OCEANIC WAR WITH PORTUGAL 47 thrust concludes the argument, pricking the bubble of the Portuguese contention. If, remarks Elizabeth, the regions in question are really under the King's authority, he can settle the matter himself by forbidding their inhabitants to trade with Englishmen. With this answer all three ambassadors had to depart unsatisfied. The Queen was as good as her word, so far as it went, for there are documents showing that bonds were exacted of Guinea adventurers not to go to places occupied by the Portuguese. But the latter were left with an undoubted grievance. They had a strong sense of prescriptive right, and in addition they knew that English witnesses like Frobisher had overstated their case. For it is certain that, although there may have been no more garrisons than Frobisher alleged, there were Portuguese factors and officers resident in several negro settlements.1 In the main, however, it is true that occupation was not effective, and that the majority of the places claimed by the Portuguese were merely visited by them from time to time for purposes of trade. Failing to secure satisfaction in England, Portugal sent out warships to the Guinea coast. There was wild work there, more, probably, than has been recorded, capture of Englishmen, destructive reprisals by their friends, and an extension of hostilities to the Atlantic islands and the seas of Europe. In 1565-6, for instance, the Wynters sent out a ship which was surprised and sunk by a Portuguese armada in the River of Sestos. Although she was only of seventy tons, they claimed that the loss suffered was £7600 and secured letters of marque from the Admiralty court empowering them to take Portuguese property in home waters to that amount. It is typical of the confusion which this irregular warfare produced that one of their first captures was a ship insured in London.2 3 Out of the gold trade with Guinea sprang the slave trade inaugurated by John Hawkins and linking Guinea with the Caribbean. Old William Hawkins died in the winter of 1553-4, when his younger son John was about twenty-two years of age. John Hawkins made. several voyages in his family's ships to the Canary Islands, where he gleaned information about trade conditions in the West Indies and made friends with local merchants who could be useful to him. He is also known to have had business in northern France, whose Huguenot adventurers had long been a plague to the Spaniards in the Caribbean. He had thus an inherited and acquired interest in Atlantic enterprise. In 1560-1 he came to London and married the daughter of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of the Navy and a partner in the Guinea syndicates. With the backing of Gonson, Sir William Wynter, Sir Thomas Lodge and Sir Lionel Ducket, he made his first slaving expedition in 1 There are several references to such persons in Cotton MSS, Otho E. viii, ff. 17–41 b, an account of John Hawkins's voyage of 1567-9. * H.C.A. Examinations, no. 17, 1570, Apr. 6; Libels, 3/42, no. 106; St. Pap. Dom., Eliz. XLIX, nos. 26, 27. Cal. St. Pap. Foreign, 1553-8, no. 566. 1562-3. He went first to the Canaries, where he picked up a Spanish pilot for the Caribbean. Then he made for the Guinea coast, where his own account, printed by Hakluyt, states merely that he captured some negroes. A version compiled by the Portuguese and submitted by yet a fourth ambassador in 1568 puts a different complexion on the proceeding, alleging that between Cape Verde and Sierra Leone he took six of their ships with well over 900 negroes and much other merchandise.1 This was his first appearance on the African coast, so that he had no personal wrongs to avenge; yet, if the Portuguese are to be trusted, he acted as a belligerent from the outset. Having thus secured his cargoes of slaves, he went over to the Caribbean to sell them to the Spanish colonists. In so doing he was infringing another Portuguese monopoly, that of the sale of negroes in Spanish America. Spain, having no Guinea stations of her own, leased this right to Portuguese capitalists, by whom the price was enhanced to the detriment of the Spanish planter. Some of the ships taken by Hawkins belonged to the owners of the concession, and one of their witnesses testified to an incident which shows how the English appreciated the situation: Dixit ipse testis se ipso audiente Anglos alta voce iactasse eo Tractationem nec ad Lusitaniae regem nec adeo Tractatores pertinere, sed ad imperium Anglicum et ad Joanem Decanes [Hawkins] spectare.2 The tractatio evidently means the slaving concession. In Hispaniola Hawkins sold his negroes at a good profit. The colonial officials made no opposition, and he acted as though he expected none, for he left property behind him in the island and shipped some part of his return cargoes to Spain. When, however, the Spanish Government learned of the enterprise, it confiscated the goods and forbade the colonial officials to allow any more trade by Englishmen. There was here no question of the effectiveness of occupation, as in Guinea, for the nature of the slave trade compelled dealings in established colonies. But Hawkins could claim legality for his traffic by the terms of treaties made with Spain and the Netherlands in the time of Henry VII. In those instruments Philip's ancestors on both sides of his family had bound themselves and their successors to allow English trade in all their dominions without any limitation of the colonies, which, in the nature of things, could not have been anticipated by the negotiators. It has been generally assumed that this was the English contention; yet there seems to be no direct evidence that either Hawkins or the English Government appealed to the treaties at the time of the voyages. However, just as Henry VII himself had sometimes quoted statutes as overriding treaties, so now Philip II brushed aside the English contention, if it was made, without a moment's consideration. Foreigners' trade was positively not to be allowed in the West. 1 St. Pap. Foreign, Eliz. xcix, a book of Portuguese complaints, of 97 pages. HAWKINS IN THE CARIBBEAN 49 The Queen backed Hawkins, and Cecil did not disapprove, and the syndicate accordingly prepared a second expedition. Hawkins sailed again in 1564 with four vessels, of which one, the Jesus of Lübeck, was a ship belonging to the Queen's Navy. This time he sold his negroes in the ports of the Spanish Main, from Borburata along to Rio de la Hacha. The governors, acting on instructions, prohibited the trade, but they did so in a perfunctory manner, and yielded to a show of force by the Englishman. They even gave him certificates of good behaviour at his departure. Once again the voyage was a great success. It excited a vigorous protest from Don Guzman de Silva, the Spanish ambassador in England, and Elizabeth, whether sincerely or not, forbade Hawkins to sail again when his squadron was ready in the autumn of 1566. He remained at home, but three ships laden by him sailed from Plymouth, ostensibly for Guinea, on 9 November.1 They were away nearly a year, committed depredations about Cape Verde, and sold negroes on the Spanish Main.2 de Silva, hearing that they had been to the West Indies, asked the Queen to punish the leaders, but nothing more was heard of the affair. Hawkins sailed in person once more in the autumn of 1567 with the Jesus and the Minion, of the Navy, and four smaller vessels. He concealed his intended destination from de Silva, although not from Cecil and the Queen, who knew at the last moment that he meant to go slaving again. The syndicate consisted of the original members with the addition of Sir William Gerrard, and they had invested a greater sum than before. Hawkins, having taken or destroyed more Portuguese property than ever in Guinea, again forced a trade on the Main, although with more difficulty, and at Cartagena met with a positive refusal. Then he sailed homewards by the Gulf of Mexico, suffered damage in a storm, and put in at San Juan de Ulua, the port of New Spain, for repairs. Shortly afterwards the outward-bound Plate fleet arrived, bearing the new viceroy as a passenger. He exchanged hostages with Hawkins in pledge of friendly behaviour, but suddenly fell upon the dismantled English ships. After a severe battle all were taken or burnt except the Minion and the Judith, in which Hawkins and Francis Drake respectively made their escape. With their arrival in England in January 1569 the era of western trade was at an end, and that of private warfare and reprisals had begun, the typically Elizabethan era, to which all the irregular proceedings of the past thirty years had formed the prelude. The disaster to Hawkins was almost contemporaneous with two other events which, coupled with it, had a considerable effect upon English relations with the oceanic Powers. These were the replacement of Guzman de Silva by Guerau de Spes as Spanish ambassador 1 P.R.O., Plymouth Port Books, 1010/18. H.C.A. Libels, 3/39, nos. 22, 101; the Portuguese complaint last cited; and Cotton MSS, Otho E. viii, f. 32. CHBE I 4 in England, and the seizure by the English Government of a consignment of treasure despatched up the Channel by Philip II for the support of his army in the Netherlands. The money was shipped in a number of small craft which were waylaid by French privateers and forced to take refuge in English harbours. Elizabeth and her ministers could not keep their hands off this wealth, and after promising to pass it safely on to its destination they found a technically good excuse for retaining it. Guerau de Spes, the new Spanish ambassador, a headstrong and foolish man, put Spain in the wrong by his handling of the matter; whereas it is quite possible that de Silva, a diplomatist of tact and personal charm, would have been equal to saving the treasure and avoiding any breach of good relations. As it was, Philip arrested all English property in his dominions and Elizabeth retaliated in the same manner, getting considerably the better of the exchange. The quarrel continued, with suspension of trade, until a compromise was patched up in 1573. These and other circumstances combined to put an end to the unofficial war with Portugal. Gold-trading in Guinea was being overdone, profits were diminishing, and Portuguese armed squadrons were growing stronger, whilst slaves were no longer a lucrative cargo for the West. Drake and a new school of privateers were feeling the attraction of the Caribbean as a cruising ground, and this also relaxed some of the pressure upon Guinea. Finally, the embargo upon English commerce in Spain put a premium upon good relations with Portugal, for it was feasible to trade indirectly with Seville through Lisbon. Accordingly in 1569 England became more friendly towards Portugal and began to prohibit Guinea expeditions, which thenceforward became less common for several years. Negotiations for peace with Portugal began in 1571, but Elizabeth, although not anxious to press the matter, would never formally yield on the question of effective occupation; and in the end nothing was diplomatically achieved but a treaty of mutual abstention from hostilities in 1576. The Guinea question was thus partly suspended, but not settled. As the reign of Elizabeth advanced, England was steering into very troubled waters, and the question of naval efficiency became vital. A list of the king's ships made a year after the death of Henry VIII shows that there were then fifty-three vessels in the fleet, twenty-five of which were of more than 200 tons. Under Edward VI the Navy was well cared for, but under Mary there was a decline in efficiency, although no great falling-off in paper strength. The total number of ships indeed decreased, but those which dropped out were for the most part of small size; and at the close of Mary's reign a considerable programme of new building was in process of being carried out. The guardians of Edward VI continued the reforms in the administration which Henry VIII had inaugurated. They laid the foundations of the building and repairing yard at Chatham, and they took steps THE TUDOR NAVY 51 to place the victualling on a more satisfactory footing under a permanent surveyor, instead of relying, as previously, upon emergency contracts made as occasion arose. During the campaigns against France and Scotland, the fleet did what was required of it, and it is worth noting that in the winter of 1550-1 a Channel guard of twelve ships was in commission, a practice which Henry VIII had made the rule in war time. But there was another side to the question. Until quite modern times dishonesty and shirking of duty have been the constant bane of the civil services of England and most other nations. Honest and efficient administration has been the exception rather than the rule. There are indications that this canker was at work in the Admiralty of Edward VI, and there is proof that it was in that of his successor. In 1555, five ships of the Navy, aggregating 1570 tons, were sold for a total of £88, one of them being the Grand Mistress of 450 tons, built in 1545, and now, when ten years old, fetching £35. Here is either incompetence or rascality, and probably a combination of the two. The possible effect of the quarrel with the Hansa, a dispute which reached the stage of nonintercourse in the summer of 1557, has already been mentioned; and in the winter of 1557-8 no Channel guard was afloat in the narrow seas, and the Earl of Rutland, trying to save Calais with reinforcements conveyed in fishing boats, was easily beaten off by the French covering squadron. One result of the Calais disaster was an outburst of naval construction, which in 1558–9 added several good warships to the fleet. But with the conclusion of peace at Cateau-Cambrésis the effort died down, and for the first ten years of her reign Elizabeth barely maintained the Navy at the strength at which she had found it. There is, however, some evidence of better administration and of an increased interest in naval problems. The Queen claimed that she alone of European princes made an effort to hunt down pirates. She was not very successful in so doing, but she did maintain a Channel police force fairly continuously on duty. Cecil kept an eye on the Navy, and was partially successful in checking the worst abuses. But in 1569 the Navy was not by any means fit for the tasks which it was to perform twenty years later. An immense work of organisation had yet to be undertaken, and a presage of that work may be seen in the arrival in Plymouth Sound of the two battered ships escaped from the carnage of San Juan de Ulua. For it was that day of treachery and murder which gave to the Navy a peerless fighting admiral in Francis Drake, and a first-class administrator in John Hawkins. Looking back over the maritime record from 1485 to 1569, it is possible to frame some generalisations. During that period England worked for and secured the chief control of the old trade routes from 1 See Oppenheim, M., Hist. of the Administration of the Royal Navy, and Corbett, J. S., Drake and the Tudor Navy, vol. 1. |