ceived intelligence from our ambassador resident in Spain CHAP XII that all manner of our subjects there, with their ships 1564 and goods were laid under arrest, and that our subjects themselves had been used in such cruel sort by vile imprisonment, torture, and famine, as more extremity could not be showed to the greatest criminal. Nor were there any pretences alleged for this violence, save only that a ship on the way to that country from Flanders was robbed by certain English vessels of war-which indeed might be true-as hitherto we know not any certainty thereof; and yet no cause to make such a general arrest and imprisonment of so great a multitude of people; whereof none were nor could be charged with any evil fact, but were proved to have come thither only for merchandize. Wherefore being troubled with the miserable complaints of the wives, children, and friends of our subjects oppressed in Spain, and seeing on the one part you will neither by means of your edict permit our subjects to come thither with their cloths, nor to bring any commodity from thence, and on the other none of our subjects may come into any port of Spain but they are taken, imprisoned, and put in danger of death; we appeal to the judgment of any indifferent person, what we can less do but, until some redress made for these intolerable griefs, to prohibit that there be no such free resort of merchandize from thence, to the enriching only of a few merchants of those countries." of the The English prisoners in Spain had suffered fright- Sufferings fully. Out of the two hundred and forty taken at Gib- English raltar only eighty, as has been already said, were alive at prisoners. the end of nine months. The crew of the Mary Hol 1 Elizabeth to Margaret of Parma, May 7, 1564.-Flanders MSS. Rolls House. 1564 CHAP XII way,' of Plymouth, numbered fifty-two when they went in January into the Castle of St. Sebastian. By the middle of May twenty-four were dead of ill-usage, and the remaining twenty-eight 'were like to die." Some notion may be formed from these two instances of the loss of life which had followed on the general arrest. Quite evidently the Spanish and English people wanted but a word from their sovereigns to fly like bull-dogs at each others' throats. But the peace with France and the eclipse of the ultra-Catholic faction at the French court, had decided Philip that the time was not yet come; he listened to Chaloner's expostulations with returning moderation; and Chaloner-though against his own interest, for his residence in Spain was a martyrdom to him, and a war would have restored him to England-advised Elizabeth to postpone her own resentment. The injuries after all had been as great on one side as the other; she would find every just complaint satisfied at last, but not so much by the lion as by the fox; and for the avoiding of trouble in England' he recommended her to allow the traffic with the Low Countries to be redintegrate." 1 The Lords of the English Council to Chaloner, June 1.-Spanish MSS. Rolls House. 2 Chaloner's description of Philip is interesting, and agrees well with Titian's portraits. "The King,' he said, 'heard us very quietly, making few and short but calm answers; which his nature to them that know it is not to be marvelled at, seeing to all ambassadors he useth the like; for as he hath great patience to hear at length and note what is said, receiving quietly what memorials or papers are presented to He thought that there him, so hardly, for as much as I have hitherto perceived, shall a stranger to his countenance or words gather any great alteration of mind either to anger or rejoicement, but after the fashion of a certain still flood. Nevertheless both his looks and words unto me gave show of a certain manner of extraordinary contentation.'- Chaloner to Elizabeth, June 11, MS. Ibid. 3 Ibid. Chaloner's lamentations over his residence at Madrid were piteous. Spain! rather pain,' he wrote to Sir John Mason in 1562. were symptoms of a revival of the old quarrels between CHAP XII France and Spain, when she might look for Philip's 1564 help to recover Calais; and by the autumn concessions Concessions were made on both sides. De Silva was sent to England sides, to heal all wounds; the English ships and the surviving on both Roads, food, lodging, about Madrid itself were scarcely tolerable, and elsewhere were past bearing.' The cost of living was four times greater than in England; and the Duke of Alva was the only person in whom he found wisdom and courteous usage.' two "Think with yourself,' he wrote in June, 1564, in the midst of his trouble, 'whether this alone is not to a free mind an importable burden: years and three quarters to bear my cross in Spain; a place and nation misliked of all others save themselves; driven here not only to forbear, but patiently like an ass to lay down mine ears at things of too, too much indignity.' His health failed at last, between the climate, the garlic diet, and his public worries. 'Surely I have had great wrong,' he said in a letter to Sir Ambrose Cave; but it is the old wont of our court never to think upon the training of a new servant till the old be worn to the stump. It is each man's part to serve their prince; but there is a just distributing, if subjects durst plead with kings. I have not much more to hope, having twenty years served four kings, now further from wealth or that staff of age which youth doth travail for, than I was eighteen years agone. Methinks I became a retrograde crab, and yet would gladly be at home with that that yet resteth, to pay my debts and live the rest of my life perhaps contentedly enough.' Of the danger of trusting to Spanish physicians he had frightful evidence. In August this same year, 1564, Philip's Queen (Elizabeth of France) miscarried of twins. Fever followed. They bled her in both arms; they bled her in both feet; and when spasms and paroxysms came on they cupped her, and then gave her up and left her to die. 'She was houselled, and the King to comfort her was houselled also for company;' and at the moment when Chaloner was writing to England 'she was lying abandoned of her physicians at the mercy of God. The palace gates were shut; the lamentations in the court both of men and women very tender and piteous; the chapel was filled with noblemen all praying on their knees for her; and great and unfeigned moans on all parts.' Nature eventually proved too strong even for Spanish doctors. She rallied; and they flew at her once more. 'At last by means of a strong purgative of agaricum that made her have twenty-two stools, given at a venture in so desperate a case to purge those gross humours, she was ever since amended.'. Letter of Sir Thomas Chaloner. Spanish MSS. Rolls House. Chaloner himself was less fortunate. He was recalled after long entreaty, in 1565; but he died a few weeks after he landed in England. 1564 CHAP XII sailors were released from the clutch of the Inquisition. After a correspondence between Cecil and Egmont the Flanders trade was reopened, and commissioners were appointed to sit at Bruges to hear all complaints and to settle terms of restitution. The letters of marque expired with the war, and the adventurers' had to look elsewhere to find a theatre for their exploits: some few continued to lurk in the western rivers; the more desperate, innoculated with a taste for lawless life, hung about their old haunts in the Irish creeks-whither Stukely, as was seen in the last chapter, after fitting out an expedition to Florida, found it more attractive to betake himself. Elizabeth consented to open her eyes to proceedings which were bringing a scandal upon her Government, and took measures at last, though of a feeble kind, to root out these pirates' nests. On the 29th of September, 1564, she wrote to Sir Peter Carew, at Dartmouth, that whereas the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall, the Land's End, and the Irish seas were by report much haunted with pirates and rovers,' she desired him to fit out an expedition with speed and secresy to clear the seas of them.' She gave him discretionary powers to act in any way that he might think good; 'she would allow anything which he might put in execution,' and she 'would victual his ships out of the public stores.' Characteristically however she would give him no money; Sir Peter and his men might pay themselves out of whatever booty they could take; and the temptation of plunder would perhaps rouse them into an energy which might not otherwise be excessively vigorous. 1 Elizabeth to Sir Peter Carew, September 29, 1564.-Domestic MSS. ELIZ. vol. xxxiv. 1564 Carew on these terms undertook the service; he CHAP XII armed three vessels, collected something under three hundred men from among the disbanded privateers, and in the spring of 1565 sent them out upon their cruise. The result may be told in the words of his own report to the Council. ful attempts pirates in 'Running along the west coast of England, and Unsuccessfinding nothing there meet for their purpose, they sailed against the over into Ireland, where they found a hulk of Stukely's Ireland." in Cork Haven, which they brought away, himself being before they arrived, on shore with the Lord Barrymore, having left certain of his men in the hulk to guard her, who being shot unto rowed unto the shore in their longboat. From thence they went to Berehaven, where before their coming Haydon, Lysingham, and Corbet, with other pirates their accomplices, had withdrawn themselves into a castle belonging to O'Sullivan Bere, and also their vessels near the same, planting their ordnance on the shore and also in the castle, so as our men were not able to annoy them. They mustered in sight of our men five hundred galloglasse and kernes besides their own soldiers, which were as they could judge a hundred and sixty at the least. Although our men had killed one of their captains with shot, which as I am informed was Lysingham, yet their own ships being shot through, nor seeing otherwise how to prevail further, considering what force Haydon was, having married with O'Sullivan's sister, who had committed the charge of the castle unto his custody, by which means he was like daily to be succoured by those kernes, thought best for fear of sinking, after sundry shots between them both-which continued from ten o'clock in the morning |