed. They
weighed anchor and brought up again behind Selsea Bill, where Lisle
proposed to run them down in the dark, taking advantage of the tide. But
they had an enemy to deal with worse than Lisle, on board their own
ships, which explained their distracted movements. Hot weather, putrid
meat, and putrid water had prostrated whole ships' companies with
dysentery. After a three weeks' ineffectual cruise they had to hasten
back to Havre, break up, and disperse. The first great armament which
was to have recovered England to the Papacy had effected nothing. Henry
had once more shown his strength, and was left undisputed master of the
narrow seas.
So matters stood for what remained of Henry's reign. As far as he had
gone, he had quarrelled with the Pope, and had brought the Church under
the law. So far the country generally had gone with him, and there had
been no violent changes in the administration of religion. When Henry
died the Protector abolished the old creed, and created a new and
perilous cleavage between Protestant and Catholic, and, while England
needed the protection of a navy more than ever, allowed the fine fleet
which Henry had left to fall into decay. The spirit of enterprise grew
with the Reformation. Merchant companies opened trade with Russia and
the Levant; adventurous sea captains went to Guinea for gold. Sir Hugh
Willoughby followed the phantom of the North-west Passage, turning
eastward round the North Cape to look for it, and perished in the ice.
English commerce was beginning to grow in spite of the Protector's
experiments; but a new and infinitely dangerous element had been
introduced by the change of religion into the relations of English
sailors with the Catholic Powers, and especially with Spain. In their
zeal to keep out heresy, the Spanish Government placed their harbours
under the control of the Holy Office. Any vessel in which an heretical
book was found was confiscated, and her crew carried to the Inquisition
prisons. It had begun in Henry's time. The Inquisitors attempted to
treat schism as heresy and arrest Englishmen in their ports. But Henry
spoke up stoutly to Charles V., and the Holy Office had been made to
hold its hand. All was altered now. It was not necessary that a poor
sailor should have been found teaching heresy. It was enough if he had
an English Bible and Prayer Book with him in his kit; and stories would
come into Dartmouth or Plymouth how some lad that everybody knew--Bill
or Jack or Tom, who had wife or father or mother among them,
perhaps--had been seized hold of for no other crime, been flung into a
dungeon, tortured, starved, set to work in the galleys, or burned in a
fool's coat, as they called it, at an _auto da fé_ at Seville.
The object of the Inquisition was partly political: it was meant to
embarrass trade and make the people impatient of changes which produced
so much inconvenience. The effect was exactly the opposite. Such
accounts when brought home created fury. There grew up in the seagoing
population an enthusiasm of hatred for that holy institution, and a
passionate desire for revenge.
The natural remedy would have been war; but the division of nations was
crossed by the division of creeds; and each nation had allies in the
heart of every other. If England went to war with Spain, Spain could
encourage insurrection among the Catholics. If Spain or France declared
war against England, England could help the Huguenots or the Holland
Calvinists. All Governments were afraid alike of a general war of
religion which might shake Europe in pieces. Thus individuals were left
to their natural impulses. The Holy Office burnt English or French
Protestants wherever it could catch them. The Protestants revenged their
injuries at their own risk and in their own way, and thus from Edward
VI.'s time to the end of the century privateering came to be the special
occupation of adventurous honourable gentlemen, who could serve God,
their country, and themselves in fighting Catholics. Fleets of these
dangerous vessels swept the Channel, lying in wait at Scilly, or even at
the Azores--disowned in public by their own Governments while secretly
countenanced, making war on their own account on what they called the
enemies of God. In such a business, of course, there were many mere
pirates engaged who cared neither for God nor man. But it was the
Protestants who were specially impelled into it by the cruelties of the
Inquisition. The Holy Office began the work with the _autos da fé_. The
privateers robbed, burnt, and scuttled Catholic ships in retaliation.
One fierce deed produced another, till right and wrong were obscured in
the passion of religious hatred. Vivid pictures of these wild doings
survive in the English and Spanish State Papers. Ireland was the rovers'
favourite haunt. In the universal anarchy there, a little more or a
little less did not signify. Notorious pirate captains were to be met in
Cork or Kinsale, collecting stores, casting cannon, or selling their
prizes--men of all sorts, from fanatical saints to undisguised ruffians.
Here is one incident out of many to show the heights to which temper had
risen.
'Long peace,' says someone, addressing the Privy Council early in
Elizabeth's time, 'becomes by force of the Spanish Inquisition more
hurtful than open war. It is the secret, determined policy of Spain to
destroy the English fleet, pilots, masters and sailors, by means of the
Inquisition. The Spanish King pretends he dares not offend the Holy
House, while we in England say we may not proclaim war against Spain in
revenge of a few. Not long since the Spanish Inquisition executed sixty
persons of St. Malo, notwithstanding entreaty to the King of Spain to
spare them. Whereupon the Frenchmen armed their pinnaces, lay for the
Spaniards, took a hundred and beheaded them, sending the Spanish ships
to the shore with their heads, leaving in each ship but one man to
render the cause of the revenge. Since which time Spanish Inquisitors
have never meddled with those of St. Malo.'
A colony of Huguenot refugees had settled on the coast of Florida. The
Spaniards heard of it, came from St. Domingo, burnt the town, and hanged
every man, woman, and child, leaving an inscription explaining that the
poor creatures had been killed, not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.
Domenique de Gourges, of Rochelle, heard of this fine exploit of
fanaticism, equipped a ship, and sailed across. He caught the Spanish
garrison which had been left in occupation and swung them on the same
trees--with a second scroll saying that they were dangling there, not as
Spaniards, but as murderers.
The genius of adventure tempted men of highest birth into the rovers'
ranks. Sir Thomas Seymour, the Protector's brother and the King's uncle,
was Lord High Admiral. In his time of office, complaints were made by
foreign merchants of ships and property seized at the Thames mouth. No
redress could be had; no restitution made; no pirate was even punished,
and Seymour's personal followers were seen suspiciously decorated with
Spanish ornaments. It appeared at last that Seymour had himself bought
the Scilly Isles, and if he could not have his way at Court, it was said
that he meant to set up there as a pirate chief.
The persecution under Mary brought in more respectable recruits than
Seymour. The younger generation of the western families had grown with
the times. If they were not theologically Protestant, they detested
tyranny. They detested the marriage with Philip, which threatened the
independence of England. At home they were powerless, but the sons of
honourable houses--Strangways, Tremaynes, Staffords, Horseys, Carews,
Killegrews, and Cobhams--dashed out upon the water to revenge the
Smithfield massacres. They found help where it could least have been
looked for. Henry II. of France hated heresy, but he hated Spain worse.
Sooner than see England absorbed in the Spanish monarchy, he forgot his
bigotry in his politics. He furnished these young mutineers with ships
and money and letters of marque. The Huguenots were their natural
friends. With Rochelle for an arsenal, they held the mouth of the
Channel, and harassed the communications between Cadiz and Antwerp. It
was a wild business: enterprise and buccaneering sanctified by religion
and hatred of cruelty; but it was a school like no other for seamanship,
and a school for the building of vessels which could out-sail all others
on the sea; a school, too, for the training up of hardy men, in whose
blood ran detestation of the Inquisition and the Inquisition's master.
Every other trade was swallowed up or coloured by privateering; the
merchantmen went armed, ready for any work that offered; the Iceland
fleet went no more in search of cod; the Channel boatmen forsook nets
and lines and took to livelier occupations; Mary was too busy burning
heretics to look to the police of the seas; her father's fine ships
rotted in harbour; her father's coast-forts were deserted or dismantled;
she lost Calais; she lost the hearts of her people in forcing them into
orthodoxy; she left the seas to the privateers; and no trade flourished,
save what the Catholic Powers called piracy.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, the whole merchant navy of England
engaged in lawful commerce amounted to no more than 50,000 tons. You may
see more now passing every day through the Gull Stream. In the service
of the Crown there were but seven revenue cruisers in commission, the
largest 120 tons, with eight merchant brigs altered for fighting. In
harbour there were still a score of large ships, but they were
dismantled and rotting; of artillery fit for sea work there was none.
The men were not to be had, and, as Sir William Cecil said, to fit out
ships without men was to set armour on stakes on the seashore. The
mariners of England were otherwise engaged, and in a way which did not
please Cecil. He was the ablest minister that Elizabeth had. He saw at
once that on the navy the prosperity and even the liberty of England
must eventually depend. If England were to remain Protestant, it was not
by articles of religion or acts of uniformity that she could be saved
without a fleet at the back of them. But he was old-fashioned. He
believed in law and order, and he has left a curious paper of
reflections on the situation. The ships' companies in Henry VIII.'s days
were recruited from the fishing-smacks, but the Reformation itself had
destroyed the fishing trade. In old times, Cecil said, no flesh was
eaten on fish days. The King himself could not have license. Now to eat
beef or mutton on fish days was the test of a true believer. The English
Iceland fishery used to supply Normandy and Brittany as well as England.
Now it had passed to the French. The Chester men used to fish the Irish
seas. Now they had left them to the Scots. The fishermen had taken to
privateering because the fasts of the Church were neglected. He saw it
was so. He recorded his own opinion that piracy, as he called it, was
_detestable_, and could not last. He was to find that it could last,
that it was to form the special discipline of the generation whose
business would be to fight the Spaniards. But he struggled hard against
the unwelcome conclusion. He tried to revive lawful trade by a
Navigation Act. He tried to restore the fisheries by Act of Parliament.
He introduced a Bill recommending godly abstinence as a means to virtue,
making the eating of meat on Fridays and Saturdays a misdemeanour, and
adding Wednesday as a half fish-day. The House of Commons laughed at him
as bringing back Popish mummeries. To please the Protestants he inserted
a clause, that the statute was politicly meant for the increase of
fishermen and mariners, not for any superstition in the choice of meats;
but it was no use. The Act was called in mockery 'Cecil's Fast,' and the
recovery of the fisheries had to wait till the natural inclination of
human stomachs for fresh whiting and salt cod should revive of itself.
Events had to take their course. Seamen were duly provided in other
ways, and such as the time required. Privateering suited Elizabeth's
convenience, and suited her disposition. She liked daring and adventure.
She liked men who would do her work without being paid for it, men whom
she could disown when expedient; who would understand her, and would not
resent it. She knew her turn was to come when Philip had leisure to deal
with her, if she could not secure herself meanwhile. Time was wanted to
restore the navy. The privateers were a resource in the interval. They
might be called pirates while there was formal peace. The name did not
signify. They were really the armed force of the country. After the war
broke out in the Netherlands, they had commissions from the Prince of
Orange. Such commissions would not save them if taken by Spain, but it
enabled them to sell their prizes, and for the rest they trusted to
their speed and their guns. When Elizabeth was at war with France about
Havre, she took the most noted of them into the service of the Crown.
Ned Horsey became Sir Edward and Governor of the Isle of Wight;
Strangways, a Red Rover in his way, who had been the terror of the
Spaniards, was killed before Rouen; Tremayne fell at Havre, mourned over
by Elizabeth; and Champernowne, one of the most gallant of the whole of
them, was killed afterwards at Coligny's side at Moncontour.
But others took their places: the wild hawks as thick as seagulls
flashing over the waves, fair wind or foul, laughing at pursuit, brave,
reckless, devoted, the crews the strangest medley: English from the
Devonshire and Cornish creeks, Huguenots from Rochelle; Irish kernes
with long skenes, 'desperate, unruly persons with no kind of mercy.'
The Holy Office meanwhile went on in cold, savage resolution: the Holy
Office which had begun the business and was the cause of it.
A note in Cecil's hand says that in the one year 1562 twenty-six English
subjects had been burnt at the stake in different parts of Spain. Ten
times as many were starving in Spanish dungeons, from which
occasionally, by happy accident, a cry could be heard like this which
follows. In 1561 an English merchant writes from the Canaries:
'I was taken by those of the Inquisition twenty months past, put into a
little dark house two paces long, loaded with irons, without sight of
sun or moon all that time. When I was arraigned I was charged that I
should say our mass was as good as theirs; that I said I would rather
give money to the poor than buy Bulls of Rome with it. I was charged
with being a subject to the Queen's grace, who, they said, was enemy to
the Faith, Antichrist, with other opprobrious names; and I stood to the
defence of the Queen's Majesty, proving the infamies most untrue. Then I
was put into Little Ease again, protesting very innocent blood to be
demanded against the judge before Christ.'
The innocent blood of these poor victims had not to wait to be avenged
at the Judgment Day. The account was presented shortly and promptly at
the cannon's mouth.
LECTURE II
JOHN HAWKINS AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
I begin this lecture with a petition addressed to Queen Elizabeth.
Thomas Seely, a merchant of Bristol, hearing a Spaniard in a Spanish
port utter foul and slanderous charges against the Queen's character,
knocked him down. To knock a man down for telling lies about Elizabeth
might be a breach of the peace, but it had not yet been declared heresy.
The Holy Office, however, seized Seely, threw him into a dungeon, and
kept him starving there for three years, at the end of which he
contrived to make his condition known in England. The Queen wrote
herself to Philip to protest. Philip would not interfere. Seely remained
in prison and in irons, and the result was a petition from his wife, in
which the temper which was rising can be read as in letters of fire.
Dorothy Seely demands that 'the friends of her Majesty's subjects so
imprisoned and tormented in Spain may make out ships at their proper
charges, take such Inquisitors or other Papistical subjects of the King
of Spain as they can by sea or land, and retain them in prison with such
torments and diet as her Majesty's subjects be kept with in Spain, and
on complaint made by the King to give such answer as is now made when
her Majesty sues for subjects imprisoned by the Inquisition. Or that a
Commission be granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other
bishops word for word for foreign Papists as the Inquisitors have in
Spain for the Protestants. So that all may know that her Majesty cannot
and will not longer endure the spoils and torments of her subjects, and
the Spaniards shall not think this noble realm dares not seek revenge of
such importable wrongs.'
Elizabeth issued no such Commission as Dorothy Seely asked for, but she
did leave her subjects to seek their revenge in their own way, and they
sought it sometimes too rashly.
In the summer of 1563 eight English merchantmen anchored in the roads
of Gibraltar. England and France were then at war. A French brig came in
after them, and brought up near. At sea, if they could take her, she
would have been a lawful prize. Spaniards under similar circumstances
had not respected the neutrality of English harbours. The Englishmen
were perhaps in doubt what to do, when the officers of the Holy Office
came off to the French ship. The sight of the black familiars drove the
English wild. Three of them made a dash at the French ship, intending to
sink her. The Inquisitors sprang into their boat, and rowed for their
lives. The castle guns opened, and the harbour police put out to
interfere. The French ship, however, would have been taken, when
unluckily Alvarez de Baçan, with a Spanish squadron, came round into the
Straits. Resistance was impossible. The eight English ships were
captured and carried off to Cadiz. The English flag was trailed under De
Baçan's stern. The crews, two hundred and forty men in all, were
promptly condemned to the galleys. In defence they could but say that
the Frenchman was an enemy, and a moderate punishment would have
sufficed for a violation of the harbour rules which the Spaniards
themselves so little regarded. But the Inquisition was inexorable, and
the men were treated with such peculiar brutality that after nine months
ninety only of the two hundred and forty were alive.
Ferocity was answered by ferocity. Listen to this! The Cobhams of
Cowling Castle were Protestants by descent. Lord Cobham was famous in
the Lollard martyrology. Thomas Cobham, one of the family, had taken to
the sea like many of his friends. While cruising in the Channel he
caught sight of a Spaniard on the way from Antwerp to Cadiz with forty
prisoners on board, consigned, it might be supposed, to the Inquisition.
They were, of course, Inquisition prisoners; for other offenders would
have been dealt with on the spot. Cobham chased her down into the Bay of
Biscay, took her, scuttled her, and rescued the captives. But that was
not enough. The captain and crew he sewed up in their own mainsail and
flung them overboard. They were washed ashore dead, wrapped in their
extraordinary winding-sheet. Cobham was called to account for this
exploit, but he does not seem to have been actually punished. In a very
short time he was out and away again at the old work. There were plenty
with him. After the business at Gibraltar, Philip's subjects were not
safe in English harbours. Jacques le Clerc, a noted privateer, called
Pie de Palo from his wooden leg, chased a Spaniard into Falmouth, and
was allowed to take her under the guns of Pendennis. The Governor of the
castle said that he could not interfere, because Le Clerc had a
commission from the Prince of Condé. It was proved that in the summer of
1563 there were 400 English and Huguenot rovers in and about the
Channel, and that they had taken 700 prizes between them. The Queen's
own ships followed suit. Captain Cotton in the _Phoenix_ captured an
Antwerp merchantman in Flushing. The harbour-master protested. Cotton
laughed, and sailed away with his prize. The Regent Margaret wrote in
indignation to Elizabeth. Such insolence, she said, was not to be
endured. She would have Captain Cotton chastised as an example to all
others. Elizabeth measured the situation more correctly than the Regent;
she preferred to show Philip that she was not afraid of him. She
preferred to let her subjects discover for themselves that the terrible
Spaniard before whom the world trembled was but a colossus stuffed with
clouts. Until Philip consented to tie the hands of the Holy Office she
did not mean to prevent them from taking the law into their own hands.
Now and then, if occasion required, Elizabeth herself would do a little
privateering on her own account. In the next story that I have to tell
she appears as a principal, and her great minister, Cecil, as an
accomplice. The Duke of Alva had succeeded Margaret as Regent of the
Netherlands, and was drowning heresy in its own blood. The Prince of
Orange was making a noble fight; but all went ill with him. His troops
were defeated, his brother Louis was killed. He was still struggling,
helped by Elizabeth's money. But the odds were terrible, and the only
hope lay in the discontent of Alva's soldiers, who had not been paid
their wages, and would not fight without them. Philip's finances were
not flourishing, but he had borrowed half a million ducats from a house
at Genoa for Alva's use. The money was to be delivered in bullion at
Antwerp. The Channel privateers heard that it was coming and were on the
look-out for it. The vessel in which it was sent took refuge in
Plymouth, but found she had run into the enemy's nest. Nineteen or
twenty Huguenot and English cruisers lay round her with commissions from
Condé to take every Catholic ship they met with. Elizabeth's special
friends thought and said freely that so rich a prize ought to fall to no
one but her Majesty. Elizabeth thought the same, but for a more
honourable reason. It was of the highest consequence that the money
should not reach the Duke of Alva at that moment. Even Cecil said so,
and sent the Prince of Orange word that it would be stopped in some way.
But how could it decently be done? Bishop Jewel relieved the Queen's
mind (if it was ever disturbed) on the moral side of the question. The
bishop held that it would be meritorious in a high degree to intercept a
treasure which was to be used in the murder of Protestant Christians.
But the how was the problem. To let the privateers take it openly in
Plymouth harbour would, it was felt, be a scandal. Sir Arthur
Champernowne, the Vice-admiral of the West, saw the difficulty and
offered his services. He had three vessels of his own in Condé's
privateer fleet, under his son Henry. As vice-admiral he was first in
command at Plymouth. He placed a guard on board the treasure ship,
telling the captain it would be a discredit to the Queen's Government if
harm befell her in English waters. He then wrote to Cecil.
'If,' he said, 'it shall seem good to your honour that I with others
shall give the attempt for her Majesty's use which cannot be without
blood, I will not only take it in hand, but also receive the blame
thereof unto myself, to the end so great a commodity should redound to
her Grace, hoping that, after bitter storms of her displeasure, showed
at the first to colour the fact, I shall find the calm of her favour in
such sort as I am most willing to hazard myself to serve her Majesty.
Great pity it were such a rich booty should escape her Grace. But surely
I am of that mind that anything taken from that wicked nation is both
necessary and profitable to our commonwealth.'
Very shocking on Sir Arthur's part to write such a letter: so many good
people will think. I hope they will consider it equally shocking that
King Philip should have burned English sailors at the stake because they
were loyal to the laws of their own country; that he was stirring war
all over Europe to please the Pope, and thrusting the doctrines of the
Council of Trent down the throats of mankind at the sword's point. Spain
and England might be at peace; Romanism and Protestantism were at deadly
war, and war suspends the obligations of ordinary life. Crimes the most
horrible were held to be virtues in defence of the Catholic faith. The
Catholics could not have the advantage of such indulgences without the
inconveniences. The Protestant cause throughout Europe was one, and
assailed as the Protestants were with such envenomed ferocity, they
could not afford to be nicely scrupulous in the means they used to
defend themselves.
Sir Arthur Champernowne was not called on to sacrifice himself in such
peculiar fashion, and a better expedient was found to secure Alva's
money. The bullion was landed and was brought to London by road on the
plea that the seas were unsafe. It was carried to the Tower, and when it
was once inside the walls it was found to remain the property of the
Genoese until it was delivered at Antwerp. The Genoese agent in London
was as willing to lend it to Elizabeth as to Philip, and indeed
preferred the security. Elizabeth calmly said that she had herself
occasion for money, and would accept their offer. Half of it was sent to
the Prince of Orange; half was spent on the Queen's navy.
Alva was of course violently angry. He arrested every English ship in
the Low Countries. He arrested every Englishman that he could catch, and
sequestered all English property. Elizabeth retaliated in kind. The
Spanish and Flemish property taken in England proved to be worth double
what had been secured by Alva. Philip could not declare war. The
Netherlands insurrection was straining his resources, and with Elizabeth
for an open enemy the whole weight of England would have been thrown on
the side of the Prince of Orange. Elizabeth herself should have
declared war, people say, instead of condescending to such tricks.
Perhaps so; but also perhaps not. These insults, steadily maintained and
unresented, shook the faith of mankind, and especially of her own
sailors, in the invincibility of the Spanish colossus.