CHAPTER VIIPIRACY IN ELIZABETHAN TIMES
But although the Mediterranean was the sphere of the Barbarian corsairs, yet this sea lawlessness was not confided to that area. The Narrow Seas were just about as bad as they had been in the Middle Ages. And Elizabeth, with the determination for which she was famous, took the matter in hand.
As early as the year 1564 she commanded Sir Peter Carew to fit out an expedition to clear the seas of any pirates and rovers that haunted the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall; yet it was an almost impossible task. For the men of these parts especially had gotten the sea-fever. Fishing was less profitable than it might be, but to capture ships instead of fish was a very paying industry and had just that amount of adventure which appealed to the Elizabethans. And bear in mind that, as in the case of the later smugglers, these men had at their backs for financial support the rich land-owners, who found the investment tempting.
It was because the colonies in the New World were yielding such wondrous treasure that the English pirates found the Spanish ships so well worth waiting for and pillaging. Again and again did Philip make demands to Elizabeth that this nuisance should be stopped, insistingthat in no case should a convicted English pirate be pardoned. He requested that Her Majesty’s officers in the west of England ports should cease from allowing these marauders to take stores aboard or even frequent these harbours. Rewards, he begged, should even be offered for their capture, and all persons on shore who aided these miscreants should be punished severely.
It was because of Philip’s complaint, no less than of the complaint of her own merchants, that the Queen was compelled to adopt severe measures. She despatched more ships to police the seas, but with what advantage? Up came a ship bound from Flanders to Spain with a cargo of tapestry, clocks and various other articles for Philip. The English pirates could not let such a prize go past, so they stopped the ship and plundered her. The Queen’s next effort was to cause strict inquiries to be made along the coast in order to discover the haunts of these Northern corsairs. Harbour commissioners were appointed, says Lindsay, to inquire and report on all vessels leaving or entering port, and all landed proprietors who had encouraged the pirates were threatened with penalties. But it was an impossible task, as I will explain. First of all, consider the fact that after centuries of this free sea-roving, no government, no amount of threats, could possibly transform the character of the English seaman. If, for instance, to-morrow, Parliament were to make it law forbidding the North Sea fishermen to proceed in their industry, nothing but shells from men-of-war would prevent the men putting to sea. Years of occupation would be too strong to resist.
So it was with the seamen in the Elizabethan age. It began by that hatred of their French neighbours; it was encouraged by the privileges which the Cinque Ports enjoyed, though it was in the blood of the English seamenquite apart from any royal permission. But there was in the time of Elizabeth still a further difficulty. Those privateers whom the law had permitted to go forth sea-roving had become too strong to be suppressed. Privateering strictly consists of a private ship or ships having a commission to seize or plunder the ships of an enemy; in effect it amounts to legalised piracy, and any one can realise that in a none too law-abiding age, such as the sixteenth century, the dividing line between piracy and privateering was so very fine that it was almost impossible to say which pillaging was legal and which was unjustifiable. That alone was sufficient reason for the frequent releases of alleged pirates at this time.
True, the Crown allowed privateering, though the commissions were limited only to the attacks on our acknowledged enemies, yet it was futile to expect that these rude Devonshire seamen would have any respect to legalfinesse. To control these men adequately was too much to expect. French and Spanish and Flemish merchantmen, regardless of nationality, were alike liable to fall into the English pirates’ hands. Some of the backers were making quite a handsome income, and who shall say that some of those fine Elizabethan mansions in our country were not built out of such illegal proceeds? The Mayor of Dover, for instance, with some of the leading inhabitants of that port, had captured over 600 prizes from the French, to say nothing of the number of neutrals which he had pillaged. This was in the year 1563, and already he had plundered sixty-one Spanish ships. And there was the valuable trade passing to and from Antwerp and London, which was a steady source of revenue for the pirates of this time. You cannot be surprised, then, at that important incident in 1564, that did so much to enrage the English seamen andhelp matters forward to the climax in the form of the Spanish Armada; for what happened? Philip, seeing how little Elizabeth was doing to put down this series of attacks on his treasure ships, had, in the year mentioned, suddenly issued an order arresting every English ship and all the English crews that happened to be found within his own harbours. It was a drastic measure, but we can quite understand the impetuous and furious Spaniard acting on this wise.
During Elizabeth’s reign there were of course some pirates who had the bad fortune to be arrested. One little batch suspected included a Captain Heidon, Richard Deigle and a man named Corbet. Included in the same gang were Robert Hitchins, Philip Readhead, Roger Shaster and others. The first three mentioned succeeded in fleeing away beyond capture, but the remainder admitted their guilt. Hitchins was a man about fifty years old and a native of Devonshire, but both he and his companions protested that they had been deceived by Heidon and Deigle; they had undertaken a voyage to Rochelle presumably in a merchant ship, whereas the trip turned out to be nothing else than a piratical expedition.
Their version of the incident was that in June 1564 they captured a Flemish ship, and to her were transferred thirteen Scots who were forming part of this supposedly merchant ship. The Flemish ship with the Scots on board now sailed away, as there was some disagreement with the rest of the party. They proceeded to Ireland, where their skipper joined them, and they also committed robberies on the coast of Spain. Having captured a ship with a cargo of wine they proceeded to that extreme south-west corner of Ireland which, even in this twentieth century, is still a wild, lonely spot and rarely visited by any craft exceptingthe British Navy, an occasional cable-laying ship and sometimes a coaster or two. Berehaven is a mighty fjord which goes out of Bantry Bay. On the one side rise high, rocky hills; on the other lies the island of Bere. It is a safe, clear anchorage and a wild, inaccessible spot.
Here the captured ship was taken and the wines sold. An arrangement was made with the Lord O’Sullivan by which the pirates could rely on his assistance. For Corbet with one ship, and a man named Lusingham, who had charge of another ship, were prevented by O’Sullivan from falling into the hands of Elizabeth’s ships that had been sent to capture them. Lusingham, however, had been slain by “a piece of ordnance,” as he was in the act of waving his cap towards the Queen’s ships at Berehaven, but Corbet was yet alive. It was alleged that Heidon and Corbet had agreed jointly to fit out theJohn of Sandwich, giving her all the necessary guns with the hope of being able to capture a good ship wherewith to provide Corbet. But whilst in the English Channel a storm had sprung up and the ship had sprung a leak. They were therefore forced into Alderney, where the vessel became a wreck, and Heidon, Corbet, Deigle, as well as fourteen others, made their escape in a small pinnace.
It was discovered that Robert Hitchins had been all his life given to piracy, so, after having been arrested in the Channel Isles, he was executed at low-water mark near St. Martin’s Point, Guernsey, and there his body was left in chains as a warning to others. The rest of the prisoners were afterwards ordered by Elizabeth to be set free, “after a good and sharp admonition to beware hereafter to fall again into the damage of our laws.” They were bidden to return to their native places and to get their living by honest labour. It is a proof that the Crown really valued her seamenby an interesting proclamation that was made in 1572 when there was a likeliness of war. The Queen went so far as to promise pardon for all piracies hitherto committed by any mariners who should now put their ships into her naval service, and we must not forget that, at a later date, the first tidings of the Armada’s advent were brought into Plymouth by a patriotic English pirate named Fleming. “Fleming,” wrote John Smith, the great Elizabethan traveller and founder of the English colony of Virginia, “was as expert and as much sought for” as any other pirates of the Queen’s reign, “yet such a friend to his Country, that discovering the Spanish Armado, he voluntarily came to Plymouth, yeelded himselfe freely to my Lord Admirall, and gave him notice of the Spaniards comming; which good warning came so happily and unexpectedly, that he had his pardon, and a good reward.”
“As in all lands,” writes this delightful Elizabethan, “where there are many people, there are some theeves, so in all seas much frequented, there are some pirates; the most ancient within the memory of threescore yeares was one Callis, who most refreshed himselfe upon the Coast of Wales; Clinton and Pursser his companions, who grew famous, till Queene Elizabeth of blessed memory, hanged them at Wapping.” Now this John Callis or Calles, after his arrest, wrote a letter of repentance to Walsyngham saying: “I bewail my former wicked life, and beseech God and Her Majesty to forgive me. If she will spare my life and use me in her service by sea, with those she can trust best, either to clear the coasts of other wicked pirates or otherwise, as I know their haunts, roads, creeks, and maintainers so well, I can do more therein than if she sent ships abroad and spent £20,000.”
Thinking thereby to obtain pardon, Calles accordinglyforwarded particulars of his fellow pirates, their “maintainers and victuallers of me and my companies.” This list contained the names and addresses of the purchasers and receivers of goods which had been pillaged from two Portuguese, one French, a Spanish and a Scotch ship, which Calles and a Captain Sturges of Rochelle had pirated. If he were given his liberty, this loquacious corsair further promised that he would also bring in a Danish ship, which he had pirated. He promised also to warn Walsyngham to take care that Sulivan Bere of Berehaven “does not practise any treason” towards Her Majesty there, as he alleged that Sulivan had told Calles in the former’s castle at Berehaven that James Fitzmorris and a number of Frenchmen were determined to land there if they could obtain pilots to guide them thither. The old pirate further alleged that they had tried to persuade himself to join them and become their guide, promising him “large gifts.” “But I would not join any rebel of Her Majesty,” he wrote grandiloquently, “hoping her mercy in time to come.”
Last March, he went on, while he was riding at anchor at Torbay, he met a Frenchman, commanded by Captain Molloner, who came aboard Calles’s ship and sought information regarding the Irish coast and the best harbours. Calles informed him the best were Cork and Kinsale. His inquirers then asked whether Berehaven and Dingell were not good places where to land. “They told me if I would go over with them to France, I need not fear the Queen for any offence I had done.” The French King would pardon him for anything Calles had done against His Majesty’s subjects, and would give him 3000 crowns to become his subject and be sworn his man, as well as a yearly fee during life. “I asked him why his master wanted to use me, and he said his master shortly meant to do someservice on the coast of Ireland, and wanted pilots.” Calles protested that he had declined this invitation, to which the other man was reported to have replied that he would never have such a chance of preferment offered him in England. But though this made a very fine yarn, the authorities were too well aware of Calles’s past history to give it too much credence.
“The misery of a Pirate (although many are as sufficient Seamen as any) yet in regard of his superfluity,” wrote the founder of Virginia, “you shall finde it such, that any wise man would rather live amongst wilde beasts than them: therefore let all unadvised persons take heed, how they entertaine that quality: and I could wish Merchants, Gentlemen, and all setters forth of ships, not to bee sparing of a competent pay, nor true payment, for neither Souldiers nor Seamen can live without meanes, but necessity will force them to steale: and when they are once entered into that trade, they are hardly reclaimed.”
Poverty as well as the love of adventure and the lust for gain had certainly to be reckoned among the incentives to this life. So steadily had the evil grown that on 7th August 1579, Yorke complained to Lord Burghley that the sea had never been so full of pirates, and a Plymouth ship which had set out from St. Malo bound for Dartmouth had been robbed and chased on to the rocks. None the less, the “persons of credit” who had been appointed in every haven, creek or other landing-place round the coast, in order to deal with the evil, were doing their best, and three notable pirates had some time before been arrested and placed in York Castle together with other pirates.
But the practice of piracy, as we have seen, was the peculiar failing of no country exclusively, though in certain parts of the world and in certain centuries pirates were moreprevalent than elsewhere. The very men who in the English Channel might have attained disgrace and wealth as sea-robbers might, also, when he went into the Mediterranean, be himself pillaged by those Barbarian corsairs of whom we spoke just now. Many an exciting brush did the mariners of England encounter with these men, and many were the sad tales which reached England of the cruelties of these Moslem tyrants. An interesting account of such an adventure is related by Master Roger Bodenham. The incident really happened seven years before Elizabeth came to the throne, but it may not be out of place here to deal with it.
After having set forth from Gravesend in the “great barkeAucher” bound for the islands of Candia and Chio in the Levant, the ship arrived at Messina in Sicily. But it was made known that a good many Moslem galleys were in the Levant and the rest of the voyage would be more than risky. TheAucher’screw got to know of this, so that Bodenham was not likely to get farther on his way and deliver his cargo at Chio. “Then,” he writes, “I had no small businesse to cause my mariners to venture with the ship in such a manifest danger. Neverthelesse I wan them to goe with me, except three which I set on land.” But these presently begged to come aboard again and were taken, and the ship got under way. A Greek pilot was taken on board, and when off Chio three Turkish pirates were suddenly espied. These were giving chase to a number of small boats which were sailing rigged with a lateen-sail. It happened that in one of the latter was the son of the pilot, and at this Greek’s request Bodenham steered towards the Turks and caused theAucher’sgunner to fire a demi-culverin at the chaser that was just about to board one of the boats. This was such a good shot that the Turkdropped astern. Presently all the little boats came and begged that they might be allowed to hang on to theAucher’sstern till daylight. After clearing from Chio, Bodenham took his ship to Candia and Messina. But whilst on the way thither and in the very waters where the battle of Lepanto was presently to be fought, he found some of the Turkish galleots pirating some Venetian ships laden with muscatels, and, good Samaritan that he was, Bodenham succeeded in driving off the Moslem aggressors and rescuing the merchantmen. “I rescued them,” he writes briefly, “and had but a barrell of wine for my powder and shot.”