English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - James Anthony Froude

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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.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      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

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