The Pirate Queen (15 page)

Cecil, who had once feared the royal favorite Dudley, particularly when he had been named as “protector” by the queen when she had smallpox, also knew Dudley was dangerous for his intervention in Newhaven. Dudley, too, was a sworn enemy of the Earl of Sussex, Lord Deputy in Ireland, and he backed the charismatic and violent Shane O’Neill, the Ulster Irish chieftain, against Sussex in a bid to extend his influence throughout Ireland. Dudley also looked favorably upon John Hawkins as a merchant engaged in legitimate trade, and a man in whom he could invest for the future.

But what had become of the pirates in the Channel and elsewhere? And what had happened to Stucley and his Huguenot enterprise? While the French pirate Ribault had successfully established the French colony in Florida, perilously close to Philip’s empire, Stucley, who had been supplied with one of the queen’s ships in his six-vessel force, sailed around the Caribbean with his three hundred men terrorizing merchants and colonists alike.
²⁵
He had been “well furnished with artillery from the queen,” according to ambassador de Quadra,
²⁶
so Stucley’s exploits rocked the courts of England, France, and Spain, and his piracy on the high seas became the scandal of the day. Stucley had made Elizabeth a fool in her own eyes, something both Catherine de’ Medici and Philip II secretly enjoyed, and which the English queen would never forgive.
²⁷
His attacks on Spanish, French, and Portuguese shipping made the English ambassador to Madrid, Chaloner, “hang his head in shame.”
²⁸
Elizabeth hesitated a bit, but eventually disowned Stucley and issued a warrant for his arrest. Her hesitation had as much to do with the usefulness of other questionable adventurers’ piratical acts, which helped secure England’s borders, as it did with a public admission that Stucley had duped her.

But worse was to yet come for England’s queen. De Granvelle, with Philip’s tacit approval, decided to close Antwerp and all other Low Countries ports to the English, using the excuse of the plague. Stucley was not the only pirate, or adventurer, who was stealing under the legitimate guise of letters of reprisal, and de Granvelle was out to prove the point. As a result, without any other market of equal status, tens of thousands of yards of broadcloth worth over £700,000
($245.48 million or £132.69 million today) lay in the Thames estuary for six months before the lucrative backbone of English trade could be transferred urgently to Emden in Germany.
²⁹

Just about the only bright spot on the horizon from the English viewpoint was that the universally reviled Spanish ambassador, Alvarez de Quadra, bishop of Aguila, died in poverty in the English countryside, having initially escaped London and the plague. His replacement, Guzmán de Silva, canon of Toledo, was an intellectual, congenial priest with an iron will and understanding of what made the English tick. Philip had, at last, appointed a worthy emissary to oversee events in England. De Silva’s insightful and eventful four-year stint in his London embassy would mark an interesting turn of events for both Hawkins and Elizabeth’s England.

8. Cunning Deceits

I am a great servant of the majesty of King Philip, whom I served when he was King of England.

—JOHN HAWKINS TO GOVERNOR BERNÁLDEZ, APRIL
16, 1565

B
y the time John Hawkins was ready to set sail on his second slaving voyage, the newly appointed Spanish ambassador, Guzmán de Silva, had tapped into the rich vein of his predecessor’s spy network in England. Philip himself had directed him to two particularly good sources of information residing in London—Antonio de Guaras and Luis de Paz, to whom the king referred as “persons of entire trust.”
¹
At first, the picture they had painted of the Hawkins plan was fuzzy, with some of their port spies declaring that the English admiral was making preparations to lead a squadron of pirates into the Channel to capture Spanish and Flemish shipping. But as more reliable intelligence poured in, it became obvious that Hawkins had a grander enterprise in mind. Whenever he sailed, John Hawkins would be flying the queen’s royal standard atop his mainmast, confirming his royal commission. Once his destination was rumored to be the West Indies again, Guzmán de Silva penned a hasty warning to Philip that the Spanish Main would again be in grave danger from the great pirate
Aquinas
, as Hawkins was called.

While this may seem an overstatement, even at the time, de Silva was nonetheless outraged that Hawkins would dare a reprise of his first audacious exploit to the West Indies. After advising the king, he lodged an official complaint with the Privy Council and was promptly told that Hawkins was sailing with the queen’s commission, and, in what became a familiar refrain, that the high seas were free. De Silva refused to accept their reply as cast in stone, and wrote directly to the queen, asking her to stop Hawkins from sailing, as he was likely to harm the King of Spain’s subjects.

This, too, was a familiar tune. Everyone in a position of power in England knew that “harm to Spanish subjects” was a point dear to the ambassador’s heart. Since his arrival, he had been successful in pressing for a royal commission to look into piracy in the Channel in a valiant effort to staunch the tide. Failing that, he aimed to get some compensation from the rogues. After several months hammering away on the subject, de Silva seemed to be making progress. On August 7 the Privy Council dashed off several letters on the express desire of the queen and Lord Robert:

to Sir William Godolphin, John Arundel, John Killigrew, Sir John Chichester, and William Lower, esquires, that where a ship was spoiled in that parts appertaining to John de Calvette and others, Spaniards, to take order that they may be restored to their goods, or else the offenders to be bound to appear to answer to the laws according to the quality of their faults…[and] to make due inquisition of such goods as appertained to John de Calvette and others, which was spoiled upon the seas by John Fleming and Hamond Gifford, requiring them to make restitution of the said goods unto the complaints, or else to take good bands of them…
²

Satisfied that the queen was acting in good faith, de Silva wrote to Philip that same month that “the proceedings ordered by the queen with the object of redressing the robberies committed on your Majesty’s subjects by her pirates, and other injuries inflicted by reason of money owing etc., are still continuing…it appears they are doing their best. The fault is not entirely on the part of the judges, although there has been much remissness, but is largely due to false witnesses, of whom there must be a great number in this country, and notwithstanding this, the judges do not consider the evidence strong enough for them to condemn their own countrymen, and are probably not sorry for it.”
³

In the same encrypted letter, de Silva gave Philip a reasonable running account of his discussions with Elizabeth about her pirates: “With regard to the future I have pressed the queen and her council for some measure of security since, if the sea is not free, there will be forever complaints and troubles.”
⁴

The Spanish ambassador, fully briefed by his king, had used the very excuse with which the queen had defeated—and would defeat—his own argument: freedom of the high seas. Hawkins was, she claimed, not a pirate, but a gentleman and merchant, and one of considerable means. His sole desire was to undertake honest trade; and since one of her leading countrymen, Elizabeth, her merchants, and her gentlemen backed him in his new adventure. The joint stock company formed for this second slaving voyage read like a
Who’s Who
of the day, led by the queen herself. As to harming the King of Spain’s loyal subjects, what harm could vibrant trade to the West Indies bring? Elizabeth inquired.

What harm indeed. The queen’s arguments in favor of her slave trader were at best disingenuous. What attracted her deep interest in the proposition was the real possibility of enriching her treasury by an expanded trade with the Spanish Indies. It is also tempting to imagine that she never considered the true nature that the “harvesting” of his African victims took, despite having warned Hawkins as early as 1563 that “if any African were carried away without his free consent it would be detestable and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers.”
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Above all, John Hawkins and his enterprise represented a “get-rich-quick” scheme that appealed to the queen’s parsimonious nature, and the business acumen—if not sheer greed—of her merchant and gentlemen adventurers, particularly in light of the debacle at Newhaven and the remorseless rise in the cost of maintaining the peace in English enclaves and plantations in Ireland.

Her Privy Council couldn’t see the harm either—it was for the good of the realm. Even Lord Admiral Clinton and Sir William Herbert, now the Earl of Pembroke, were two of Hawkins’s prominent gentlemen adventurer investors. The queen’s favorite, Robert Dudley—newly elevated as the Earl of Leicester—was not only an investor but also a primary license holder for the export of undyed cloth, which was being loaded onto Hawkins’s ships while the queen engaged the Spanish ambassador in the philosophical merits of her case. Even the cautious William Cecil was actively involved in an administrative and supervisory role in the second voyage. And the queen herself, having ventured the
Jesus
, valued at
£4,000 ($1.45 million or £782,800 today) would have been the largest single investor.
⁶

Despite Elizabeth’s posturing, there was little doubt that the slaving voyage would do someone harm. Hawkins’s new fleet of four ships was, of course, headed by the leviathan 700-ton
Jesus of Lubeck
, and in spite of her advanced years, the
Jesus
couldn’t fail to impress. With her fabulously ornate poop, four masts of Baltic oak, and formidable forecastle, the
Jesus
was the ultimate symbol of royal favor. While it was known to be in quite poor repair and of questionable seaworthiness since
The Book of Sea Causes
was published on the queen’s accession, the
Jesus
still bristled with heavy bronze and iron artillery. As the admiral of the fleet, it had the sort of devastating firepower that befitted a royal Tudor floating fortress. The second ship in the fleet was the 140-ton
Solomon
, now spruced up and ready for action since its first Caribbean voyage under Hawkins’s command. The
Solomon
’s companion ships, the 50-ton
Tiger
and new 30-ton pinnace
Swallow
, completed the fleet. All three of the companion ships belonged to Hawkins. All three were heavily armed, carrying as much artillery and shot as they could accommodate readily for their size, while leaving room for the other essentials of the voyage.

What is staggering is that the entire fleet was manned with a mere 170 mariners—far below the norm for the times. Hawkins, ever the meticulous planner, ensured that there would be ample victuals of biscuits and beef, bacon and beer, peas to help keep scurvy at bay, water, and cider. He had also ordered that their holds be filled with enough beans and peas to feed up to four hundred African slaves. There were cots for the Africans to sleep on, and clothing for them to make themselves “respectable” in the slave markets of New Spain. Every contingency had been provided for.

Still, none of the queen’s excuses or Hawkins’s preparations interested the Spanish ambassador. De Silva was nobody’s fool and an exceptionally able diplomat. Since Hawkins was no pirate, then perhaps, de Silva argued, the queen would support an all-out effort to rid the Channel of “this sea of thieves” and make the lanes safe for merchant shipping of all nations.
⁷
Elizabeth was trapped by her own words this time. On August 4, she was obliged to publish an
edict ordering all armed ships to return to port and forbade them to set sail again without a license from the queen herself. Such a license could be granted only on giving an undertaking that they would not harm England’s allies, including Spain. All well and good, de Silva reasoned, but without a good show of royal strength in Channel ports, Channel piracy would remain a threat to daily life. The ambassador confirmed the exchange of full and frank views with Elizabeth to his king, closing with the remark, “The queen, so far as her words go, shows great rectitude in matters appertaining to justice.”
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This did not, however, mean that she could succeed in subduing—or indeed wholly wished to subdue—piracy. Maritime theft had become more than a national pastime that neatly exported penniless rogues and thieves away from the towns and cities. When, or rather if, they returned, they were frequently financially better off and posed less of a threat to their fellow countrymen. A successful “adventure” spawned new “adventurers,” and so it continued. It was little wonder that Channel piracy had become the national obsession.

Philip, for his part, was greatly preoccupied with these Channel matters—both French and English piracy, as well as what action to take with his own rebellious subjects in the Low Countries. Yet he remained powerless to intervene due to his military commitments against the Turks in the Mediterranean. This is what made de Silva’s missive stand out as a shimmering hope on an ever-darkening horizon. The States, as Philip himself referred to the Low Countries, were heading toward open revolt against the king’s religious intolerance and decrees. The Dutch nobles like William of Orange and Count Egmont claimed that these decrees served only Spain and infringed on the States’ ancient privileges. The regent, Margaret of Parma, had warned the king repeatedly that it would be impossible to rule without the cooperation of the Flemish nobles, and unless something was done to remove the odious influence of Philip’s man, Cardinal de Granvelle, the States would erupt in revolt.