1564 their CHAP XII powder, shot, the money which his passengers had on persons, with their bread, cheese, and meat.' 'Adrian Peterson, mariner of Antwerp, deposed that being on his way to London in the January of that year, an hour after sunset, he was boarded off Margate by eight or ten armed men in masks whom by their voices he knew to be Englishmen. He himself fled from them into the hold, where he lay concealed; but they beat his servant, and took from the ship more than two hundred pounds' worth of goods.' 'Bartholomew Cornelius deposed that for the whole year past he has never made the voyage to England without suffering some outrage, being robbed of victuals, shirt, coat, and all the goods he has had on board. Even in the river at Greenwich, under the very windows of the palace, and the very eyes of the Queen, he had been fired into four or five times, and his sails shot through.' Among the worst sufferers from these meaner piracies were the poor Dutch fishermen. The English who had ceased to fish for themselves, resented the intrusion of foreigners into their home waters. They robbed their boats of the fish which they had taken; they took away their sails, masts and cordage, nets, lines, food, beds, cushions, money; they even stripped the men themselves of their clothes, and left them naked and destitute on the water. As one specimen of a class of outrages which were frightfully numerous— Francis Bertram, of Dunkirk, said and deposed that he had been herring fishing in the north of the Channel. He had had great success and was going home, when an English vessel came down upon him, with forty armed men-took from him ten last of herrings, stripped his boat bare to the very ropes and anchor-and sailed away, leaving him to perish of hunger. The hull of the vessel when he was attacked by her was painted white CHAP XII and yellow; three days later she was seen elsewhere 1564 painted black, and the crew with blacked faces after the manner of Ethiopians.'1 Nor were these depredations confined to privateers or pirates. On the 19th of December 1563, Margaret of Parma complained to Elizabeth of the daily thefts and robberies of the subjects of the King of Spain committed on the coast of England-not only by persons unknown, but by ships belonging to the Queen's own navy. men-of-war. 'One of your subjects named Thomas Cotton,' said the The English Regent, ‘commanding your ship the "Phoenix," lately seized a vessel off Boulogne belonging to a merchant of Antwerp, and sent her with a foreign crew into England. The "Phoenix" came afterwards into Flushing, and the owner of the vessel sent a water-bailiff to arrest Captain Cotton, and make him restore his capture or else pay for the injury. Captain Cotton however refused to submit to our laws. He spoke insolently of the King's Majesty our Sovereign, resisted the arrest, and sailed away in contempt. Madam, these insolences, these spoils and larcenies of the King's subjects, cannot continue thus without redress. It is provided in the treaties of intercourse between us, that the perpetrators of violent acts shall be arrested and kept in ward till they have made satisfaction, and shall be punished according to their demerits. I beseech you, Madam, to take order in these matters, and inflict some signal chastisement as an example to all other evil doers. I require that the losses of our merchants be made good-being as they are 1 Petition of the Burgomasters of Newport and Dunkirk, September 24, 1565.-Flanders MSS. Rolls House. CHAP XII molested and troubled on so many sides by the subjects of your Majesty. These, Madam, are things that can no longer be endured." 1564 Had Philip been satisfied with the state of affairs in France, he would probably have now made common cause with Catherine de Medici, declared war against Elizabeth, and proclaimed Mary Stuart Queen of England. But the break up of the Catholic league on the death of the Duke of Guise, the return of Montmorency to power, and his reconciliation with Condé, had reinstated in Catherine's cabinet the old French party which was most jealous of Spain, and was most disposed to temporize with the Protestants. Philip felt his early fears revive that Mary Stuart's allegiance to France might prove stronger than her gratitude to himself, and he hesitated to take a step which might cripple his predominance in Europe. He was uneasy at the increasing disaffection of the United Provinces, which a war with England would inevitably aggravate; and though again and again on the verge of a rupture with his sister-in-law, he drew back at the last moment, feeling that the apple was not Arrest of ripe.' Determined however to check the audacity of the privateers, and those darker cruelties of Cobham and his friends, he issued a sudden order in January 1564 for the arrest of every English ship in the Spanish harbours, with their crews and owners. Thirty large vessels were seized; a thousand sailors and merchants were locked up in Spanish prisons, and English traders were excluded by a general order from the ports of the Low Countries. English ships in Spain. 1 Margaret of Parma to Elizabeth, December 19, 1563.—Flanders MSS. Rolls House. 2 Chaloner to Elizabeth, January 22, 1564.-Spanish MSS. Ibid. 1564 An estimate was made of the collective damage inflicted CHAP XII by the English cruisers, and a bill was presented to Sir Thomas Chaloner for a million and a half of ducats, for which the imprisoned crews would be held as securities.1 'Long ago I foretold this,' wrote Chaloner, but I was ' regarded as a Cassandra. For the present I travail chiefly that our men may be in courteous prison, a great number of whom shall else die of cold and hunger.' affects With the French war still upon her hands, Elizabeth was obliged to endure the affront and durst not retaliate. With the Catholic party so powerful, a war with Spain, and the contingencies which might arise from it, was too formidable to be encountered. She wrote humbly to Elizabeth Philip, entreating that the innocent should not be made regret to suffer for the guilty; the wrong which she admitted might have been done, she attributed to the confusion of the times; she protested that she had herself given neither sanction nor encouragement to her subjects' lawless doings; she would do her utmost to suppress the pirates; and if her merchants and sailors were set at liberty she would listen to any proposal which Philip might be pleased to make.2 As an earnest of the good intentions of the Government, 1 Chaloner to Elizabeth, Jan. 20.— Spanish MSS. Rolls House. 2 Elizabeth to Philip, March 17.— MSS. Ibid. Her subjects themselves were not so submissive. One insolence,' wrote Chaloner, sundry of the council here have much complained of to me: that in Gallicia, upon occasion of certain of our merchants detained by the coregidor of a port town there, the same town was shot at with artillery out CHAP XII the English Prize Courts made large awards of restitution; and it was proposed that a joint commission should sit at Bruges to examine the items of the Spanish claim. The Flemings excluded lish ports. But Elizabeth saw that she must lose no time in settling her differences with France. Peace was hastily concluded; she amused Catherine and frightened Philip with the possibility of her accepting the hand of Charles the Ninth; and by the beginning of the summer which followed the close of the war, she was able to take a bolder tone. The trade with England was of vital moment to the Low Countries. The inhibition which the Regent had issued against English vessels had given the carrying trade to the Flemings; and the ships in from Spain continuing unreleased, Elizabeth on her part at the beginning of May retaliated upon the Duchess of Parma by excluding Flemings from the English ports. The intercourse between the two countries was thus at an end. The Queen bade Chaloner say to Philip, that 'whatever injury might have been done to subjects of Spain, she had more to complain of than he; Spanish ships might have been robbed, but the offenders were but private persons; the banner of England had been trailed in the dirt by public officers of Castile, as if it had been taken in battle from the Turks; English subjects had been seized, imprisoned, flogged, tortured, famished, murdered, and buried like dogs in dungheaps; she too as well as he would bear these wrongs no longer." To the letter of Margaret of Parma she replied with equal haughtiness. In the month of January last,' she wrote, 'we re 1 Memorial presented by Sir T. Chaloner to Philip II., June 4, 1564.-Spanish MSS. Rolls House. |