CHAP XII January, 1563, Sir William Cecil stated that in the one 1563 year then last past, twenty-six English subjects had been Twenty-six burnt to death in different parts of Spain.1 Englishmen burnt in Spain. Scene at But the stake was but one of many forms of judicial murder. The following story indicates with some detail both the careless audacity of the English, and the treatment to which they were exposed :-During the war between England and France, on the 15th of November, 1563, a fleet of eight English merchantmen, homeward bound from the Levant, were lying in the harbour at Gibraltar, when a French privateer full of men and heavily armed, came in and anchored within speaking distance of them. The sailors on both sides were amusing themselves with exchanging the usual discourtesies in word and gesture, when the vicar of the Holy Office, with a boatload of priests came off to the Frenchman; and whether it was that the presence of their natural foe excited the English, or that they did not know what those black figures were, and intended merely to make a prize of an enemy's vessel, three or four of the ships slipped their cables, opened fire, and attempted to run the Frenchman down. The Spaniards, indignant at the breach of the peace of the harbour, and the insult to the Inquisition, began to fire from the castle; the holy men fled terrified; a party of English who were on shore were arrested; and the alcalde sent a body of harbour police to arrest others who were hanging in their boats about the French vessel. The police on coming up were received with a shower of arrows; the officer in command was wounded; and they were carried off as prisoners to the English ships, where At the beginning of 1563, foreigners residing in London were forbidden to hear mass in their private houses. The Bishop of Aquila re monstrated, and Cecil answered, 'que en España han quemado este año viente y seis Ingleses.-De Quadra to Philip, January, 1563. MS. Simancas. they were detained till their comrades on shore were CHAP XII restored. The next morning a second effort to seize or sink the Frenchman was prevented by the guns of the fortress. The English had given up the game and were sailing out of the bay, when Alvarez de Vasar happened to come round with a strong force from Cadiz. The ships, after a fruitless attempt at flight, were seized and confiscated; the ensigns were torn down and trailed reversed over the Spanish admiral's stern; and the captains and men, two hundred and forty in all, were condemned as galley slaves. They forwarded a memorial to Chaloner at Madrid, telling their own story, and praying him to intercede for them. 'Ye served some angry saint,' Chaloner wrote in answer, so unadvisedly to take such an enterprise in hand. in these parts where our nation findeth so short courtesy ; and ye played the part of wavering, inconstant heads, having once begun a matter to suffer yourselves so vilely to be taken, which if ye had held together I think ye needed not. Most of all I accuse the wonted fault of all merchants of our nation who go about every man to shift for himself, and care not for their fellows so they make sure work for themselves."2 Although the treatment of our people,' the ambassador wrote in relating the matter to Elizabeth, has been most cruel and rigorous, yet I must say that a great part thereof has proceeded of the counterdealing of our adventurers, or rather pirates, during these wars, having spoiled and misused the King's subjects very 1 Hugh Tipton to Sir Thomas Chaloner, December 8, 1563.—Spanish MSS. 2 Sir T. Chaloner to the merchants and mariners taken at Gibraltar, March 3, 1564.-Spanish MSS. Rolls House. 1563 1563 CHAP XII much. These men would not have remained by the heels had not other English adventurers by force broken the jurisdiction of this King's ports, and taken Frenchmen out of their havens; so at last when they chanced to catch any such in their gripe, they determined to make them an example for the rest.' of English An example they did make of them, or rather of their own wilful cruelty. England and Spain were nominally at peace; and the fault of the eight ships in those lawless times had a thousand precedents to bespeak lenient punishment. The ambassador interceded, entreated, explained; Philip and Alva listened with grave courtesy ; and a commission was appointed to examine into the cirIll-usage cumstances at Gibraltar. But the investigation was prisoners in studiously deliberate while the treatment of the prisoners was as studiously cruel. Nine months after the capture there were but eighty survivors out of the two hundred and forty; the rest had died of cold, hunger, and hard labour. Then at last, after humiliating apologies from Chaloner, with excuses founded on the barbarous nature of sailors, occasioned by their lives on so barbarous an element as the sea,' the famished wretches that were left alive were allowed to return to England. Spain. The King of Spain had been already warned of the danger of provoking the spirit of English sailors. 'Our mariners,' said Sir Thomas Chamberlain to him, on his first return from the Netherlands, 'have no want of stomach to remember a wrong offered them, which if 1 Chaloner to the Queen, June 18, 1564.-Spanish MSS. Rolls House. 2Se debe considerar la poca discrecion que ordinariamente suelen tener hombres marineros, los quales por la mas parte platicando con un elemento tan barbaro como es la Mar, suelen á ser tan bien de costumbres barbaros y inquietos, no guardando aquellos respetos que suelen tener otros hombres mas politicos.-Chaloner to Philip, Oct., 1564.—MS. Ibid. they shall hereafter seek to revenge with recompensing CHAP XII one wrong with another when the matter should least be 1563 thought of, the Queen of England must be held excused." As the scene at Gibraltar was but one of many like it; as the cruel treatment of the crews was but a specimen of the manner in which the Holy Office thought proper to deal with Englishmen in every port in Spain, so is the following illustration of Chamberlain's warning to Philip but a specimen also of the deadly hate which was growing between the rivals for the sovereignty of the ocean. The sons of Lord Cobham of Cowling Castle, who had first distinguished themselves in Wyatt's rebellion, had grown up after the type of their boyhood, irregular lawless Protestants; and one of them, Thomas Cobham, was at this time roving the seas, half pirate, half knighterrant of the Reformation, doing battle on his own account with the enemies of the truth, wherever the service to God was likely to be repaid with plunder. He was one of a thousand whom Elizabeth was forced for decency's sake to condemn and disclaim in proclamations, and whom she was as powerless as she was probably unwilling to interfere with in practice. What Cobham was, and what his kind were, may be seen in the story about to be told. Thomas A Spanish ship was freighted in Flanders for Bilbao; Exploit of the cargo was valued at 80,000 ducats, and there were on Cobham, board also forty prisoners, condemned, as the Spanish accounts say, 'for heavy offences worthy of chastisement," who were going to Spain to serve in the galleys. Young Cobham, cruising in the Channel, caught sight of the vessel, chased her down into the Bay of Biscay, fired 1 Chamberlain to Elizabeth, November 15, 1561.-Spanish MSS. Rolls House. Por graves delitos dignos de punicion y castigo.' CHAP XII into her, killed her captain's brother and a number of 1563 men, and then boarding when all resistance had ceased, sewed up the captain himself and the survivors of the crew in their own sails and flung them overboard. The fate of the prisoners is not related; it seems they perished with the rest. The ship was scuttled; and Cobham made off with booty, which the English themselves admitted to be worth 50,000 ducats, to his pirate's nest in the south of Ireland. Eighteen drowned bodies, with the mainsail for their winding-sheet, were washed up upon the Spanish shores-cruelty without example, of which but to hear was enough to break the heart." English hearts in like manner had been broken with the news of brothers, sons, or husbands wasting to skeletons in the Cadiz dungeons, or burning to ashes in the Plaza at Valladolid. But this fierce deed of young Cobham was no dream of Spanish slander: the English factor at Bilbao was obliged to reply to Chaloner's eager inquiries that the story in its essential features was true, and he added another instance of English audacity. A Spanish vessel had been cut out of the harbour at Santander by an Anglo-Irish pirate, and carried off to sea. The captain, more merciful than Cobham, saved the crew alive, kept them prisoners, and was driven into another Spanish port for shelter, having them at the time confined under his hatches. They were discovered; the pirates were seized and died-it is needless to inquire how; but so it came about that 'what with losing their goods, and divers slain having no war, and again for 1 Tomáron á todos los que dentro iban, y los cosiéron en las velas, y los echáron á la mar, y en una de las velas se habian hallado 18 hombres ahogados en la costa de España. Crueldad nunca vista, y que en solo oyrlo quiebra el corazon.'-Louis Romano to Cardinal Granvelle, February 20, 1564. MS. Simancas. |