The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England

by Kathy Lynn Emerson

  Piracy Under the Stuarts

  Elizabeth I’s ongoing war with Spain had brought about a temporary decline of piracy in English waters. Privateering in the West Indies had become phenomenally profitable, drawing potential pirates away, while at the same time the increased presence of royal ships gathered to defend England had cut pirates off from their former havens. When King James I came to the throne, he outlawed privateering by a proclamation of June 23, 1603. The number of cases of piracy immediately increased. By 1608 at least 500 pirate ships were active at sea. As had been the case in Elizabeth’s time, the very officials charged with capturing pirates were sometimes in league with them. Sir Richard Hawkins, appointed in 1603 as vice admiral of Devon, was tried, convicted, and imprisoned in 1609 for receiving, aiding, and comforting notorious pirates and taking bribes to free them.

  Thames River Pirates

  The Thames was navigable to merchant ships for sixty miles, all the way to London Bridge, which put it under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty. Between 1600 and 1640, fifty-one of eighty-six indictments for piracy committed on the English coast concerned crimes committed on the Thames. Over 700 individuals were indicted for piracy not restricted to the coast.

  Land Pirates

  Land pirates were those who received stolen pirate goods or provided supplies to pirate ships. Until 1700 the statutes on punishments for pirates did not include accessories. From 1603 to 1640, only seventeen persons were indicted for harboring pirates or receiving stolen goods from them. Seven were women.

  North Atlantic Pirates

  Piracy in the North Atlantic was at its peak from 1608 to 1614 and operated out of bases in Morocco and Ireland. Many of these pirates practiced their trade for a few years and then surrendered under a general pardon and were allowed to keep all the loot they’d accumulated. Henry Mainwaring (1587-1643) was one of these, and he wrote a detailed account of pirate life after he was pardoned in 1616. He presented a copy of his book to James I in 1618. Mainwaring had taken a degree at Oxford and briefly studied law at the Inner Temple before he turned pirate in 1613. He was admiral of a pirate fleet before his surrender. Two years after his pardon, he was knighted, and by the end of his career, he had served as Lieutenant of Dover Castle, M.P., and Naval Commissioner.

  Mediterranean Pirates

  Another distinct group of pirates was based in the Mediterranean, primarily at Tunis, and enjoyed a heyday from 1592 to 1609. These English renegades were in league with “the Turk.” To “turn Turk” was to convert to Islam in order to increase opportunities for advancement among the Barbary pirates, those operating from the western part of North Africa (the Barbary Coast). In the seventeenth century, they moved out into the Atlantic, raided in the English Channel, and once even landed in Cornwall, attacking a church during services and taking sixty prisoners. A sallee-man or sallee rover was any pirate ship operating out of the port of Sallee on the Barbary Coast.

  In the 1620s and 1630s, English piracy was in decline. Most of the raiders were Dunkirkers (French), Biscayners (Spanish), and Turkish rovers from Algiers and Sallee. Barbary pirates plagued English shipping throughout the reign of Charles I. Typical of their activities was the attack on the Little David in 1636. A London woolen draper had financed the ship to transport some fifty men and boys and seven women to Virginia as servants. Thirty-five miles off Land’s End, the ship was taken by a sallee-man. The captured passengers were sold into slavery. The English women brought especially high prices.

  The Sea Dogs

  In 1569, Queen Elizabeth sent privateers to prey upon Dutch shipping in an effort to sever communication between the Netherlands and their Spanish allies. The spoils were sold openly at Dover, Plymouth, and La Rochelle. Spain’s practice of sending regular treasure fleets home from the Caribbean soon drew these “Sea Dogs” to that region. The combination of a violent annual hurricane season and powerful trade winds had forced the Spanish into a predictable schedule of sailing dates. All English privateers had to do was lie in wait and attack ships carrying gold and silver bullion, pearls, emeralds, and other valuable commodities, including sugar. In 1591 a Spanish spy in London reported that because the privateers had been so successful, sugar was less expensive in England than it was in the Indies from which it had come.

  By late in the sixteenth century, privateering had become a joint-stock business. Money was subscribed by individuals who received “bills of adventure” representing their stock. When the ship returned, each investor could claim a percentage of the profits. A number of London merchants formed syndicates to send out expeditions. Records list seventy-six English expeditions to the Caribbean, involving 235 vessels, between April 1585 and March 1603. One investor, Sir John Watts, later a founder of the East India Company, equipped squadrons of privateers to send to the West Indies in 1588, 1590, 1591, 1592, 1594, and 1597.

  Not all voyages were successful, but enough of them produced spectacular returns to keep investors interested. The greatest prize of the century was taken off the Azores in 1592 by a fleet under the command of Sir John Burgh. “The Great Carrack” was Portuguese, the Madre de Dios, returning from the East Indies. Queen Elizabeth was one of the investors in this venture, which had been organized by Sir Walter Ralegh. She’d put up £3,000 and two ships. The earl of Cumberland invested £19,000 and Ralegh invested £34,000. The Madre de Dios carried everything from diamonds to Chinese silk. Even after heavy pilfering by crewmen before she was brought into port in Dartmouth, the cargo was valued at £150,000. The queen received £60,000, Cumberland was awarded £36,000, and Ralegh received the same amount, even though his investment had been much greater.

  The English not only attacked treasure ships, they also plundered Spanish colonies. In 1595 a Spanish official wrote that “corsairs . . . lie in wait on all the sailing routes to the Indies, particularly the courses converging on this city of Santo Domingo . . . . If this continues, either this island will be depopulated or they will compel us to do business with them rather than with Spain.”

  In the seventeenth century, English privateers operated in the East as well as the West. They took ships off India, Java, and Sumatra. One privateer, the Sea Horse, operating near Madagascar, was personally financed by King Charles.

  PASSENGER SHIPS

  Crossing the English Channel

  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the English name for the English Channel was the Narrow Seas, although on maps it is usually labeled the British Sea (and the North Sea is usually the German Ocean). The French called the channel la Manche (the Sleeve). From its western entrance to the far side of the Strait of Dover is just under 350 nautical miles.

  The ordinary way to reach France or the Netherlands was by packet boat. These vessels, usually around sixty tons, had single decks and cabins in their high sterns. They were in regular service between Dover and Calais and Dover and Nieuport. The usual cost to Calais was five shillings but various charges and gratuities could more than double that, especially when ferries had to be taken at both ends (these vessels did not dock). On the other hand, in 1579, John Chapman paid only two shillings to get from Dover to Calais in the company of “Frenchmen and English merchants.”

  The time it took to cross from England to the Continent depended upon point of origin and weather conditions and might amount to days, even weeks. In 1591, Fynes Moryson sailed from Leigh-on-Thames. He didn’t land in the Netherlands until ten days later. In perfect conditions a ship could sail the seven leagues from Dover to Calais (a little over 20 miles) in two hours. It was as likely, however, to take thirty-six hours.

  In October 1514, Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's sister and the new bride of the French king, Louis XII, left Dover for Boulogne with a flotilla of fourteen ships. A quarter of the way across, the convoy was scattered by a storm. The bride’s ship managed to reach its destination but was unable to make a safe landing. Mary was loaded into a rowing boat, which brought her within wading distance of the shore. Sir Christopher Garnish then carried the new
French queen the rest of the way to dry land in his arms. Queen Henrietta Maria’s crossing, from Boulogne to Dover in June 1625, took twenty-four hours. Another account records that a trip from Dover to Boulogne required eight hours hard rowing. To reach the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, row barges with crews of sixty transported the courtiers and ladies.

  The “Great Migration”

  Between 1630 and 1642, 377,600 persons left England to settle in the Caribbean, the Chesapeake Bay region, and New England. To meet the demand for passenger vessels, all kinds of ships were pressed into service. Converted wine traders made the most desirable transports, since they had a sweeter smell and tight caulking. On any ship, however, passengers paid healthy fares (£5 per person and £3 per ton of goods) to endure primitive, cramped conditions during an eight- to twelve-week crossing.

  Passenger ships leaving ports in the English Channel needed a constant east wind to take them out into the Atlantic. Prevailing winds in the Channel are from the southwest, which meant that failure to take advantage of the right combination of wind and tide could result in weeks of delay. Passengers stayed on board their ship while they waited, because anyone who went ashore risked being left behind if conditions changed abruptly. It made no difference who they were. Even one of Governor John Winthrop’s sons missed the boat and was left behind in England when the Puritans set sail for Massachusetts Bay in 1630.

  Ships carrying passengers to America brought back cargo and mail and almost always found return passengers waiting at the docks. A number of prominent colonists made several trips hack and forth in order to settle land-claim disputes and recruit more colonists, but some English men and women decided that life in the New World was not all the promoters had promised. Neither the perils of the “downhill” voyage nor the outbreak of the English Civil War could dissuade these disillusioned souls from returning home.

  SOME SAILING TIMES

  From

  To

  Number of days at sea

  Dartmouth, England

  Isle of Wight, England

  12

  Weymouth, England

  Barbados

  40*

  England

  Sierra Leone

  73

  Plymouth, England

  Cape Cod (summer)**

  51

  Plymouth, England

  Cape Cod (autumn) **

  66

  Cape Verde

  Brazil

  54

  Cape Florida

  Scilly Isles

  23

  Penobscot Bay

  the Azores

  12

  New England

  Dartmouth, England

  32

  *This was excellent time. The trip usually lasted several months.

  **This was by the southern route to the Canaries on northeast trade winds, then west using the southeast trade winds and the North Atlantic currents. The entire trip covered 5,420 nautical miles.

  DEFINITIONS

  astrolabe: Either the astrolabe or the cross-staff could measure latitude. They were used by early mariners together with the sun or the Pole Star and declination tables.

  backstaff: This English quadrant, or sea-quadrant, alleged to have been invented by John Davys, was similar to the modern sextant (developed in 1730) and was used to fix a ship’s latitude. One sighted with one’s back to the sun.

  buccaneer: A term which was not in use before the “golden age of piracy” (1690-1725). In particular, buccaneers were pirates who used the island of Tortuga as a base of operations.

  Cinque Ports: This term dates from the reign of Henry II and originally referred to five ports: Dover, Hastings, Hythe, Romney, and Sandwich. Later, other nearby ports, in particular Winchelsea and Rye, were included in the Cinque Ports Confederacy, which enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the early fourteenth century. In the mid-thirteenth century, a Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was appointed by the sovereign. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, most of these harbors were so filled in with silt that they could not be used for the newer, larger ships of the day. In 1565 there were sixty-four navigable creeks and landing places on the Essex coast. The most important were Harwich, Colchester, and Maldon.

  compass: Early compasses were divided into thirty-two points, each of eleven and a quarter degrees. Unfortunately, the needle swung wildly in rough weather.

  corsair: Originally a privateersman of the Mediterranean, especially the Barbary Coast. By 1590 the term was applied to any pirate or privateering ship.

  dead reckoning: A means of calculating the distance sailed in an east-west direction. The course and estimated speed of the ship were recorded every half-hour on a wooden traverse board, which had eight holes drilled along each of the primary compass points, each hole corresponding to a half-hourly course reading.

  East Indies: All land east of Africa.

  Indies: The West Indies.

  league: Although generally equated with a distance of three miles, contemporary manuals indicate that the Spanish marine league was 2.82 nautical miles. (One nautical mile equaled 1.15 land miles.) There was general agreement that sixty nautical miles equaled one degree of latitude and that seven leagues was a respectable day’s sail.

  letters of marque: Naval commissions or authorizations to carry on naval warfare issued by a belligerent nation to the owners of a privately owned armed vessel (a privateer). Pirates carried on naval warfare without benefit of letters of marque and sailed against all flags rather than in service of their sovereign.

  Lord High Admiral: Head of the royal navy and a member of the Privy Council. The office became a permanent post in 1406 and paid £200 per annum, but the Lord Admiral was also entitled to claim all captured pirate booty.

  mariner: Any person employed on a ship, but most commonly an able-bodied seaman. At any given time in the sixteenth century, there were only about 5,000 experienced mariners in England. No experience at sea was necessary to become an ordinary seaman. The term sailor was used for any member of a ship’s company below the rank of an officer.

  on the account: When a man said he’d been “on the account,” he meant he had been engaging in piracy.

  Spanish Main: Coastal regions of Spanish America in the Caribbean from the Lesser Antilles to the Yucatan. This area was the chief theater of operations for the Elizabethan privateers.

  SIGNIFICANT SEAFARING EVENTS

  1496 First dry dock in England built at Portsmouth.

  1497 John Cabot claims North America for England.

  1533 Triangulation first used in mapmaking.

  1536 Punishments for pirates established by statute.

  1536 Lighthouse near Newcastle financed by charging passing ships a fee of 2d. for English vessels and 4d. for foreigners (the earliest lighthouse seems to have been at Winchelsea in 1261).

  1555 Muscovy Company chartered.

  1569 Gerhardus Mercator publishes the first accurate chart to enable mariners to adjust distances at sea.

  1580 Sir Francis Drake circumnavigates the globe.

  1588 Spanish Armada defeated.

  1589 Publication of Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation.

  1594 400 Spaniards land in Cornwall to burn two towns.

  1608 Binoculars (a Dutch invention) first used at sea.

  1620 Private lighthouses banned until 1640.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Cressy, David. Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

  Firstbrook, Peter. The Voyage of the Matthew: John Cabot and the Discovery of North America. San Francisco, CA: Bay Books & Tapes, 1997.

  Miller, Helen Hill. Captains from Devon: The Great Elizabethan Seafarers who won the Oceans for England. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 1985.

  Senior, C.H. A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in its Heyday (1603-1640). New York: Crane, 1976
.

  Williams, Neville. The Sea Dogs: Privateers, Plunder and Piracy in the Elizabethan Age. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.

  PART THREE: RENAISSANCE SOCIETY

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: EDUCATION, SECULAR & RELIGIOUS

  At age five a gentleman’s son began to learn to read with the aid of a hornbook, a wooden tablet with a handle. Pasted onto the wood and covered with a thin sheet of transparent horn was a printed sheet containing the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer in English. In the early seventeenth century, Sir Hugh Platt invented alphabet blocks to aid in teaching letters.

  Children used the catechism, psalters, and the Bible as textbooks at an early stage in their education. Non-religious reading material included translations of Aesop and books retelling the Robin Hood and King Arthur stories. In addition, there was an oral tradition of nursery rhymes and fairy tales, many of which now began to be written down. “Tom Thumb” was an old favorite by the time it was first published in 1621 and there were medieval versions of “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Cinderella.”

  Reading was taught before writing, and although it has been estimated that only 30% of all men and only 10% of all women could write their own names at the outbreak of the Civil War, many more than that could read. Girls were often taught to read (along with sewing and housewifery) but not to write.

  LITERACY