CHAPTER IX

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.

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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.

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