The King's City

by Don Jordan

  Lacking Davenant’s technically advanced facilities, Killigrew planned his own crowd-pleasing novelty. On 8 December, one month after their first production, the King’s Men produced Shakespeare’s Othello. A prologue written by the actor, playwright and panegyrist Thomas Jordan announced to the audience that they were about to see something fresh, something that would correct a long-standing theatrical defect:

  Out women are defective, and so sized

  You’d think they were some of the guard disguised;

  For, to speak truth, men act, that are between

  Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen:

  With bones so large and nerve so incompliant,

  When you call Desdemona, enter giant.

  But, said the prologue, this would not be the case tonight:

  I come, unknown to any of the rest.

  To tell the news; I saw the lady drest —

  The woman plays to-day; mistake me not,

  No man in gown or page in petticoat.

  And so the audience saw a woman play the main female role. The name of the actress who played Desdemona is unknown, but it was probably either Ann Marshall or Margaret Hughes, Killigrew’s new female talents.

  Before 1660, adolescent boys or young men had played female roles on the English stage. This did not mean that women were never seen on any stage. The private masques of the royal court were often graced by the participation of female members of the court and occasionally by the Queen. As we have seen, on at least one occasion in 1657 a woman acted in one of Davenant’s semi-underground opera productions. Yet the skill of the female impersonator was in general accepted and lauded. With the Restoration, the sexually ambiguous Edward Kynaston was still young enough at twenty to play female roles, in which he was highly praised for his loveliness and ability to evoke emotion in the audience – ‘a compleat stage beauty’ according to the Duke’s Company prompter John Downes.5

  Since female members of visiting French companies had previously been seen on the London stage, the move away from an all-male cast was not quite revolutionary. Nor did female impersonation vanish with Killigrew’s innovation: actors like the androgynous Kynaston continued to dress up and play the opposite sex for a few years yet. But from Killigrew’s Othello onwards their days in drag were numbered. With his introduction of female actors into the mainstream theatre, Killigrew gambled that in his rivalry with Davenant, he who won the race would win all.

  Various reasons have been put forward for tlie innovation in the autumn of 1660. One was that after the eighteen-year ban on theatres in London there were insufficient numbers of adolescent boys trained to play female roles, while the young adult leads who had played such parts had become middle-aged. Another was that the presence of women on the stage would help to refine the otherwise bawdy aspects of the theatre. There was even a clause written into the royal warrants awarded to Davenant and Killigrew stating they had the right to put women on the stage for this purpose. The real reason, however, seems to be more earthy. Charles had seen female actors in France and he wanted to see them in London. Women were put on the stage to provide the explicit ingredient of sexuality. Apart from enjoying the actresses’ professional art, theatregoers developed considerable interest in their private lives.

  Davenant’s new theatre at Lisle’s Court, fitted out with its elaborate wings and shutters, was months away from readiness. In the meantime, his players continued to perform at the preCivil War theatre in Salisbury Court. When his new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields opened eight months after his rival’s, his instinct for providing spectacle was proved right – his theatre was an instant success. The theatre itself was a blend of two types, combining the thrust stage of the public Jacobean playhouse and the proscenium arch stage invented by Inigo Jones for court masques. Given that Davenant had little money and was stepping into untested territory, it is to his great credit that he took such pains to give the London crowd a novel multi-sensory experience. From the start it was clear that the older man was more ambitious, seeking to move the art of theatre forward. This was hardly surprising, for Killigrew played little part in the running of his theatre, leaving his business largely in the hands of his players and stage managers.

  With the reopening of the playhouses, Londoners – or at least the tiny proportion of the city’s population the two new theatres could cater for – rediscovered the delights of theatre. Of course, some of the belle monde had experience during the interregnum of playhouses and opera houses on the continent, but for the majority of even the most fashionable, this was a pleasure to be learned, or learned anew.

  There has been a good deal of discussion about which sections of society actually frequented the theatre in the years following the Restoration. Some theatre historians see it as having been essentially a court audience. Pepys, however, makes several references to rowdy audiences made up of apprentices. Even allowing for a good cross-section of society, few could ever have seen the performances either at Lincoln’s Inn or Vere Street and their subsequent replacement houses. It has been estimated that these early houses each seated somewhere between 400 and 600.6 With a population of 385,000 in the city, this meant that between one in a thousand and one in six hundred Londoners could see any one performance. Yet from this small base, Davenant and Killigrew, vying with one another for the best plays, the latest theatrical innovations, the most fashionable audiences, the fullest houses, and, of course, the greatest profit, were to change the history of the English stage. The rivalry between the companies would colour London life during the first two decades of the King’s reign.

  In an era before the duopoly of Killigrew and Davenant, London had boasted nine or ten theatres at any one time. The writing talent to sustain this number of playhouses had long since retired or died, so their plays were dusted down and rewritten for the new era. The comedies of Fletcher and Beaumont became favourites. The works of Shakespeare did not escape being rewritten; they were often given new endings and, almost invariably, musical interludes. Soon, the new theatres attracted a new generation of writing talent, but the works from the high point of the English Renaissance provided the major part of the repertoire.

  Although the general population of London would never have set foot in either theatre, thanks to the city’s gossip sheets they knew who the stars of the playhouses were, and could follow their careers.† A star system was thus born. Killigrew’s company featured the veteran actors Charles Hart and Major Michael Mohun, soon to be joined by the new wave of female actors including Elizabeth Kncpp and Nell Gwyn. Davenant had to begin with lesser lights but, along with the early services of Thomas Betterton, was soon able to offer Marv Saunderson (after the pair’s marriage, she was often referred to as Betterton), and later again the talented dancer Mary, or Moll, Davies.

  Restoration theatre was set to become an expression of Caroline culture, with the theatre a form of public relations platform for the kind of society Charles encouraged to flourish inside and outside the court. Charles wanted his court to mirror that of France, with style, licentiousness and wit taking centre stage. So completely did the theatre become enmeshed with high society that many aristocratic wits – those who Marvell called ‘the Merry Gang’ – took up writing. Soon the professional writers had to compete with the likes of the Duke of Buckingham, the King’s childhood friend, the irrepressible rake Charles Sedley and others. The loose morals soon to be displayed on the stage wordd reflect of those of the royal court itself. The theatres sent out a clear signal that the days of Puritanism were over.

  As the rivalry between Davenant and Killigrew settled into a peculiar relationship foisted on them by the King, another, far more serious rivalry encouraged by Charles was about to enter a new phase. This was the old rivalry between the English and the Dutch for the riches of international trade. As 1660 drew to a close, the Company of Royal Adventurers made preparations for its first exploratory voyage to West Africa. The Duke of York made good his promise of help from the Royal Navy. He lo
aned the company not only five ships but also one of its most capable captains, Robert Holmes. At the age of thirty-eight, Holmes was vastly experienced and had a reputation for brilliance and troublemaking in equal measure. He was just the sort of man to lead a force to Africa with the intention of taking on the Dutch and relieving them of some of their profitable trading.

  Holmes, born in Mallow, West County Cork in Ireland, was a professional soldier and a close confederate of Prince Rupert. Having fought with the Prince in the civil war and later on the continent, Holmes switched to seafaring when Rupert took command of a Royalist fleet during the Civil War, and demonstrated an ability to command warships. He had served under Rupert during his piratical campaigns off Africa in the early 1650s. Quarrelsome and abrasive, but also charismatic and capable, Holmes was the epitome of the Cavalier officer – brave and adventurous but difficult and ill-disciplined. Rupert planned to accompany Holmes on the African voyage – a last hurrah for the old comrades and a final adventure for a military prince without a war to fight. The Duke of York put his foot down; his able cousin was not going to go careering off to Africa and possibly get himself killed.

  In early January 1661, Holmes’s squadron sailed from the Thames. Much of England’s foreign policy at this time was bound up with London’s view of international trade. There had long been a view in England that the Dutch had too great a slice of world trade. Cromwell had proposed in 1651 that the Dutch should have rights to Africa and Asia, in return for helping England to conquer all of the Americas by taking on the Spanish. The Dutch view was that free trade was the best way forward. This was precisely what England did not want. The Dutch had flourished under free trade to the detriment of England, and so negotiations broke down. Shortly afterwards Cromwell declared war and a bruising encounter in 1652 ended with the collapse of the Dutch economy, although the trade dispute between the two nations was no nearer to resolution. The two countries had remained at loggerheads over trade rights ever since.

  When Charles II took over the reins at Whitehall, relations were no better, owing both to his animosity to the Dutch Protestant ruling elite and to his support for London’s craving for trade supremacy. Charles’s policy was to revisit the trade impasse. Though the Dutch economy had recovered since the previous war and the navy had been rebuilt, Charles’s aim was to take on the Dutch with a direct assault on one specific part of their trade – their long-established trading system in West Africa, from where they dealt in commodities and slaves.

  This was not to say that England had no experience of trading in West Africa. Since Tudor times, the gold that had gone into English coinage had come from Guinea‡ The intention now, though, was not to trade for small quantities to make golden guineas, but to search for the source and take as much gold as possible. Holmes’s instructions, dictated to him before he left London by the Duke of York’s secretary, William Coventry, were to find the mountain of gold described so vividly by Rupert and to assist the new Company of Royal Adventurers’ agents in the region. What this latter instruction meant was not spelled out. Holmes took it to mean he could take a tough approach to the Dutch presence in Gambia.

  The fleet was supplied with barrels and sacks to fill with gold or ‘the richest sands’ (presumably sand bearing gold dust). As an afterthought, the instructions stipulated that if there was any room left for extra freight they should bring back ‘such negroes. . . you possibly can’. This was the first reference to slavery in the history of the company. It was an augury for the future.

  Having made good speed, Holmes’s flotilla reached the Dutch-held island of Goree in the Cape Verde Isles, off the African coast, by the end of January. Holmes appears to have bristled with aggression. According to the Dutch governor, the English commander told him curtly that the King of England claimed the exclusive right of trade and navigation all the way from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch, who had operated in this immense stretch of territory for in excess of two hundred years, had six months to pack up and be gone.

  Over the next four weeks the flotilla anchored off the Guinea coast while Holmes harassed and intimidated Dutch traders, forcing the surrender of the Dutch fort of St Andreas on the Gambia River, and ferreting out potential allies for England among the local figures of power. His journal speaks of caressing and presenting the natives whose friendship we had almost lost’ because of the Dutch.

  Despite the best efforts of the expedition, no gold was found. The climate proved inhospitable and it is unlikely that Holmes carried out any mining. Having failed to discover (or, as some suspected, to look for) any gold, Holmes headed back to London, bringing what produce he could, along with a large ape. (Samuel Pepys wondered if the ape might be the product of a female baboon and a man, and might therefore be open to instruction.) Admiralty papers record that on one of the returning ships, the Amity, thirty-eight of its crew died while they were in Gambia or en route home. We do not know the mortality rate on board the other vessels. On return to London the expedition landed goods including ivory and hides that were sold for £1567.8s;7 the cost of the voyage has been estimated at between £4000 and £4500.8 Pepys, always a man for a reckoning, noted that Holmes afterwards had a lavish lifestyle. Perhaps more goods were brought back than were accounted for.

  Further voyages to West Africa proved an additional drain on the company’s finances, without any new income. The company had not made a great start. Its charter, granted by Charles, stipulated that he was to receive two-thirds of any gold discovered. The other third, minus expenses, was to be divided between the remaining shareholders. As things stood after Holmes’s first expedition, such fractions hardly mattered.

  Amazingly, the voyage made Holmes’s name. While failing to make any money, he had demonstrated that the Dutch could be taken on in their established trading grounds. This was exactly w’hat Charles wished to know. Holmes was presented to the King and soon boasted to Pepys about how well he got on in palace circles. ‘He seems to be very well acquainted with the King’s mind and with all the several factions at court,’ wrote Pepys in his diary. ‘Being a cunning fellow’, and one (by his own confession to me) that can put on two several faces and look his enemies in the face with as much love as his friends. But good God, what an age is this, that a man cannot live without playing the knave.’9

  Holmes’s first voyage appears to have caused a rethink on how West Africa might be made to turn a profit. Gold became a secondary consideration. Taking a leaf from the Dutch traders’ book, it was decided that slave trading was the way forward. The English had been carrying on slavery for many years, though on a small scale. Now it would become the major policy of the monopoly company, rather than a matter for individual ship owners, traders and merchants trading illegally outside the company’s monopoly.

  The point had been a long time coming. From the time that sugar was introduced into Barbados around 1640 it had been recognised that slavery was the means by which it might be exploited. The economic basis for sugar planting became a matter of debate and discussion. At least one book published in die mid-itkfos on Barbados was part travelogue and part self-help manual for the would-be sugar planter, explaining everything from how to buy a plantation, to how many slaves would be required per acre and what profits could be made.10

  Sugar spread rapidly to Jamaica and the Leeward Islands. By the time of the Restoration it was outpacing tobacco in terms of value as the chief commodity from the colonies. Slave trading provided a growing How of labour for the sugar industry. London merchants and gentlemen with money to invest were now anxious to support the sugar industry in the West Indies. New plantations were opening up and long-established ones increasing in size. A slave workforce was the way forward, copying the tested Dutch model in Brazil. Slavery was not new for the English, but the trade had not been run in any orderly or large-scale manner.

  Statistics recently compiled on slave voyages give some idea of the rate at which the trade was increasing. According to the ambitious Trans-At
lantic Slave Trade Database at Emory University, the numbers of slaves shipped from England increased sharply during the middle of the seventeenth century. The database records the transporting of no slaves from England between 1646 and 1650. Yet during this period slave ownership grew quickly in Barbados and other islands in order to keep up with the market for sugar. It is hard to believe that all the slaves arriving in the West Indies during this period of rapid expansion landed only from Dutch or Portuguese vessels. Many of the planters were known to import their own workforces. For this reason, the statistics in the Slave Trade Database must be viewed as incomplete, omitting at least some voyages commencing in England but not at the time listed as primarily slave voyages.

  Bearing that in mind, the figures for the next five-year period, from 1651 to 1655, still show a remarkable increase from zero African slaves shipped to 1755 embarked on ships whose voyages originated in London. The reason for this rapid growth was the British takeover of Jamaica in 1650, with its attendant stress on slave-produced sugar. In the following five years (1656–60) the number of African slaves embarked on ships out of London jumped to 3625.11

  This then was the situation when Charles II came to the throne. He and those around him could see that there was room for growth in the slave trade allied to the growth in overseas colonies.

  Outside London the Company of Royal Adventurers’ new monopoly was unwelcome. Many attempts were made to break it, some successfully. A ship from Exeter took on thirty-five slaves in West Africa. Another 315 were loaded onto a ship from Bristol, while 335 were embarked on ships from other English ports. The fact that these numbers were so low signified that London’s monopoly held remarkably well. During this time, Dutch opposition remained an impediment to English trade in Africa. This would soon change as London became a slavetrading city to rival the Spanish and Portuguese. Over the next five years, 1661–5, the English and the Dutch fought campaigns against one another off West Africa, and London-based ships carried 10,049 African slaves across the Atlantic.12 In fifteen years, therefore, London’s slave trade increased almost sixfold, and in the first five years of Charles’s reign by two-thirds. This next stage in opening up the African slave trade to English ships would again involve the irrepressible Captain Holmes.