Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650 (Early Modern Literature in History)

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Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650 Edited by

Claire Jowitt

Early Modern Literature in History General Editors: Cedric C. Brown, Professor of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Reading; Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of Sussex, Brighton Advisory Board: Donna Hamilton, University of Maryland; Jean Howard, University of Columbia; John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge; Richard McCoy, CUNY; Sharon Achinstein, University of Oxford Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Titles include: Andrea Brady ENGLISH FUNERARY ELEGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Laws in Mourning Jocelyn Catty WRITING RAPE, WRITING WOMEN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Unbridled Speech Dermot Cavanagh LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY HISTORY PLAY Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (editors) ‘THIS DOUBLE VOICE’ Gendered Writing in Early Modern England James Daybell (editor) EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S LETTER-WRITING, 1450–1700 Jerome De Groot ROYALIST IDENTITIES John Dolan POETIC OCCASION FROM MILTON TO WORDSWORTH Tobias Döring PERFORMANCES OF MOURNING IN SHAKESPEAREAN THEATRE AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Sarah M. Dunnigan EROS AND POETRY AT THE COURTS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND JAMES VI Andrew Hadfield SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER AND THE MATTER OF BRITAIN William M. Hamlin TRAGEDY AND SCEPTICISM IN SHAKESPEARE’S ENGLAND

Elizabeth Heale AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTHORSHIP IN RENAISSANCE VERSE Chronicles of the Self Claire Jowitt (editor) PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, 1550–1650 Pauline Kiernan STAGING SHAKESPEARE AT THE NEW GLOBE Arthur F. Marotti (editor) CATHOLICISM AND ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH TEXTS Jean-Christopher Mayer SHAKESPEARE’S HYBRID FAITH History, Religion and the Stage Jennifer Richards (editor) EARLY MODERN CIVIL DISCOURSES Sasha Roberts READING SHAKESPEARE’S POEMS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Rosalind Smith SONNETS AND THE ENGLISH WOMAN WRITER, 1560–1621 The Politics of Absence Mark Thornton Burnett CONSTRUCTING ‘MONSTERS’ IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE MASTERS AND SERVANTS IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA AND CULTURE Authority and Obedience The series Early Modern Literature in History is published in association with the Renaissance Texts Research Centre at the University of Reading.

Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71472–5 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650 Edited by

Claire Jowitt

© Editorial matter, selection and Introduction, Chapter 9 © Claire E. Jowitt 2007 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 13: 978–0–230–00327–9 hardback ISBN 10: 0–230–00327–3 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pirates? : the politics of plunder, 1550–1650 / edited by Claire Jowitt p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–00327–3 1. Pirates–History–16th century. 2. Pirates–History–17th century. 3. Naval history, Modern–16th century. 4. Naval history, Modern–17th century. I. Jowitt, Claire. G535.P577 2006 910.4′5–dc22

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Contents List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Notes on Contributors

Part I

xii

Piracy? Some Definitions

Introduction: Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650 Claire Jowitt

1 3

1 ‘Hostis Humani Generis’ – The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea Christopher Harding

20

Part II

39

Perspectives on Piracy

2 The Problem of Piracy in Ireland, 1570–1630 John C. Appleby

41

3 Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary Nabil Matar

56

4 Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95 Matthew Dimmock

74

5 Acting Pirates: Converting A Christian Turned Turk Mark Hutchings 6 ‘We are not pirates’: Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads Bernhard Klein 7 Virolet and Martia the Pirate’s Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double Marriage Lucy Munro

vii

90 105

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viii Contents

Part III

Pirate Afterlives

135

8 Sir Francis Drake’s Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood Mark Netzloff 9 Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Execution Claire Jowitt

137 151

10 Of Pirates, Slaves, and Diplomats: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire Gerald MacLean

169

Notes

187

Select Bibliography

226

Index

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viii

List of Figures 0.1 Detail from Anon, A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton, a Pirate and Rover on the seas, Wood 402 (37). Reproduced courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

5

3.1 Paolo Caliari Véronèze, Les Noces de Cana, Paris, musée du Louvre. Reproduced with permission Photo RMN.

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3.2 Pietro Tacca, Monument to Ferdinand I, Livorno: detail of the Moorish Slave. © 1990, Photo Scala, Florence.

59

3.3 The mosque by Ahmed el-Ingles in Rabat. Reproduced with permission from Nabil Matar.

72

7.1 Inigo Jones, costume for Lucy, Countess of Bedford, in The Masque of Queens (1609), Devonshire Collection Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

124

7.2 Portrait of Penthisilaea, Thomas Heywood’s The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women of the World (1640). Published with permission from The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

125

ix

Acknowledgements This book has its origin in a conference on ‘Pirates! Plunderers at Sea in the Age of Empire 1550–1650’, which was held at the Gregynog, the conference centre of the University of Wales, in beautiful late spring weather in May 2005. My first thanks goes then to all the scholars, friends and colleagues who made the event such an intellectually stimulating and socially convivial event, but especially Ken Parker who not only gave a splendid plenary paper himself, but also was also immensely thoughtful and generous in discussion and question sessions. I would also like to thank the University of Wales Aberystwyth, Gregynog Conference Centre, and the Society for Renaissance Studies, who generously helped finance the event through grants and awards. My colleagues Peter Barry, Sarah Prescott and Diane Watt in the English Department at Aberystwyth were tremendously supportive whilst I was planning the conference; as was my research student Stephan Schmuck. I also gratefully acknowledge the help of Julie Roberts, the Secretary of the English Department at UWA, who dealt with the conference paperwork with efficiency and tireless good humour; and of Christoph Lindner, who provided me with a mine of information about conference organization at UWA. Liz Oakley-Brown of Canterbury Christ Church University College, formerly UWA, stepped into the breach during the conference, helping smooth over any minor hiccups, in particular chasing up Birmingham airport baggage handlers’ loss of Nabil Matar’s luggage, which appeared to have been plundered in transit for nearly 48 hours. In the production of this book I have accrued other significant debts. I am delighted that this book appears in Cedric Brown’s and Andrew Hadfield’s Literature in History series at Palgrave, and I thank them for their faith in the project. The Literature, Theatre and Performance team at Palgrave has been consistently helpful and efficient at every stage in the genesis of this book. The book’s contributors have, uniformly, been a pleasure to work with, sticking to deadlines and responding with alacrity to editorial comments and each others’ work, despite other commitments. I am especially grateful to John Appleby who read and commented on the book’s Introduction, and to Paulina Kewes, Kevin Sharpe, David Shuttleton, and Greg Walker who provided x

Acknowledgements xi

extremely helpful feedback on my chapter on pirate scaffolds. In the final stages of the production of this book I took up an appointment at Nottingham Trent University: I am grateful to my new colleagues to listening to my enthusiasm on this subject with patience. A final acknowledgement is to Gerald MacLean: it is to him that I owe a debt for the book’s title since he suggested the change from the rather too emphatic ‘Pirates!’ to the more inquiring ‘Pirates?’, an alteration which much better reflects the arguments of the book.

Notes on Contributors John C. Appleby is Senior Lecturer in History at Liverpool Hope University College. His research interests are in early modern English maritime and colonial history, including piracy and privateering in England and Ireland. He is a contributor to the New Maritime History of Devon vol. 1 (1992), and to the Oxford History of the British Empire vol. 1 (1998). He is editor of A Calendar of Material Relating to Ireland from the High Court of Admiralty Examinations 1536–1641 (1992). Matthew Dimmock is Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex and member of the University’s Centre for Early Modern Studies. He is the author of New Turkes: Dramatising Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (2005) and co-editor (with Matthew Birchwood) of Cultural Encounters Between East and West, 1453–1699 (2005). He is interested in early modern cultural and religious encounters. Christopher Harding is Professor of Law at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His research interests include European and International law, crime and delinquency in the international context, and penal theory and history. More recently his research has focused on evolving legal structures and identities, especially in relation to the construction and control of criminal behaviour. One major research project focused on the criminalization of business cartels which was published (with J. Joshua) as Regulating Cartels in Europe (2003) and as ‘Business Collusion as a Criminological Phenomenon’, forthcoming in Critical Criminology. Mark Hutchings is a Lecturer in English at the University of Reading, specializing in early modern theatre and drama in performance. His edition of Three Jacobean ‘Turkish’ Plays (Revels Series) is in preparation and a co-authored book with A. A. Bromham, Middleton and his Collaborators is forthcoming in 2006. His published and current research focuses on the staging and reception of the Ottoman Empire and the theatre of Thomas Middleton. Claire Jowitt is Professor of English at the Nottingham Trent University. She is the author of Voyage Drama and Gender Politics 1589–1642: Real and Imagined Worlds (2003) and co-editor of The Arts of Seventeenth Century Science: Representations of the Natural World in European and North

Notes on Contributors xiii

American Culture (2002). Her research interests focus on colonialism and empire, travel writing and piracy, and she is currently finishing a book Alien Nation: Piracy and Empire 1580–1630. Bernhard Klein is Reader in Literature at the University of Essex. His publications include a monograph on Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland (2001) and several edited collections, among them Fictions of the Sea: Critical Perspectives on the Ocean in British Literature and Culture (2002) and Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean (2004). He is currently working on a cultural history of the ocean in the early modern period. Gerald MacLean is Anniversary Professor of English at the University of York. Recent book publications include The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Travellers to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 (2004); and, as editor Re-Orientating the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East (2005). He is currently completing Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire before 1800. Nabil Matar is Professor of English and Department Head of Humanities and Communication at the Florida Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the interaction between Europe, particularly England, and the world of Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He is the author of Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (1998); Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (1999); In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (2003) and Barbary and Britain, 1589–1689 (2005). Lucy Munro is a Lecturer in English at Keele University. She is the author of Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (2005) and has edited Edward Sharpham’s The Fleer for Globe Quartos (2005). Mark Netzloff is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of England’s Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism (2003). His current book project examines English travel and migration in early modern Europe.


Part I Piracy? Some Definitions


Introduction: Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650 Claire Jowitt

Pirates have long held a significant place in literature. Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Story, for instance, begins in media res on a corpse-strewn Egyptian beach.1 It is only five books later in the romance’s account of Theagenes’ and Cariclia’s adventures that the reader becomes fully aware that the dead men were in fact pirates, and the events and significance of the enigmatic opening scene is explained as characters’ reactions to the test of piracy are indicative of their moral and religious principles. Pirates likewise make frequent appearances in Renaissance literature. In Shakespeare’s plays pirates play small but important roles: in Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Pericles, The Merchant of Venice, for example, pirates intervene in the action in ways crucial to each play’s plot development. Both the number of literary pirates, and their ability to change the course of the story despite the size of their role, indicate that these figures haunted the literary imagination. Sometimes they take up roles centre stage – such as John Ward in Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk – but more often than not, pirates appear on the sidelines of literary texts, unruly, discontented figures, excluded from the main story, but refusing to be wholly suppressed. For example, in Measure for Measure the conveniently deceased pirate Ragozine plays a crucial role in saving Claudio from Angelo’s injustice, when the first substitute, the condemned Barnadine, refuses to co-operate in providing a severed head to show Angelo.2 If literary pirates can be seen as liminal, so too can the men (and women) who committed violent crimes at sea in this period as they operated on the hinterland between licit and illicit activities. Current work on Renaissance travel writing, and the origins of empire, has not focused on piracy in a sustained way. In recent years early modern historians have begun to address activities that tied distant regions of the 3

4 Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

world together – such as migration, long range trade, proselytization – but a detailed study of piracy as another mechanism that connects cultures is yet to be undertaken. This book is an attempt in that direction. It questions how pirates should be understood in one of the most exciting periods of maritime history: whether as political or sexual radicals, as interceptors of and disrupters to networks of economic and cultural exchange, or, in fact, as key, if often unrecognized, players in the creation of cultural connections? Taken together, the essays in this collection explore the rich variety of cultural work undertaken by ‘pirates’: as allegories of religious and political issues; as actors in the theatre of empire; in terms of gendered behaviour, national, legal or racial identities. I want to begin this book by showing in brief the types of cultural work that the figure of the ‘pirate’ could perform in the years 1550–1650. In London in 1630 a one-page broadsheet was published containing a ballad (to be sung to the tune of ‘Come follow me love’), about the exploits of the early sixteenth-century Scottish ‘pirate’ Sir Andrew Barton, A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton, A Pirate and Rover on the Sea.3 What concerns me here is why was this old story about ‘the Scottish “Drake”’ was revived in 1630 (see Figure 0.1)?4 In what ways did it speak to the interests of a new, Caroline, readership? In the case of the anonymous 1630 ballad my focus is on the ways ‘piracy’ figures as an allegory for a larger set of relations between England and Scotland in the hundred years or so between Barton’s activities and his published textual representation and acts as, through comparison with Tudor success, a parable of Caroline naval failure. Before examining Barton’s depiction in the ballad, I want to situate this analysis by providing information about his real-life activities. Andrew Barton and his family are important figures in Scotland’s maritime history. Based in Leith, in the fifteenth century the centre of Scotland’s seaborne activity, the three Barton brothers, Andrew, Robert and John stood high in the favour of King James IV, receiving gifts of money and lands at his hands, and enjoying extensive and profitable legitimate trading interests.5 By the early sixteenth century, the Barton family were the most important naval captains in Scotland, employed on a variety of official and unofficial royal missions including escorting Perkin Warbeck from Scotland in 1497 (Robert), conveying the King’s illegitimate son Alexander Stewart to France in 1507 (John) and revenging the murder of Scottish merchant seamen by Dutch pirates in 1509 (Andrew).6 Indeed Andrew Barton carried out the King’s orders against the Dutch pirates so completely that he cleared the Scottish coast of their ships, and sent the King a number of barrels full of their heads.7

Claire Jowitt 5

Figure 0.1 Detail from Anon, A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton, a Pirate and Rover on the seas, Wood 402 (37). Reproduced courtesy of The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.


As well as performing these official maritime exploits, the Barton brothers were also involved in a variety of less legitimate seaborne activities. In 1576 Andrew, Robert and John’s father, John Barton, was voyaging from the port of Sluis in Flanders to Leith on the Juliana, when he was attacked by two Portuguese ships, his cargo stolen, some of the crew killed and the rest, Barton senior included, cut adrift.8 After the failure of repeated appeals to the King of Portugal for redress, despite travelling to Lisbon to make the case, Barton persuaded James III to issue him letters of marque against Portugal, which were renewed by James IV at the beginning of his reign in 1488. These letters of reprisal authorized the Bartons to seize Portuguese vessels and cargoes to make good their losses to the value of 12,000 ducats, with the result that the Bartons undertook a private war against Portuguese shipping, especially the richly laden caravels returning from India and Africa.9 These letters were intermittently suspended, but on 20 November 1506 James renewed them, sending Rothesay Herald to the Portuguese court to announce they were in force again in July 1507. The next four years were ones of extreme violence with all three of the Barton brothers strenuously attacking Portuguese, and other, shipping. These activities demonstrate something that the essays in this collection repeatedly discuss: the permeable boundary between legitimate and illegitimate seaborne activities; in this case some of the Bartons’ exploits were performed with the permission of James IV or John of Denmark under letters of marque, and some attacks were undertaken independently.10 For example, in March 1511 Margaret of Savoy’s envoy, Aloysius Boniannus, complained to the Edinburgh Council about Andrew Barton capturing a Breton ship and plundering goods belonging to Antwerp merchants. Barton failed to answer the charges or appear before the Scottish Lords of Council, provoking them to declare that if Bonciannus ‘or any uther wald gar tak the said party, that is to say Andro Bartyn, justice sald be ministrat.’11 It seems likely that Barton had returned to Denmark, since King John had again asked for the loan of Barton and his ships from James IV, and Barton clearly suffered no ill consequences from these complaints since James once more renewed the letters of marque against Portugal.12 As a result, Barton sailed south in his ship the Lion, accompanied by the Jenny Pirwin, according to the chronicler Edward Hall, ‘saiying that the kyng of Scottes, had warre with the Portingales, did rob every nacion, and so stopped the kynges stremes, that no merchauntes almost could passe, and when he took thenglishmenes goodes he said they wer Portyngales goodes, and thus he haunted and robbed at every

Claire Jowitt 7

havens mouthe.’13 In the wake of these attacks, the distressed merchants complained to Henry VIII about Barton’s reign of plunder: the English King ordered the Admiral of England, Sir Edward Howard, and his brother, Lord Thomas Howard, to deal with the situation by equipping two ships ‘in all hast to the sea’ in June 1511.14 If Barton’s activities here demonstrate the permeable nature of the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate violence at sea, so too does Henry’s reaction to them. As R. L. Mackie summarizes: ‘[a]ccording to the Treaty of 1502, which he had confirmed in 1509, Henry should first have asked the King of Scots for redress; then if he obtained no satisfactory answer from James at the end of six months, he should have issued letters of marque.’15 In other words, the English King’s response to Barton was also, strictly speaking, ‘piratical’, since his orders to the Howards to put to sea immediately ignore the established conventions governing appropriate redress from a brother monarch for the actions of one of his subjects. Indeed, Henry’s flouting of established diplomatic practice in order to establish his sovereignty at sea through an immediate armed response to Barton’s activities may have been motivated by national rivalry and the strategic situation in 1511. In 1506 James IV had begun building a powerful new ship, the Michael, and by 1511 Henry VIII was receiving reports from his ambassador in Edinburgh indicating just how superior she was to any English vessel. According to N. A. M. Rodger the Michael was ‘revolutionary in design’, since in contrast to the English navy which acted as a carrier of troops with small arms and light guns, the Scottish ship was ‘designed from the first to carry a main armament of heavy artillery: twelve guns on each side, and three bronze “basilisks”.’16 Scottish naval superiority not only provoked English rivalry, it also was dangerous strategically since England was contemplating an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire against France at this time, and a Scottish counter-alliance with France and Denmark (England’s main rival for the Baltic trade), might prove decisive in gaining control of the seas surrounding the Atlantic archipelago. Indeed Hall’s version of the sea battle between English and Scottish forces emphasizes the valour displayed on both sides, perhaps in order to demonstrate English martial prowess: [T]here was a sore battaill: thenglishmen wer fierce, and the Scottes defended them manfully, and ever Andrew blewe his whistell to encourage his men, yet for al that, the lord Haward and his men, by cleane strength entred the mayne decke: then the Englishemen entred on all sides, and the Scottes foughte on the hatches, but in


conclusion, Andrewe was taken, whiche was so sore wounded, that he died there: then all the remnaunte of the Scottes wer taken, with their shippe called the Lion.17 Hall also stresses Henry’s ‘merci’ in releasing his Scottish prisoners since ‘as peace was yet between England and Scotland, that their contrary to that, as theves and pirates, had robbed the Kynges subjectes within his stremes: wherefore, thei had deserved to die by the law, and to be hanged at the low water marke.’18 Hence, James’ complaints about Barton’s death ‘requiring restiticion, accordyng to the league and amitie’ met a stony reply from the English King since ‘it became not one Prince to laie a breach of a league to another Prince in doyng Justice upon a pirate or thiefe, and that al the other Scottes that were taken, had deserved to dye by Justice, if he had not extended his mercie.’19 Here Henry starts to articulate a view of pirates as a kind of special legal case, where their crime is seen as so serious that it is a monarch’s right and duty to punish them for the offences, notwithstanding that they are acting against previous Treaties or Leagues between their country and that of the pirate.20 The 1630 broadsheet is a fascinating document, provoking as many questions as it answers concerning its textual production, its generic conventions, and the relationship between its narrative and the June 1511 seaborne events it purports to describe. The story of Andrew Barton has survived in other texts, most notably several inter-related folk-ballads, variously titled Andrew Barton, Sir Andrew Barton, The Ballad of Andrew Barton, Andrew Bartin, and Henry Martin.21 Broadly speaking, these ballads can be divided into two groups, some – such as Henry Martin – describe the successful piracy of three Scottish brothers against English shipping; others – such as Sir Andrew Barton – describe the death of the Scottish pirate at English hands. The ballads’ chronological relation to each other has not been categorically established, though several theories have been put forward.22 What is particularly interesting, and what I want to highlight in the following discussion, is the way these texts contrast with each other: both depart from the historical record, altering significant details and adapting them for new sets of circumstances, but in significantly different ways. To cite just one example at this point: the story of Henry Martin describes only half of the one told in Sir Andrew Barton, with the result that the text celebrates the triumph of Scottish piracy over English shipping ‘Bad news, bad news, my brave English boys / Bad news for fair London town / There’s a rich merchant ship and she’s cast away / cast away, cast away

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/ And all of her merry men drowned’.23 Sir Andrew Barton continues the story to show the eventual defeat of Barton at the hands of the English. Given that Barton’s death, and Henry VIII’s failure to provide ‘restiticion, accordyng to the league’, contributed to the increasing AngloScots tension at the time – which ultimately lead to the battle of Flodden Field on 9 September 1513 and James IV’s own death – it is easy to see how the different versions of the story express Anglo-Scots rivalry and nationalist agendas. Generically the broadsheet of Sir Andrew Barton initially appears to be indebted to the romance tradition. Similar to the way at the beginning of Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale Theseus is importuned by Corinth widows who have been unable to bury their husbands slain in war at Thebes, the opening of Sir Andrew Barton describes how King Henry VIII, whilst on his annual progress in May, was beleaguered by 40 distressed merchants. They complain that they are unable to ply their legitimate trades with France since ‘Barton makes us quaile, / and robs us of our Merchants ware’ (15–16). Akin to Arthur’s search for a champion to defend the honour of his court against the challenge of the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Henry commands his Lords to ‘fetch that Traitor unto me’ (20). Like Gawain, ‘young’ (26) Lord Charles Howard responds to his king’s demand: ‘The Scottish Knight I vow to séeke, / in place wheresoever that he be, / And bring on shore with all his might, / or into Scot[…]and he shall carry me’ (29–32). The main body of the text describes Howard’s quest to capture Barton, as he sets out equipped with a hundred men including the realm’s best gunner, Peter Simon, and best bowman, William Horsly. No sooner have they set sail than they encounter ‘a Merchant os New-castle’, Henry Hunt, who has just been robbed by Barton and he agrees to lead him to ‘that villain’ (90). Like the Michael, whose cannon so worried Henry VIII, the merchant also emphasizes Barton’s ship’s superior strength and firepower: […]e is brasse within and steele without, his ship most huge and very strong: With eighteene pieces strong and stout, he carieth on each side along: With beames from her Top-castle, as also being huge and high, That neither English nor Portugall, can Sir Andrew Barton passe by, (97–104)


Furthermore the merchant also warns Howard about Barton’s secret weapon: some kind of unusual mechanical device fitted to the ship ‘Let no man to his topcastle goe / nor strive to let his beames downe fall’ (111–12). By pretending to be a merchant ship (‘Set up withal a Willow wand, / that Merchant like I may passe by’ (131–2)) the Howards sail close enough to Barton to tempt him to fire at their ship, and they are then able to return fire with the full force of their hidden guns: In at his Decke it came so hot, kill’d fifty of his men of war. Alas, then said the Pirate stout, I am in danger now I see, This is some Lord I greatly doubt, that’s now set on to conquer me. (147–52) Barton then attempts to bring his Top-castle machine into the battle, but when two of his men are killed attempting the climb ‘up amaine, / did this stout Pirat climbe with speed, / For armour of proofe he had put on, / and did not of Arrow dread’ (181–4). The English bowman, Horsly, however ‘spied a privie place […] and smote sir Andrew to the heart,’ (193–6). With impressive bravery, Sir Andrew rallies his troops: Fight on, fight on my merry men all, a little I am hurt yet not slaine, Ile but lie downe and bléed a while, And come and fight with […] you againe And do not, saith he, feare English Rogues and of your Foes stand in no awe, But stand fast by S. Andrewes crosse, until you heare my whistle blow, (197–204) However, since his whistle does not blow, the English board the Scottish ship, capturing ‘Eighteenescore Scots alive in it’ (211). Similar to the way Barton cut of the Dutch pirates’ heads to send to James IV, in this story the English cut off Barton’s head for Howard ‘to present unto the King’ (220). However, on being offered this gift, there is a brief moment of anxiety concerning the King’s reaction. Henry ‘before he knew well what was done,’ requested ‘Where is the knight and Pirate gay / th[…] I myselfe may be his doome’ (222–4), but the tension dissipates when he generously rewards the men who had taken Barton,

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and releases the surviving Scots without punishment, with ‘12 pence a day’ until they return to ‘my brother King his land’ (247–8). What is particularly significant about this document is not that, in contrast to the story told in Henry Martin, the English triumph over the Scots, but the manner of that success. By 1630, the rivalry between the two nations which had culminated in the Battle of Flodden was remote in history, and for nearly 30 years there had been dynastic union between England and Scotland since James VI of Scotland’s assumption of the English throne in 1603. Yet by 1630, despite the succession of James’ Scottish-born son Charles to the twin kingdoms in 1625, and the new king’s attempts to please the interests of both nations, Anglo-Scots relations were strained.24 Charles had still not visited the kingdom of his birth for his Scottish coronation, he had brought in a variety of unsettling religious and other reforms to Scotland, and his personal tastes were for the elaborate ceremony and ritual rather than the casual informality of Edinburgh and the kirk: he was, as Kevin Sharpe puts it, ‘a Scottish king by title only.’25 Notwithstanding, then, the dynastic union between the two countries, by 1630 the tension between them was such that it was thought profitable to publish Sir Andrew Barton, a broadsheet which describes the open expression of, admittedly historically situated, hostilities between the two nations. The tension between the Scots and the English palpably revealed in texts like Sir Andrew Barton, despite Henry’s financial support of the displaced Scotsmen his men have captured in the closing lines, shows just how little the dynastic union had done to bring the two countries together. Furthermore, Sir Andrew Barton also can be read as an expression of concern about the strength of contemporary English sea-power. Akin to English anxieties about the state of the navy relative to the amphibious forces of other nations which lead to Henry VIII’s shipbuilding programme, in 1630 Charles I’s fleet was also in poor shape. The years 1625–30 were dispiriting ones in terms of English performance at sea – the fleet against Spain in 1625 floundered at Cadiz; in 1627 a disastrous expedition was launched to relieve England’s allies in the war against France, the Huguenots of La Rochelle; and Lord Admiral Buckingham’s policy of allowing unlimited ‘reprisals’ against enemy shipping engendered a revival of privateering on a large scale.26 According to Rodger ‘[a]t least 737 prizes, possibly as many as a thousand, were taken between 1626 and 1630’ and ‘the Isle of Wight was described as “another Argier”.’ 27 Not only were the English active in taking prizes indiscriminately, but English shipping


suffered extensively from privateering by French and Spanish ships – particularly the Spanish squadron at Dunkirk (the ‘Dunkirkers’) who in five years took more than 300 ships, about one-fifth of the English merchant fleet – and from the slave-raids of the Barbary corsairs.28 It is not difficult, therefore, to see the sorry state of English seamanship, and the proliferation of violence at sea perpetrated both by and against English ships, as motivation for the revival in print of a ballad from an earlier age which celebrated English prowess at sea. Henry’s navy under the Howards was seen as far superior to Charles’ under Buckingham (or under the Commission which replaced him after his assassination in 1628). The publication of a text describing Henry’s triumph at sea in a time of spectacular failure to manage the nation’s sea affairs was not a disinterested choice. Indeed, there is a particularly pointed – and, I would suggest, deliberate – alteration between the historical defeat of Barton by the Howards in 1511 and its textual representation in 1630. In 1511 it is Thomas and Edward Howard who defeat Barton, in Sir Andrew Barton it is Lord Charles Howard who bests the pirate. Half-brother of Thomas and Edward, Charles Howard was born in 1536, 25 years after the battle he is supposed to have won, and was the Lord High Admiral who was commander-in-chief of the English fleet against the Armada in 1588. The defeat of the Spanish Armada by Howard and his sea captains against all odds was, understandably, celebrated and championed as a momentous national achievement, ‘shattering the myth of invincibility which Spanish armies had built up’ and ‘emboldened [the English] to fresh attacks.’ 29 The broadsheet’s use of Lord Charles Howard, the man best known for the glorious defeat of the Armada and as a saviour of his country, to rid England of the depredations of the pirate, can thus be seen as a way of highlighting some of Charles Stuart’s perceived problems. As Ashburnham wrote to Nicholas in October 1627 ‘[s]uch a rotten, miserable fleet, set out to sea, no man ever saw. Our enemies seeing it may scoff at our nation’; and after the humiliation at Cadiz in 1625 one of the officers present, William St Ledger, wrote to Buckingham ‘I am so much ashamed that I wish I may never live to see my sovereign nor Your Excellency’s face again’.30 Charles Howard’s success represented the pinnacle of English achievement, and his anachronistic presence in a 1630 text about 1511 events, acts as an indictment against contemporary mismanagement of the navy. What this analysis of this neglected ‘pirate’ text reveals, then, is the ways an historical situation might be revived, retold and rewritten for

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a new set of circumstances. Pirate studies are a particularly rich literary and cultural field because pirates hold enormous popular appeal: in texts of all periods and all genres from the classical period onwards (such as Daphnis and Chloë and Apollonius of Tyre) pirate characters have their place. They have come in all shapes and sizes from the heroic rogue Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1883), through the dastardly and inept Captain Hook in J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan (1904), the bumbling but well-meaning Captain Pugwash and his arch-enemy Cut-throat Jake in the 1970s BBC cartoon to, most recently, Johnny Depp’s tongue-in-cheek performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest (dir. Gore Verbinski, 2003; 2006). The pirates discussed in the essays in this edited collection – the ‘heroic’ Francis Drake (Netzloff), the ‘renegade’ John Ward (Hutchings), the ‘outlaws’ Purser and Clinton (Jowitt), to name just a few – are just as fascinating, their activities just as sensational, and their cultural importance just as compelling. As the varied nature of terms applied to these individuals shows in brief, and the collection reveals in more depth, the boundary between licit and illicit activity at sea in this period is permeable: one monarch’s ‘pirate’ is, literally, another’s ‘privateer’.31 Furthermore, in these years of increasing travel by Western Europeans, as well as by Mediterranean corsairs and the mariners of the Barbary States, out of ‘home’ waters, confrontations at sea were inevitable. States aggressively sought to establish their territorial claim to more distant lands and seas, or to monopolize profitable trade routes and commerce, often with extreme violence. At the beginning of the Age of Empire, then, ‘piracy’ intersects with a variety of larger cultural issues: legal; national; colonial; and those to do with race, religion and gender. ‘Piracy’ is thus a highly flexible term, serving a variety of polemical purposes, as well as characterizing a material practice. As we shall see in many of the essays in this collection – especially those by Klein, Appleby and Dimmock – charges of piracy were frequently used as part of a polemic framework of moral and religious justification. The plethora of literary pirates is matched by the variety of books on the subject though none of reproduce either the range of geographical material or the interdisciplinary scope of this one.32 Pirates? The Politics of Plunder 1550–1650 explores piracy as a cultural phenomenon in relation to a variety of regions and seas including Ireland; North and South America; the Atlantic; the Mediterranean; the Barbary States; Spain; Portugal; the Pacific, as well as England and its ‘home’ waters.


The essays in this collection show how various, and how culturally important, were the overlapping categories of the ‘pirate’, the ‘corsair’, the ‘buccaneer’ and the ‘privateer’ in a variety of cultural arenas in the years 1550–1650.33 Terminology is important here; the word ‘privateer’ was not coined until 1664, but the practice of ‘private reprisal’ was long established, and in general terms these categories are difficult to keep separate. As Janice Thomson comments in relation to Mediterranean corsairs ‘the most complicated and persistent problem […] was whether [they] were pirates or privateers’; and as Klein suggests in relation to seaborne violence in The Luciads ‘piracy […] is more often than not a problem of perception: it matters who calls whom a pirate, and why.’34 However, I want to emphasize that though England possessed little foreign territory for much of this period (even Calais had been humiliatingly lost during the reign of Mary Tudor, and Ireland and the Channel Islands, England’s ‘domestic’ colonies were both problematic and contested), nevertheless these years were crucial to English, later British, empire formation, as this was when the nation seriously attempted, for the first time, to express ambitions for an empire to rival that of Spain and Portugal in the West and the Ottomans in the East.35 Though the nation’s territorial possessions in no way matched its ambitions, colonial discourses that justified, defended and proved England’s Protestant right to empire – against the claims of rivals such as Catholic Spain or the Ottomon Empire – were well developed.36 The discussions of the politics of plunder in this book by noted historians, lawyers, and literary scholars, provide an illuminating, previously neglected window on the cultural work involved in these processes. Indeed, this interdisciplinary study is the first to consider how representations of plunderers were shaped by national political issues and the agenda of particular interest groups. Looking at a variety of wellknown and neglected figures, texts, and geographical areas it shows how attitudes to piracy and privateering were debated, contested and changed between 1550 and 1650. A key feature of the collection is the way the essays cross-refer to each other, allowing the interested reader to follow up ideas and issues in essays concerned with different locations or contexts. The book is split into three sections: in the first, ‘Piracy? Some Definitions’ Christopher Harding uncovers the legal perception of maritime piracy during the period 1550–1650 and the extent and manner of legal regulation of such conduct. His essay ‘“Hostis Humani Generis” – The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea’, starts with the modern legal definition of piracy as an ‘international

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crime’, since pirates are seen as a common enemy of mankind and of every state, and hence can be brought to justice anywhere. Harding’s careful examination of historical evidence, however, suggests that the pirate did not possess this definite criminal persona during the years 1550–1650, when the maritime legal space comprised a complex pattern of emerging jurisdictions. Pirates should, he suggests, be viewed as commercial (and sometimes political) actors who were not outlaws, but operating within existing legal structures in order to justify or defend apparently piratical activity. As this essay shows, the early modern pirate was one of a number of actors operating within and exploiting the existing rules of an evolving maritime legal space. With Harding’s legal definition of piracy in mind, the second section of the book, ‘Perspectives on Piracy: Nation, Region, Religion, Politics, Gender’ explores the politics of plunder and the cultural work performed by ‘pirates’ from a variety of important viewpoints. Starting with an in depth analysis of the impact of piracy in one particular region, South West Ireland, John Appleby’s essay ‘The Problem of Piracy in Ireland during the later Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries’, explores the upsurge in piratical activity in this region in a wider context of English maritime depredation and colonial planting in Ireland more generally. The essay also considers the early modern English state’s responses to the problem and the changing nature of ‘piracy’ in this period. From Appleby’s discussion of Irish piracy and it’s relationship to English colonial expansion, the book moves to discuss piracy in a different early modern regional context in Nabil Matar’s chapter ‘Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary’. Here piracy is examined from a perspective which has been largely ignored: the Muslims captured by Christian pirates in this period, who describe their experiences in the corpus captivitis in early modern Arabic sources. Matar’s chapter considers how much devastation Christian corsairs inflicted on the Muslim societies of North Africa. Through a survey of Arabic sources from the North African triple Maghreb – Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco – he catalogues a variety of allusions to the violence of Christian piracy and to Muslim captivity and enslavement. This material – from travelogues, autobiographical accounts, and correspondence – is used to examine the range of experience of Muslims who were taken captive into Christendom in this period. Similar to Matar’s consideration of piracy from Muslim sources, Matthew Dimmock’s essay also examines the practise from a new angle. In ‘Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the


Channel, 1590–1595’ Dimmock considers a number of accounts, both English and Spanish, to explore the ways ‘piracy’ might be accommodated within the rhetoric of conflict. These accounts offer a little known narrative of post-armada war consciously conducted through the raiding and plundering methods traditionally associated with piracy, providing an account that engages with issues of holy war, and national and religious identities. The next essay in the collection, by Mark Hutchings, continues to show the polemical uses writers in this period made of connections between piracy and religious concerns. In ‘Acting Pirates: Converting A Christian Turned Turk’ Hutchings focuses on the complex ways conversion is acted out in Daborne’s play about the notorious renegade pirate John Ward. As its title suggests, A Christian Turned Turk is primarily concerned with renegades, a category of transgressor it extends to include both pirates and converts to Islam. Hutchings suggests even as the play exploits fears of conversion and apostasy, conversion is its central motif. Pirates are former soldiers, cast adrift by ‘their’ country; captives are sold into slavery in Tunis, bodies converted into currency in the marketplace; and Jews and Christians, enthralled by the prospect of riches, convert to Islam. As Hutchings reveals, not only does the play find itself immersed in a conversion economy, but it cannot itself avoid ‘enacting’ conversion in its production since not only do Christian actors play Jews and Turks, but the doubling patterns of the play indicate that actors playing Christians double as non-Christian others. The act of conversion – to pirate and/or to Turk – is played out in the text’s very performance as Hutchings argues that acting the pirate/Jew/Turk illustrates as much as condemns conversion, as identity is shown to be a convertible currency in the play’s economy of doubling on stage. Hutching’s emphasis on the politics of identity in relation to piracy is carried through into Bernhard Klein’s chapter ‘“We are not pirates”: Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads’. Here, Klein focuses on the deeper meanings behind the charges and denials of piracy in the 1572 maritime epic Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) by the Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões. As Vasco da Gama (the epic hero) sails north up the East African coast and across to India, he is frequently suspected of being little more than a pirate by those he encounters on the way – just as the actual explorer was during the historic first European sea voyage to Calicut in 1498. As Klein shows, these charges can easily be understood within the historical context of early Portuguese voyaging in the Indian Ocean. In the poem, however, the ambiguities surround-

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ing references to piracy expose significant faultlines in The Lusiads’ imperial imaginary. In these moments, Klein argues, piracy is revealed as navigation’s ‘other’, in the sense that the virtual maritime spaces created by celestial navigation (as described in contemporary navigation manuals) are fantasies of imperial possession that deny the ethnic and cultural diversity the Portuguese mariners actually encountered in the Indian Ocean. If Klein’s chapter reveals to us the ways piracy and discourses of power operate in Portuguese imperial literature, then Lucy Munro’s chapter continues this emphasis but in relation to a particularly significant early modern power relation: gender. Her chapter ‘Virolet and Martia the Pirate’s Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double Marriage’ explores the links between gender and piracy, since this play includes the pirate characters of Martia and her father, the renegade duke-turned-pirate, Sesse. Munro describes how Martia is seen initially as a ‘Martiall mayd’ and an amazon, fighting as bravely as any of the men, before turning against her father and his world when she falls in love with one of Sesse’s captives, Virolet. Rejected by Virolet after their marriage, she begins a liaison with the tyrannical king Ferrand, her father’s enemy, turning to traditionally ‘female’ crimes and working to achieve her murderous revenge through sexual manipulation. Munro suggests that concerns about the political and social disruption associated with piracy are crucial to the play’s double construction as sexual tragedy and political tragicomedy. By creating a series of disturbing parallels between Ferrand and Sesse, Fletcher and Massinger manipulate the common association made between piracy and tyranny; these parallels are eventually displaced, however, as Sesse takes on the role of liberator and kills the tyrant. In response, Munro argues, concerns about piracy are embodied in the ambiguous figure of Martia, a woman who is simultaneously pirate and amazon, and masculine and hyper-feminine. The final section in the book ‘Pirate Afterlives’ focuses on piracy’s continuing cultural work both after the death of individual pirates and through the appropriation of Renaissance pirate tropes by later writers. The essays by Netzloff and Jowitt both focus on the ways Elizabethan pirates are recycled by Jacobean writers for political purposes. In ‘Sir Francis Drake’s Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood’ Mark Netzloff examines the numerous images of Drake that circulated during his own lifetime along with the earliest efforts to establish his reputation in the Jacobean period. These spectral images


of Drake were, he suggests, used for competing political ends: at times to embody a militant, aggressively interventionist foreign policy at odds with the positions of the state; at other moments, as a way to harness the potentially unruly energies of populist expressions of nationalism and channel them in support of the monarchical state. Netzloff argues that Drake’s spectral form reflected both the emergence of, as well as the inability to conceptualize, new models of political community, particularly in terms of definitions of citizenship. Netzloff’s focus on the links between piracy and political protest is also the subject of my essay ‘Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Execution’. Focusing on the pirate scaffold speeches of Thomas Walton, alias ‘Purser’ and Clinton Atkinson, or ‘Clinton’, contained in the anonymous pamphlet Clinton, Purser and Arnold, to their countreymen wheresoever (1583), in Thomas Heywood’s and William Rowley’s tragic-comedy Fortune by Land and Sea (1607–09), and the execution of the ‘pirate’ Walter Ralegh in 1618, I read depictions of the manner of pirates’ deaths and their scaffold behaviour in political terms. Pirates were able, sometimes in surprising and resourceful ways, to use their scaffolds as a pulpit from which to express their antagonism to the state that condemns them. Using the work of Michel Foucault, J. A. Sharpe and Peter Lake concerning the subversive politics of scaffold speeches more generally, I explore the conventions specific to pirate scaffolds in order to analyse the ways in which these representations are sympathetic to the pirates themselves and offer a critique of contemporary institutions of statecraft. The last essay in the collection, by Gerald MacLean, ‘Of Pirates, Slaves and Diplomats: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire’ is the most speculative as it moves beyond the historical parameters of the rest of the book, even into the twenty-first century. It shows the way in which the literature of immediately postindependence ‘Young America’ appropriated images associated with Elizabethan ‘free trade’ or piracy, and attitudes to ‘Turks’, and adapted them for a new set of circumstances, namely the United States’ foreign policy in North Africa, specifically Algeria, in the late eighteenth century, and beyond. This diversity of attitudes influenced, MacLean argues, the development of several literary forms, including in sixteenth-century, imperially ambitious England ideas of a ‘national literature’ based on a history of native writers as described by Dryden and his contemporaries. For United States writers, the imperative for the new nation – or ‘Young America’ – to have a foundational myth and national literature was in place as soon as the concept of the

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United States of America came into being. MacLean describes the way that early American writers such as Colonel David Humphreys of Connecticut and Royall Tyler of Boston were innovators and ‘Young American literary firsts’, writing the first sonnets and epic verse, and the earliest plays and prose fiction respectively. MacLean reveals the ways in which early English accounts of Mediterranean piracy develop from residual humanistic attempts to understand the nature and range of Ottoman imperialism spurred by imperial envy. By contrast, the earliest efforts of the first United States commentators aimed to forge a language and literature of national identity based on, according to Humphreys, ‘the illustrious task of rearing an empire’. MacLean concludes by tracing the legacy of these patterns of behaviour into the twenty-first century through a brief discussion of the United States’ current foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly in relation to Iraq.

1 ‘Hostis Humani Generis’ – The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea Christopher Harding

The purpose of this discussion is to explore the legal perception of maritime piracy, primarily with reference to English source material, during the period 1550–1650. How was piracy characterized and defined as a matter of legal regulation and what was the nature and extent of the enforcement of such law dealing with piracy during that period? The starting point for this enquiry is the conventional legal view of maritime piracy as a distinctive form of criminal behaviour. According to this view, historically piracy has represented an unusual case of personal and individual behaviour directly subject to rules of international as well as national law, as a species of ‘international crime’, the pirate being the ‘enemy of all humankind’ – ‘hostis humani generis’. In accounts of legal history and international law, this categorization has elevated the pirate offender to a special status, as an exceptional and serious kind of criminal, whose behaviour has been subject to universal condemnation – almost a precursor of the archetypal international criminal of the later twentieth century, the war criminal. First this chapter considers the validity of this standard depiction of the pirate as an exceptional type of criminal, before examining in more detail the early modern legal view of piracy. My argument will seek to qualify and clarify what is often understood by the description ‘hostis humani generis’, and then point to the ambivalent view of piratical activity during the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries, prior to the much more definite criminalization of piracy at the turn of the eighteenth century.

The pirate as ‘hostis humani generis’ and the subject of ‘universal jurisdiction’ As students of international law are frequently told, piracy is an early example of individual conduct directly regulated by international law, 20

Christopher Harding 21

the rules of which stipulated a universal jurisdiction for all states over acts of maritime piracy committed on the high seas outside national jurisdiction. As such piracy has sometimes been characterized as an ‘international crime’. This in turn has created an impression of serious criminality – based upon an imperative for all states to take action against the common threat posed by such banditry beyond their territorial borders. This conventional view of the pirate as common but special enemy is encapsulated in L. Oppenheim’s classic international law treatise: Before a Law of Nations in the modern sense of the term was in existence, a pirate was already considered an outlaw, a ‘hostis humani generis’. According to the Law of Nations the act of piracy makes the pirate lose the protection of his home state, and thereby his national character; and his vessel, although she may formerly have possessed a claim to sail under a certain State’s flag, loses such claim. Piracy is a so-called ‘international crime’; the pirate is considered the enemy of every State, and can be brought to justice anywhere.1 This is a dramatic assertion of outlaw status for both pirates and their ships. The act of piracy strips from the perpetrator the normal legal protection of his or her home state, and thereby exposes the pirate to the jurisdiction of all other countries, which are encouraged and even obliged by international law to take legal action against pirates whenever possible.2 Moreover, the penalties following conviction for piracy were frequently severe. Tellingly, as a matter of English law, attempting murder during an act of piracy was still on the statute books as a capital offence until 1998, well after the abolition of capital punishment for murder more generally.3 A high degree of opprobrium also emerges from some judicial statements regarding piracy. For instance, according to Sir William Scott, a judge in the High Court of Admiralty: With professed pirates there is no state of peace. They are the enemies of every country, and at all times, and therefore are universally subject to the extreme rights of war […].4 In the light of such legal presentation, it is unsurprising that there emerged a conventional view of the pirate as a notorious and egregious category of criminal. This perception has been reinforced by textbook accounts which discuss piracy not only as a topic under the heading of ‘law of the sea’ but also under the heading of ‘universal jurisdiction’. In


the latter context, it has acquired bedfellows of special moral censure, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture.5 However, it is important to understand the purpose and nature of the ‘universal jurisdiction’ which has provided the pirate with such special legal status. The term ‘universal jurisdiction’ in itself may reflect rather different objectives. On the one hand, in its judgement in the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, the District Court of Jerusalem stated that: The abhorrent crimes defined in this Law are not crimes under Israel law alone. These crimes, which struck at the whole of mankind and shocked the conscience of nations, are grave offences against the law of nations itself (delicta iuris gentium). Therefore, so far from international law negating or limiting the jurisdiction of countries with respect to such crimes, international law is, in the absence of an International Court, in need of the judicial and legislative organs of every country to give effect to its criminal interdictions and to bring the criminals to trial. The jurisdiction to try crimes under international law is universal.6 This is a ‘universal jurisdiction’ both justified and required by the ‘abhorrent’ nature of the crimes in question, based on a moral imperative. But this would appear to be something different in its conception from the historical form of ‘universal jurisdiction’ applied to piracy. The latter, it may be argued, has a functional rather than imperative basis. A genuinely distinctive legal aspect of maritime piracy resides in its location – geographically it is by legal definition carried out beyond the limits of territorial jurisdiction. This does not result in a jurisdictional vacuum, since it would still be possible for both the pirate’s and the victim’s home states to exercise personal jurisdiction, but the location of the piratical act on the high seas does in a geographical sense place it in a ‘jurisdictionless’ zone, within which the normal conditions of jurisdiction do not apply.7 Since, by the end of the seventeenth century, it was widely agreed among maritime powers that piracy should be controlled, then discussions arose concerning how do this in areas which were for the most part free from the exercise of national jurisdiction. A broad agreement that all states were equally able, and equally obliged, to exercise jurisdiction, both to apprehend pirates and bring them to trial, appeared as a convenient strategy for trans-national regulation of an activity that was by then a common problem. In line with this ‘revisionist’ view, Antonio Cassese has argued that the universal jurisdiction


over piracy was motivated not so much by the protection of a community value as the need to safeguard a joint interest in fighting a common danger, concluding: Probably it was simply because piracy by definition occurred outside any State’s territorial jurisdiction that a useful oppressive mechanism evolved of allowing all or any State to bring pirates to justice.8 In short, special jurisdiction over piracy was a matter of optimizing law enforcement rather than a response to any special heinousness inherent in piratical conduct.9 Another ‘revisionist’ argument concerning the perceived seriousness of piracy as an offence has been presented by Eugene Kontorovich, who questions the use of jurisdiction over piracy as a model for the ‘new universal jurisdiction’ of the later twentieth century over especially heinous crimes.10 Although aiming to sound a cautionary note in relation to the contemporary extension of universal jurisdiction, his analysis of the historical position regarding piracy is revealing. In particular, he demonstrates that the co-existence during the early modern period of piracy and privateering, with the latter as a lawful and statesponsored piratical activity, suggested a pragmatic rather than moral basis for any condemnation of piracy at that time: The coexistence of piracy and privateering within one system of legal norms suggests that attacks on civilian shipping were not entirely beyond the pale within that set of norms […] Pirates were not universally condemned because of the nature of their actions, but rather for their failure to comply with the formalities of licensing.11 The phenomenon of privateering is an important aspect of this discussion, since its significance during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries necessarily colours any perspective on piracy more generally and undoubtedly would have informed contemporary attitudes. My first conclusion, therefore, is that later legal arguments relating to the idea of universal jurisdiction and the consequent association12 of (historical) piracy with (modern) forms of international crime comprising especially egregious conduct have tended to project backwards a certain view of piratical activity as an exceptional and seriously offensive kind of criminal activity. Certainly during the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries, for a number of reasons which will be explored below, the substance of the offence of piracy was viewed with a good


deal of ambivalence, and the identity of the pirate was a matter of some complexity.

Piracy and privateering Privateering is a crucial element in the discussion, since it demonstrates the fine line between descriptions of the same conduct as legal or illegal which would have informed contemporary views of the substantive character of piratical activity. Quite simply, privateering was a form of maritime plunder carried out by private parties but authorized and sponsored by state authority through formal documentation known as letters of marque (sometimes referred to as ‘commissions’).13 Privateering differed from piracy only in the formalities, not in the substantive nature of the conduct itself. Privateers committed acts that would constitute piracy in the absence of a letter of marque; plundering merchant ships on the high seas. As with pirates, this was usually accomplished solely by the threat of violence […] Privateers often behaved as badly as pirates, yet this did not throw off their […] cognizable status.14 This degree of equivalence between the two forms of plundering is important in two respects: in relation to the conduct itself, and also in relation to the identity and reputation of the actors perpetrating the plunder. Maritime plunder: crime, commerce or warfare? Privateering was a well-established practice within a number of countries from the medieval period through to the nineteenth century, only being outlawed by most states in 1856 by the Declaration of Paris; even then the United States refused to accede to that instrument and did not legally condemn the practice until the end of that century15 (while a ‘privateering clause’ survives still in the US Constitution16). In formal terms, privateering was a means of engaging in warfare at a time when most countries’ navies were not equipped for large-scale or sustained military action. Less formally, the practice also served the economic interests of some countries during a period of maritime economic expansion and of colonial development.17 As a technique of warfare, privateers attacked the economic interests of an enemy state by attacking its merchant shipping and that of other states trading with that


enemy. Barbara Fuchs describes the matter in the context of sixteenthcentury Anglo/Spanish relations: Under Elizabeth, England pursued a highly aggressive para-naval policy towards Spain: in the 1570s and 80s, piracy became England’s belated answer to Spain’s imperial expansion. Long before war became open in 1588, the Queen was giving her not-so-tacit approval to privateering expeditions that ostensibly sought new channels for English trade but in fact consisted mainly of attacks on Spanish colonies in the New World.18 Even during peacetime it continued via the authority of letters of reprisal,19 which authorized the recouping of losses due to piracy by attacking ships bearing the same nationality as the pirates causing such loss. Privateering was closely regulated as a joint venture between state and private entrepreneur – a kind of privatization of state warfare. The privateer of course entered the venture for profit, but the spoils were carefully divided betwseen the two partners by formal legal process: the rules relating to ‘prize’.20 This legal regulation of privateering was achieved firstly through the terms of the letters of marque or reprisal, and then through the system of prize law dealing with the distribution of and rights to plunder. An important function of the letter of marque was to define the scope of legitimate attack, in terms of nationality of shipping, and to set down any rules of conduct relating to the attack and seizure of ships and the treatment of captured ships and crew. The prize proceedings (for instance, in the case of England within the jurisdiction of the Court of Admiralty) would typically confirm that the seizure had been carried out according to the terms of the letter of marque, and would then comprise the legal selling of the captured property and distribution of proceeds, all of this conferring good title to the property on the subsequent purchaser. Such prize decisions were internationally recognized, conferring an international legitimacy on the whole system as a routine aspect of maritime commerce as well as warfare. In practice, letters of marque were documents of considerable legal and economic significance. One notable feature of their legal importance, which also confirms the fine distinction between piracy and privateering, was the extent to which they could be used as a defence in criminal proceedings alleging acts of piracy.21 In short, the system of letters of marque and reprisal provided a legal mask for what may frequently have been criminal piracy. According to Kenneth Andrews: ‘English captains accepted dubious letters of marque from


William of Orange or Gaspard de Coligny, the Huguenot leader, and for three or four years around 1570 a state of near-anarchy supervened in the Channel.’22 To a large extent the Admiralty, the office of state with the legal power to issue these commissions, promoted for its own profit the ensuing legal ambiguity. Ship-owners, for instance, were able to purchase letters of reprisal in advance for trading voyages, to cover any subsequent opportunities for plunder, as ‘licences were thus made available to all and sundry at a price’.23 Discussions of privateering inform and colour the perspective on piracy more generally. Most importantly, in terms of contemporary perception during the early modern period, it serves to broaden the context in which piracy should be viewed. Piracy, as an activity and as a method of maritime plunder, would not have been seen simply as a matter of crime and criminal law, but as something which was also closely related to the conduct of both warfare and commerce. Piracy itself as a strategy and its participants were both requisitioned in the interests of commerce, supplying an economic mode of warfare and a violent way of doing business. Inevitably, this would have informed the general view of piracy as a course of conduct. The piratical identity: maritime criminal or national hero? There is a second complementary dimension within the early modern perception of piracy, focusing on the role of the pirate as an actor as distinct from the piratical activity as such. To focus on the identity of the pirate may be instructive since contemporary perceptions may have depended as much on who the pirates were as what they did as pirates. From the early modern perspective – certainly at least an English perspective – part of the answer to this question ‘Who were the pirates?’ would have been: persons who some of the time were privateers, whose main occupation might have been described as merchantadventurers, and some of whom were legends, perhaps not so much in their own time but certainly afterwards. Just to mention names such as Francis Drake and Walter Ralegh in this context makes the point concisely that the pirate could be viewed as a national hero as much as a despised criminal. In his recent biography of Drake Harry Kelsey describes the late sixteenth-century pirate-merchant-adventurer’s provenance in the following terms: During the sixteenth century the maritime region of south Devon spawned dozens of English seafarers who made a fair living from


commercial voyages. For many of them this was not enough, and they turned to piracy for added income. The best of them managed to get away with it because they coordinated their depredations with English foreign policy. Francis Drake grew up around Plymouth, where many such men made their homes. He was trained by the Hawkins family, one of the leading families of merchant-pirates.24 But Kelsey may be playing up the view of Drake’s delinquency and playing down his heroic stature among his contemporaries;25 we should not underestimate the extent of ambivalence regarding what happened in that sixteenth-century oceanic space. Lauren Benton, for instance, has asserted that: seventeenth-century piracy was not a force of anti-legality. It was illegal, certainly, but great ambiguity attached to its definition in both theory and practice.26 And Daniel Vitkus argues that Kelsey draws too rigid a dichotomy between the elements of hero and villain in Drake’s reputation, suggesting ‘Kelsey preserves the piracy-merchant opposition and by doing so fails to acknowledge that plunder and violence were business as usual for English merchants operating throughout the early modern era’.27 As we shall see, it is an instructive exercise to summarize the range of roles performed by some of the leading ‘part-time’ pirates during this period. These roles are largely inter-related in origin and should therefore be discussed together, even though some of the outcomes may appear distinct. Moreover, during the second half of the sixteenth century there was also a common political feature associated with these roles, especially in relation to piracy in Atlantic waters: the strong rivalry and frequent warfare between England and Spain as European powers. Since much of Spain’s political and economic power at this time resided in its South American colonies, that country’s transatlantic activities were both a natural target for English military action and a stimulus for rival English ambition in the same domain.28 In this way anti-Spanish policies and sentiment harnessed piratical and privateering activity to confer upon the pirate-privateer a number of nationally useful roles: as agents of warfare; agents of commerce; agents of exploration; and ultimately as elements of a newly forged national identity.


These identities can be very clearly traced in the careers of two particular merchant-pirate-adventurers later to be celebrated as quintessential English heroes – Drake and Ralegh. The ascendant Protestant Elizabethan-Jacobean English state had limited naval resources and naturally entered into partnership with private entrepreneurial privateers in order to achieve both naval defence and economic expansion. Kelsey notes the reputation that Drake achieved in this kind of role: In fact, when Drake died in 1596 his reputation at home was in eclipse, but Spain rejoiced at the passing of a powerful foe. The Spanish dramatist and cleric Lope de Vega celebrated the event in 1598 with his epic poem La Dragontea, publicizing ever more widely many of the tales current in Spain about the aptly named ‘Dragon’ who had once preyed upon Spain and the Church.29 And he further shows how Henry Holland, writing about Drake in 1620 ‘intimated that Drake might some day rise from his watery grave to defend the world against a resurgent Roman Catholicism.’30 The career of Ralegh was also based on an assault on Spanish power and his rise and fall coincided with English state policy in that regard, eventually falling foul of James I’s more placatory attitude towards Spain. According to Stephen Greenblatt ‘Ralegh was not content with clever diplomacy, piracy, and the occasional spectacular raid. He dreamed of a far grander enterprise, of a challenge to the entire Spanish empire in the new World.’ 31 Alongside the political, defensive and commercial ends served by pirateprivateers, there were less aggressive achievements. As leading explorers and navigators of the newly opened oceanic space, they inevitably contributed much to the body of knowledge and learning. Matthew Teorey, for instance, emphasizes the contribution of this kind made by seventeenth-century pirates such as John Esquemeling, commenting that: Esquemeling described the geography, peoples, raw products, and Spanish weaknesses throughout the region. He provides hand-drawn maps of islands, ports and Spanish settlements that no British official or scientist has ever visited. The ex-pirates provided fairly accurate maps, which allowed English imperialists to dominate and master these territories.32


In a more general way the experience and knowledge of geography and navigation acquired by pirates and privateers contributed to the process of English maritime expansion. As Andrews explains: [T]here grew up a race of skippers who knew the ocean as their forefathers had known the Channel […] trained in the school of privateering. Their contribution to the new East India trade was indispensable, since men with the relevant practical experience of ocean voyages, men of proved judgement and responsibility, could hardly have been produced overnight […] Ships and seamen were rightly seen by Elizabethan statesmen as the key to mercantile power, and the contribution of these two decades of private warfare to England’s maritime strength made possible her rise to commercial pre-eminence in the following century.33 There is no doubt concerning the nationally valuable roles performed by pirates-privateers. Some contemporary recognition of such roles is evident from the careers of ‘reformed’ pirates such as Sir Henry Mainwaring, who received a pardon in 1616, was knighted two years later and entered into a distinguished naval and official career; Mainwaring famously remarked that ‘the State may hereafter want such men [pirates], who commonly are the most daring and serviceable in war of all those kind of people’.34

Another class of pirate: infidel corsairs and European renegades Another early modern phenomenon which would have influenced and, most likely, complicated European perceptions of piracy was the plundering carried out by the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean region.35 At the time of Shakespeare’s writing of The Merchant of Venice there is a reference to the risks for Mediterranean trade, exemplified by the loss of Antonio’s ships in that play. As Shylock remarks in the play: ‘But ships are but boards, / sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, / land-thieves and water-thieves, (I mean pirates), and / then there be the peril of waters, winds, and rocks.’36 It was also a situation which caused considerable legal argument concerning status as pirate or privateer. The corsairs were for the most part state-sponsored raiders, operating on behalf of the Barbary States (Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Salee). These polities were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but for practical purposes


acted independently of Turkish authority so that their ‘international relations’ with other states were uncertain in a formal sense. 37 This obscured the legal picture. On the one hand Hugo Grotius 38 argued that the Christian nations were continually at war with these non-Christian polities so that corsair raiding was to be regarded as warfare and thus not piratical. A different school of thought was represented by Alberico Gentilli. 39 In his view authorization by a legitimate sovereign was crucial and consequently much depended upon whether the Barbary States were so regarded by other countries – by removing that recognition authorized raiding became piracy.40 Matters were further complicated by treaty practice. Some European countries entered into individual agreements with individual Barbary States, under which the latter promised to prevent attacks on the shipping of the European country in return for protection money or the provision of maritime supplies. 41 Such treaties would remove enemy status and authority for privateering if any raiding continued. Finally, corsairs were also based on Malta, which was a Christian polity and as such was expected to confine attacks to Muslim shipping. But in practice the Maltese corsairs often targeted Greek ships.42 Overlaying these legal complexities was a further aspect of corsair activity: it was perceived by Christians as an activity perpetrated by infidels who also engaged in slave trading. Thousands of Christian captives were taken for slavery during this period.43 In turn this lead to the spectre of forced conversion.44 There was thus a sense of moral outrage regarding the fate of these Christian captives and the redemption of such captives became an increasingly institutionalized and statesupported mission in a number of European countries.45 According to Nabil Matar: It is impossible to calculate the exact number of Britons who were captured by the Barbary privateers during [this] period […]. While there are records of thousands of captives who were ransomed, innumerable others simply disappeared after being sold into slavery in the North African and Middle Eastern hinterlands.46 The outcome was a perception of corsair raiding and Barbary piracy as ‘barbaric’ and morally offensive in so far as being directed against Christians, yet in legal terms it was a complicated matter. The picture was further confused by the fact that many corsairs were actually Europeans – ‘renegadoes’ seeking their fortune under the Barbary


flags.47 As Peter Earle outlines, a number of former privateers turned to corsair piracy in the earlier part of the seventeenth century: When such men were declared outlaws in England, it is not too surprising that many went a stage further, made Barbary their permanent base and, unlike nearly all previous English pirates, attacked English as well as other Christian shipping […] becoming renegades or ‘turning Turk’, a change of faith which enabled them to enjoy the full benefits of a career of plunder in the Muslim world.48 A particularly notorious convert was John Ward, who (as Mark Hutchings describes in Chapter 5 of this volume) became the commander of a corsair fleet manned by both Turks and Englishmen and eventually retired to a life of affluence in Tunis.49 On the whole, it seems likely that corsairs would have been regarded differently from Atlantic privateer-pirates of European origin. But in the longer term, stronger popular feeling regarding corsairs and renegades may have contributed to a less ambivalent view of piracy more generally, bequeathing to it a more definitely barbaric and outlaw character.

The pirate as legal defendant In discussing the criminal prosecution of pirates during the seventeenth century, Benton has argued: ‘[e]ven the most apparently rebellious and openly criminal pirates were acutely aware of the nuances of their legal standing’.50 This statement refers to another significant aspect of the legal position of pirates during the early modern period: their situation was not, in legal terms, so far beyond the pale as to make defensive legal argument a waste of time. There are two main issues to explore in relation to the pirate as legal defendant: defence arguments when actually brought to trial, and jurisdictional issues and problems of enforcement. Defence strategies The co-existence of pirating and privateering during this period and the fact, as noted, that the same mariners might switch from one to the other activity, presented considerable opportunity for those charged with piracy to defend themselves by arguing that the act in question was authorized privateering. Since the distinction between piracy and privateering was technical rather than substantive, there


was a ready technical defence, based upon finding documentary authority to cover the act of piracy. Legal arguments revolved around not only documentary evidence, comprising the interpretation and validity of particular letters of marque or reprisal, but also issues of time and geographical delimitation. The validity of letters of marque depended in part on the exact timing of relations of war and peace between particular countries, and mariners could exploit the argument that, in distant oceanic locations, news of a change of status travelled slowly. Moreover, the rules relating to hostile relations did not apply beyond certain geographical limits. In this period the principle of ‘no peace beyond the line’ had some currency, but ‘the line’ could be variously interpreted as the equator, the Tropic of Cancer, or even to include North America.51 As Benton has shown, a number of seventeenth-century pirates were astute in their use of legalistic argument to justify dubious acts as privateering.52 Adjudicating on the legality of conduct at the borderline between piracy and privateering was further complicated by the background presence of significant vested interests in such ventures. During the reign of Elizabeth there were frequent legal claims relating to the attack and seizure of neutral vessels and goods, as well as the seizure of neutral goods on enemy vessels, which were frustrated by the intervention of the powerful backers of the piratical-privateering raids. The litigation brought by the Italian merchant Filippo Corsini in the 1590s provides a good example of the difficulties of legal process.53 Corsini represented the claims of a number of merchants, with strong support from the governments of Florence and Venice, in relation to valuable cargoes seized in 1590. Although he obtained a court order for the arrest of the goods, he discovered that some of the cargo had quickly (within 11 days of its arrival in England) been adjudicated good prize and distributed. Despite eventually obtaining a favourable judgement from an ad hoc tribunal established by the Privy Council, those who had obtained possession of the goods succeeded in obstructing enforcement so that, by 1593, Corsini complained that he was being ‘led about in a ring without end.’54 Part of the explanation of what was happening lay in the identity of parties interested in this captured cargo: powerful and influential men such as Walter Ralegh, George Carey, Henry Seckford, Thomas Myddleton and Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral.55 The important point, more generally, is that the legal process and its exploitation were well appreciated both within the pirating community and its shadowy hinterland of promoters and investors. Benton


summarizes the matter as comprising ‘understandings of the maritime legal order’ and, in relation to pirates themselves, comments that: No matter how remote, the possibility of prosecution caused privateers-turned-pirate to anticipate defence arguments they might use at trial and to make efforts to preserve the pretence of legality, even while openly conducting unsanctioned raids and seizures […] Trial records reveal defendants presenting rehearsed excuses for their actions and pleading for mercy, sometimes with success.56 The other main category of defence employed by both crew and captain alike, was mutiny and coercion. It seems clear from some records that crew members could be in genuine ignorance of the real destination of ships or unwilling participants as a privateering expedition turned to piracy.57 This argument was used in Ralegh’s final arraignment, since his ill-fated expedition to Guiana in 1617–18 involved both allegedly illegal attacks against the Spanish at San Thomé58 and an attempt by Ralegh’s crew to turn to piracy on the return voyage. Ralegh’s defence was that he was in ignorance of the attack on San Thomé59 and that he had also striven to deflect the crew from their piratical intentions.60 Again, the more general point is that the fine line between privateering or other forms of authorized venture and piracy, and the temptation for privateers and their crews to turn pirate, especially when anticipated profits had not materialized, would have rendered some defences of ignorance and coercion quite plausible. Jurisdiction and enforcement at a distance There seem to have been further legal and practical obstacles impeding the prosecution of alleged piracy during this period. As a matter of English legal jurisdiction, piracy was at this time under legislation of 1536 a matter for the Admiralty Court, but employing a special common law procedure which included the use of juries. Strictly speaking, accused persons, evidence and witnesses had therefore to be transported back to England, at the very least a costly and cumbersome procedure in practice. Legislation clearly providing for the trial of pirates outside England was not passed until 1700. In practical terms the apprehension of alleged pirates and securing their presence before the properly constituted admiralty courts was not an easy matter. There were limited resources, in terms of both ships and manpower, for policing and apprehension of pirates, especially in the ocean areas beyond the British Isles.61


It is not easy to assess the level or effectiveness of enforcement of the criminal law against piracy, during the reign of either Elizabeth or James, although it is clear that James I had both a strong personal dislike of pirates and an incentive in his pacific policy towards Spain for more determined law enforcement.62 But the scale of the task of enforcement was daunting; as Andrews notes in relation to the last decades of the sixteenth century ‘[m]any hundreds of men in these years were convicted of piracy […] thousands more actual pirates were never convicted, for the problem was simply unmanageable’. 63 Even apprehension and conviction would not necessarily result in the application of the full rigour of the law. The 1570s case of John Challice reveals the need for compromise in law enforcement: sentenced to death, Challice was pardoned on condition that he served as a pirate-hunter ‘to clear the coasts of other wicked pirates, as he knows their haunts, roads and creeks and maintainers so well he can do more than if she [the Queen] sent ships and spent £20,000.’64 Furthermore, the problem of enforcement was compounded during this period by a fair measure of support for piratical activity in colonial territories since, according to Thomson: Pirates supplied goods otherwise unobtainable under the Navigation Acts […] at bargain prices. Trade in pirated goods helped the colonies maintain a balance of trade with England […] Financing pirate voyages provided an investment opportunity for wealthy individuals with excess capital.65 The outcome was a culture of mutual support between pirates and colonists, resulting for instance in ‘escapes’ of captured pirates from colonial prisons, and acquittal of those pirates tried in colonial courts by juries reluctant to see the death penalty imposed.66 Throughout the seventeenth century the economy and security of the fledgling English colonies in the Caribbean were closely intertwined with pirating activity, although in a complex manner. Finally, in considering the question of law enforcement, it should also be noted that some aspects of pirate character, even in cases of criminal conviction, may well have struck a sympathetic chord with certain sections of popular opinion. Christopher Hill refers to a pamphlet published in 1639, recalling the case of two well-known Elizabethan pirates, A True Relation of the Lives and Deaths of the Two Most Famous English Pyrates, Purser and Clinton. Hill argues that:


According to this account, they were common seamen who reflected ‘what baseness it was in them to be no better than servants […] Who had the ability to command’. Thinking it high time to become ‘freemen of the seas’ they drew in several discontented sailors at Plymouth and formed a crew, seeing themselves as ‘half lords at sea’. They had a brief but successful career till Queen Elizabeth ‘thought rather by her clemency to reclaim them’ and offered a pardon. But ‘they were then free commanders’, and rejected the offer. In consequence they were proclaimed traitors, captured and ultimately executed.67 Hill’s analysis suggests a view and popular tradition of the pirate not so much as ‘common criminal’, but rather as ‘noble outlaw’, and this view is explored more fully in Claire Jowitt’s discussion of pirate scaffolds in Chapter 9 of this book.68 There is evidence of some contemporary sympathy or even respect for piratical character. For instance, there were reports of some reluctance on the part of juries to return guilty verdicts.69 Elsewhere there were accounts of crowds at execution demonstrating sympathy for pirates about to be executed, and official fears of rescue attempts on the part of crowds.70 This is not to suggest that convicted pirates would have been exceptional in attracting a certain degree of popular sympathy. But it would appear to be another facet of the contemporary perception of piratical behaviour which should be taken into account in any attempt to reconstruct a sense of the measure of law enforcement at this time.71

Shifting identities – just like Walter Ralegh’s blues In pointing to the transformation of piracy from ‘honorable crime’72 to the action of hostis humani generis, Thomson argues: There is simply no question that piracy was a legitimate practice in the early European state system. Pirates brought revenue to the sovereign, public officials and private investors. They weakened enemies by attacking their shipping and settlements […] The most successful of the British pirates were knighted […] By the early eighteenth century, however, pirates were being hanged en masse in public executions.73 It may be overstating the case somewhat to say that there was no question regarding its legitimacy, and that later pirates were being executed


en masse. Certainly there was no doubt that piracy was, at least in legal terms, a criminal offence and had been for some time. There was a longstanding sense of piratical delinquency – after all, during the Roman period Cicero had referred to pirata as being the hostes of all societies74 and medieval European polities had entered into treaties providing for the prevention and punishment of piracy.75 In English law, the Statute of 1536 regulated piracy as a criminal offence. Yet, although from the reign of James I there was an official determination to prosecute pirates as criminals, it would be misleading to think of the outcome as ‘mass’ execution. Yet the core of Thomson’s statement does convey the ambivalence with which piracy was regarded in early modern Europe, and the reasons for that complex perception. Pirates were simultaneously criminals and agents of national interest, illustrating what Benton has called the ‘variegated regulatory space’76 of the ocean world at that time. To appreciate the early modern perception of piracy and in what sense the practice may have been regarded as delinquent, we need to divest ourselves of a modern and more definitely drawn idea of criminality and criminal law. Our contemporary sense of crime is much more uncompromising, having become the preserve of state regulation and subject to an imperative of enforcement (indeed some jurisdictions work from a principle of obligation rather than discretion to prosecute). It may be that we are now less capable of, and less comfortable with, a subtle appreciation of mixed identity compared to early modern observers of the piratical world. The tangled politics and morality of pirating are perhaps well dramatized in the reaction to Ralegh’s execution in 1618, here summarized by Raleigh Trevelyan: Weeks later […] the town was still talking of nothing else. The execution had come to be regarded as a national dishonour; however misjudged Raleigh’s enterprises, whatever mistakes he had made, his visions had always been the greatness of England […] There was an explosion of lampoons, ballads and pamphlets against Spain […] In a vain attempt to justify himself, James produced the Declaration […] Such a document was decidedly unusual for a reigning monarch to have sanctioned.77 Therefore, in so far as pirates were regarded as criminals during this period, we should be careful to temper this perception and not translate it into a modern and more categorical sense of criminality. Matters were more fluid since:


Privateering not only absorbed the numerous pirates of the pre-War period […] but it drew upon the whole maritime population, inducting landsmen as well as seamen en masse into a kind of predatory voyaging which verged upon and frequently deteriorated into piracy.78 The reasons for this ambivalent early modern view of the subject appear to be tied to those for the change in perception later in the seventeenth century. In this regard, I would make four particular points by way of conclusion. First, national interest is a crucial consideration, and national interests, and certainly that of England, changed between the beginning and end of the seventeenth century. In economic terms, aggressive maritime and colonial expansion was gradually replaced by more settled and regulated trading activity. As Hill argues: ‘[b]y the later seventeenth century trade had become all-important to the English economy and standard of living. Piracy was suppressed.’79 In political terms, privateering and piracy served a useful role in the Elizabethan period while the English navy was still small;80 later in the seventeenth century, naval power had expanded considerably. The official view of piracy has to be placed in this context of consolidation of power and authority by the sovereign state during the course of that century, a political process which in itself implied an increasing monopolization of force and violence by the state. In that sense, in Thomson’s words, piracy ceased to be an exploitable resource and became instead a practice to be eliminated.81 The second point is related, and concerns the resort to violence, whether as a means of policy or as a personal act. Early modern society accepted violence and force more readily than our present society. This is evident, for instance, in both the widespread use of corporal punishment 82 and in the use of force in international relations. Piracy, when defined as a form of plunder, accompanied if necessary with personal violence, should be seen in such a context. From the Spanish colonial perspective, English and Dutch pirates and privateers in the Caribbean were pillagers, prepared to inflict (and receive) a large amount of carnage and destruction in order to gain their booty. 83 Yet this violent method was tolerated as an element of both political and economic policy. As Vitkus suggests ‘[t]he enterprises of overseas trade, freebooting, maritime warfare, slavery and colonization were supported by a cultural outlook that imagined and glorified a new set of heroically violent roles for


venturing English subjects’.84 This cultural outlook would moderate over time, leading to the categorical condemnation by the second half of the twentieth century of both personal violence, as a central concern of criminal law, and of state sanctioned violence and the use of force in international relations. Early modern contemporaries would have been well aware of piratical resort to violence, yet would have had a different perspective on the subject compared to our present sensibilities. Thirdly, we need also perhaps to appreciate that the individual victims of piracy and privateering would have been regarded as ‘fair game’ in the geopolitical context of maritime expansion. Piracy was almost an inevitable risk of both Atlantic and Mediterranean trade, as the luckless Antonio is aware in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Drake’s acts of piracy were acceptable in Elizabethan England especially because they were directed at Spanish merchants and shipping. But again, over time, the identity of the individual victim would shift. By the eighteenth century, there was developing a greater separation of identity as between the individual and his or her nation, which would eventually lead to an articulation of human rights and the legal protection of both combatants and civilians in wartime (‘humanitarian’ law).85 What increasingly informs later perceptions of piracy, therefore, is a diminishing acceptance of the role of the victim as an expendable element in international competition and conflict, and a growing recognition of such victims’ claims to legal protection in their own right. Finally – and here I return to the issue of ambivalent perceptions – there is the identity of the pirate as such. Given what has been said above regarding the political, economic, and cultural context of piracy in the early modern period, we need to view the piratical identity itself as less stable and neatly defined compared to that presented in later images. It was in that earlier period possible for the pirate, as a particular individual, to shift in identity, both quickly and frequently: from privateer to pirate (Drake); from merchantadventurer to enemy of the State (Ralegh); from failed adventurers to national heroes (both Drake and Ralegh); from delinquent pirate to government official (Mainwaring); from pirate to celebrated explorer (Frobisher). Modern criminal law prefers a neater concept of criminality, but we should be careful not to project backwards too readily and easily our view of l’uomo delinquente on to the identity of the early modern pirate.

Part II Perspectives on Piracy


2 The Problem of Piracy in Ireland, 1570–1630 John C. Appleby

Maritime disorder was a major problem in north west European waters during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Under the pressure of international rivalries and conflicts, organized privateering and piracy severely disrupted trade and shipping, inflicting widespread damage on maritime regions, stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Plunder on this scale represented a significant redistribution of wealth both between and within the economies of England, the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal and France. For early modern states, engaged in an uneasy process of centralization, maritime depredation also presented a finely balanced range of problems and opportunities. As the case of England demonstrates, states with limited financial resources and military power were tempted to exploit private enterprise at sea for strategic and tactical purposes, particularly in the form of privateering, under which legally commissioned private vessels were authorized to attack enemy shipping under the guise of legitimate reprisals. During the long Anglo-Spanish conflict from 1585 to 1604 privateering grew into an extensive business; during the closing stages of the war, however, it became increasingly disorderly in nature. Indeed the increasing seizure of neutral vessels, often in violent and dubious circumstances, led to complaints that the English were a ‘nation of pirates’.1 These conditions favoured the development of organized English piracy after 1604, when large groups of mainly English rovers roamed the Atlantic in search of plunder. According to some estimates there may have been as many as 40 pirate ships, manned by 2000 men, operating during these years, which bears comparison with the scale of activity in the early eighteenth century, during the so-called golden age of piracy, when between 25 and 30 pirate ships, manned with a similar number of men, were active.2 41


To some extent the problem of piracy in Ireland during the period covered by this paper grew out of the disorderly spread of English depredation beyond its traditional bases in south west England. While Sir Henry Mainwaring claimed in the early seventeenth century that Ireland was a ‘nursery and storehouse of pirates’, most pirates were English in origin.3 But the nature and scale of such piratical activity represented a difficult problem for the English government, during an acutely sensitive phase of plantation development, particularly in Munster and Ulster. Some indication of the seriousness of the problem can be gained from the surviving letter-book of Sir Arthur Chichester, the Lord Deputy from 1605 to 1616. Although Chichester was determined to promote the plantation of Ireland, at times he was almost overwhelmed by the problem of piracy. In a revealing insight into the limitations of an expanding English state, the Lord Deputy was forced into negotiations with pirate captains, despite his own dislike for such a policy: ‘I thought it no good husbandry nor service for the King to make such Capitulations with Pirates, since His Majesty was driven to make reparation of their misdeeds daily, and yet Piracy increased or continued nevertheless’.4 Not only did such discussions rebate ‘the Edge of His Majesty’s justice and dignity’, but also they fruitlessly consumed his resources, ‘with no better effect then if it were Water cast into a sive.’5 On a personal level, moreover, Chichester felt that he was involved in parleys which engaged him in bonds of honour and conscience with pirate leaders; but the business was ‘like the Undertaking of an other Hydra, which yields me ten labors for every one I intended.’6 Of course piracy was a long-standing, if intermittent, problem in Ireland. But two overlapping developments lent it greater significance during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, both of which were related to the position of Ireland within the wider geographical and political context of the British Isles. The first concerns the changing nature of piratical activity, and the emergence of organized, deep-sea piracy after 1604, based on a pattern of voyaging in which Irish harbours were used as safe havens for a variety of purposes. The second concerns the emergence of various plantation schemes for English settlement in Ireland, official and unofficial, notably in coastal regions of the south west. The coincidence between these two developments effectively confounded earlier proposals which envisaged the construction of garrison towns in Munster as a means of dealing with the increasing presence of pirates in the region.7

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As a result the growth of organized piracy after 1604 occurred within a colonial context, in which official plantation was accompanied by the spread of unofficial settlement into remote regions, where the forces of law and order were seriously compromised by local conditions. In addition it was shaped by wider opportunities in the Atlantic, which foreshadowed the subsequent development of English piracy in the Caribbean and North America. Within this longer perspective the problem of English piracy in Ireland during the early seventeenth century represented a formative stage in the growth of transatlantic depredation.8 Against such a background this chapter seeks to explore various aspects of the problem of piracy in Ireland, especially during the early seventeenth century, by examining its wide ranging social and economic dimensions and by drawing attention to the flexible response of the English state in dealing with it. Despite the appeal of the popular image, piracy was a complex and multi-layered activity. The growth of English piracy in south west Ireland needs to be located within a context of varied forms, if not traditions, of activity. Thus a crude distinction can be drawn between the coastal raiding and plunder that predominated in the north and west, which was a long-standing characteristic of Gaeldom, in Ireland and Scotland, and the venturing of pirates who haunted the harbours of the south and east, which was increasingly linked with English and Welsh piracy across the Irish Sea. Although there were significant differences between these two forms of piratical enterprise, in terms of organization and range of operations for example, they overlapped uneasily and briefly in Ireland during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. As in the Western Isles of Scotland, coastal raiding in Gaelic Ireland was partly a means of making a living within the narrow confines of a predominantly subsistence economy. Across the north west, ranging from the western highlands of Scotland to the west of Mayo, sea plunder served a range of economic and social purposes, which were often entangled with political rivalries, as demonstrated in the activities of the O’Malleys during the 1580s and 1590s. It was conducted in small vessels, described as galleys, which were descended from the Viking long-boat tradition of shipbuilding, bearing a sail with oars, with two to three men serving at each oar. According to descriptions of the galleys used by the O’Malleys, they had 15 oars on each side and were capable of carrying up to a hundred men.9 With a fleet of at least six or seven such vessels the O’Malleys and their neighbours reportedly lived by robbing fishermen and other small ships that passed along the


west coast. Large fleets of these vessels, manned with a substantial number of men, were also involved in cross-Channel raiding. In 1585, for example, one of the Macdonnells led an expedition of 2000 men, in 24 long ships, from Islay to Antrim.10 Such foraging expeditions could also range over a wider field of operations. During the reign of Elizabeth I the ‘Galleys of Kisimul’ raided deep into the Irish Sea.11 Ruari Og McNeill of Barra was one of the leading promoters of such raiding, which was continued by his successors in the early seventeenth century despite ambitious attempts by King James to impose civility on the highlands and islands. More alarming to James was the growth of piracy by the Macdonnells, a powerful Gaelic family with extensive landed interests in the Western Isles and Ulster, including such strategically located sites as Dunluce Castle and Rathlin Island. Though rooted in customary forms of seafaring, which undoubtedly reflected the ethos of a society characterized by fighting and feasting, the upsurge in Macdonnell piracy during the early seventeenth century can also be linked with newer opportunities and pressures, that included the growth of overseas trade in Ulster as a result of plantation, and the centralizing and civilizing ambitions of the Scottish monarchy under James VI.12 These ambitions provoked widespread unease in the highlands and islands, leading the Macdonnells into open rebellion during 1615. The Scottish and Irish rovers operating at this time were thus identified by James as rebels as much as pirates, in a similar manner as the O’Malleys were identified as rebels by the late Tudor monarchy during the 1580s and 1590s. The association between piracy and rebellion, moreover, was complicated by religious differences. The Catholicism of the Macdonnells threatened to give the activities of such Gaelic sea-raiders a wider European significance, particularly through their links with the Spanish Monarchy.13 Although this outbreak of piracy was short-lived, and tended to be limited by its very nature, such petty marauding was more than a mere irritant. Within the British Isles it challenged the imperial pretensions of the early Stuarts, clouding the projection of a civilizing and unifying British monarchy. Consequently under James VI and I, the Macdonnells and others faced the military might of England, in the form of naval power, and the legal jurisdiction of Scotland, as demonstrated in the Statutes of Iona of 1609 and subsequent decrees that each Highland chief was to be limited to one 16-oared galley.14 The activities of these Gaelic sea-rovers, and the response they provoked from the Anglo-Scottish monarchy, were overlaid by the striking

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increase in English piracy in south west Munster after 1604. For many years, of course, pirates of various backgrounds had visited ports and harbours in Ireland to dispose of plundered cargoes. Henry Strangeways, one of the most notorious pirates operating during the 1540s and 1550s, regularly haunted the coast of Munster, acquiring a reputation as the ‘Irish pirate’, despite his Dorset background.15 According to a report of 1589 the province of Munster was a receptacle of pirates, who were maintained and supported by English settlers, including Sir Edward Denny and his wife who had extensive landed interests around Tralee in the west.16 Sir William Herbert, one of the most active promoters of plantation during these years, claimed that if piracy continued to be encouraged in this way, ‘and every port and haven in those parts be made a receptacle for them […] we must give over our inhabitation there, since we shall pass neither our commodities nor ourselves over the seas, but at their mercy.’17 But Ireland appeared to be defenceless against the pirate menace. In the year after the Armada campaign the lord deputy warned that ‘Duncannon could not resist a strong pirate’; royal ships were urgently needed to fend off pirates and defend Ireland against the threat of Spanish attack.18 Nonetheless the growth of pirate activity in Ireland during the early seventeenth century was unprecedented. It was also different from the coastal raiding that flourished in the north and west, not least because it was the product of a commercialized economy within which unemployed or underemployed seamen were recruited into occasional robbery at sea. For much of the sixteenth century this kind of smallscale piracy was based on short-distance voyaging into the Channel and its approaches, including the Irish Sea. The scale of such venturing appears to have fluctuated considerably. Increasing activity during the 1560s and 1570s, which was partly encouraged by growing hostility with Spain, facilitated the emergence of transatlantic depredation, as demonstrated by the raids of Francis Drake and others in the Caribbean during the 1570s. Following the outbreak of the AngloSpanish war in 1585, however, the development of Atlantic piracy was partly diverted into privateering, which was reinforced, as a business, by its convenient relationship with patriotism and Protestantism. Under such conditions, indeed, plunder could easily be justified as a form of public duty. The legacy of these years can be detected in the antiSpanish dimension to English piracy during the early seventeenth century, and in the way in which some pirate captains sought to portray themselves as patriotic warriors, who were still fighting their own war against England’s enemy. On several occasions pirates declined


to attack English vessels, or if they did the booty was returned, though this did not prevent others, like Peter Easton – who termed English men Turks and Jews – from indiscriminately plundering their countrymen.19 It has become almost commonplace to argue that the growth of organized English piracy after 1604 was the legacy of the war with Spain. Peace created a serious problem of unemployment among hundreds, possibly thousands, of mariners, who consequently sought work aboard pirate vessels.20 The force of this interpretation is undeniable, though it deserves more critical analysis than it has received so far. Nevertheless the link between maritime unemployment and piracy was affirmed by informed commentators such as Mainwaring, Richard Hakluyt the younger and Captain John Smith.21 At the same time the experience of Ireland during the early seventeenth century indicates that in the Atlantic, at least, the growth of piracy was intimately related to the opportunities presented by loosely-controlled, unruly English expansion. Conditions in Munster created a fertile environment for migration from England, especially in the region west of Cork which apparently was heavily depopulated in 1603. Indeed it has been argued that piracy was one of the reasons behind the rapid spread of English settlements in the south west region of county Cork, though this occurred within a context of widespread disorder on land and at sea.22 The Council Book of Munster contains varied evidence of the deep concern of officials in the province with disorder, and of the way in which vagrancy and criminality, particularly piracy, were yoked together. In 1611 the Council expressed its alarm at the number of dishonest and desperate men in the west, who were ready recruits for visiting pirate vessels. The crews of these vessels also benefited from the favours and services of shameless and adulterous women who haunted a growing number of unlicensed taverns, ale houses and victualling houses along the coast. Faced with the impossibility of preventing such contacts, the Council came round to the view that the only solution was ‘by unpeopling and layeing waste … Ilands’ and other parts of what it clearly perceived to be an uncontrolled borderland.23 The following year the Council was faced with complaints of ‘many notorious and unusuall Robberies’ in the province. Significantly it blamed the increase in robbery on idle and masterless men, who were ‘induced by the access of pirates’ to range up and down the province in search of booty. In 1613 the provincial authorities were concerned at the large number of idle persons in the west, most of whom, it was claimed, were pirates or former pirates, with nothing to do but ‘mischief by sea

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or land’. Several years later the Council was still concerned at the ‘great multitude’ of men involved in the ‘lewde and detestable trade of piracy’, who were supported in their ‘devilish action’ by shore-based assistants.24 Collectively the concerns of the Council with the wider social dimensions of the problem of piracy underline its determination to promote reformation and civility in the province. Against this background pirates, and the vagrants and other masterless men with whom they were associated, were identified as rootless troublemakers, who lived off the sweat of other men’s brows. They disturbed the ‘good quiet’ of the public weal, casting a shadow over the officially articulated image of plantation as a means of ‘securing and civilizing’ the province.25 At the same time, the Council complained of wicked pirates in the west who were accused of spreading malicious rumours that Hugh O’Neill, second earl of Tyrone, who had fled into exile in 1607, was planning to return to Ireland with the support of a Spanish fleet to raise a new and general rebellion, arousing widespread alarm and discouragement among the colonial community.26 If piracy was a serious social problem that raised complex issues concerning the structure of employment among the seafaring population, it was also an unusual, if not unrivalled, example of large-scale organized crime, which exposed the weaknesses of the early modern English state in dealing with criminal disorder. These weaknesses were compounded with uncertainty at the applicability of English law in Ireland. Consequently the Henrician statue of 1536 dealing with piracy was rarely used in Ireland, at least until the Dublin parliament passed similar legislation in 1614. Under these conditions pirates were able to evade the sanction of the law by claiming benefit of clergy.27 In January 1606 the lord deputy complained that captain Connello and seven or eight pirates, taken near Wexford, ‘will escape with life, for they can read well.’28 Although the judges informed Chichester that Connello and his associates would be offered ‘their “clergy”’, he urged that they be left to face the severity of legal procedure, not least to challenge a widespread perception among pirates ‘that the law there can do them no hurt.’29 In an exposed and vulnerable frontier region, such as south west Ireland, these problems were complicated by the difficulties of distance and communication, and by the persistence of favourable attitudes towards pirates, despite the consolidation of a hostile metropolitan view, which increasingly labelled pirates as the ‘enemies of all mankind’, or, in Sir William Monson’s more forthright description, as


the ‘very scum of a commonwealth [… who were …] to be abhorred by all honest and laborious men.’30 Similar attitudes can be detected among officials in Ireland. According to Chichester, pirates were the ‘common enemies of society’, while Lord Danvers, lord president of Munster, dismissed them as sea-sharkers and caterpillars.31 In practice, however, the way in which officials dealt with pirates continued to be qualified by wider considerations of policy, based on a belief that former pirates could be employed in a variety of public or private services. Such ambivalence was acknowledged and exploited by the pirates themselves. Prior to his capture off Wexford, captain Connello had been imprisoned for piracy in England, but he ‘was saved by the mediation of the Lord Admiral or Lord Chamberlain’; as a result, he was hopeful of receiving the like favour in Ireland.32 Several years later the Lord Deputy sought the permission of the Privy Council to employ pirates against fugitives and rebels, following the practice of Danvers in Munster. Apparently this was unacceptable to the king’s councillors in London, who roundly reprimanded Danvers for his dealings with pirates, ‘for the State should not appear to give countenance to such wicked persons, either by employing them against others, or merchandizing with them for redemption of their offences.’33 In their defence local and regional officials repeatedly drew attention to the scale of the pirate threat. Although modern estimates need to be handled cautiously, at their peak the Atlantic pirates who regularly haunted the coast of Munster during the early seventeenth century were made up of between 30 and 40 vessels which were manned by up to 2000 men. According to one report of 1611 there were 40 sail of ‘such vermin’ in Mamora, their rendezvous in North Africa, from whence they sailed north, plundering Iberian and other shipping en route to safe bases in Munster.34 Although the companies of these pirate vessels appear to have been made up predominantly of English men, it is worth noting that they included recruits of various nationalities. According to a Jesuit report of 1619 a group of 47 pirates who were captured and put on trial in Cork included one Turk and one Moor, who were apparently converted, by sign language, baptized and christened with the names of Peter and John; the rest of the pirate group were either English or Irish.35 The size and character of pirate companies during these years contributed to a feeling that they were an ‘unruly multitude’ who threatened the fragile peace and stability of Ireland.36 In 1606 Chichester, who on one occasion compared the pirate menace with the dangerous

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activities of Catholic priests, warned that captain Connello and his associates had ‘threatened revenge upon the parties that took them, and all their friends and neighbours.’37 Two years later captain Williams of the king’s navy justified his failure to attack a group of pirates on the grounds that he was overmatched.38 The following year, in August 1609, Sir Richard Moryson, vice-president of Munster, reported the presence of 11 pirate ships, manned with 1000 men, off the coast, with alarming news that ten more vessels were expected to join them. Prudently Moryson refrained from hostile or provocative action, ‘to engage this unruly multitude into any act either of spoiling or burning the country that might make them despair of pardon, and fit to be entertained by any ill-affected to the quiet of this kingdom.’39 What made these groups of pirates appear more threatening was their organization and range of operations which reached across the Atlantic to include Newfoundland and the Caribbean. In 1612 the Privy Council described the pirates off Munster as a confederacy, foreshadowing modern claims in favour of the existence of a ‘pirate confederation’ which was held together by a remarkable degree of harmony, underpinned by the development of a code of behaviour or conduct.40 Undoubtedly the Atlantic pirates operated under rudimentary regulations, but it is difficult to detect how they were developed or articulated during the early seventeenth century. Purser, the pirate in Heywood and Rowley’s play, Fortune by Land and Sea (1607–09), emphatically asserts that ‘Tho’ outlaws, we keep laws amongst ourselves: Else we could have no certain government’, but the evidence for clearly defined rules aboard English pirate ships during this period is scant.41 Contemporary observers did note that the Atlantic pirates were organized into fleets with a hierarchical structure based on the leadership of an admiral, who was elected.42 But the pirate confederacy was made up of groups of turbulent and teeming shipboard communities whose inherent instability created the potential for deep-seated rivalries and hostility, particularly among aggressive and competitive leaders, and companies of mixed backgrounds. Of necessity these divisions were rarely visible to outside observers in Ireland. Some indication of their significance is provided by the testimony of a former pirate concerning the rivalry between English and Dutch pirate companies at Mamora during 1609 and 1610, which reached such a pitch that the latter seized a group of English pirates, torturing the captain and his men.43 In revenge the English set upon the Dutch; the ensuing conflict, during which there were several fatalities, reportedly lasted for three days.


In practice pirates appear to have hunted for prey in small packs though they congregated in much larger groups in secure havens. In August 1611 a fleet of nine pirate ships, manned with 500 men, were together in south west Munster; on hearing reports of Dutch and royal warships on the coast they departed, ‘divided into three factions, being as it were in a mating among themselves.’44 Despite the potential for discord, these congregations in Ireland were important occasions in the life-cycle of pirates, fulfilling wide ranging social and economic functions, including the maintenance of varied relationships ashore. In remote parts of the south west, where, as one admiralty official noted, there were ‘fewe inhabitants and noe manner of force to annoy them’, pirates gathered particularly in Baltimore, Leamcon, Schull and islands within Roaringwater Bay, although some occasionally sailed farther west and north, along the coast of Connacht.45 According to one report, most of the suppliers of pirates in Baltimore were women, single, widowed or married, who attempted to conceal their activities by claiming to supply fishermen.46 Indeed women played a significant role in supporting English pirates in Ireland during the early seventeenth century. Although they were often the victims of piracy, as the wives or partners of pirates they could expect a share of their partner’s booty, as demonstrated in the circulation of gifts and other tokens. Some of these women lived in scattered coastal communities of south west Ireland and beyond, establishing independent lifestyles that are barely recorded in the surviving evidence. The wife of the pirate, Tibault Suxbridge, for example, managed a lodging-house close to Dublin with the assistance of her daughters, which appears to have served as a hiding-place for relatives and others who were involved in piracy. Many more women turned to prostitution, the growth of which was encouraged by the spread of unlicensed taverns and ale houses in south west Munster. But the relationship between prostitution and piracy placed many women in a deeply ambivalent position, exposing them to pirate violence and disorder, as well as to their liberality and generosity.47 At the height of pirate activity in south west Ireland, from 1605 to 1615, the disposal of plundered commodities became a regular trade, through which a variety of goods were widely dispersed. Although the evidence is often anecdotal, and impossible to quantify, it indicates that such transactions created a varied pattern of commerce, exchange and gift-giving. Though short-lived, the scale and nature of this illicit commerce may have played a significant part in the economic recovery of Munster from the ravages of the Nine Years’ War, and in the

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growing commercialization of a borderland region that was being absorbed within a wider, more far-reaching Atlantic network of commerce and contact. Many of these coastal settlements, it has recently been observed, have the appearance of a ‘boom town’, which was the result of uncontrolled expansion, or ‘spillovers of English settlement’, into regions beyond the range of official plantation.48 In such areas, it is evident that frontier settlement was either initiated or supported by the pirate presence: as Lord Deputy Chichester lamented in 1612, pirates were not only supported by the Irish, but also by ‘[m]en of our own Nation (who) under colour of Treaty do usually and familiarly converse and commerce with them.’49 In these circumstances the pirates were well provided with victuals and furnished with ‘Voluntary persons’ or recruits, from inns and guest houses along the shore which were ‘commonly full of Idle Men.’50 In the security of havens like Leamcon, pirates were able to trim their vessels and make preparations for future voyages. While the pastoral economy of west Cork was well suited to provide pirate vessels with ready supplies of beef or mutton, the south west fishery furnished abundant supplies of fish and potential recruits, either volunteers or forced men. The availability of such resources helped to establish a seasonal pattern of voyaging: as one observer noted in 1606, groups of English and Flemish pirates, ‘about the fishing time of Ireland, fall from their pickering upon the coast of Spain unto these western parts of Ireland, on purpose to victual themselves upon the fishing fleet bound from the south and west coasts of England.’51 Although the fishermen regularly complained that they were robbed by pirates, according to some officials this was a cover for a flourishing provisioning trade with England. Chichester claimed that the pirates’ ‘principall relief of Victualls’ was ordinarily provided by small vessels from England, which pretended to be engaged in fishing.52 Vessels from south west and south coast English ports were particularly involved in this unusual commerce, which enabled ship-masters and merchants to acquire a range of commodities, including sugar, wines and hides, at very favourable rates of exchange. About 1609, for example, Gideon Johnson, master of the Dorothy of London which was involved in the pilchard trade, purchased 600 Indian hides and a substantial quantity of gum, at Schull haven, from the pirate, Tibault Suxbridge. Johnson reportedly paid four shillings for each hide which were later sold in Venice for 30 shillings each.53 Even allowing for the cost of freight and other charges, this was a hugely impressive profit which demonstrates the underlying economic attraction of doing business with pirates.


In Munster, as in parts of south west England and Wales, pirates benefited from the connivance of local officials, whose approach to this type of maritime criminality was essentially opportunistic and entrepreneurial. Sir William Hull, a deputy vice-admiral, who settled at Leamcon in the early seventeenth century, after receiving a pardon for piracy committed in the Mediterranean during the closing stages of the Elizabethan war with Spain, was one of the leading protectors, and possibly promoters, of piracy in the province. Planters and officials like Hull were heavily engaged in regular dealings with visiting pirates: on one occasion, indeed, Hull was reported to have claimed that a pirate captain ‘owed him good store of money for victualls which he had delivered unto him at his last going to sea.’54 Hull’s neighbour, a clergyman, was also reputed to be a ‘victualler of pirates.’55 Despite some attempt at concealment, the coastal communities of south west Munster were engaged in a flourishing commerce with pirates. In 1611 there were complaints against the large number of local boats which, ‘under colour of carrying provision to the fishermen of Crookhaven suffer themselves to be taken by the pirates, and so are forced to do, what they purposely intended.’56 There is a large body of evidence among the records of the high court of admiralty and the state papers concerning the nature and variety of these transactions. In 1608 captain Boniton brought a prize into Baltimore laden with 160 chests of sugar, 60 of which were reportedly brought ashore and given away. During 1612 the John of Dover was seized by one of the king’s ships for trading with pirates, though the master defended himself by claiming that he had given a gratuity to the captain of the naval vessel, to allow him to trade. During the same year, a Dutch vessel was brought into Wexford and its cargo of goods, valued at £2500, ‘were rifled and scattered amongst the Inhabitants of’ the town.57 In 1613 captain William Baugh arrived at Baltimore with plundered goods estimated to be worth £3000 or £4000. During the course of protracted negotiations concerning his request for a pardon, Baugh distributed gifts among members of the local community, while allegedly giving 900 pieces of eight to a local official, captain Henry Skipwith, to procure a protection from the lord deputy. One of Baugh’s company, Baptist Ingle, reportedly deserted the pirate ship with £100 ‘to make merry’ with a woman ashore.58 Another member of the company, Henry Orenge, who had been with Baugh for about 18 months absconded with an unspecified quantity of precious stones. Sailing from Dublin to Chester, Orenge subsequently claimed to a yeoman of Chester that he had various diamonds and a great

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carbuncle ‘quilled up in the plates of his hose’, some of which he tried to sell to Lady Cooke during the course of his passage across the Irish Sea.59 Local officials and others could be the recipients of extravagant gifts from pirate captains. In 1611 captain Harris offered £200 to any official who could help him to procure a pardon from the crown. Several years later captain Lording Barry gave a servant of Humphrey Jobson, an admiralty agent from London, various amounts of gold twist, cloth of silver, silk and a ‘negro wenche’ all valued at £100, in an effort to gain the favour of the lord admiral in London.60 In such circumstances, naval captains were sometimes more concerned to do business with pirates than to arrest them. In 1609 the Privy Council was concerned to hear that captain Williams, who claimed to have been overmatched by a group of pirates in Baltimore, had received 19 or 20 chests of sugar and four chests of coral from them. If the report was true, and apparently it was not denied by Williams, the Council concluded that it was ‘a token of too much familiarity, and a sign that he meant not to do them hurt from whom he received so much good.’61 By varied means pirate plunder was widely dispersed within an extensive and loosely formed market. Although the economic dynamics that underpinned such transactions have yet to be fully investigated, it seems likely that few pirates gained much from these exchanges, at least financially. Very few, indeed, appear to have been able to emulate captain Richard Bishop, a former admiral of the Atlantic pirates, who retired from the sea and built a house ‘in the English fashion’ at Schull.62 Captain Baugh, who surrendered during 1613 with possibly as much as £4000 in plunder, died in a debtor’s jail, complaining bitterly that much of his wealth had been embezzled by Sir William St John, the naval captain who was involved in negotiating his surrender.63 The record for most other pirates is obscure, but it seems likely that their rapidly acquired wealth was just as easily dispersed among the coastal settlements of south west Ireland, or in North Africa, in a ‘night of Jubilee.’64 The government response to the problem of piracy in Ireland was varied, and always complex in operation. The extent of the problem provoked some radical proposals, including one by the lord admiral in 1609 that the relievers of piracy in Ireland should face the death penalty; and another by the Council of Munster, to depopulate the coastal region and islands of the south west.65 In spite of growing hostility towards pirates who, under the early Stuarts, were increasingly described as vermin or scum, official action continued to be influenced


by an underlying assumption that most pirates were unemployed seamen, who were forced into the trade by poverty and despair. This attitude, and its potential implications for government policy, were nicely captured by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the governor of Plymouth fort, in a letter of 1611 to the Earl of Salisbury, one of James’ leading ministers. According to Gorges, the growth of piracy was the direct result of the maritime unemployment that followed the peace with Spain in 1604. Indeed, among the ‘multitude of people that daily […] increase […] in whom there is no feeling of honesty or Religion’ piracy was applauded; consequently, their number was likely to increase.66 Gorges concluded by noting that in order to deal with piracy, ‘[a]ges past hath imployed great cost in the planting of Colonies in barbarous and uninhabited parts of the world.’67 Monson made a similar point, from a slightly different perspective, by arguing that if vagabonds were sent to the galleys or Virginia, ‘[i]t will take away the occasion of pirates and piracies.’68 Indeed, overseas service might be a pathway to redemption and reclamation. Sir Richard Moryson justified the suggested employment of pirates in the defence of the infant colony of Virginia on the grounds that they were ‘active men and good mariners, [and] hereafter when time shall wear out their former offences, with better desert in other countries not troubled so near at hand with their spoiling, they may return and prove necessary instruments of His Majesty’s service.’69 This awareness of the social roots of piracy, in which pirates were identified as the casualties or victims of economic change, created a profound ambiguity in the government’s attempts to deal with the problem. Indeed under James I government policy towards piracy was an uneasy compound of compromise and coercion, despite some occasional tough talk from the king or his ministers. In part this was the result of necessity, for the coercive power of the English state, as represented by the royal navy, was of limited utility in Ireland. For much of James’ reign the navy found it difficult to sustain regular or effective patrolling in Irish waters. Given the extent of maritime jurisdiction across and beyond the Irish Sea this was always going to be a challenging task; but it was intensified by the availability of only one or two naval vessels which, as the lord deputy repeatedly complained, were not based continually in Ireland.70 Consequently the king’s ships were no match for the pirate fleets which congregated in the south west during the summer. At times, moreover, the navy suffered from such serious problems in manning, that the crews of naval vessels seemed to be little more than a ‘rabble of loose people’, in the words

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of Sir John Coke.71 As Chichester ruefully recorded in August 1613, therefore, the king’s ships appeared to patrol the coasts of Ireland ‘without apprehending or seeing any Pirate.’72 Although Chichester insisted that pirates ‘will never abstaine from ill doing […] but for fear of prosecution and punishment’, the experience of the early seventeenth century indicates that the government’s flexible use of conciliation and compromise, through pardons and even occasional pensions, met with some success, particularly among pirates who saw themselves as patriotically plundering Iberian trade and shipping.73 Not only did this persuade a number of pirate captains and their companies to surrender after 1612, but also it played on the inherent fragility of pirate groups, exposing serious divisions that encouraged the fragmentation of English Atlantic piracy. Yet the decline of organized English piracy, which became increasingly evident in Ireland after 1618, was also the result of wide ranging international developments which were beginning to change the character of piratical activity in north west European waters. In Ireland pirates continued to visit remote havens and exposed coastal regions, but many were now in search of prey and plunder. By the 1620s diverse groups of rovers were spoiling trade and shipping off the coasts and sea approaches of the south and south west. In 1625 a multitude of Turkish pirates were reported to be in the west; several years later, the Bishop of Waterford complained that ‘at sea a merchant can not navegat two dayes, when he is taken either by a Hollander, or a Dunkerk(er), or a French pirate, or a hungrie Biscaner’.74 In 1631 Turkish pirates raided Baltimore, carrying off more than a hundred prisoners into captivity. The depredations of the Turks effectively frustrated earlier fears that there were some in Ireland who ‘would make this coast like Barbery, common and free for all pirates’, while demonstrating the rapid and radical changes to piratical enterprise during these years, which were inseparable from the changing position of Ireland both within the British Isles and a wider Atlantic context.75

3 Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary Nabil Matar

If you had seen them as they were taken, you would have wept blood; Children were separated from their mothers, and husbands from their wives; For the loss of their loved ones, tears streamed down their cheeks; And the virgin was paraded in the open, after her hijab was torn away from her; And the enemy watched gleefully, as tears choked her moans.1 Those were the words of Ibn Yajjabsh al-Tazi, a poet who died in 1514. He was describing the 28 August 1471 Portuguese attack on the Moroccan port of Asila in which more than 5000 of the inhabitants were carried into Christian slavery. Within a few decades, the number of Moroccan slaves rose to such an extent that the Moor in Andrew Boorde’s The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (1548) opened his speech by identifying Moor with slave: I am a blake More borne in Barbary; Chrysten men for money oft doth me bye. Yf I be vnchristend, marchauntes do not ecare, They by me in markets, be I neuer so bare.2 From the last quarter of the fifteenth century on, Portuguese and Spanish ships attacked Islamic ports in North Africa, both on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts, and established military bastions: Portugal seized Ceuta in 1415, Tangier (and Asila) in 1471, 56

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Azammur/al-Jadida in 1486, and Safi in 1508; Spain seized Mellila in 1497, Marsa al-Kabir in 1505, Oran in 1509, Tunis in 1535 and al-Araish in 1610. These occupations provided bridgeheads from which Euro-Christian armies fanned out into the country and captured thousands of Muslim men, women, and children, who were either kept captive in the presidios, or transported to the slave markets of the European mainland and from there to the trans-Atlantic imperial possessions, from Florida to Brazil. As Ahmad Bu Sharab has extensively documented from the sixteenth-century Portuguese archives of the Inquisition, Magharibi men, women and children were important commodities sought out by the Iberian pirates and invaders for the European slave markets:3 from 1495 until 1541, 9287 Moroccans were taken captive by the Portuguese alone; and in the ‘black years’ of 1521–22, nearly 60,000 Moroccans were seized and deported to Europe.4 By the end of the sixteenth century, there were so many Muslim slaves in port cities from Genoa to Cadiz that they became a common motif in European painting and sculpture (See Figure 3.1 Veronezi, ‘The Marriage at Canaa’ and Figure 3.2 the Moorish Slave in Leghorn). At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Moroccan rebel Ibn Abi Mahali lamented the seizure of his countrymen by Christian pirates: ‘[t]he sea is full of the ships of the infidels, and the mainland with its coasts are humiliated by the worshippers of the cross’.5 Even a small island like Malta caused deep fear among the Magharibi: in 1611, Ahmad bin Qasim’s informant reported that there were 5500 Muslim captives in Malta alone, 500 of whom were Andalusian/Moriscos and the rest were Turkish and Arab.6 In 1624, after a sea battle between Maltese and Tunisian ships, the latter released 500 Muslims from captivity.7 Similar fear was spread by the sailors of that other notas-small-an-island: England. From 1609 on, England assisted Spain in transporting the expelled Moriscos to the Maghrib. English captains chartered their ships to the exiles and carried them across to North Africa8 – and robbed them on the way. By the 1620s, the English were so active in the slave trade so much so that even the English royal delegate, John Harrison, complained about their depredations and their ‘taking of a ship of Salley by one Madork, and Edward Wye, and selling the men therein 56 into Spaine for slaves.’9 In her celebrated Captives (2002), Linda Colley explained that the North African captives did not leave behind them narratives about their enslavement by Christians; the early modern voice of the ‘captives’ was exclusively that of Europeans suffering from the brutality of

58

Figure 3.1

Paolo Caliari Véronèze, Les Noces de Cana, Paris, musée du Louvre. Reproduced with permission Photo RMN.

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Figure 3.2 Pietro Tacca, Monument to Ferdinand I, Livorno: detail of the Moorish Slave. © 1990, Photo Scala, Florence.


the Barbary Corsairs.10 But some Muslim captives did leave a record of their captivity and of the devastation of the European imperial venture on their societies and lands. These writings are unique in providing the only early modern response to the imperial project from the point of view of the ‘natives’ who endured the consequences of that project. American Indians, sub-Saharan Africans, or any other slaves in the early modern period did not leave descriptions, in their own language and idiom, of the European invasion as did the Magharibi. So many Magharibi captives were taken by Euro-Christians that a corpus captivitis emerged in late medieval and early modern Arabic about the experience of Muslims in Christian captivity. This corpus captivitis does not belong to a distinct genre of writing with its own conventions, as in the European tradition, nor to a body of macrohistorical documents and treatises: rather, it appears as subtexts in other texts, intrusions into larger polemics, hagiographies, or histories and religious expositions. But this ‘meager, scattered, and obscure documentation can be put to good use’:11 to provide a panoramic view of the Euro-Christians constituted from within the experience of the thousands of Magharibi Muslims who were taken captive into Christendom at the beginning of the age of European empire. The captives of the early modern Mediterranean were not just Britons and other hapless Christians but Muslims, too, defeated by the firepower and the naval advancement of the European empirebuilders. And so the question that this chapter will address is the following: who were the Muslim captives, and how has their narrative survived in the corpus captivitis of the early modern Maghrib? How can a counter-discourse (to that of Colley and others) about early modern Mediterranean piracy and captivity be constructed on the basis of Arabic sources and documents? Muslim captives seized by European pirate and naval fleets belonged to various nationalities: Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Turks and Arabs from Turkey and from Ottoman-ruled Egypt, Basra, and Hormuz, along with ‘Muslim Indians’12 – native Americans who had been brought as slaves to Europe and had subsequently converted to Islam.13 Indeed, and despite the ban on transporting Moriscos and Marranos to the New World, many Portuguese and Spaniards took their North African servants, captives and slaves there.14 The Moor in Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 account of Amerindian captivity and escape provides one of the earliest pieces of evidence about Moorish presence in the New World;15 ‘to beg with Indian slaves’, Cardinal Mendoza threatened Eleazar the Moor in Thomas Dekker’s 1599/1600 play, Lust’s Dominion,

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‘I’le banish you’ (I.3).16 Muslim captives were part of the slave labour in the emergent European empire. In particular, captives belonged to one of two groups. The first were the ghuzat, a term that chiefly applied to Ottoman fighters and janizzaries, attacking European ships or ports. In May 1577, the Ottoman Sultan, Murad III, urged the Moroccan ruler, Abd al-Malik, to appoint ghuzat mu’mineen (devout warriors) who would, as a later letter explained, fight in jihad against the unbelievers.17 The ghuzat were believers struggling to defend the lands of Islam against Euro-Christian piracy, and in the process, gaining martyrdom, booty (ghana’im), or falling captive to their Christian enemy. God determined the outcome. Among this group were also the Morisco exiles in North Africa who were zealous for revenge against those who had expelled them from home and history: ‘Wa kan minhum min al-jihad fi al-bahr ma huwa mash-hour’ (and there were some of them who went on the sea jihad and acquired fame), wrote al-Maqqari in the early part of the seventeenth century (he died in 1631).18 These were mujahideen who left schools and mosques, Sufi circles and professional stalls in order to protect the coastlines against the relentless conquista of their former compatriots – and in the process were captured and enslaved. The second group consists of Arabo-Berber natives in the coastal regions of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic who were seized by European marauders and enslaved either on their own soil, or transported to Spain and Portugal and from there, sometimes, shipped to America. Many Muslim ports were turned into Christian presidioscum-penal colonies and housed the worst elements from Christendom – and from Islamdom, too. They offered a haven for the mughattiseen/ baptizers – Christianized Bedouins/arab mutanassira, as the eighteenthcentury Algerian, Abd al-Qadir al-Mashrafi, called them (or al-maghatees, according to al-Mazari)19 – who posed as peddlers, kidnapped Muslims, hid them under the leather wares on their horses, and then sold them in the slave market of the presidios. On one occasion, they had even baptized and sold their own imam.20 The presidios caused as much fear of the Euro-Christians among the Magharibi as an Algerian outpost in Aberystwyth, for instance, would have caused among the Welsh population, or a Saletian colony in Cadiz or in Brindisi. Abu Zaid al-Fasi described how one day, the sixteenth-century reformer, Radwan al-Jenawy, was in the ‘West’ of the country/Morocco when he saw the Christians on their saddled horses, scanning the horizon from their outpost. He wept very much and called on the ruler to save the Maghrib, for there was no safety for Muslims even on their own soil.21


‘O Christian,’ asked Muhammad bin Muhammad al-Udwani, sometime in the middle of the seventeenth century, of a Christian from Cartagena, ‘Your hearts still yearn to invade the land of the Islam. He answered, Yes. We have documents assuring us that we shall return to the land of the Arabs. And so do all other Christians’.22 The ‘siege mentality’ which Bruce Taylor identified as the consequence of Spanish fear of Barbary Corsairs in the early modern period,23 was also experienced by the Magharibi: that is why envoys and emissaries did not always welcome travel into the lands of the Christians, and the humiliation and violence that they sometimes faced remained indelibly marked in their memories.24 One of the recurrent motifs in early modern Magharibi Arabic biographies, jurisprudential decisions, royal letters, and others, describes the danger of Euro-Christian invasions and the destructive impact of captivity on Magharibi stability, both political and social. The earliest allusions to captivity in the Magharibi corpus captivitis appears in religious sources: theologians invented/discovered hadiths which they ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad stating that whoever ransoms a captive from the hands of the infidels, God will release his body from the fires of punishment.25 Subsequently, ransoming captives became a religious duty, a fard, and jurists turned in their legal judgements to the consequences in their communities of individual and group captivity. They found themselves confronted by social crises as well as theological quandaries provoked by the seizure of breadwinners and husbands, wives and children. Ahmad bin Yahya Al-Wansharisi (d. 1508), the foremost Moroccan jurist, included numerous cases for examination, and his judgements/fatawa reveal the extent of the crises caused by the captivity of his co-religionists. ‘If Muslim captives escape from an enemy ship, they should not be returned’; it is legal to exchange Muslim captives with Christian ones; it is not legal to kill Christian captives because then Christians would kill their Muslim captives; it is not legal to enslave Christians without the opportunity of ransom; it is legal to exchange captives with money especially so that Christians know how much Muslims are willing to pay for ransoming their co-religionists.26 Other decisions reflected the role that women enjoyed in the Maliki school (which prevails in North Africa, west of Egypt), where they did not hesitate to go to court to seek divorce (they could appeal to 12 reasons where other schools of jurisprudence appealed to three or five) or to contest inheritance – and to seek clarification on marital status in the case of the captivity/asr of the husband. A century later, the same issues were still being discussed. The four chief jurists of Cairo responded to Andalusian queries about

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captivity: was it permissible for a mudejar in the lands of the Christians to emigrate to the lands of Islam and thus expose himself to the danger of captivity?27 At the end of that century, Algerians near Oran questioned their jurists whether it was permissible for them to capture the unclean boar and exchange it for their captured kinsmen?28 Starved in their besieged presidios, Spaniards were not unwilling to exchange Muslims for food. Further references to captivity appear in poems, memoirs, travelogues, recollections, and official correspondence which constitute the vast majority of the Arabic corpus captivitis, from both the Mashriq and the Maghrib. In 1613, the court scribe of the Lebanese prince, Fakhr al-Din, described Muslim slaves in Leghorn. There were, he wrote, around three thousand slaves, mostly Muslim with some Christian felons, all confined in underground ‘bagnios’ above which were the rooms of the sentries who looked down through holes in the ceilings. In the centre of one of the four bagnios was a pillar to which the Muslims were tied and beaten in punishment. When ships sailed out to pursue their corsairing (transliterating the term into Arabic, qars), they took the able men as galley slaves.29 From the Maghrib, lists have survived of Muslim captives, where they came from, what their professions were, and how much their ransoms were. There are also letters and petitions that were sent by the captives as well as miracle stories about holy men who effected their liberation; there are references to solitary as well as to communal captivities, to brief captivities as to extended enslavements. Some of the narratives are by captives who had spent so much time in European countries that upon their return to their homes, they added epithets to their names, al-Burtughali or al-Siqqili, showing their transformed personalities and characters. There are also letters scribbled by captives in broken Arabic, with barely enough ink, on scraps of paper, appealing for help from their captors or their rulers.30 The Magharibi corpus captivitis follows a paradigm that is different from its European counterpart. Arabic writers did not produce fulllength accounts of their or their compatriots’ captivity nor did they offer graphic descriptions of beatings, humiliations or tortures, as in many English or French accounts. Rather, the Arabic stories alluded to, or briefly recounted, an episode of captivity, an encounter with corsairs, and/or escape from slavery. Biographical and autobiographical writing in classical Islamic literature, which continued well into the period under study, followed conventions of style and presentation that neglected personal emphases. Authors did not write about private


experiences because they believed them not important to their readers.31 Consider the following reference to captivity in the autobiography of Ahmad bin Ghanim, in the early years of the seventeenth century: After I had recovered [in Tunis] we set out again in search of the Infidel and his wealth. While we were off the city of Malaga, which lies on the edge of the Bahr al-Saghir (? La Ensenada de Malaga) we came upon eleven galleys. It was during the second half of August when there is no wind and the sea is calm. A terrific battle ensued in which many died on both sides. We were closely pursued until only a handful of us remained. We were captured after I was wounded. But truly, that day more than six hundred of the Enemy Unbelievers were killed, including more than twenty of their grandees. After seven years God released me from captivity and I made for Tunis.32 Ibn Ghanim was so humiliated by his captivity that he preferred to mention it only briefly, as if he did not want to burden the reader with his own suffering and ordeal. Muslim writers did not have, like their Christian counterparts, the theological image (and vast iconography) of a suffering Christ whose pain the captive was willing to emulate – and a desire to tell others that he had emulated it. Captivity was not, therefore, a matter in and by itself, revealing personal tribulation leading to salvation and ‘redemption’ (an apt term used in the liberation of Christian captives), but part of the larger narrative of the Muslim in his submission to Allah: for both captivity and liberation were in God’s hands, not the captive’s. An exceptional account that delineates the whole experience of captivity – from seizure to liberation, but again, with little description of the actual captivity ordeal itself – survives about a rich government official: evidently, both in Christendom as in Islamdom, on behalf of the rich and powerful, rulers intervened personally to bring the captives back. And narratives were told not to dramatize the suffering of the captive but to enlarge on the commitment and pious effort of the ruler. Still, it took Ibn al-Qadi, the scribe of Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur, a whole year before he was released and returned to Marrakesh. His story shows the extent of governmental involvement in his liberation, and the complex level of negotiation and bargaining that took place among the Moroccans, the Maltese and the Spaniards – a negotiation that was widely discussed, reported, and thus remembered and recorded in Moroccan annals. As he was traveling from Tetuan to Egypt, Ahmad

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bin Muhammad bin al-Qadi (c. 1552–1616) was captured by the Maltese who, on Thursday 31 July 1586, took him to their island. He was, as he wrote later in his memoir, in ‘great distress as a result of hunger and cold, unendurable things, beatings and other indescribable tortures – may God break them/qaharahum al-Lah.’33 Again we see the same brevity in describing his suffering as with Ibn Ghanim. Because of his high status, as soon as he was seized, the machinery of liberation went into action. Abu Faris Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali, a fellow scribe at the Marrakesh court (c. 1549–1612), wrote about the contacts with the Europeans and the arrangements that were made in both Morocco and Spain for the release of Ibn al-Qadi. He reported how Mulay Ahmad ordered the governor in Tetuan and a wealthy merchant there to do everything possible to effect Ibn al-Qadi’s release. The pirates who had captured him immediately became greedy and sent the Qadi family a Christian, who was a famous weapons craftsman in Badis and a servant of King Philip II, the ‘tyrant of Castile’. The Spaniard asked that Ibn al-Qadi be exchanged for his son who had been captured in the battle of Wadi al-Makhazen in 1578; he also asked for a large sum of money which al-Mansur generously gave. The Qadi family took the Christian captive to Fez and from there to Tetuan to meet with the father at the appointed time for the exchange.34 Such a narrative was told and retold: two centuries later, the historian Ahmad al-Qadiri (d. 1773) still recalled it in his chronicle of Morocco, Nashr al-Mathani.35 Other narratives about captivity served not to show the power and commitment of the ruler, but to promote faith. The captive was transformed into a model of Muslim resistance to Christian power and temptation. Every Muslim who was able to outwit his captors or who was able to sustain his (or her) piety in the midst of conversionist pressure became worthy of a story that travelled beyond the immediate social and geographic borders. Just as Cervantes and Lope de Vega created dozens of fictional Christian men and women who resisted even unto death the pressures of Muslim captors, figures who later appeared in French and English literature, so did the Magharibi orally recount dozens of stories about resistance to Christian captors – which also appeared in later religious and biographical writings. In his memoir about the unbelievers of France and Holland, Nasir al-Din ala al-Qawm al-Kafireen, written in the early 1640s, Ahmad bin Qasim included the story of a Muslim captive in a North African presidio who defied his captors and lived to laugh at them – and to tell his story. The story about the captive showed defiance and piety – qualities that no amount of enslavement or brutality could erode. The Muslim


slave was ordered by his master to go to another presidio and fetch a statue of a saint. When he got there, he refused to seat the statue on the donkey, thinking such a deed of venerating wood sacrilegious. So he tied the wood to the tail of the donkey and trundled it behind. Upon returning, the villagers were furious as they touched the saint and wept for his condition, and took the slave to the ruler, demanding that he be executed. The ruler refused, telling them that they could not expect a Muslim to act in any other way regarding a statue. The story became so popular that it was relayed to the jurist Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Burji, who told it to his friends in Marrakesh, one of whom told it to Qasim. The story travelled from the Atlantic seaside to the metropolis, and from the oral narrative to the written page.36 As in the case of Ibn al-Qadi, the captivity narrative became a national narrative of endurance and of defiance of infidelity. A letter from a captive, Othman bin Qasim, to a French count, Le Comte de Pontchartrain, in Paris, on 1 November 1707, shows the self-constitution of a Magharibi captive. Despite having spent many years in France, he had not been able to wean himself from the flowery rhetoric of his Arabic culture. Many letters show how captives were quite astute about their demands, but completely ignorant about how to project themselves in cultures with different emotions, priorities and codes. Qasim opened his letter with an extensive and bombastic salutation that would certainly have made his Moliere-reading addressees laugh; he then continued with a description of his background and the conditions of his captivity. He was, he reported, an Algerian/jazairi, 50 years of age, disabled with a lame foot, who could not ‘even haul water and who had never rowed.’ He had been enslaved in Spain for two years, was released, along with 1500 other captives, by Mulay Ismail, and then as he was sailing back from Morocco to Algiers, his ‘watan’ (country), on a Saletian ship, he was captured by the French who proceeded to enslave him, mistaking him for a Moroccan. After years, he now had the four hundred francs needed for his ransom, which are, he admitted, ‘more than what I am worth, for I eat and lie inactive – as I am sure you can imagine the condition of an old and disabled man like me.’ But he was not being released because he was classified as a Moroccan not an Algerian.37 The letter confirms that Europeans, in this case the (notorious) French, did not differentiate between nationalities: all Muslims made good captives, regardless of their national origin and the state of affairs between the captive’s country and France. Throughout the early modern period, French pirates, along with the Maltese and the Italians,

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sailed under Majorcan or Portuguese flags (as Majorcans sailed under French flags, and Britons under Spanish flags), and refused to distinguish between the nationalities of their North African captives: if they were at war with Algiers, every Moor became an Algerian to justify enslavement. It is interesting how Qasim repeatedly emphasized his national identity: where ‘Muslim’ or ‘Arab’ might have been used in the face of the Christian, Qasim enunciated a national identity to distinguish himself from fellow Magharibi. Captivity was teaching North Africans about the importance of national differences and perhaps the preference of one nationality over another – especially if it could facilitate liberation. Having naively told the French that he had been orphaned since his youth, it is very likely that his captors would have realized that none would ever claim him, and no pressure would ever be applied for his release. He could therefore be kept, without any intrusions from Algerian ransomers. There are numerous references to captivity and to the miracles/ karamat that effected liberation from European pirates. These karamat were bestowed by God on holy men to effect the escape and victory of captives – a phenomenon that also appears in Catholic hagiographical and literary accounts from the other side of the Mediterranean. Sidi Shu’ayb bin al-Hasan al-Andalusi, a jurist who had migrated from the Andalus to Morocco, was once walking near the seashore when the crew of a Spanish ship abducted him and chained him to other Muslims. As soon as they did that, the ship no longer moved. The Spaniards realized that they could not go on, so some suggested that they release the captive because he was a qissees who was favoured by God. But he refused to leave unless they released all the Muslim captives too – which they did.38 God had intervened through the sheikh on the side of the captives. On another occasion, Christian ships appeared near the Moroccan coast of Haha in order to seize slaves; but Sidi Ahmad al-Sayeh, who had been sleeping, suddenly stood up calling out for his sword, as a result of which the enemy fled.39 Having alerted the city, the sheikh appeared to have miraculously driven away the enemy. Salé, which to Europeans was the notorious centre of piracy, housed the shrine of Sidi Abu Hassan who was invoked to ward off European piratical attacks. So venerated was this murabit that he became integrated into the vast religious complex around him – his sixteenth-century gravesite was built near the medieval Grand Mosque and the thirteenth-century Merinid medrassa (and later, the Tijani sufi circle was established close by). The murabit who protected from EuroChristian depredations was central to the piety of the port city – and


has remained to this very day a site of veneration where celebrations are held every year in the week of the Prophet’s Birthday. No holy man could acquire religious authority or credibility without showing power in freeing captives. Biographies of saints/murabits included stories about miraculous deeds in regard to helpless captives. One such extensive biography is that of Abi al-Ghaith al-Qashash (1551–1622), Nur al-armash fi manaqib abi al-Ghaith Muhammad al-Qashash, which includes stories of liberation and of the Tunisian saint’s power over captors.40 A shareef (a claimant to descent from the Prophet) who had been taken captive in ‘the lands of the Christians’/ bilad al-Nasara was brought by his captor directly to Abi al-Ghaith in Tunis. The latter asked the captor how much the Muslim’s ransom was. ‘Three hundred sultanic dinars’, replied the captor.41 So the sheikh told him to wait, as he always did, in order to strengthen the captive in his faith. The Christian captor got tired of waiting and threatened to take the captive back to Christendom. So the sheikh asked the Christian what he wanted. The Christian brought in a witness in order to write a (bank)note for the ransom sum. The Christian insisted on cash, but the sheikh insisted that they write the note, saying: ‘O ruumi, let us write it in the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, and things will then be finalized’. The sheikh then put his hands on the note and started giving the Christian coins from under the carpet covering the floor of the room, until he had paid the whole sum.42 When the Christian saw the miracle of the sheikh, he said to the shareef, ‘Tell this cashier (?) of yours that had I not had a wife and children in the land of Christians, I would not have gone back but would have stayed here to serve him’. This and other such karamat were widely disseminated in a culture that relied on orality for information and news: the miracles transformed the miracle-doing ransomer from a local to a regional saint, unifying societies from Tunis to Miknas and from Algiers to Aghadir in their anti-Europeanness.43 As in the case of men, women too were captured because the Europeans wanted labour, and women provided it. Indeed, as in the attack on Djerba at the beginning of the seventeenth century, even toddlers were taken to be bred as future slaves.44 A list of Muslim female captives who were baptized in Rome includes captives who had been seized by pirates from all over the North African and Mediterranean regions: Tunisians (one of whom was a ‘puella’), Constantinopoleans, Mauritanians, Bosnians, Dalmatians, along with girls and women from all over the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts – Mostar, Tripoli, Morea, Coron, Chios, Aleppo, and Salé; their ages ranged from seven to 60.45

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Evidently, the whole Islamic world was being viewed as a provider of cheap labour and possible converts. Women who ended up in Spain and Portugal were treated as life slaves with no option of manumission and repatriation, much as in sub-Saharan enslavement. Some tried to escape as was the case with one Moroccan who admitted upon her capture in Portugal that she did not want to spend the rest of her life in poverty and dire conditions.46 But those who were captured and enslaved were sometimes the lucky ones; on many occasions, the women and children were not deemed useful and were slaughtered: ‘We took them completely by surprise and killed about 400 persons, most of them women and children’, wrote a Portuguese captain in July 1541.47 By the end of the sixteenth century, al-Fishtali, was lamenting the plight of ‘the women of the Maghrib, Arab by lineage and character’ who had been enslaved by invaders from the Canary Islands and led away, ‘trailing their clothes behind them.’48 This is why accounts about the return of women captives were associated with miracles – sometimes quite curious ones. One account tells of the captivity of a jurist, Sidi Abdallah al-Mahaji, along with his three daughters and 50 of his followers. After a year of captivity in Oran, he was ransomed, and then two of his daughters were ransomed by friends, one of whom proceeded to wed her. His wife kept weeping for the third daughter, so he left the house, abluted and prayed, calling on God to help her: ‘[a]nd lo, she came. He told her mother, Go and see your daughter. The latter explained that she was combing her hair when a white bird pecked her. She followed it until she reached home’.49 That the Christian image of the Holy Spirit, which the captives might have seen in paintings and ecclesiastical decoration during their captivity, had been transformed into the saviour of Muslims from Christian slavery is intriguing. The story of the miraculous liberation of this third daughter continued to be recounted until the end of the nineteenth century.50 There were many Christian men and women who, after being captured by the Muslims, ‘turned Turk’ or ‘donned the turban’ in pursuit of advancement, employment and security. Arabic sources are full of references to a’laj and ‘iljat – converts both masculine and feminine – often in the context of describing military officers, diplomatic and commercial agents, and female servants. As Kenneth Parker has noted, the names of converted pirates ‘demonstrate the risks attached to making assumptions that all so-called Barbary pirates were North Africans by origin and Muslim by religion: from where it is but a short step to the construction of the conventional binaries such as those of


Christian versus Muslim.’51 The slippage from one religious community to another occurred widely between the two sides of the Mediterranean: an Englishman by the name of Martin sailed to Salé and teamed up with a Moroccan murabit, telling him that while in England, he had had a dream of the Prophet Muhammad who told him: ‘Go to Africa where you will find the savior of humanity.’ The murabit confirmed that he too had had the same dream in which the Englishman converted to Islam and started reciting the Qur’an. Martin converted and the two started performing miracles together, feeding the people vast amounts of couscous.52 What was distinct about the slippage into Islamic society were the opportunities that captives-cum-converts found – opportunities which Muslim converts rarely found in European Christendom. While Muslim society accepted converts and integrated them into their communal and political fabric, Euro-Christians never viewed Muslim converts as part of their society. The theory of the Purity of Blood (limpieza de sangre) prevented Muslim converts from assuming important roles in Spanish society:53 there was fear that their skin colour would rub off on the pure white European and result in physical contagion and defilement – thus the reference to the ‘sooty bosom’ in Othello. There is not a single Muslim convert to Christianity in early modern Britain or Holland who acquired status and respectability. The first Muslim to convert in Britain and leave an account tells of a grim and exclusionary life at the end of the eighteenth century – despite his conversion and marriage to an English woman.54 In France, there is only one: Jean Armand Mustapha, author of Voyages D’Afriqve (1630). Meanwhile, Muslims, both in the West as well as in the Levant, saw no structural reason to prevent the Euro-Christians from becoming, if they chose, part of the Muslim community. The racial binary that dominated Europe and eurocentrism in the early modern and the modern periods and that proved instrumental in conquest, expulsion and ethnonational cleansing, is notably absent in North African writings.55 Linda Colley described visiting Rabat in Morocco, and taking a stroll in ‘Rue des Consuls to one of the places where white captives are known to have been sold, the Souk el Ghezel.’ She was disappointed, she commented, not to find anything ‘precious […] to see when you finally arrive’ other than ‘a tree-shaded car park.’ But just a few minutes’ walk away from Souk el Ghezel stands the magnificent Oudaya Mosque which demonstrates the integration of an English captive into Moroccan society and civilization. The mosque was rebuilt in the eighteenth century by a captured architect who had converted to Islam,

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Ahmed el Ingles/Ahmad the English who also built the treasury and fortified the qasba: ‘He was a man who had power with the sultan.’56 It is striking that while other mosques in Rabat had high ceilings, the ceiling in this mosque is much lower, recalling the small parish churches of Ahmad’s native England (see Figure 3.3). While the majority of European captives were truly the ‘underbelly’ of empire and suffered grievously in their slavery, as Colley correctly pointed out, there were Britons and others who were allowed to become hybrid natives, to use James Clifford’s term,57 English Squantos, finding in their captivity an opportunity for prosperity, self-realization and fame. The age of empire rewarded some European captives in Islamdom – but not the Muslim captives in Christendom. The corpus captivitis that emerged from the Magharibi experience recounts the narrative of only a small number of captives; but it is an important corpus because it constitutes the first record of the voice of ‘natives’ in their early modern encounter with empire. Neither subSaharan Africans, nor South and North American Indians left written accounts of their captivity by the European conquistadors and slave traders as did the Magharibi. Their experience of captivity was unique because the Magharibi had the Ottomans to fall back on as a kind of geo-political depth (they could turn to them for help in a manner that was not possible for the Amerindians who were there without imperial allies); they also had both a history and a religion that tied them, linguistically and theologically, to coreligionists half-way across the world; and most significantly, they had literacy which enabled captives to write their own letters and petitions, or compose poems and prayers about their conditions. Even if on torn sheets of paper, they inscribed their stories in their own hands and in their own dialects, thereby remembering and memorializing their captivity for generations to come. Captivity and the liberation of captives brought North Africans into contact with Europeans, Muslims with Christians, Magharibi with Spaniards and Frenchmen, Englishmen and Maltese. It provided the Magharibi with the opportunity to learn about the imperial religion, and about the society, custom, mores, and personal character of the pirates in the lands of the Christians. In various voices, and to various audiences, local and foreign, at home or abroad, captives ‘spoke’ about the Christians, the nasara, about themselves, and about their experiences. While some of the narratives consisted of the direct voice of the captive, others were ventriloquized and have only survived in French, English or Spanish translation. Still, the narratives provide descriptions of personal experiences


Figure 3.3 The mosque by Ahmed el-Ingles in Rabat. Reproduced with permission from Nabil Matar.

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and encounters that show captives not as constituted in the European West, but as offering their own testimony and consciousness about the age of empire. These testimonies became loci of identity providing the Magharibi with a shared history that was passed on from region to region and from generation to generation. One allusion to asr/captivity or one recollection of seizure was enough to trigger off a reaction of emotions in family or community that had developed their own objective correlatives to suffering and humiliation. For all those who had or might encounter the early modern European empire, and from the coastal plains to the mountains, there were narratives and memorials about captivity and liberation, conflict and branding58 that could never be forgotten. As the nineteenth-century Tunisian diplomat/writer Ahmad bin Abi Diyaf (1804–73) stood before a coastal ruin in his country, he recalled the past and the terrors that the British Empire had wrought on his forefathers: ‘In the days of Mustapha Laz [c. 1665], the ships of the English came to Ghar al-Milh and burnt a ship and bombarded the city towers, whose ruins can still be seen today’.59

4 Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95 Matthew Dimmock

1590 was a year of portentous visions over the English Channel. Not only were reports circulating in London that mariners from the Low Countries had found the sea ‘the couler of blood’, but English sailors on her Majesty’s ship Vangard reported how: in an euening about setting time of the watch, all the men in the ship at the rising of the Moone, did discerne in the aire ouer the Moone the shape of a man, with a croun on his head and the king of Spaines armes plainly displaide, which continued visibly to bee seene for some small space, and soone after it was as a thing ouerthrown and vanished away, and seemed to them as though it were falling.1 These are only two examples of ‘sundry such sights’ that have ‘lately beene seene vpon the coast of France’, which, when soberly considered by those ‘of good iudgement […] presageth, the ruine and confusion of those unholy leaguers, vpholden by the Pope and the king of Spaine.’2 The popular currency of such visions, unequivocally indicating the inevitability of victory for England and her allies, predestined by God and the natural world, was not simply a hangover from the similarly characterized destruction of the 1588 Armada, but was a response to rapidly changing events in a continuing conflict.3 From London’s printing presses this conflict was repeatedly represented in explicitly religious, often apocalyptic terms (as with many early modern accounts of celestial occurrences) that attempted to indicate a unity of purpose in a righteous cause, where the English occupied the position of God’s elect nation and the Spanish were ‘the professed enemies of God’s truth.’4 Furthermore, such accounts indicate the extent to which 74

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the larger conflict between Catholic and Protestant was understood to correspond with events prophesied in the book of Revelation, a conflict from which the godly would emerge victorious, their enemies damned.5 Not only was this exegetical explanation a powerful dynamic behind the creation of a sense of national destiny, but it was driven by a fundamentally biblical language of heresy, revelation, damnation and the fall that created an image of Philip II of Spain as the ‘grandchild’ of ‘the deuill’, the son of ‘Antichrist’, and of the Spanish as ‘so much worse than the heathen Infidels.’6 This was a crusade in all but name, and such language homogenized combatants into absolute categories, regardless of their prior status or tactics, which were often closer to piracy than the triumphalist printed record suggests. Beneath these inflexible theological invocations, this conflict always threatened to undermine or overflow the bounds of nationalist rhetoric and royal authority. In the land-based campaigns of northern France, a rigid hierarchy and the regimenting of large armies in the field meant that authority could be preserved relatively easily, but in the conditions of the Channel where individuals were encouraged on both sides to engage in actions redolent of piracy for ‘God’s cause’, the unstable boundaries between legality and illegality, loyal subject and renegade, and between a righteous national cause and individual gain, repeatedly threatened to collapse. An anxiety about maintaining these distinctions emerges in a series of royal proclamations between 1591 and 1593 declaring that privateers engaged in this conflict who did not officially declare prizes taken at sea, ‘shall be held, and taken as Felons and Abbettors to Pyrats, and to be proceeded against, as in case of Felonie is accustomed to be done by the Lawes of this Realme.’7 Furthermore such proclamations indicate the fine line between heroic legitimate service and simple pillage, the latter a characteristic of ‘felons and Pirates’, which ‘was not lawfull to be done by the lawes of the Realme’ or ‘the lawes of the Sea.’8 The state required its subjects’ duty, in both senses of that word. This chapter is thus concerned with the ways in which such precarious privateering in the Channel was represented in a remarkable body of popular literature, alongside a series of curious events that, when connected, offer insight into the web of political, mercantile, theological and national concerns that shaped the ways in which the English, the Spanish and the Ottoman ‘turkes’ interacted in this arena. Of primary importance is the way in which the post-reformation conflict between Catholic and Protestant is rationalized and represented. By focusing upon a relatively narrow chronological period (1590–95), and


upon a very specific geographical area, I shall argue that the accounts by those involved in these privateering raids (either as soldiers or as slaves – or occasionally as both) offer a sophisticated sense of strategic alliances and of implacable enemies, and of a process of condemnation and conflation, on a grand scale that has implications for a wide range of textual representations. Conversely, of course, this kind of focus also offers a valuable sense of the ways in which ideological conflicts affect the lives and perceptions of individual protagonists on all sides.9 1590 marks the moment at which, taking advantage of the murder of the French King Henry III in the previous year, the Duke of Parma invaded France from the east while Spanish forces simultaneously took and held the Breton port of Blavet (now Port Louis), initially in order to disrupt supplies from England reaching the Protestant claimant to the throne, Henry of Navarre.10 This strategy finally ended a precarious balance of power that had already been deeply disrupted by the Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, and necessitated an English response.11 Over the next five years, ‘there were constantly some 10,000 English troops serving abroad, strung out along the continental coast of Brittany and Normandy to Holland’.12 A Spanish foothold in Brittany was dangerously close to the English coast, and a cause of profound anxiety in London since it was considered a potential launching point for another armada, the prelude to which, it was widely assumed, would be the taking of the Scilly Isles.13 A vast amount of documentation exists concerning troop movements and political developments in Brittany before 1591. The dispatch of Sir John Norris and an English army of 3000 men in this year prompted a considerable increase.14 William Lyly had earlier reported on 23 January 1590, for instance, that Henry of Navarre (after 1589 referred to by the English as ‘King Henry’) ‘had been warned to take care lest the Spaniards should seize Brittany under colour of invading England’ and, in the following years, there were regular appeals for men, munitions and money for the region, with a number of English and ‘Scots’ companies sent to fight for Henry against the Catholic League (or ‘Holy League’) who were actively supported by the Spanish.15 However, English aid was by no means constant, nor did all English participants concur on the aim of their policy – commanders such as Sir Roger Williams argued that a ‘torn and divided’ France might be to England’s advantage, were it not for Brittany, ‘for all the best ports of France’ are ‘in that province.’16 The danger was only heightened after 1594 when, having abjured Protestantism, Navarre was crowned in Paris as Henry IV. The now

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redundant ships and men based in Brittany were reorganized: some were sent back to Spain, some moved elsewhere, and the rest formed into a unit of substantial galleys whose specific purpose was, on their own initiative, to attack and pillage the coasts of England and Scotland.17 After a high-profile raid on Penzance, described as ‘a proud attempt by some Spanish galleys that landed in Cornwall’ (to which I shall return), the force was largely disbanded at the end of 1595, though rumours abounded that further attacks were imminent.18 I am primarily concerned, then, with the five years during which the Spanish held possession of Blavet and used the French coast as a base for patrolling mercantile sea routes and raiding English shipping and ports. Not only does this Spanish presence prompt vigorous assertions of an English Protestant identity, but it also seems – as I have suggested – to have supported the sense that these were the final moves in an apocalyptic endgame which would result in the inevitable victory of God’s elect nation. This millenarian theme is central to an understanding of many texts dealing with this specific conflict, most of which are anonymous, relatively short in length, and feature frontispieces illustrating naval vessels and royal arms. A typical example, The Honourable Actions of that most Famous and Valiant Englishman, Edward Glemham Esquire, latelie obtained against the Spaniards, and the Holy League, in Foure Sundrie Fightes (1591) was revealingly ‘published for an Encouragement to our English adventurers, (Gentlemen, Sailors and Soldiars) that serue against the enemies of God and our countrey’, and offers again a sense of the ways in which national and religious allegiances seamlessly connect in the heroism of ‘valiant’ English ‘adventurers’, a term that flaunts the legitimacy of their privateering tactics.19 However, the first text I want to consider is The Taking of the Royall Galley of Naunts in Brittaine, from the Spanyards and Leaguers, with the releasement of 153. Galley slaues, that were in her: by Iohn Bilbrough, Prentice of London. Published in 1591, the text refers to events that took place during October of the previous year. Bilbrough introduces himself with the first of a number of references to ‘renegat English’, a phrase which often refers to those who had become ‘pyrats’ or ‘turned Turk,’ or both, (see Mark Hutchings’ discussion of the anxieties surrounding this particular transformation in Chapter 5) but which in this context refers to English Catholics: About seauen yeares since, I Iohn Bilbrough, Citizen and Marchant Taylor of London, toke my aduenture to the seas, where in short


space afterwards I was betrayed into the enemies hands by the treacherie of a renegat English, not worthy the name of my Countreyman; which villanie of his extended not to mee alone, but to seauen other of my companions: amongst whom, my selfe and a Skot, remaining aliue, were carried captiues.20 He describes being ‘condemned into the Galeyes in the moneth of September, 1584. and there hauing remained the space of sixe yeares’, where he endured ‘exceeding miserie, as hunger, colde, stripes, with many violent torments bereft of all hope for euer to behold my parents, friends, or natiue countrey againe.’21 These sufferings, typical of many accounts of galley slavery, are a means of publicly asserting his identity as an Englishman in opposition to that ‘renegat’ who was ‘not worthy the name’, and are further extended as he narrates valiant escape attempts which, when they fail, only increase his ‘sorrowfull wretchedness.’22 Such comments offer a common defence against any possible accusation that the narrator had been tainted by the religion of his captors, or was simply lying, and Bilbrough goes as far as listing on the final page of his text, ‘Witnesses of the truth of this matter’, after which is written ‘the great seale of Rochell.’23 The incorporation of witnesses was astute on his part, since all such narratives and their authors were open to a degree of suspicion: a royal proclamation of 1591 asserts that: because it is certainlie knowen and proued by common experience, vpon the apprehension of sundry of the sayde traiterous persons sent into the Realme, that they doe come into the same by secret Creekes, and landing places, disguised, both in their names and persons: Some in apparell, as Souldiers, Mariners, or Merchants, pretending that they haue bene heretofore taken prisoners, and put into Gallies, and deliuered.24 In part it was this threat that prompted the establishment of a formulaic narrative in which the temptations of the enemy are emphatically rejected, religious and national identity is maintained in suffering, and allegiances are confirmed. In this sense, each account is a kind of autohagiography, and is typical of accounts of Christian slavery in privateer vessels from the Channel to the Mediterranean that have, as Nabil Matar indicates in the previous chapter, clear Muslim parallels.25 Not only do both the form of the accounts and the above proclamation

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indicate a pervasive anxiety concerning the veracity of markers of identity – particularly of religious identity – but they also demonstrate a sense of the pernicious and monstrous figure of the renegade, ‘fanaticall’ and ‘seditious’, ‘English men by name, but Spanyards in heart’, which has a long lineage and may, in this form, originate in early Christian portrayals of heresy.26 Bilbrough’s account is thus remarkably similar to Barbary captivity accounts such as Richard Hasleton’s Strange and Wonderful Things Happened to Richard Hasleton … in His Ten Years’ Travails in Many Foreign Countries (1595) and Edward Webbe’s The Rare and most wonderfull things Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seen and passed in his troublesome trauiles … (1590) – both of which are roughly contemporary.27 Each of these authors use a similarly dramatic narrative to perform the heroic retention of their Protestant national identity in captivity, and establish that identity in reference to the archetype of the suffering Christ, their nationality and religion (the two of course inextricably linked) fundamentally vindicated. Bilbrough is moved onto the ‘Galley Royall’ of Nantes in Brittany following the Spanish expansion into the area in 1590, with a commission to ‘take all those […] English, Scots, Flemmings’ and ‘their owne nation [the French] on the Kings part.’28 Like Webbe, he takes up a position as gunner, and is granted a measure of freedom for his cooperation. Consequently – as so often in such narratives – the captain urges him: often to goe to Masse, of whom I requested pardon; protesting that if I might bee perswaded by sufficient reason, and proofe from the Word of GOD, that the Romish religion were the true doctrine of Christ, I would gladlie embrace it: in the mean time (seeing I was yet vtterlie of another opinion) I besought him to haue patience, for that a settled Religion, could not so slightlie bee remoued; which hee in hope of my conuersion (as hee termed it) in the ende granted.29 Here Protestantism and Catholicism, both claiming a true understanding of Christ and of the word of ‘GOD’, are represented as absolutely distinct, and (similar to many Christian narratives of Barbary captivity) conversion is represented as the aim of the captor. The terms of approbation used in this, and other accounts, exclusively centre upon religion, while neither the enemy’s legitimacy as combatant, nor the legitimacy of their tactics are in question. The enemy are not ‘pyrats’, nor could they


be, since for such texts their value lies in their exemplification of the ‘antichristian’ Spanish cause. Unwilling to shoot at English shipping and ‘abhorring to bee made the butcher of my natiue countreymen’, Bilbrough eventually escapes, leading his multinational fellow galley slaves to a very bloody overthrow of the captain and away to join the French: only, as he asserts, through ‘the help of God.’30 While this account offers a powerful sense of the opposition between Protestant and Catholic, it also indicates the ways such texts could mirror accounts of more distant skirmishes, a continuity that is confirmed in Mediterranean-based reports such as The Valiant and most laudable fight performed in the Straights, by the Centurion of London, against fiue Spanish Gallies (1591).31 This arena of conflict is discussed in detail by Mark Hutchings in the following chapter. The themes and structure of Bilbrough’s narrative are further modified and repeated in the central text that I want to now consider, The True Report of a great Galley that was brought vnto Rochell, vpon the sixt of Februarie last, published in London in 1592. Written in the third person, this account concerns the presence of Spanish privateers in Brittany, and elevates the conflict into one of truly epic proportions. The anonymous author, in the familiar apocalyptic vein of the earlier visions, begins by asserting that: if we enter with deepe consideration, to censure of the late prosperitie of the Spaniards, or rather hard fortune inflicted vpon them by God, for their manifest opposing themselues against the truth and his Gospell: wee shall find that their sundrie mishaps presageth their fall to be neere, and that their sins being ripe, wrath cannot long be deferd.32 The text continues: ‘[despite] the Spaniards gilden mines, their hauty stomackes, their honors, their worldly glories, no not the praiers of their Cardinals, Abbots, Moonks, and friars, their Agnus dei, their holy water, and such trash, cannot withhold the wrath of God from them.’33 Such dogmatic confidence indicates a certainty of Protestant victory within the well-established parameters of holy war. Through reference to these specifically Catholic markers, the account demonstrates a particularly Protestant destiny at work (just as in earlier accounts of the armada of 1588), made all the more virulent by the presumption of the Spanish to establish themselves so close to the English coast. The author of The True Report explains: In Brittanie the King of Spain had two great Galeasses and foure Gallies, the which hee appointed to keepe the seas vpon the coast of

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Brittanie and so along from S. Malo to Rochel. Of these in November last [that is, of 1591] returned vnto Portingall the two Galeasses and one Galley of the three Gallies that remained, this that was brought into Rochell was the Admirall, this galley had fiue and twentie oares of a side, and to euerie oar was chained fiue slaues to row them, and was left Admirall for those which remained behind.34 Unlike Bilbrough’s account, in which he describes his fellow slaves as ‘Frenchmen, Flemings, Scots, and English’ – clear Christian allies – in The True Report, the galley slaves are listed as ‘Turkes, Portingals, & French men’, with particular reference made to the Spanish annexation of Portugal (1580), which, given that there were several Portuguese soldiers on this galley, ‘drew these two nations to a secret tumult and priuate mutinie.’35 The fact that the primary claimant to the Portuguese throne, Don Antonio, was in exile in England at this point heightens the tension, particularly as the Spanish commanders of this galley have apparently offered him only ‘abuse’.36 The report continues by focusing upon a Portuguese ‘ancient’, who: hauing thus brought the Marriners to his contented determination, he then broake with the Turkes, & the other slaues that were in the Galley, promising them their libertie if they would sticke to him, and follow his advice: the poore, whom seruile bondage had deeplie tormented, beeing in a second hell vppon earth, and glad to bee deliuered from his thraldome, agreed all in one simpathie of mind, and ioyfully praied and wished for fit and conuenient oportunitie.37 The text emphatically establishes a sense of the appalling conditions on the galleys, guaranteeing the reader’s sympathy will lie with the allies – the Portuguese, the French Protestants, and most interestingly the ‘turkes’ – against the Spanish, whom (it has already been established) are to be damned by God. Curiously, however, this alliance is not simply a religious one, despite the fact that all concerned are described as ‘ioyfully’ praying when the revolt is broached, and that they agree ‘in one simpathie of mind’ despite ostensibly profound theological and cultural differences. The implication, of course, is that such differences are effaced in favour of total opposition to Spanish tyranny – while, at the same time, the success of such a revolt is proof of the fundamental truth of the Protestant religion. The account continues, narrating how the Spaniards were then, ‘set vppon by the Ancient-bearer, Portingals, Turkes, and Frenchmen his confederates.’38 They finally ‘put all the Spaniards to the


sword, and so hoisting sales, bent their course towardes Don Anthonie their king in England’, but ‘the winde came about and blew contrarie, so that they were fain to put into the baye of Rochell’ where they are ‘well entertained of the French.’39 That the primary destination of this multiethnic, multireligious alliance, led by the Portuguese, is England, reveals again the position England had come to occupy in the wake of the victory over the armada as a focus for opposition to Spain. Not only was Don Antonio in England, but Elizabeth had pursued a policy of aiding Henry of Navarre and the Protestant French. By the early 1590s English relations with the Ottoman Empire were at their height, having been initiated in 1580 in direct response to the Spanish annexation of Portugal, and their acquisition of the latter’s considerable fleet as well as overseas territories.40 Just as Don Antonio, and Navarre (and indeed the Dutch, according to Bilbrough’s account) had received English military aid in a bid to halt the expansion of Spanish dominance, in 1591 rumours were circulating around Christian courts that the English were similarly funding the construction of an Ottoman fleet: the English ambassador at Constantinople, Edward Barton, complained, ‘such an eyesore I am to the Christians here resident and so well esteemed by the Turks that whatsoever is done touching the [Ottoman] armada is alleged to be for her Majesty’s sake and request.’41 So this confederation of Portuguese, French and ‘Turkes’, coalesced by Spanish tyranny, turns to England following the successful mutiny and reveals that it is England, and English policy, that binds them together. Formulated in the depths of a Spanish privateering galley, this alliance also affirms the illegitimacy of Spanish policy and implicitly the ‘Romish religion’, as the conclusion of the text makes clear:42 besides it is reported, that in great brauerie the Portingall is gone to the French king, and all the Turkes and other slaues vncommitted and set at liberty, to the great ioy of all good christian hearts, that ioy to heare either the controuersie or confusion of the Spaniards. Thus you heare how God deliuered the Portingals and poore slaues from thraldome by a priuate mutiny, as hee ouerthrew the pride of Babell, whereby we receiue this comfort, that as GOD cherisheth his chosen people, so hee will confound the deuises of such as are opposed enemies to his truth and glorie.43 The Old Testament framework within which ‘Babell’ and God’s ‘chosen people’ are referenced is further confirmation of the ways in

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which privateering has here been co-opted into the rhetoric of a larger ideological conflict. There is a fascinating postscript to this episode. The events reported by The True Report are dated ‘the sixt day of Februarie’, 1591. Clearly, the implication is that many of the released slaves remained in France, having offered ‘their seruice to the King […] graunting in forme of a free gift their Galley, ordinance, and all other prouision’ to him.44 It is tantalizingly possible that at least one made it to England, since the State Papers contain a petition submitted to the Queen towards the end of 1591, from one ‘Hamedd’, a ‘distressed turke’, which reads as follows: To the Queens most excellent Matie In most humble manner prayeth and beseecheth yor most excellent Matie yor daylye orator and yor supliant Hamedd a pore miserable and distressed turke, who being borne in Constantinople in the cort of the great Turke and going into his Maties service agaynst the Spaniard ten yeares since was taken by them and sentt to the most miserable slavery of the gallyes, wher having suffred most extreame misery the said ten yeares, by gods favor and goodnes escaped away about 3 months since, and came into france wher having served the kyng att the winning of la fera, had licence of pasport to come into Ingland, hoping heer to fynd some meanes of passing into myne own contry, which pasports I havyng delivered vnto yor Matie I humbly entreat that I maye have them redelivered, wth yor Maties licence of pasport and yor princely benevolence towards my passing home to constantinople, or otherwise that it wold please yor Matie to send me as a soldier in yor warres agaynst ye Spaniard wher I vowe by the fayth of a turke to doe you most true and faythfull service which if yor Matie shall graciously grant I shall never cease to pray for yor Maties long happy and prosperous raygne.45 Most likely transcribed from Spanish, and probably successful (since he does not appear again in the extant records), this petition affirms the perspective of The True Report. While it is impossible to be certain whether Hamedd was released in the mutiny of February, I wonder whether it is fantastical to speculate whether it might be in part his account that forms the basis for the text – after all, no Englishman is recorded on this galley, no records exist of any other of the survivors, and it is written in the (admittedly commonplace) third person. Whether he was a source for the True Report or not, Hamedd’s request


for assistance home, or to fight on ‘in yor warres against ye Spaniard’ in which he swears ‘by the fayth of a turke’ to do ‘true and faythfull service’, reveals a great deal about the kinds of ideological alliances that were possible towards the end of the sixteenth century. Not only does Hamedd represent a continuation of conflict between the Mediterranean and the Channel, but his hope that England might present a way back to Constantinople reflects a widespread awareness of the strength of the Anglo-Ottoman alliance. After all, the English had attempted to cement this alliance by, according to William Harborne (the earlier ambassador), trying ‘to persuade the Grand Signior that the Queen’s wars with Spain were not due to any private quarrel’, but were instead ‘voluntarily undertaken by her upon the establishing of her friendship with the Grand Signior and only because Spain was the martial enemy of his empire, an empire whose expansion she desired, along with the overthrow of all idolaters.’46 The establishment of common religious ground through an emphasis upon a shared abhorrence of idolatry and the downplaying of potential divisive religious specifics would eventually result in Edward Barton taking the deeply controversial step of accompanying the Ottoman sultan Mehmed III on campaign in Eastern Europe in 1596, only five years after Hamedd’s request.47 As Nabil Matar has suggested, it was by no means unthinkable that ‘foreign combatants’ might fight alongside the English, and all of these factors played a part in the ways in which the Anglo-Spanish conflict was conducted. The inclusive and zealous rhetoric of the English war effort seems in fact to have been further focused by the presence of Spanish privateers around the English coast, regularly attacking English and Dutch shipping.48 Yet again, however, we find no reference to them as pirates – paradoxically, while their cause is repeatedly vilified as theologically unlawful, they are recognized as lawful combatants.49 In 1595 Spanish privateers were to get even closer to England. After a reorganization of the Catholic forces in 1594 that reflected a changing political situation in France, Spanish galleys began to raid the English coast. Their first action was to attack, plunder, and virtually destroy the Cornish towns of Mousehole, Penzance and Newlyn in a raid that began on Wednesday, 23 July 1595, the details of which were meticulously recorded by both the Spanish commander of the expedition, Don Carlos de Amezola, and by Richard Carew in his Survey of Cornwall of 1602.50 That we have accounts from both the English and Spanish sides of this raid is illuminating and allows unprecedented access to the pejorative strategies of both writers, as well as to a considerable

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amount of detail. Although apparently a privateering raid, small in scale, it was undertaken with up to four hundred veteran troops, as well as sailors and galley slaves, and carried with it a Captain Richard Burley, a Dorset recusant – or ‘English renegate’ – who acted as an advisor and probably as a translator.51 In Amezola’s account it is clear that the Spanish had clearly defined aims – this was not entirely uncoordinated pillage – as their English captives confirmed: The intention in employing these galleys was to have gone to Scilly, Guernsey, and Jersey, but the wind was contrary; they would have stayed longer to do more spoil to this country, had they not stood in fear of Sir Fras. Drake’s fleet. There is a good store of treasure in the galleys, which was to be used for pay, and for corrupting of some.52 It is also the case that Drake and Hawkins (both accused of piracy by the Spanish) were fitting out a fleet for the West Indies, and the Spaniards ‘were very anxious to learn its destination.’53 Richard Carew, who used his account to rail against England’s poor coastal defences, simply refers to the Spanish as ‘the enemye’ and describes how the galleys bombarded Mousehole from the sea, before landing: about two hundred men, pikes and shot, who forthwith sent their forlorne hope, consisting of their basest people, vnto the stragled houses of the countrie, about halfe a mile compasse or more, by whom were burned, not only the houses they went by, but also the Parish Church of Paul, the force of the fire being such, as it vtterly ruined all the great stonie pillars thereof: others of them in that time, burned that fisher towne Mousehole.54 Amezola describes how ‘the shot struck the houses and at the sight of this the inhabitants fled, so that our men had the opportunity to set fire to the town, which must have more than two hundred houses.’55 It was an action that he records being repeated in the ‘surrounding hamlets’, confirming Carew’s details, where the Spanish commander reports having ‘burned a mosque, with a solid tower, in which a lot of people had taken shelter.’56 As well as the sheltering locals, the Spanish found in the church of St Pol de Leon at Paul what Amezola describes as ‘a horse carved in wood and greatly embellished, serving as an idol, worshipped by the people’, which seems likely to have been little more threatening than a


hobby-horse for use in local festivities – although the association of Islam and idolatry was common and would be made in plays like Robert Greene’s Alphonsus of Arragon (1590?).57 Later, when attacking the larger town of Penzance, Amezola records that ‘the mosque, where they gather for their conventicles’ was narrowly spared being burnt thanks only to the pleas of Captain Burley, the English renegade, who claimed, ‘that this mosque had first been English and that mass had been celebrated in it previously.’58 The Spanish marauded across the coast for a few days, driving back the ill-equipped English militia until reinforcements arrived and forced them out into the Channel and to Brittany, having achieved their aims. There were some further isolated attacks, such as an attempt to fire a castle at Arwennack and kidnap Sir John Killigrew’s wife and children, but the force would later disband.59 Following his account of the raid, Carew writes: Thus you have a summary report of the Spaniards glorious enterprise, and the Cornish mens infamous cowardice, which (were there any cause) I could qualify by many reasons, as, the suddenesse of the attempt, the narrowness of the cuntry, the opennesse of the towne, the aduantage of the Gallies ordinance on a people unprepared against such accidents […] So might I say, that all these circumstances meeting in any other quarter of the Realm, would hardly haue produced much better effects.60 Major changes resulted from this state-sponsored raid as England’s coastal defences were entirely reorganized over the following years – a process that was particularly urgent since many, including the Queen, believed that this action was only a precursor to a Spanish invasion and ‘the whole defence position of the country’ was reviewed.61 Carew, however, continued to blame his countrymen, asserting that they excused their failure to fight the Spanish through reference to ‘destiny’. By this logic it was right that ‘the Cornish people should vndergoe this misfortune’: for, ‘an ancient prophecy, in their owne language, hath long run amongst them, how there would land vpon the rock of Merlin, those that would burn Pauls church, Pensants, and Newlyn. And indeed, so is the rocke called, where the enemy first stept on shore.’62 Carew’s assertion of Cornish superstition as the cause of this dangerous capitulation indicates a need to erase regional difference in favour of a national identity, a process A. L. Rowse, in his Tudor Cornwall, suggests progressed rapidly throughout this period.63 In his

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focus upon ‘superstition’, Carew also offers a pejorative link with Amezola’s remarkable account. The Spanish commander’s description of the English churches as mosques – mesquita – has largely perplexed historians. On a basic visual level it is clear, as Nabil Matar earlier asserts, that the whitewashed, austere interior of an English parish church, lacking religious iconography but decorated with the word of God, would have seemed closer to the mosques Amezola may have encountered in his reading (and perhaps in person) than the Catholic churches with which he was familiar.64 Robert Dickinson, however, suspects that the use of this term represents a continuance of the ideology of the reconquista, while Daniel Cruickshank argues that the term represents this conflict’s status as a ‘Holy War’, complete with ‘all the savagery, bigotry, fanaticism and misunderstanding that disfigure such enterprises.’65 These views are of course not mutually exclusive, and the burning of churches suggests both are correct to an extent: as we have seen from the earlier accounts, English protagonists considered the conflict to be a holy war, and a wide range of propagandist literature suggests that it was similarly understood in Spain – as a result, it is important to recognize that both sides knew, and were outraged, that the other portrayed it as such.66 There are instructive parallels to be drawn between the language of Amezola’s report of his plundering raid upon the Cornish coast, and the iconography that surrounded and accompanied the armada of 1588.67 Certainly the papal bull that was carried in great quantities on the armada ships confirms a preoccupation with ideas of crusade, and was reissued later in 1588 by an English printer who added a considerable amount of commentary, the most significant element being the recognition that this very same ‘Lying, Godless, and blaspheming Bull’ released by the papacy to legitimate the armada, had already been used before – to justify a crusade against the ‘Turke’.68 Amezola’s identification of the English churches as mosques is an extension of this same oppositional logic: the English are schismatics, heretics, and legitimate objects of crusade, so are the ‘Turkes’. They are thus in many ways the same – outside of the faith, infidels whom it is meritorious to destroy or convert, by any and all means available. Other textual examples from this conflict confirm this process of conflation: the English are identified by Catholic propagandists as the ‘new turkes’ of Europe, who ‘would exchange their Geneua Bible for the Turkish Alcoran’ had they not been ‘so far distant’, and accusations that their ‘new confederates’ were ‘the great Turk, the kinges of Fesse,


Marocco, and Algiers, or other Mahometains and Moores of Barbarie, all professed enemies to Christ.’69 Such examples – and there are many more – are a means of combining England’s contemporary association with the Ottomans commercially and politically with a conception of otherness inherited from the influential anti-Muslim polemic of the middle ages.70 In addition, the marked similarity between the earlier accounts of captivity on Spanish vessels and those of Barbary captivity suggest an association between the two that further demonizes the former. Yet as the earlier texts demonstrate, Amezola’s account is one amongst a number that are triggered by the presence of Spanish galleys on the Brittany coast in the early 1590s. When considered together they offer a remarkable narrative of continuing conflict which, though often characterized in terms of an opposition that culminates in the armada of 1588, actually continued in regular skirmishes in and around the Channel, incorporating a diverse assortment of participants, from French, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish, to Scots, English and ‘Turkes’. The representation of these privateers in print – particularly of enemy privateers – consequently places them at the leading edge of this ‘holy war’. As the proclamations reproduced earlier indicate, however, for the English combatants at least, official legitimization was necessary to avoid charges of piracy. They were not free agents. God’s warriors were also the Queen’s warriors, and had to be bound by the law: as a result, those that went across to the Spanish side are simply recorded as ‘English pirates’.71 Furthermore the language used in the accounts of these incidents indicates an awareness that they were participating in a conflict that went beyond any simple Anglo-Spanish divide and was spread across the early modern world. Moreover, the galley itself is presented as a microcosm of the wider conflict: an unstable multinational space deeply fractured along theological and political grounds. Particularly in terms of the published English accounts – as with the Barbary captivity narratives – there is a kind of circularity to such representations: the accounts confirm a sense of the English as God’s elect; yet they are simultaneously products of that same certainty. Objective they are not. The polarized encounters that occur in these skirmishes thus reveal a complex tangle of allegiances in which conceptions of difference become flexible among allies and rigidly defined between enemies, and in which one’s status as combatant was understood differently by the reading public and by the state, revealing a disparity between the rhetoric of nationalist holy war and the require-

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ments of national law. Such considerations can have been little comfort to those enslaved on the galleys, however, where, as John Bilbrough writes, ‘euery daye’ was ‘sharper than the sharpest sting of death.’72 Acknowledgements This essay would not have been possible without financial assistance from the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex. My thanks also to Lucy Grove, Claire Jowitt and Gerald MacLean.

5 Acting Pirates: Converting A Christian Turned Turk Mark Hutchings

The early modern playhouse was well suited – too well suited, in the eyes of its detractors – to play out anxieties about identity and allegiance, class and gender, place and nation. The stage’s ambiguous, liminal position in early modern London culture, at once protected and attacked by the authorities, is a commonplace in criticism.1 While the theatre’s ‘official’ role was the legal fiction that it practised playing to entertain the monarch at court, it was also perceived to be a site of danger and abuse, associated with lewd, frivolous, and immoral behaviour.2 Philip Stubbes’ complaint in The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) that legislation regulating types of dress such as the Act of Apparel (1563; updated as the Sumptuary Laws in 1597; repealed in 1604) was being flouted by all classes could of course be applied directly to the theatre too, not only because costume was a floating signifier through which the players represented character and identity, but in the acting conventions that made this representation of identity and self malleable, transitory, and unstable.3 If Stubbes feared that ‘such a confuse mingle and mangle of apparel in England, and such horrible excesse thereof, as euery one is permitted to flaunt it out, in what apparel he listeth, or can get by any meanes’ was detrimental to order in society, the stage, ironically, was aptly placed to register such perceptions.4 But the theatre also acknowledged deeper, more fundamental, forces at work. If Stubbes believed attire stabilized and regulated social relations (and ambitions), the theatre regarded costume as an exchangeable, transferable stage property: the playhouse exposed the fallacy of Stubbes’ argument in its continual deconstruction of the sign, emptying out costumes, like Tamburlaine distributing crowns, divesting the prop of its intrinsic value. This fluid economy, where exchange over-determines properties and human relations, is explored 90

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in a number of interesting ways in a play that takes as its subject two related phenomena: English piracy and conversion to Islam in the early seventeenth century.5 It would be reckless to suggest that the playhouse was obsessed with questions of identity and role-playing; nevertheless, in the light of the current, comparatively recent interest in early modern England’s relations with and representations of the Ottoman Empire, it may be useful to revisit some of these issues. If plays featuring ‘the other’ offered a vicarious engagement with foreign places and cultures, these plays also sometimes represented, in their very form, some of the issues, uncertainties, and anxieties arising from narratives of cultural and/or religious difference. In staging this engagement with ‘otherness’, players rehearsed the performative transformation that was being played out, out there. In the body/actor/character the marks of engagement with the other are displayed, but it is, crucially, in the transposition of identities on the early modern stage that identity is deconstructed, and conversion itself seen to take place. The playhouse’s association with the destabilization of social place and position can be seen in any number of plays even before the conventions of early modern playing are considered, and one starting point is the Tamburlaine plays (1587–88), widely recognized by critics as registering the impact of socio-economic (among other) forces on early modern culture.6 If Tamburlaine represents the emerging adventurer contemptuous of the class restraints Stubbes and others hold dear, the immense success of the play suggests that the ethos was influential and persuasive. Playgoers may not have embarked in numbers on ships to Constantinople to seek their fortune, attracted as their queen was by the possibilities offered by the opening up of trade routes to the Ottoman Empire, but playwrights certainly were influenced by the Marlovian model.7 The playhouse’s interest in Turks was one of the dominant stage narratives of the entire period, and few regular playgoers could have been unaware of the Turkish presence in the English imagination, a presence maintained in large part by Elizabeth’s diplomatic initiatives with successive sultans in the 1580s and 1590s, and by the Levant Company, as well as by the playhouse itself.8 One measure of the Levant Company’s success is the increase in piracy in the Mediterranean during James’ reign. As Christopher Harding’s discussion of the legal distinction between pirates and privateers in Chapter 1 makes clear, Elizabeth turned a blind eye to (and indeed tacitly encouraged) privateers who harassed Spanish shipping, but under her successor, who made peace with Spain in 1604, such


activities were no longer tolerated.9 Yet piracy flourished in the Mediterranean, following in the wake of the Levant Company’s success – an indirect consequence of Elizabeth’s Turkish initiative, which from the outset had been both commercial and political, but also, inevitably, raised complex ideological issues.10 These narratives coalesce in Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk (1610–11). When Daborne came to write his play the themes he chose were well travelled, on the stage and elsewhere. Daborne is best remembered today for his letters preserved in Henslowe’s records; 11 only recently, amidst the upsurge in interest in ‘Turk’ plays, has Daborne’s venture begun to receive attention, but his is a particularly interesting, and innovative, contribution to the genre. Its apparent design to demonize Turks, and indeed Jews, as well as (some) Christians, evokes an atmosphere of anxiety, and perhaps registers a climate of fear on which it would seem indeed to depend. Daborne’s ace (to anticipate the card game of hazard with which the play begins) is to propose a link between two contemporary concerns. In exploiting the dramatic and ideological possibilities in linking Turks and pirates, Daborne was tapping into two issues that engaged the popular imagination, producing a play that, perhaps not surprisingly, has received diverse readings from critics, who have teased out its participation in a number of narratives. 12 The present discussion takes a slightly different tack, focusing on the theatrical aspects of the play’s staging, and exploring whether ‘acting’ and ‘conversion’ might mutually illuminate our understanding of the play. Daborne proposes an interesting, and arguably persuasive, analogy, although the play makes claims it cannot sustain – at least insofar as its subject, John Ward, so condemned for ‘turning Turk’ in the play, in fact prospered, living comfortably in Tunis into old age, according to William Lithgow.13 The stark shift in official policy was exemplified in 1609 when 19 pirates were executed at Wapping; while pirates had been punished under Elizabeth there could be no mistaking James’ intentions, and it has been argued that several early Jacobean plays treat piracy nostalgically rather than simply condemning it, harking back to the days of Elizabethan privateering. 14 And yet, associating pirates and renegades was both logical and factually accurate: both categories were transgressive, subversive of social and political order, and turning to a life of piracy often resulted in close encounters with Muslims which sometimes led to outright conversion. As Barbara Fuchs has commented, ‘if for the

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privateer even a personal quarrel had to be authorized by the state, the renegado abandons that state so completely as to be branded a traitor’; this ‘unstable continuum of privateer, pirate, and renegade’ thus threatened England’s self-identity, 15 casting off notional moorings to the nation. Daborne’s strategy, however, in large part depended on spectators accepting the premise that pirates were to be condemned; even if playgoers were appalled by religious apostasy, it is less certain they were necessarily persuaded by the newly enforced policy on pirates. A space, literal and metaphorical, thus opens up between the state’s position on piracy and the playhouse’s imaginative, licensed artisans offering entertainment and delight. So even in a play where the dice appear to be loaded, where, indeed, there might seem to be a voice which speaks, as it were, as much from the pulpit as from the stage, the performance of controversial and contested material can by no means guarantee a particular interpretative outcome.16 As Claire Jowitt remarks, Daborne’s play ‘is full of subtle indeterminacy that makes it ambiguously available for an oppositional reading’.17 Similar to Thomas Middleton’s and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl (1611), Robert Daborne was no doubt drawn to portray a notorious, living figure in part precisely because he could play off the audience’s knowledge and expectations; like his fellow dramatists, however, he may have found that this opportunity was a double-edged sword. Middleton’s preface to the reader acknowledges that each playgoer ‘brings a play in’s head with him’ (Prologue, 4), to which the dramatization of course might well not conform.18 Daborne’s description of his play, in the address ‘To the Knowing Reader’, as ‘this oppressed and much martyred tragedy’, and of the audience as ‘silken gulls and ignorant citizens’, indicates it encountered difficulties when it was staged.19 What those were is not known. Samuel Chew describes it as ‘a contemptible piece of work, coarse and scabrous, bombastic and noisy, ill-constructed and confused in style, thought and intention’, and a recent commentator complains that it ‘must have been printed from papers nearly as foul as its hero’.20 Whatever its merits and problems, textual and aesthetic, A Christian Turned Turk is packed with fascinating features; ironically, it is perhaps its complexity that undoes, and undid, its apparent strategy, for in the act of conflating Turks and pirates in the figure of the renegade the play opens up, rather than closes off, opportunities for multiple and often problematic interpretation. The simplicity of the design, ideologically speaking, can be seen most clearly in a brief summary of the plot. The pirates are shown in


action at the outset, deceiving two merchants, Ferdinand and Albert, whom they entertain at cards on their ship, off the coast of Ireland. They then encounter another merchantman and a pirate ship, the captain of the latter disputing with Ward the booty Ward captures from the former. Although Ward is betrayed by his comrades, all the survivors, pirates and merchants alike, eventually set sail for Tunis. When they arrive at the port, with their human booty to be sold in the slave market, the audience is introduced to the world of the renegade, as Ward falls into temptation and ‘turns Turk’, the play ending with his (and others’) destruction. The moral, it seems, is clear, and the play has been likened to Doctor Faustus as an example of ‘warning literature’.21 Certainly, Ward’s apostasy must have been terrifying for early modern spectators, and the predicament of Christians in human bondage is treated in a manner commensurate with the kinds of horrors retold in captivity narratives coming into print and circulation at this time. 22 And yet, this doubled play dramatizing piracy as not only a desertion of country but as conversion to the infidel faith raises a number of interesting issues. Warning literature cannot avoid showing that which it condemns, here reenacting the moment of the Fall, and enticing spectators to experience precisely Ward’s pain – and, indeed, his motive. Like Faustus, then, Ward offers a vicarious, second-hand indulgent pleasure that his death is designed to punish. But this staged damnation met with awkward facts, not least that the opening up of the Mediterranean to English subjects led to thousands of them doing precisely what the play appears to condemn.23 Consideration of the play’s various cross-currents draws out its rich, complicated texture, for it is as a multi-layered palimpsest that the play activates its concerns, not least in its use of the formal properties and conventions of early modern playmaking. Indeed, ironically, it is perhaps through reading strategies such as these that A Christian Turned Turk fully allows its central anxieties, transgression and conversion, to take centre stage. An example of this complexity occurs in the opening scene. When Ward’s identity is revealed to the startled merchants, only now cognizant of their terrible predicament, his lieutenant, Gismund exclaims: Do you know this honourable shape? Heroic Captain Ward, lord of the ocean, terror of kings, landlord to merchants, rewarder of manhood, conqueror of the western world, to whose followers the lands and seas pay tribute[.] (1.22–5)

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The Chorus has promised playgoers ‘Our subject’s low, yet to your eyes presents / Deeds high in blood, in blood of innocents’ (3–4), reminding them that: The baseness of his birth, how from below Ambition oft takes root, makes me forsake The good they enjoy, yet know not. (10–12) Gismund’s introduction of Ward may be intended to be read ironically, but it recalls Tamburlaine – a quite extraordinary strategy for Daborne to adopt if, as appears to be the case, condemnation of the English pirate was intended. 24 As Richard Levin has shown, far from condemning him early modern playgoers appear to have marvelled at Tamburlaine. 25 Ward himself underlines this link with Marlowe’s play when, like Tamburlaine’s refusal to ransom Bajazeth, he scornfully refuses Ferdinand’s offer of money to free the merchants: Know we have other use for you, Have not enticed you hither for your gold: It is the man we want. (1.31–3) Marlowe’s most famous dramatic creation was of course satirized as well as celebrated, as for example in Ancient Pistol in 2 Henry IV (1597–98) and Henry V (1599). But here the parallel is less obviously critical, and Ward, unlike Shakespeare’s braggart, backs up his rhetoric with achievements; indeed, in Ward’s cruelty may be seen an echo of Tamburlaine’s ruthlessness: fearsome and yet, in theatrical terms, admirable. This uncertainty of register, at the very beginning, when a playwright intent on deploying a specific strategy might be expected to avoid such ambiguity, is not confined to a consideration of possible theatrical parallels – though there are more of these later. The opening scenes are remarkable for their even-handed treatment of piracy. Ferdinand, one of the captured merchants, observes that: Piracy, it’s theft most hateful, swallows up The estates of orphans, widows, who – born free – Are thus made slaves, enthralled to misery By those that should defend them at the best. (1.58–61)


His view is borne out by the play’s events; yet this condemnation is in response to Gismund’s explanation of why desperate men turn to piracy: [W]ho is’t would not smile To hear a soldier that hath nothing left But misery to speak him man, can show More marks than pence, upon whose back contempt Heaps on the weight of poverty – who would not smile To hear this piece of wretchedness boast his wounds? How far he went to purchase them? With what honour He put them on? And now for sustenance, Want of a little bread, being giving up His empty soul, should joy yet that his country Shall see him breathe his last what that air he terms his Ungratefully doth stifle him? (1.40–51) Here the play follows Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599) and Middleton’s The Puritan (1608), for example, in recording the lot of soldiers returning to England.26 This trading of insults – Ward describes merchants as ‘cankers, eating up the soil’ (1.35) – may have encouraged spectators to take one side or the other, but most interestingly it suggests similarities as well as differences and when, in the attack on Monsieur Davy’s merchant ship, Ward finds the body of a comrade, it is with Ferdinand by his side that he delivers an elegy that is heroic, not demonic: WARD: Recall thy spirit, brave friend! A while yet stay – At least bear thy revenge hence with thee. FERDINAND: He hath lost all motion. WARD: Injurious heaven, that with so excellent matter As is our soul, didst mingle this base mould, So frail a substance earth, as if thou hadst framed man The subject of thy laughter, gav’st him a spirit Free, unbounded, whose fiery temper breaks Through all the clouds of danger, dares even heaven, Swells and bears high, when with one little prick This bubble breaks, displays a vanity – Ridiculous vanity – this building That hath been twenty and odd years a-rearing, One blast thus lays it flat. I could e’en tremble

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To think that such a coward I bear about me As is this flesh that for so small a wound Betrays our life. (3.1–17) As Claire Jowitt demonstrates in Chapter 9 on ‘Scaffold Performances’, the condemned man could appropriate the scene of his execution as an act of subversion, both in the ‘present tense’ speech or act he performed, and the later, textual form it often took. Here, the stage, whose analogous structure lends itself to a comparison with the scaffold, serves to give Ward a pulpit from which to elegize his comrade – ironically subverting the play’s apparent design.27 This focus on the opening scenes should not avoid consideration of the play’s concerns – indeed this incident is Ward’s epiphany: he determines that ‘[w]e have no will to act – / Or not to act’ (3.40–1), it is ‘the will of fate’ (3.43) simply; from this point on his life will be ‘through blood’ (3.49). What this opening sequence does is establish Ward as a flawed though heroic figure: the play builds him up so to accentuate his fall. But this strategy complicates the audience’s own narration of what it sees on stage. Indeed, it becomes clear that conversion is not simply the play’s subject but its controlling motif. When the action shifts in Scene 5 the uncertainties of life at sea are as nothing compared to Tunis, whose entire economy is driven by conversion, and pirates and merchants alike, Jews, Turks, and Christians are subject to its forces and fluctuations. This world operates on a single Mediterranean currency, flattening out values and diluting difference – producing financial, human, religious, and ideological conversion through the medium of that other arena of conversion, the stage. In this new setting the play activates a familiar (Western) image of the Ottoman Empire as a ‘sexual economy’, over-determined by Seraglio intrigue.28 The marketplace that is Tunis, ostensibly the setting for the financial and bodily exchange that takes place when pirates sell their human cargo to Benwash, the Jewish convert to Islam who functions as an agent of Ottoman commerce, is also a sex market where women are used as lures to attract candidates for conversion.29 But this Tunis, paradoxically, is familiar for another reason, for the play shifts here to the world of London city comedy, a further example of the play’s dexterity or uncertainty. This shift towards comedy anticipates a number of theatrical moments later, such as the familiar cross-dressing routine when Voada falls for Ward’s page Fidelio (Alizia, Lemot’s sister, in disguise), and most spectacularly the meta-dramatic restaging of the famous scaffold scene in The Spanish Tragedy, replayed here when


Benwash kills Rabshake with ‘the play of Pedringano’ (16.154–5). The effect of these diversions, arguably, is to disperse the narrative focus in several different directions, detracting significantly from the clarity of the narrative. The denouement, central to the play’s design, will be considered in due course. What the Tunis scenes signal is not only a thematic and symbolic treatment of conversion, but they also alert spectators to the theatre’s role in staging such transformation. Clearly the spectacle of Ward’s conversion is deeply – and troublingly – theatrical; but the playhouse has a more significant role to play in this respect. Whatever the reasons for the play’s apparent lack of success, whether ‘artistic’ or ideological, one aspect of its staging in particular is worth dwelling on. As is well known, the number of roles in early modern plays invariably exceeded the number of actors available. This necessitated the doubling and sometimes tripling of parts, a procedure which depended of course on availability and plotting – i.e. whether a given actor was able to play one role and switch to another (see Lucy Munro’s Chapter 7). 30 The modern theatre has made much of the potential doubling offers as a further layer of interpretation, leading to interesting permutations.31 How far the early modern playhouse employed similar strategies, however, is much less certain. Peter Thomson reasons that it was: unlikely that medieval or Elizabethan actors made any attempt to deceive the audience over doubling; on the contrary, they were at pains to display it as evidence of their skill and to gratify the audience’s delight in virtuosity.32 This may well be so; whether this produced a further frisson of meaning is open to debate. It is also important to distinguish here between doubling and disguising. As Peter Hyland observes, disguise was intended to be transparent, visible to the audience but not to other characters, and thus ‘a constant generator of dramatic irony’.33 Doubling may have worked in a similar fashion, but it was also a different form of transformation: the actor playing a disguised character overlays his character with a costume which conceals his identity (except to the audience); the doubled character is, on a fundamental level, an actor underneath, as it were. The question that arises then is whether actors who doubled as a matter of practical necessity also conveyed a further level of multi-layered meaning. Since regular playgoers who attended plays at particular playhouses must have become famil-

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iar with the actors in the company it is likely such identifications took place. To what extent this was exploited by playwrights and actors – indeed it must be doubted whether they could control the interpretative outcome of such possibilities – is very difficult to answer.34 But doubling there certainly was, and in A Christian Turned Turk it may have been particularly significant. The play has 25 named parts, in addition to speaking and non-speaking roles alike for ‘Turks, Janissaries, Sailors, Guards, Knights, Priests of Mahomet, Surgeon, Actors in the dumb shows, Dansiker’s wife, children, and followers, Governor of Provence, Merchants, Chorus’35 – far too many for a company’s resources, even when using hired hands for the mute roles. There must therefore have been extensive doubling. David Bradley estimates that the play required 16 or 17 actors with five boy players.36 Analysis of the play scene by scene can show the frequency of appearance of characters, and the possible doubling patterns that may have been used. As we will see, it is less the specific doubling that may have influenced the reception of the play than that the play’s doubling and conversion of actors and characters generally may suggest an ironic perspective on the play itself. For a play concerned with anxieties about identity and conversion, it begins, appropriately, with deception, the merchants deceived by pirates they take to be fellow merchants. Indeed, since it is the merchants who are keenest to play at cards and dice it is a blurring of identity the audience may have shared, initially. This is, of course, simply a dramatic device; but it is worth bearing in mind that: The same traders with Turkey and Venice who first developed the armed fleets that penetrated the Mediterranean were among the leaders of the privateering war against Spain during the 1580s and 1590s.37 The play depends on the maintenance of a distinction between pirates and merchants, but in fact there was considerable interplay between them: by the early seventeenth century the Levant Company was so successful that some privateers used piracy as a cover for their illegal trading ventures in the Mediterranean, to the point where its monopoly was threatened.38 Moreover, some ships were crewed by Turkish and English sailors operating together.39 In this, the play’s first deception and conversion, here of merchants to pirates, fluidity of identity and multiple conversion are planted in the minds of spectators as the play’s dominant motifs.


Deception features in the play significantly, most obviously when Alizia disguises herself as Fidelio to save her honour after Monsieur Davy’s ship is captured – most interestingly a disguise which is donned onstage, visually italicizing the conversion motif; and Dansiker adopts a disguise to kill Benwash, in the final scene. Above all, Ward is tricked into ‘turning Turk’ by Crosman, the Captain of the Janissaries, and Voada, his role-playing sister. But the changing of attire, it becomes clear, signifies most dramatically – and troublingly – in the formal conventions of playing. An analysis of the plot suggests that the play’s staging of the fear of conversion replicates that very conversion in its deployment of actors: extensive doubling must have been required. It is not intended here to speculate unnecessarily on the possible doubling of roles as such, but one or two obvious points might be highlighted. Arguably the key moment in the play, in logistical terms, is the shift in setting from the sea to Tunis in Scene 5, after the capture of Monsieur Davy’s ship: Lemot, Davy, several sailors (and Ward’s slain comrade) disappear at this point, to reappear as other characters later – about which more in a moment. Gismund, surprisingly perhaps, given his prominent role in the opening scenes, drops out of the play entirely in Scene 6: the actor playing him must then pick up one of the ‘Tunis’ roles. Perhaps he takes the part of Crosman, Captain of the Janissaries: both he and Gismund appear in Scene 6, but since Gismund exits at 6.207 and Crosman does not enter until 6.345 there is ample time for a costume change. For scholars interested in the potential for irony in doubling this suggestion is an attractive one: Gismund is struck by Ward (4.31), later in the scene betrays him, and it is Crosman who traps Ward into falling for his sister Voada. (In both cases a Christian/pirate ‘turns Turk’: one in the act of doubling, the other in conforming to the plot.) The actor playing Gismund may not have doubled as Crosman, but he must have taken a second role: Scene 6 alone features 22 characters. The point is that the actors playing Lemot, Davy, Gismund, Lieutenant, and Sailors most certainly doubled to play a range of Turks once the setting moved to Tunis – the exception being the actor who, after playing one of the Christians in the early scenes then played Dansiker the pirate (itself a significant transformation, illustrating the malleability of terms and identities). Christian characters thus metamorphosed into Turks, while the sailors in scenes 1–4 most likely took up mostly non-speaking roles in the two dumb shows as Turkish priests and Janissaries. In the play’s very performance, as Christian actors represent Turks, both the malleability of identity and conversion as costuming is signalled; but more tellingly

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is the shift onstage from Christian to Turk. While Ward’s is the only conversion to Islam enacted, Gismund’s doubling (and others’) is a subtle, almost uncanny reminder to the audience, for whom some doublings may not have been immediately apparent (and thus all the more striking and unsettling) that conversion was possible and literally irresistible. In this respect Fuch’s notion of an ‘unstable continuum’ may be adopted here, the palimpsest of play narrative overlaying (imperfectly) the acting out (and switching) of roles neatly suggesting that ‘turning Turk’ is the play’s structuring principle, not simply its horrific exception in Ward, as Daborne’s account would have the audience believe.40 If doubling in A Christian Turned Turk replicated conversion in its very production, we might speculate about the possible effect this may have had on playgoers. In one sense the stage simply rehearses the social signification of dress and its function as a sign of identity: thus the dumb show depicting the conversion of Ward, in Scene 8, is in its very ceremony both the ‘actual’ transformation of a Christian into a Muslim (though as the Chorus explains, ‘What we are dumb to think, much more to show’ [8.8], the ceremony is not in fact staged in its entirety), and the theatrical, practical, onstage change that converts Ward, and gives him his new identity. Here, the play deploys not only in its stark, silent horror the ‘reality’ of conversion, but also presents an onstage doubling. In this sequence is writ large not only the moral of the play, but also the underlying, undermining agent of theatre itself. The transformation may well have troubled spectators: Enter two bearing half-moons, one with a Mahomet’s head following. After them, the Mufti, or chief priest, two meaner priests bearing his train. The Mufti seated, a confused noise of music, with a show. Enter two Turks, one bearing a turban with a half-moon in it, the other a robe, a sword: a third with a globe in one hand, an arrow in the other. Two knights follow. After them, Ward on an ass, in his Christian habit, bareheaded. The two knights, with low reverence, ascend, whisper the Mufti in the ear, draw their swords, and pull him off the ass. He [is] laid on his belly, the tables (by two inferior priests) offered him, he lifts his hand up, subscribes, is brought to his seat by the Mufti, who puts on his turban and robe, girds his sword, then swears him on the Mahomet’s head, ungirts his sword, offers him a cup of wine by the hands of a Christian. He spurns at him and throws away the cup, is mounted on the ass, who is richly clad, and with a shout, they exit.


Acting is conversion. The play was designed to provoke anxieties – anxieties that were well founded: thousands of Englishmen ‘turned Turk’ in the early seventeenth century.41 But equally the play has anxieties of its own. The omission of the entire ceremony may be because Ward’s action is: so shocking that it is unthinkable, and so horrible that it cannot be fully dramatized on stage. … The Chorus may be hinting that the surgical procedure of circumcision (considered by early modern Englishmen to be a bizarre rite of mutilation) is too grisly to be imagined, much less staged.42 But this elision may be symptomatic of a deeper anxiety about the conversion of the body itself, on stage. This moment is of course key to the play’s power; yet it is incomplete. It may have been sufficient to convey the horror of Ward’s apostasy, but there is also here, perhaps, a specific cultural resistance to going through with the act. Indeed, in the next scene it emerges by report that Ward ‘played the Jew with ’em, / Made ’em come to the cutting of an ape’s tale’ (9.3–4): Samuel Chew remarks dryly that ‘the Jacobean stage never sank lower than that’,43 but this act of rebellion is, perhaps, doublecharged. As well as offering a familiar joke about circumcision, (which was often conflated with castration 44), Ward’s resistance figures in a much more significant way, as a meta-theatrical moment, when the actor playing Ward distances himself from the character he is portraying. It may or may not be true that when playing Faustus Edward Alleyn wore a ‘surplice, / With a cross on his breast’, but anecdotes about Marlowe’s play frightening spectators are suggestive of the kinds of fears some plays evoked.45 A similar unease may have surrounded the playing of conversion here, for it is a moment which both repels and yet draws in, vicariously, the viewer, ‘whereby the spectator participates the present body of the actor’.46 In the moment of conversion not quite played out on the actor’s resistant body, therefore, is nevertheless conveyed the possibility of conversion in the (identity-less) actor - and playgoer. If A Christian Turned Turk cannot avoid the implications of conversion even as it warns against its dangers then this severely undermines the moralizing imperative, as playgoers witness the spectacle of Ward’s last words and Crossman’s speech. The critic might ask how these speeches from the stage, in all probability directed to the playhouse audience, are received:

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WARD: Lastly, O may I be the last of my country That trust unto your treacheries, seducing treacheries. All you that live by theft and piracies, That sell your lives and souls to purchase graves, That die to hell, and live far worse then slaves, Let dying Ward tell you that heaven is just, And that despair attends on blood and lust. ALL: Down with the villain! GOVERNOR: Tear the wretch piecemeal! Throw his accursed limbs Into the raging bowels of the sea! His monument in brass we’ll thus engrave: ‘Ward sold his country, turned Turk, and died a slave’. (16.315–26)47 Such an orthodox ending suggests that Robert Daborne had little interest in exploring the complex issues that lead men to abandon their country and their god. Though the opening scene voiced a defence of piracy, fashioning Ward as an apostate allows no room for manoeuvre, and Daborne cannot offer anything other than condemnation of Ward’s repudiation of his Creator. By the ending the play has nowhere else to go. In this respect A Christian Turned Turk might be offered as a defence of playing to attackers of the theatre who regarded plays as encouraging immoral behaviour. In this contrived, stylized ending Daborne seeks to impose a moral message, to draw out the only conclusion a playgoer might come to: Ward penitent, regretting his turning pirate, and Crosman evoking the Turk as bogeyman. There are alternative conclusions. Far from closing off possibilities of changing identity the play is entirely dependent on such strategies; instead of presenting a definable ‘English’ identity to be triumphantly reclaimed in the midst of temptation the play presents alreadycompromised figures – merchants or pirates, travellers all – exposed to the other. In the ‘Turkish’ figures deployed, the principals – Benwash, Crossman, the Governor – and Ward himself – are themselves converts: there is no yardstick for identity, English or Turkish, that can avoid the implication that all such labels are transferable and exchangeable in the marketplace that is Tunis. Above all, this foreign exchange is mediated by the largest common denominator of all – the playhouse’s protean equity underpinning this playing economy. By acting pirates the play pirates; it plunders material, reusing costumes and conventions,48 and revoicing, converting stage matter into a


representation which in this case counters the play’s own counterfactual account, its fiction that the still-living Ward dies and is damned. A Christian Turned Turk is less a dramatization of a politicallyorthodox condemnation of piracy for which it seeks converts in the playhouse audience than a textual and performative acknowledgment of the fluidity of social and national identity. In Ward, then ensconced in Tunis, and through the actor playing him, the play offers a metonymic figure for the thousands who, attracted by ‘the allure of an empire that changed an Englishman’s hat into a turban’, were indeed turning Turk in the early seventeenth century.49

6 ‘We are not pirates’: Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads Bernhard Klein

Few readers would describe the 1572 maritime epic Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) by Luís Vaz de Camões as centrally concerned with piracy. Taking the form of a long and highly stylized eulogy on Vasco da Gama’s first voyage into the Indian Ocean (lasting from 1497 to 1499), the poem applies the epic formula of Virgil’s Aeneid to the modern experience of deep-sea navigation, making da Gama the new Aeneas, and Portugal the new Rome. Its crowded cast includes heroic Lusitanian seafarers, hostile Muslim rulers, rowdy pagan deities, a whole array of indigenous characters met en route from Lisbon to Calicut – but not a single pirate. This is no accidental omission. Da Gama sails not only as a self-conscious explorer but also as a Christian missionary, whose poetic persona has fully absorbed the heroic code of honest and honourable seafaring. But while pirates are ostensibly alien to the moral economy of The Lusiads, the poem is at the same time so deeply immersed in contemporary maritime culture (written as it is by an experienced seafarer) that the very idea of piracy cannot be eliminated altogether from its imaginative world. References to piracy in The Lusiads are inevitably indirect, defensive, or purely allegorical, but this second-hand treatment belies their actual importance. These references are like warning signals, alerting us to otherwise buried meanings, as they briefly make visible a set of conceptual links between piracy and navigation that the poem, for most of its ten long cantos, is anxious to deny. And since it is precisely the mastery of an unprecedented navigational challenge that constitutes, for Camões, the Portuguese fleet’s greatest triumph, this close association between piracy and navigation makes the unconditional celebration of European seafaring in Asian waters a far thornier task than the poem’s rhetoric of maritime heroism would imply. In this sense, 105


piracy has at least a double presence in The Lusiads: it functions both as a troubling moral accusation that could at any time be brought against the Portuguese imperial drive, and as a projection of the uncertainty about the intellectual achievement of astronomical navigation on which the Portuguese based their claim to colonial possession in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Pirates of the Indian Ocean Piracy has a long and colourful history in the Indian Ocean. One of its more recent and popular manifestations is the mythical pirate utopia of Libertalia, an egalitarian, multi-ethnic, multi-national republic on the island of Madagascar, first described in 1728 by Captain Charles Johnson in the second volume of his General History of the Pyrates.1 The proto-communist fantasy, a central element of the romantic iconography of pirates, deliberately inverts the realities of eighteenthcentury Western maritime capitalism,2 and thus serves as a reminder of the European and North American origin of many post-1500 pirates in the Indian Ocean. For Alan Villiers, these ‘imported’ pirates (as opposed to the ‘local’ variety) are modern practitioners of ‘the oldest profession’3 who flocked into the Indian Ocean before the end of the seventeenth century when stories of its vast wealth became known. The area and the trade lent themselves almost ideally to the pursuit of piracy. Great lumbering ships, full of the richest cargoes, came year after year from the Malabar Coast and from the Persian Gulf and from Malacca towards the Cape of Good Hope, round which lay the only useful route to Europe. The island of Madagascar, with its many creeks, lagoons and harbours, might have been designed as a pirate lair. All shipping had to pass it, either to the east or the west. On the west lay the Mozambique Channel, where at the northern end the Comoro Islands offered safe bases and admirable look-out points from which to watch for ships. […] [T]he coast of Madagascar abounded in natural retreats which were perfect for shipping with local knowledge and impregnable to others. It was a simple matter to move a few guns ashore and make a fortress out of a pretty bay, whence it would take a major assault to dislodge the defenders.4 According to Villiers, these Western imports were no glamorous swashbucklers or early freedom fighters but ‘real fiends’, lawless and ‘brutish’

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sea raiders, famous for their ‘[m]eanness, debauchery, the foulest kind of double-dealing, sneaking treachery, stabs in the back, and unrelieved brutality.’5 Such a bad press is clearly at odds with the retrospective veneration of pirates in romantic adventure stories and blockbuster Hollywood films, and also with the recent interpretation of pirate communities as alternative societies by radical social historians, in whose work the eighteenth-century pirate ship emerges as a dynamic, anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchical social space that incurred the wrath of the ruling classes by openly flaunting its ‘multicultural, multiracial, multinational’6 credentials. Villiers’ ‘imported’ Indian Ocean pirates are clearly open to many readings: they can be seen as either criminal outlaws, romantic heroes, or practitioners of political utopia. As a snapshot of early eighteenth-century piracy in the Indian Ocean, the myth of Libertalia confirms not only the enduring attraction of viewing pirates as adventurers or social rebels, it also highlights the problem of perspective which accompanies the history of European ‘discovery’ in this region from the start. As the differences in assessment show, one man’s heroes are another man’s pirates, and if we go back to the final year of the fifteenth century, we can find opinion similarly divided on the first European who dropped anchor in the Indian Ocean, Vasco da Gama: seen as little more than an unwelcome intruder with sinister intentions by the ethnically mixed merchant community of Calicut,7 whose trading rights in India da Gama openly attempted to usurp, he was celebrated as a heroic explorer and shining beacon of mankind by the citizens of Lisbon during his triumphal entry into the town after his return to Europe in August or September 1499. The latter view has dominated da Gama’s reception in Europe ever since the historic voyage. To this day, his name lives on in the cultural memory of the West as the skilled deep-sea navigator who ‘discovered’ the sea route from Europe to India, who ‘opened up’ what had remained a mysterious ocean to Western trade and commerce. More so than Columbus, who five years earlier had simply sailed west on a straight line until he sighted land, more by accident than by design, da Gama epitomizes the image of the European navigator on the high seas, steering his way fearlessly through ‘uncharted’ space, confident of the superiority of the scientific knowledge that guides him on his way. Of course the ocean he ‘opened’ was anything but mysterious or unknown: what the Portuguese had stumbled upon, as they realized soon after rounding the Cape, was an ancient, sophisticated, and


culturally diverse trading network that operated on the natural rhythm of the monsoon winds, and that spanned the entire Indian Ocean from East Africa to the South China Seas.8 In this world there was so little occasion for further ‘discovery’ that in order to find the route to India, it actually made a lot more sense for da Gama to rely on local knowledge and maritime expertise than to engage in long navigational experiments of trial and error.9 One of his greatest concerns, as he sailed up the East African coast, was finding experienced pilots who would unlock for him the secret of the monsoons. Given da Gama’s dependence on local assistance and indigenous maritime skills, his continued pretension to ‘discovery’ and his divisive approach to the issue of trading rights make it hardly surprising that an image rather different from that of the heroic navigator prevailed on the Kerala coast. Indeed, upon arrival at Calicut – the west Indian port city where he made landfall after crossing the Indian Ocean – da Gama was denounced by the city’s leading Muslim merchants as an untrustworthy pirate, who was only posing as a foreign king’s ambassador.10 His paltry ceremonial gift to the local ruler,11 which brought tears of laughter to the eyes of the Zamorin’s advisors since ‘the poorest merchant from Mecca, or any other part of India, gave more’,12 did nothing to boost his credibility as an honest agent representing a mighty Christian power. His actions just prior to leaving Calicut in 1498, when he refused to pay port duties and took with him five hostages he had captured, only further fuelled the suspicion that his intentions were anything but honourable. His immediate successors left little doubt that the aggression and religiously motivated violence that characterized Portuguese attacks on North Africa earlier in the fifteenth century (which Nabil Matar writes about in Chapter 3) were to be continued in similar style in Asian waters. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral, believing he was witnessing a breach of his trading privileges, attacked and seized a Muslim ship that was heading up the Red Sea route to Europe with its spice cargo. Shocked locals responded in kind by burning down the Portuguese warehouse and killing the factor (who had advised Cabral to seize the ship) together with over 50 of his men. The violence soon spiralled out of control: Cabral next burned ten (in some accounts, 15) Arab vessels lying in the port, killing all their crew, and then bombarded the unfortified towns of Calicut and Pantalayini for two entire days.13 The third Portuguese visitor to the Kerala coast, Joao de Nova, attacked and sank between two and five (again, depending on the account) Muslim ships in 1501, plundering their entire cargo.14 By anybody’s definition,

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these were aggressive acts of piracy, in which da Gama continued to engage on his second voyage to the Indian Ocean in 1502, when he was under explicit instructions to seize Muslim vessels on the high seas (an order upon which he acted at least once15) and thus interrupt the old spice route through the Red Sea, overland via Egypt, and finally by ship across the Mediterranean to Venice. Before the arrival of the Portuguese and other Europeans in their wake, the Indian Ocean was a relatively peaceful and neutral trading territory, despite the existence of indigenous piracy. It is important to make that distinction. In the Indian Ocean, there was no tradition of dominating or controlling sea lanes for any other than defensive purposes (in contrast to standard practice in the Mediterranean), and except for isolated instances, there were no forms of armed trading either. It was the Portuguese who introduced both ideas: that goods on board had to be protected with weapons at all times, and that rights of sovereignty could be exercised over the sea – as the Portuguese did with their system of ‘cartazes’, or naval passes, which Indian Ocean merchants were compelled to buy from Portuguese officials of the Estado da India, with its main base at Goa.16 The novelty of these ideas, and the extent to which Indian Ocean societies were unprepared for them, goes a long way towards explaining how a small nation like Portugal, largely marginalized in Europe, could exercise a nominal (though to some extent no more than notional) hegemony for so long over so vast a region as the Indian Ocean. Indigenous or ‘local’ piracy could take different forms. There are some reports of large-scale, organized attacks: some time before 1324 (the year of his death), Marco Polo ran into pirate fleets of ‘a hundred corsair vessels on cruize’ along the Malabar and Gujarati coasts, who stayed out on the water for the whole summer with their families.17 In the early 1340s, near Pigeon Island off Goa on the west Indian coast, Ibn Battuta was attacked by pirates who ‘took everything everybody had’, though they spared the lives of all on board.18 And in his fifteenth-century navigational work Kita¯b al-Fawa¯’id, or ‘Book of Useful Things’, the renowned Arab navigator Ahmad Ibn Majid warned of one particular pocket of piracy close to Calicut that seafarers in the Indian Ocean should do their best to avoid.19 Forms of organized sea raiding were thus not unknown, yet like in other parts of the world (in late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Gaelic Ireland for example, as John Appleby demonstrates in Chapter 2) most instances of indigenous Indian Ocean piracy had their cause less in greed than in material need, and were often confined to periods of crisis and to


isolated locations along the shore – if they were not actually extensions of land-based political conflicts or simply signs of a successful and flourishing maritime trade.20 Certainly these localized instances were not what the Portuguese and the later imperial powers had in mind when they denounced acts of piracy in the region, which tended to be intimately linked to the economic changes precipitated by their arrival in Asian waters. For a later period than this volume is concerned with, James Warren has shown how the ethnic groups of Iranun and Balangingi in the Sulu-Mindanao region of South East Asia were no professional pirates or slave traders but only took up maritime raiding to meet the English demand for tea.21 In earlier times, the many Malay and Indonesian sultans whom the Portuguese and later the English and Dutch denounced as ‘pirate chieftains’ were often simply local rulers unwilling to accept the terms imposed upon them by the colonial powers. In this sense, as Anand writes, ‘much talk by Europeans about “piracy” in the Indian Ocean […] was only a manipulation of the concept to suit their political needs’.22

Piracy in The Lusiads This brief historical scenario confirms for the Indian Ocean what other essays in this collection also argue for other regions, which is that piracy – whether in the English Channel, the west coast of Ireland, the Caribbean, or elsewhere – is more often than not a problem of perception: it matters who calls whom a pirate, and why. The absence of objective criteria to define piracy noticeably governs how the issue is addressed by Luís de Camões, author of The Lusiads, who arrived in the Indian Ocean in the mid-1550s to stay for c. 15 years, in various professional capacities (including several prison terms), travelling possibly as far as Macao in eastern China. Piracy in The Lusiads is a bit like the contemporary notion of atheism: imaginable only as the thought or profession of somebody else. In this sense pirates are part of the maritime backdrop of this poem, always present as a potential danger and a serious threat – a threat especially to the safety and ‘sufficiency’ of the ship,23 to the reputation of the mariners, and to the heroics of the voyage. The anxiety of being mistaken for pirates haunts the Portuguese fleet, and when they first arrive in Mozambique they are indeed denounced as ‘gentes roubadoras’ (1.78.3)24 – pirates; sea ‘robbers’ – who wish to enter the harbour under pretence of peaceful trade: ‘There

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is hardly a sea they have not looted / Burning everything in their sight’ (1.79.3–4).25 This false claim is made by Bacchus (a companion of Lusus, the mythical founder of Portugal), who appears here in one of his many disguises. Bacchus belongs to the main subplot of the poem, which is set among the gods on Olympus and is structured around a dispute between himself and Venus: Bacchus wants the Portuguese to fail in their imperial mission, Venus wants them to succeed; the frequent interventions of the gods in the progress of the expedition tend to neutralize each other. The success of the voyage – the principal plot line – is finally attributed not to the gods but to the courage and strength of the Portuguese seafarers. Bacchus’ denunciation of Vasco da Gama’s men is of course presented as an outrage, and leads immediately to a battle in which the Portuguese are triumphant. It figures here as an attempt to intensify the antagonism between Christians and Muslims: ‘[B]loodthirsty Christians’ (1.79.2),26 Bacchus calls the Portuguese, implying that piracy is implicit in the corrupt nature of their faith. That there is more behind this accusation than simply the slanderous intentions of Bacchus is made obvious by the Portuguese self-presentation in Malindi, another East African port city, which they visit after Mozambique and Mombasa. Here, da Gama’s unnamed envoy, who is sent on shore to open negotiations with the Sultan, starts by explicitly pre-empting suspicions of piracy: ‘“We are not pirates”’, he explains, ‘“who, coming upon / Undefended, unsuspecting cities, / Commit massacre by fire and sword / To rob people of what they treasure”’ (2.80.1–4).27 The same pattern – the accusation of piracy necessitating an elaborate rhetorical self-defence – occurs later in the poem on the other side of the Indian Ocean. Arriving in Calicut, one of the Muslim councillors to the Zamorin, Monsayeed (a historical figure mentioned also in the only eyewitness account to survive from the voyage28), again introduces the Portuguese as pirates. They are, he tells the Zamorin, ‘restless people / Who, spilling from the seas of the west, / Lived lawlessly by piracy and rapine, / Without king or country, human or divine’ (8.53.5–8).29 In the explicit conjunction of piracy and the rejection of worldly and spiritual rule, avarice is here given a political twist, anticipating twentieth-century readings of pirates as radical idealists.30 Again, Vasco da Gama struggles to defend himself against the charge, interestingly this time by pointing out the attractions of the pirate lifestyle: ‘“[T]o be frank,”’ he tells the Zamorin, ‘“were I a buccaneer, / Roaming the seas in perpetual exile, / Why do you think I should


voyage so far / Seeking so unknown and remote a port?”’ (8.67.1–4),31 and again a few lines later: ‘“It would, indeed, profit me more / To spend my days as a pirate / On the never-resting bosom of the sea / Amassing wealth from others’ industry”’ (8.74.5–8).32 An explorer clearly works much harder than a pirate, and has less fun. It is obvious, then, that even though pirates are absent from the textual surface of The Lusiads, they loom in the background as an element of corruption that might seriously jeopardize the ethics of heroic ‘discovery’ by revealing it as nothing more than greed for wealth and power. Heroism, this suggests, might be no more than a posture, a thin veneer, always threatening to be exposed as a mask for piracy. Considerable moral strength – such as only the Portuguese appear to possess – is required to resist the temptation. Off the East African coast, after another frustrating attempt to converse with monolingual natives, amid ‘rancid’ provisions (5.71.1)33 and renewed fears that they might never return home, discipline and obedience become ever harder to maintain, as da Gama explains to the Sultan of Malindi: the mariners have grown weary but ‘“Do you imagine if I, their captain, / Opposed them, they would not have mutinied, / Driven to become pirates out of sheer / Rage and desperation and hunger?”’ (5.72.1–4)34 The imminent descent into piracy was only avoided because of the mariners’ ‘“natural qualities / Of discipline, of being Portuguese.”’ (5.72.7–8)35 But clearly, the danger exists, revealing how the text of The Lusiads is haunted by piracy in the sense that under stress, all seafarers – even the heroic Portuguese – might turn into lawless sea raiders. The boundary between the ‘honest’ mariner and the ‘treacherous’ pirate, between heroism and sea robbery, is a slippery one. Both define opposite uses of the sea but, as in the rhetorical figure of paradiastole, they inhabit adjacent semantic fields. Mariners may turn into pirates in the way that only a slightly exaggerated form of courage can tip over into recklessness, thus defining not a more intense degree of the same quality, but effectively its opposite. 36 The proximity between mariners and pirates is in fact so disturbing that the one cannot easily be evoked without explicit reference to the other. In the scene mentioned above, when da Gama’s envoy presents the Portuguese to the Sultan of Malindi by insisting they ‘are not pirates’, he also explains what they are instead: honest mariners, exceptionally skilled navigators, who have sailed from as far away as ‘proud Europe’ and crossed lands widely separated in space – ‘terras apartadas’ (2.80.5–6).37

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Piracy and navigation Piracy and navigation are not accidentally brought into proximity here. What the explicit emphasis on navigational achievement as a defence against the charge of piracy suggests, I now want to argue, is that the anxiety over piracy is related to a wider anxiety over the lawfulness of the Portuguese claim to empire. More precisely, it is the exclusivity of ownership implied in this claim – both intellectual and territorial ownership – that is the source of the tension which surfaces in the pirate references. Some years ago, Patricia Seed suggested that the mental and material possession of imperial knowledge was intimately related for the Portuguese, whose ‘technological achievements granted them a kind of intellectual property which in turn granted them right to a commercial monopoly in regions they had uncovered’.38 Jewish astronomers in fifteenth-century Portugal were the first to apply mathematical knowledge to the practical problems of deep-sea navigation, a fusion between theory and practice that made the ‘discovery’ of distant lands possible in the first place. The Portuguese mathematician and royal cosmographer to King João III, Pedro Nunes, exemplified that idea in his highly influential and pioneering navigation manual of 1537, Tratado de la sphera – ‘the first scientific treatise on navigation … to appear in print’39 anywhere in Europe – by claiming that the Portuguese had discovered ‘new islands, new lands, new seas, new peoples; and what is more a new sky and new stars’.40 The southern sky and especially its stars – unreachable, remote, only just perceptible to the human eye – are clearly of a different order from the intimate and physical encounter with islands, seas, and people: the Portuguese claim to exclusive ownership of these celestial ‘discoveries’ rests on what we would now recognize as science. Celestial navigation has indeed some claim to being a kind of master science in the sixteenth century. John Dee, in his customarily convoluted syntax, wrote in 1570 that ‘the arte of navigation demonstrateth how, by the shortest good way, by the aptest Direction, & in the shortest time, a sufficient Ship, betwene any two places (in passage Nauigable,) assigned: may be conducted: and in all stormes, & naturall disturbances chauncyng, how, to vse the best possible meanes, whereby to recouer the place first assigned’.41 Any course across the water is thus an imagined straight line between two equally imagined Euclidean (and hence non-dimensional) points, which makes navigation a kind of thought experiment, a way of


overcoming the limitations of time and space, and of all obstacles thrown in the way by tempests or violent seas. Pedro de Medina, the mathematician and cosmographer from Seville, made a similar point in 1545: ‘who is sufficient to speake of so great a misterie [subtileza: ingenuity; ‘subtiltie, craft, finenes’42] that a man with a compasse, and certaine strekes marked in a carde, doth knowe howe to goe rounde about the world, and knoweth both by day and night whether he shall come, and from whence he shall depart, and howe much he shall go from one place to another, and that he goe certainly in his right way, by so long and so large a thing as the sea is [vna cosa tan larga y espaciosa como es la mar], where is no way nor signe therof.’43 Navigators cannot ‘see’ where they are yet ‘know’ their position at any given moment, indeed that moment in time is part of their position in space. That scientific precision constitutes the ‘misterie’ of navigation, which leads – from a Portuguese imperial perspective – directly and unambiguously to the ‘mastery’ of the ocean. But like most rhetorical claims to exclusive ownership, this discourse of imperial conquest based on the ‘discovery’ of a particular technology is as much a stylish fabrication as it is a position of considerable material consequence for the lands and peoples thus ‘discovered’. On closer inspection, the Portuguese navigational skills were never as sensational or unparalleled as Nunes and the official propagandists made them out to be. By the time of da Gama’s arrival, the Indian Ocean was already ancient sailing territory, having been traversed by humans in sea-going vessels for several thousand years.44 Local navigational knowledge was extensive and highly sophisticated, as is evident from the writings of Ahmad Ibn Majid,45 Sidi Ali Çelebi,46 and other Arab navigators. Evidence of cross-fertilization as Western and Arab navigational traditions came into contact in the Indian Ocean around 1498 is speculative but suggestive. The contemporary Portuguese historian João de Barros, for instance, reports conversations between da Gama and the pilot from Gujarat who joined him in Malindi about their respective navigational techniques.47 And it is just possible that the adoption of the cross-staff, a thirteenth-century measuring instrument used in land surveying, by European mariners in the sixteenth century was influenced by the kamal, an ancient Arab navigational instrument da Gama saw in use in the Indian Ocean, and which Cabral tested on his own voyage to Calicut, via Brazil, in 1500.48 The kamal, importantly, made the fixed horizon, rather than the rolling deck of the ship, one of the crucial variables in determining latitude by angular

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measurement.49 By contrast, measuring instruments used on European ships, like the quadrant or the ancient astrolabe, were unreliable when the ship was in motion, and when da Gama wanted to take his exact position with his huge wooden astrolabe at St Helena’s Bay in southern Africa, he had to do so on land.50 Direct influences apart, the similarities between kamal and cross-staff certainly suggest related solutions to the same navigational problems – including a reading of the sky and the stars – in seas as far apart as the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, a parallel that did not go unnoticed by Western seafarers and early modern historians. The more general point to be made here, with regard to the wider history of the Indian Ocean, is that this particular early modern encounter between East and West cannot be reduced to any facile and clear-cut binaries. The Europeans who arrived in the sixteenth century certainly had an unsettling impact on the region, disrupting ‘ancient economic linkages and mercantile fortunes’,51 but they also often had no other choice than to adopt local customs and blend into existing commercial networks. ‘[I]n essence’, McPherson concludes, the Europeans’ ‘mercantile activities during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were founded upon intimate collaboration with indigenous merchants and seafarers.’52 On the seas, such collaboration took the form of mutual respect and recognition between mariners – which to some extent was a precondition of all European voyages of exploration, not only in the Indian Ocean. As we have seen with da Gama, who would hardly have known where to locate Calicut on the Malabar Coast without the help of his pilot, Western mariners were crucially dependent on local knowledge and indigenous navigational skills. Even in The Lusiads, Camões implicitly acknowledges that mariners in foreign waters are never the self-sufficient masters of oceanic horizons he otherwise claims them to be. The acknowledgement is indeed never more than implicit because the poem is in an important sense divided against itself: there is on the surface the familiar Western tale of antagonism and struggle – the ‘other’ has to be overcome, defeated, conquered, never accepted as equal, whether that ‘other’ is the indigenous ‘savage’, the sea, or Islam. But below that ideology, there is a recognition of a maritime world of compromise and negotiation in which there is no space for that exclusive and arrogant posturing: a space of cultural diversity, of seafaring labour, of ‘turbulent seas, where there are lodged / Nations and tribes with various kings and chiefs, / Contrasting customs, various beliefs’ (10.91.5–8).53 Even the open hostility towards Islam – for which this poem is sadly famous54 – is shelved


the moment the Portuguese require relevant information or material assistance in order to proceed on their journey. Indeed, Camões may well be silently acknowledging a maritime fellowship here that had to some extent become a pattern in the sixteenth century, as manpower shortages made it necessary for the Portuguese to employ Muslim mariners on their ships.55 Of course, in the cynical version of the story the colonizers simply put up a temporary façade of friendliness to extract local knowledge from the natives, and once they have obtained it, use brute force to push through their imperial agenda. But to privilege this version means to cancel out both indigenous agency and genuine moments of mutual respect across ethnic, cultural and religious divides. Even for the Portuguese mariners, the real discovery of the voyage is perhaps not a new world or trading empire but the interconnectedness of one single world, full of ‘[c]ontrasting customs, various beliefs’. Piracy, I want to suggest in conclusion, belongs to this second order of meaning in the poem; pirates are one of many reminders that there is a real seafaring world out there which takes no heed of the controlling discourses of power and the high-strung imperial rhetoric the poem is otherwise eager to advertise. Pirates attack property in the same way that the poem undermines (albeit unwittingly) its own case for exclusive Portuguese ownership of the ‘new sky and new stars’ of the southern hemisphere: the brave mariners are noble, honest and honourable, but actually they are also pirates; copyright is claimed on celestial navigation, but actually the Portuguese cannot find their way across the sea without local help; sole ownership of the ocean relies on the rhetoric of an ‘empty’ and ‘uncharted’ sea – and is even celebrated in canto nine as a marriage ritual, in which the Portuguese are officially ‘wedded to the sea’ – but actually the ocean is revealed as a space shared by many. Piracy is an outward manifestation of these contradictions and disjunctions, it thus signifies more than an alternative maritime career: pirates muddy the clean waters of the southern seas as much as they disturb the pristine rhetoric of imperial ownership. It is in this sense that piracy can be seen as navigation’s ‘other’, as quite literally polluting the pure art of navigation. This art, Richard Eden writes in his 1561 preface to the English translation of a Spanish navigation manual (by Martin Cortes), is reserved for ‘Pilotes (I saie) not Pirottes, Rulers, not Rouers, but such as by their honest behauour and conditions ioyned with arte and experience, may doe you honest and true seruice: whiche is not to be looked for of suche as beynge destitute as well of the feare of God as of all moral vertues, superbounde

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in all notorious vyces, accoumpting desperateness for boldness, rashnesse for hardinesse, impudencie for stoutnesse, and crueltie for manhod.’56 Putting navigational knowledge into circulation while asking to keep it out of reach of pirates is wishful thinking of the preGutenberg variety, an attempt to promote proper conduct on the high seas that ignores the economic imperative of the printing press. Eden could have equally well stuck a label on his printed book, ‘not to be sold to pirates’. The futility of the gesture epitomizes the role of piracy in the Western imperial discourse of oceanic ‘discovery’: pirates are products of the virtual maritime spaces created by celestial navigation, not its ‘natural’ obstacle; the idea of piracy cannot be eliminated even from an epic celebrating the heroics of exploration and deep-sea navigation because the knowledge that the globe is a space shared by a multitude of people, not by a single nation, can perhaps be denied, but never fully eradicated from all fantasies of imperial possession.

7 Virolet and Martia the Pirate’s Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double Marriage Lucy Munro

Around 1621 the King’s Men first performed a play by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, The Double Marriage.1 This is one of a series of plays written by Fletcher and Massinger for the King’s Men in the last years of the reign of James I, many of which return to the seemingly interlinked figures of the pirate and the Amazon. They include, in addition to The Double Marriage, Fletcher and Massinger’s The Sea Voyage (1622), Fletcher’s The Island Princess (1619–21), Massinger’s The Unnatural Combat (c. 1624–25) and Love’s Cure, which may date in its extant form from around 1625.2 The Double Marriage and The Sea Voyage in particular demonstrate a complex interaction between piracy and political and sexual unease in the Jacobean fin de siècle, an unease also exemplified in the Hic Mulier and Haec Vir pamphlets of 1620.3 The Sea Voyage juxtaposes a pirate who has abducted his enemy’s sister with a community of shipwrecked women who have set up an Amazonian community, while The Double Marriage features not only a pirate but also an Amazonian pirate’s daughter, involving them both with pressing questions of political legitimacy and tyranny. In view of the pirate’s potency as a dramatic figure, and of early modern drama’s investment in gender controversy, it is perhaps surprising to find that plays featuring female pirates are rare. The most intriguing of this select group are The Double Marriage and Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, the two parts of which probably date from the 1590s and 1630s respectively.4 These plays are diametrically opposed in their treatment of the female pirate. While the first part of The Fair Maid of the West focuses on the virtuous Bess Bridges’ career as a privateer,5 The Double Marriage depicts Martia, pirate daugh118

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ter of the renegade duke-turned-pirate Sesse, as a virago, uncompromising in her pursuit of love and revenge. The change in the treatment of piracy between The Fair Maid of the West and The Double Marriage is possibly related to changes in foreign policy; the 1604 peace treaty with Spain had far-reaching effects on English attitudes towards piracy and privateering. Critics such as Claire Jowitt have described a marked variation in the representations of pirates and privateers in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and in Chapter 2 of this volume John Appleby notes the ‘growing hostility to pirates who, under the early Stuarts, were increasingly described as vermin or scum’.6 Critics of The Double Marriage have tended to pass over the fact that Sesse and Martia are pirates, focusing instead on the play’s representations of tyranny and gender politics.7 I suggest, however, that The Double Marriage merits sustained investigation from the perspective of piracy, and that the figure of the pirate’s daughter embodies the play’s anxieties about tyranny and female sexuality. The opening scenes of the play focus on tyranny, as Ferrand, the Aragonese King of Naples, revenges himself on Virolet, a Neapolitan nobleman who has conspired against him. Ferrand first attempts to break Virolet’s wife, Juliana, on the rack; the tyrant then sends Virolet on what he suspects will be a fatal mission to rescue his friend Ascanio from captivity at the hands of the pirate Sesse. Virolet is taken prisoner and Martia enters the narrative, falling in love with Virolet and offering to release both him and Ascanio. The catch is that Virolet must in return pledge to divorce Juliana and marry Martia, creating the ‘double marriage’ of the play’s title. Virolet agrees to this scheme, but after his divorce and remarriage he repudiates Martia, vowing never to consummate their marriage. Enraged, Martia vows revenge and when Juliana refuses to help her she forms a liaison with Ferrand. At this point the play’s main preoccupations – tyranny, piracy and female sexuality – are brought together. Sesse pursues Martia to Naples, but is distracted by his desire for political vengeance against Ferrand; he eventually leads the people of Naples in deposing and decapitating the tyrant. The deaths of Virolet and Juliana (Juliana kills Virolet in error and then dies herself, seemingly of grief) satiate Martia’s desire for revenge, and she stoically faces her father. Sesse’s murderous vengeance is prevented, however, by his Boatswain, who steps in and kills Martia himself, unwilling to let Sesse act in such an unfatherly fashion. Sesse finally passes the crown to Ascanio and returns to his life on the sea. As a number of critics, notably Paul Salzman, have pointed out, doubling is crucial to The Double Marriage.8 A largely unnoticed piece of


doubling is that between the two pirates, father and daughter, who at first are aligned but who eventually move in opposite directions. Emerging from the homosocial male world of the pirate ship, Martia is seen initially by the audience as a ‘martial maid’ and an ‘Amazon’, fighting as bravely as any of the men.9 A sudden infatuation with her father’s enemy, however, leads her to reject Sesse, and she increasingly turns to stereotypically ‘female’ crimes, working to achieve her revenge through sexual manipulation. While Sesse’s piratical energies are eventually harnessed in service of a movement from tyranny to liberation, Martia actually forms an alliance with the tyrant. In redeeming Sesse as a liberator, The Double Marriage locates concerns about the disruptive energies of piracy in the ambiguous figure of a woman who is simultaneously masculine and hyper-feminine. The doubling of the two pirates also emphasizes the ways in which the play’s genre is doubled: while Sesse’s actions enable the political tragicomedy of the tyrant’s death, Martia’s lead to sexual tragedy.10 This essay is concerned primarily with the effects that Martia – in her dual identities as amazon and pirate – has on the generic structures and gendered politics of The Double Marriage. My first concern is the play’s literary heritage, which is an important influence on its depiction of the female pirate. While many pirate plays portray contemporary people or situations – Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, for instance, or Heywood and Rowley’s A Fortune by Land or Sea – the plot of The Double Marriage and its theatrical embodiment of the amazon display a marked debt to classical sources and traditions. I then examine the ways in which the portrayal of Martia also draws on the ideas about political disruption and insurgency associated with the pirate. The masculine woman is not treated wholly negatively in The Double Marriage – in another piece of doubling, Martia finds her echo in the valiant and faithful Juliana; instead, it is Martia’s piratical inheritance which equips her to bear the brunt of the play’s tragic conclusion. Although the female pirate was to become a vibrant stereotype, an exemplary ‘phallic woman’, her depiction in the early seventeenth century was far more uncertain.11 A few historical exemplars existed, such as the Irish chieftain and pirate Gráinne Ní Mháille (Grace O’Malley), who defied the English president of Connaught, Richard Bingham, and finally found support from Elizabeth herself after gaining a personal meeting in 1593.12 But although she left literary traces in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Ní Mháille does not seem to have been well-known in the early seventeenth century and she had no particular influence on the drama. Instead of representing a specific histor-

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ical figure, Fletcher and Massinger draw on literary and, in particular, classical material in their portrayal of the female pirate. As Eugene Waith has demonstrated, the plot of The Double Marriage is derived in the main part from two of Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae.13 The Controversiae are not plays or romances, instead they outline a situation which becomes the subject of debate between a group of students. The first Controversia used by Fletcher and Massinger, ‘The Pirate Chief’s Daughter’, takes the case of a man who is captured by pirates and whose father refuses to ransom him. The pirate’s daughter promises to free the man and desert her father if he will agree to marry her. They marry, but the man’s father later orders his son to divorce his pirate-wife so that he can marry an heiress; when the man refuses his father disinherits him. The second Controversia used in The Double Marriage, ‘The Woman who was Tortured by the Tyrant for her Husband’s Sake’, takes the case of a woman who is tortured by a tyrant intent on discovering her husband’s plots against him. The husband eventually kills the tyrant, but he later divorces his wife on the grounds that she bore him no children within five years of marriage.14 In the original plots, both women are threatened with divorce; in Fletcher and Massinger’s fusion of the two narratives, Martia’s marriage to Virolet actually creates the divorce between Virolet and Juliana, the latter’s possible sterility following her torture being merely a pretext suggested by a corrupt lawyer.15 In Seneca’s narrative, the pirate’s daughter is the victim; in The Double Marriage, the pirate’s daughter’s love or, it is strongly suggested, lust for Virolet makes her the perpetrator of injustice.16 This combination immediately tilts the resulting dramatic plot towards tragedy; it also yields the tragicomic political conclusion of the play as two seemingly peripheral characters in the Controversiae, the tyrant and the pirate chief, are brought together. The shift to tragedy has important effects on the representation of the female pirate, enabling her presentation as an ambiguous virago who becomes a fully-fledged villain. The orientation towards tragedy and tragicomedy is also achieved through another literary influence on The Double Marriage: the longestablished stereotype of the amazon. Martia is presented from the first in terms of sexual ambiguity, in an exchange between the Boatswain and the Gunner about their master and his daughter. The Boatswain says, How like old Neptune have I seen our Generall Standing ith’ Poope, and tossing his steel Trident, Commanding both the Sea and Winds to serve him?


Gunner. His daughter too, which is the honour, Boteswain, Of all her sex; that Martiall mayd. Boteswain. A brave wench. Gunner. How oftentimes, a fight being new begun, Has she leap’d down, and took my Linstock from me, And crying, now fly right, fir’d all my chasers? Then like the Image of the warlike Goddesse, Her Target brac’d upon her arme, her Sword drawn, And anger in her eyes, leap’d up again, And bravely hal’d the Barke. I have wondred Botswain, That in a body made so delicate, So soft for sweet embraces, so much fire, And manly soule, not starting at a danger. Bots. Her Noble father got her in his fury, And so she proves a souldier. (2.1.28–44) The terms through which Martia is introduced invoke the amazon, but they nonetheless seem positive. She is ‘the honour […] of all her sex’ and, in the Boatswain’s less elevated terms, a ‘brave wench’; the Gunner likens her to ‘the Image of the warlike Goddesse’, presumably the chaste warrior Athena. The term ‘martial maid’ could also be positive – it recalls female warriors such as Spenser’s Britomart, and the virtuous and valiant Clara in Love’s Cure is also a ‘martial maid’. In other respects, however, the description of Martia is unsettling. Like Shakespeare’s Joan of Arc in 1 Henry VI, she is associated with violence and with the appropriation of male power, taking the Gunner’s linstock away from him in order to fire the ship’s guns for herself. Similarly, she is not quite the chaste ‘martial maid’ of The Faerie Queene or Love’s Cure. The Gunner is keen to frame her in sensual terms, remarking on the paradox that a body ‘made so delicate, | So soft for sweet embraces’ should contain ‘so much fire’ and a ‘manly soul’, and the Boatswain traces her warlike nature to her father’s mood on the night when she was conceived.17 Martia conveys the paradox of her own character when she tells the ship’s Master that the wound she sustained in fighting was ‘A scratch man, | My needle would ha done as much’ (2.3.19–20). The needle becomes emblematic of a strangely phallic femininity; in The Double Marriage femininity does not replace masculine valour but exists alongside it.18 Martia’s simultaneously masculine and feminine character is made visually explicit on her first appearance, at which point we find the

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stage direction ‘Enter Duke of Sesse above and his daughter Martia like an Amazon’ (2.1.67SD). Unlike Clara in Love’s Cure, who assumes a male guise to go to war, or Bess Bridges, whose clothing mirrors the legendary appearance of Elizabeth I at Tilbury in 1588, Martia appears in the theatre’s balcony dressed as a woman but, more importantly, as an amazon. Although she is never described as an amazon in the dialogue, Martia’s costume has crucial implications for her on-stage representation. A strong visual tradition was associated with the amazon, and it seems likely that the King’s Men would have drawn on this tradition in their presentation of the amazonian female pirate in The Double Marriage and of the voyagers turned amazons in The Sea Voyage. Examples of this established visual tradition can be seen in two seventeenth-century representations of Penthisilea, the queen of the Amazons who fought at Troy and was killed by Achilles. The first is Inigo Jones’ costume for Lucy, Countess of Bedford, in the Masque of Queens of 1609; the second is from Thomas Heywood’s The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women of the World, published in 1640 (see Figures 7.1 and 7.2). As a gloss on these images, the blazon-style description of Pyrocles as Cleophila from Sidney’s Arcadia, which highlights something of the amazon’s ambiguous sexuality, is worth quoting at some length: his hair (which the young men of Greece ware very long, accounting them most beautiful that had that in fairest quantity) lay upon the upper part of his forehead in locks, some curled and some, as it were, forgotten, with such a careless care, and with an art so hiding art, that he seemed he would lay them for a paragon whether nature simply, or nature helped by cunning, be the more excellent. The rest whereof was drawn into a coronet of gold, richly set with pearls, and so joined all over with gold wires, and covered with feathers of divers colours, that it was not unlike to a helmet, such a glittering show it bare, and so bravely it was held up from the head. Upon his body he ware a kind of doublet of sky-colour satin, so plated over with plates of massy gold that he seemed armed in it; his sleeves of the same, instead of plates, was covered with purled lace. And such was the nether part of his garment; but that made so full of stuff, and cut after such a fashion that, though the length fell under his ankles, yet in his going one might well perceive the small of the leg which, with the foot, was covered with a little short pair of crimson velvet buskins, in some places open (as the ancient manner was) to show the


Figure 7.1 Inigo Jones, costume for Lucy, Countess of Bedford, in The Masque of Queens (1609), Devonshire Collection Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

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Figure 7.2 Portrait of Penthisilaea, Thomas Heywood’s The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women of the World (1640). Published with permission from The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

fairness of the skin. Over all this he ware a certain mantle of like stuff, made in such manner that, coming under his right arm, and covering most part of that side, it couched not the left side but upon the top of the shoulder where the two ends met, and were fastened together with a very rich jewel […] Upon the same side, upon his thigh he ware a sword (such as we now call scimitars),


the pommel whereof was so richly set with precious stones as they were sufficient testimony it could be no mean personage that bore it.19 The effect of Pyrocles’ disguise as Cleophila is artless, but its construction – within the story and in the writing of the blazon – is highly artful. Amazonian sexuality presents itself as natural and unmediated, but its effect is dependent on carefully careless hair and on skirts and buskins that seem to accidentally display the wearer’s legs. The décolletage of the Jones drawing and the engraving from Heywood’s book stress the female identity and sexuality of the amazon, but the weapon that she carries in both of the illustrations and in Sidney’s description emphasizes her masculine potency. Similarly, the masculine helmet worn by the amazon is juxtaposed with feminine (or only ambiguously masculine) long hair. As Lisa Jardine has noted, Pyrocles as Cleophila becomes a ‘provocative boy/girl’; the ambiguity which is already attendant on the amazon as a masculine woman is heightened and further sexualized.20 A similar effect is produced in The Double Marriage, in the performance of which a boy actor played Martia, creating an ambiguous eroticism similar to that of Pyrocles’ female charade. The stage amazon might not be epicene, but doubly sexual. As Kathryn Schwartz describes, the sexuality of the amazon is often presented in early modern literary texts as something dangerous and transgressive. Schwartz summarizes a network of ideas and preconceptions as follows: Amazons choose inappropriate sexual objects: men who are enemies, barbarians, prisoners, or physically maimed, and possibly – although it is a largely and strangely silent possibility – other women. Amazons engage in troubling sexual practices, mating anonymously in the dark, killing men by exhausting them sexually, refraining from marriage until they have killed a man in war […] Amazons mystify sexual reproduction, undoing patrilineal connections, killing, maiming, or abandoning male children, raising their daughters in what becomes in effect a female parthenogenetic society.21 Like Schwartz’s exemplary amazons, Martia chooses an inappropriate man, one who is not only an enemy but also a prisoner; while Virolet is not physically maimed, he refuses to perform sexually owing to his prior attachment to Juliana. In instituting the divorce between Juliana and Virolet, Martia disrupts conventional bonds of marriage, and

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Virolet’s divorce actually causes his father to disinherit him and instate Juliana as his heir. Fletcher and Massinger capitalize on the ambiguous allure of the amazon in the scene in which Martia propositions Virolet. In essence, this is a seduction scene, albeit one in which the usual imbalance of power between man and woman is inverted; it also inverts the common narrative cliché in which female captives fall in love with their pirate abductors.22 Martia appears before the captived Virolet and Ascanio, her entrance heralded by ‘strange cries, horrid noyse, Trumpets’ within (2.4.82SD).23 She first triumphs over the two men, but the exchange quickly develops into a battle of wills as she tries to force Virolet to beg for his life. Virolet defies Martia, but the structure of the dialogue betrays his attraction to her: Y’are couzened woman, Your handsomnesse may do much, but not this way; But for your glorious hate —— Martia. Are ye so stubborn? Death, I will make you bow. Virolet. It must be in your bed then; There you may worke me to humility. Martia. Why, I can kill thee. Virolet. If you do it handsomely; It may be I can thank you, else —— Martia. So glorious? Asca. Her cruelty now workes. Martia. Yet woot thou? Virolet. No. Martia. Wilt thou for life sake? Virolet. No, I know your subtilty. Martia. For honour sake? Virolet. I will not be a Pageant, My mind was ever firm, and so Ile lose it. Martia. Ile starve thee to it. Virolet. Ile starve my selfe, and crosse it. Martia. Ile lay thee on such miseries —— Virolet. Ile weare ’em, And with that wantonnesse, you do your Bracelets. Martia. Ile be a moneth a killing thee. Virolet. Poore Lady, Ile be a moneth a dying then: (2.4.106–21)


The exchange between Martia and Virolet is structured in a similar fashion to the well-known seduction of Lady Anne in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Virolet, like Lady Anne, outwardly defies Martia, but his language quickly falls into step with hers and follows its patterns. Although Virolet is hostile to Martia, he constantly refers to her in sexual terms: she is handsome, her hate is ‘glorious’, her bracelets are ‘wanton’. Virolet claims that his ‘mind was ever firm’, but by the end of this dialogue his mind is no longer his own. One of the sailors enters with ‘a rich Cap and Mantle’ (2.4.124SD), and Martia instructs Virolet to put them on. Virolet asks, ‘To what end?’, Martia replies ‘To my end, to my will’, and Virolet merely says ‘I will’ before putting on the clothes (2.4.126–7). The sexual pun on ‘will’ is resonant: although he seems to have withstood the temptation to beg for his life, Virolet has already succumbed to the erotic temptation which, it quickly becomes clear, is Martia’s real intent. He has accepted Martia’s ‘will’ and her gift; it is therefore no surprise that his response to her declaration of love is highly ambiguous. He says: ‘I love you; | But how to recompence your love with marriage? | Alas I have a wife’ (2.4.157–9). Martia replies, Dearer than I am? That will adventure so much for your safety? Forget her fathers wrongs, quit her own honour, Pull on her for a strangers sake, all curses? (2.4.159–62) We might expect Virolet at this point to explain just how much Juliana has ‘adventured’ for his safety, but he merely asks if Ascanio can also be freed, ‘Else all I love is gone, all my friends perish’ (2.4.164). Like Vitelli in Massinger’s The Renegado (licensed for Lady Elizabeth’s Men in 1624), who is unable to resist the assertive Donusa, Virolet is unable to offer any form of resistance to Martia. Ascanio urges Virolet to accept Martia’s offer, saying, ‘Be wise; if she be true, no thred is left else, | To guide us from this laborinth of mischiefe’ (2.4.169–70). Ascanio associates Martia with Ariadne, who provided the thread with which Theseus found his way through the labyrinth. But perhaps more important is the fact that if Martia is Ariadne, Virolet is Theseus, who according to some versions of the classical legends abandoned not only Ariadne but also a host of other women he had raped or, in some cases, married.24 Notably, of course, his conquests also included the amazon Hippolyta. The association between Virolet and Theseus therefore muddies further his character-

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ization and motivation – acting like a Theseus, he is to abandon Juliana in Martia’s favour, only to abandon Martia in turn and try to return to Juliana. Despite Virolet, however, the theatrical interest of the scene lies mainly with Martia, her ambiguous amazonian sexuality represented as so nearly irresistible that it is all the more shocking when Virolet so casually rejects her only a couple of scenes later. Although the figure of the amazon is used to convey fears about masculine women, Martia is consistently paralleled with Virolet’s other wife, Juliana, who is described as having a ‘Masculine spirit’ (1.1.181) and is able to endure ‘more than a woman, beyond flesh and blood’ (1.2.128–9). In The Double Marriage the masculine woman is not, therefore, a wholly negative stereotype. The play instead capitalizes on the other side of Martia’s identity; she is both amazon and pirate, the latter role allowing her to be presented as more straightforwardly villainous. While Martia is paralleled with Juliana, she is also paralleled with Sesse, this identification doing much to establish her identity as a pirate. As I noted above, she is first described in the context of a discussion of Sesse’s background and character, and she first appears standing beside her father in the playhouse balcony. It is telling to find that in early editions of The Double Marriage Martia is given the speech-head ‘Daughter’ in this scene and this scene only; by the end of the scene she has become ‘Mart.’, an appellation that she keeps until the end of the play.25 The connection between father and daughter is also foregrounded through theatrical allusion. Fletcher and Massinger were evidently preoccupied by Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the early 1620s, since The Sea Voyage, The Island Princess and The Unnatural Combat also incorporate sustained references to it.26 The Double Marriage is no exception, echoing The Tempest in the conclusion of its political plot and also in its incorporation of a lengthy dialogue between father and daughter in which the reasons for their exile is explained.27 Prospero and Sesse are equally ambivalent about their daughters’ mothers; Martia’s mother is not even mentioned in Sesse’s account. Instead, the focus is on the relationship between father and daughter. While Miranda is described by Prospero as ‘a cherubin […] that did preserve me’,28 Martia, ‘snatch’d’ from her nurse, is the ‘modell of [her] fathers miseries’ (2.1.127–8), violently cast into the world of the Mediterranean pirate. As this suggests, an insistent irony imbues The Double Marriage’s allusions to The Tempest. Clarinda in The Sea Voyage is, like Miranda, essentially virtuous despite her disruptive desire for the first man she has ever seen, but Martia does not share their innocence. Moreover,


the original reason for Sesse’s exile was not the kind of political insurgency practiced by Virolet, nor was it the result of a plot to supplant him. Instead, a quarrel over a game of chess eventually led to a duel in which Sesse killed his opponent, after which he was forced to take to the seas, the ‘Kings frowns following’ (2.1.122). Parallels between father and daughter are reinforced on a linguistic level. After Sesse’s account of the reasons for his exile, Martia tells him: Had you done lesse, or lost this Noble anger, You had been worthy then mens empty pities, And not their wonders. Go on, and use your justice; And use it still with that fell violence It first appeared to you; if you go lesse, Or take a doting mercy to protection, The honour of a father I disclaim in you, Call back all duty, and will be prowder of The infamous and base name of a whore, Then daughter to a great Duke and a coward. (2.1.135–44) Like Sesse, Martia inverts conventional morality: mercy is ‘doting’, pity ‘empty’, anger ‘noble’ and justice to be exerted through ‘fell violence’. The linguistic doubling of father and daughter becomes particularly evident in Sesse’s reaction to Martia’s defection. Martia’s claim that she will be ‘prowder of | The infamous and base name of a whore, | Then daughter to a great Duke’ ironically fulfils itself, as Sesse now proclaims her to be a whore. As the canons fire out at Martia’s boat, Sesse’s curses become insistently sexual. ‘What divel’, he asks, ‘Put this base trick into her tayle? […] rots find her, | The leprosy of whore, stick ever to her’ (2.4.41–2, 44–5). His curses take on an almost lyrical vibrancy: Rise winds, blow till you burst the aire, Blow till ye burst the aire, and swell the Seas, That they may sink the starres, O dance her, dance her; Shes impudently wanton, dance her, dance her, Mount her upon your surges, coole her, coole her She runs hot like a whore, coole her, coole her; O now a shot to sink her; come, cut Cables; I will away, and where she sets her foote Although it be in Ferrants court, ile follow her, And such a fathers vengeance shall she suffer – (2.4.47–56)

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Sesse’s curses take ironic effect later in the play, when Martia determinedly whores herself to Ferrand in order to facilitate her vengeance against Virolet. This new association is underlined visually by her appearance at Ferrand’s side in the playhouse’s balcony at the start of the final act, just as she earlier appeared alongside Sesse. The union of pirate and tyrant is peculiarly appropriate. Pirate chiefs are frequently likened to kings, ruling as they do their sea-faring worlds. In one of Erasmus’ Apophthegms a ‘rouer on the sea’ is brought before Alexander the Great and ‘asked vpon whose supportacion he durst be so bolde to doo such myschief on the seaes, he aunswered at fewe woordes as foloeth: I (saieth he) because I so dooe with no more but one sely poore foyste, am called a pirate, and yu, wheras, thou dooest thesame [sic] with a greate nauie, art called a kyng’.29 Other texts link the pirate’s cruelty with political tyranny. The character sketch ‘A Pyrate’, printed with Thomas Overbury’s poem The Wife, states that the pirate chief ‘is very gentle to those vnder him, yet his rule is the horriblest tyranny in the world: for hee giues licence to all rape, murder, and cruelty in his owne example’.30 In The Double Marriage, the tyrant acts like a pirate, and the pirate acts like a tyrant.31 Ferrand plunders his own peoples’ wealth; his ‘rapes of Matrons, | And Virgins, are too frequent’ and he has ‘sold | The Bishop-prick of Tarent to a Jew, | For thirteene thousand Duckets’ (1.1.96–7). Sesse, meanwhile, treats foreigners with ‘respect and coolnesse’ (2.1.46) but treats his fellow countrymen with indiscriminate harshness. The Gunner comments, if he take His Countreyman, that should be nearest to him, And stand most free from danger, he sure pays for’t: He drownes or hangs the men, ransacks the Backe, Then gives her up a Bonfire to his fortune. (2.1.50–4) Like Ferrand, Sesse violently oppresses those whom he would be expected to protect; however, the movement of the narrative later leads Sesse away from tyranny and into the role of liberator. Piracy and political tyranny are instead united in the liaison between Martia and Ferrand, the King himself quickly grasping the political importance of his sexual relationship with Martia when he discovers her true identity. Sesse complains, ‘It is my daughter, Ferrand; | My daughter, thou hast whor’d’, and Ferrand replies, I triumph in it: To know she’s thine, affords me more true pleasure,


Then the act gave me, when even at the height, I crack’d her Virgin zone. (5.3.122–5) Knowing that Martia is the daughter of his enemy increases Ferrand’s pleasure, and the violence of the King’s intentions towards Sesse are embodied in his grotesque claim to have ‘crack’d her Virgin zone’. The play’s double ending capitalizes on Martia’s doubly unsettling identity as amazon and pirate, as the conclusion of the sexual tragedy in her death is surrounded by the tragicomedy of Ferrand’s deposition. We are led to believe that Sesse will be crucial to both; he enters at the beginning of the final scene ‘with Ferrands head’ (5.4.0.SD) and prepares to kill Martia. Having vowed ‘in this I liv’d | In this Ile die, your daughter’ (5.4.36–8), Martia faces Sesse stoically, saying, Fates you are equall. What can now fall on me, That I wil shrink at? now unmov’d I dare Look on your anger, and not bend a knee To aske your pardon: let your rage run higher Then billows rais’d up by a violent Tempest, And be as that is, deafe to all intreaties: They are dead, and I prepar’d; for in their fall All my desires are sum’d up. (5.4.44–51) Martia is splendidly unrepentant: she does not regret the deaths of Juliana and Virolet, and she refuses to beg Sesse’s pardon. Sesse tries to kill his daughter, but is prevented by the Boatswain, who presents his act of murder as a final act of service. Asked ‘How dar’st thou villaine, | Snatch from my sword the honour of my justice?’, the Boatswain replies, I never did you better service sir, Yet have been ever faithfull. I confesse That she deserv’d to die; but by whose hand? Not by a fathers. Double all her guilt, It could not make you innocent, had you done it. In me tis murder, in you twere a crime Heaven could not pardon. Witnesse that I love you, And in that love I did it. (5.4.52–61) Sesse’s response to this declaration is to tell the Boatswain, ‘Thou art Noble, | I thank thee for’t; the thought of her die with her’ (61–2). The

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male homosocial world of the pirate ship reasserts itself, containing the disruption caused by the ambiguous presence of the female pirate. In a similar fashion, Ferrand’s depredations are to be healed by the new ruler Ascanio; in the final words of the play, Sesse tells him: warn’d by the example of your Unkle, Learn that you are to govern men, not beasts: And that it is a most improvident head, That strives to hurt the limbs that do support it. (5.4.70–3) At the beginning of the play, Sesse’s trade, the violent and illmotivated circumstances surrounding his exile and his treatment of his own people created uneasy parallels between pirate Duke and tyrant King. By the end of the play, however, the disruptive energies associated with the pirate have been largely absorbed by Martia, as Sesse has taken on the role of liberator; the associations between piracy and rebellion take on a positive cast. Sesse is denied the culmination of his desire for revenge, and the Boatswain’s almost comic intervention prevents him from becoming an unnatural father. To conclude: as we have seen, Martia is first introduced on stage with the direction ‘like an Amazon’. In 1621 Fletcher, Massinger and the King’s Men could not draw on a stereotype or sustained tradition of the female pirate; they could not say that Martia was ‘like a woman pirate’. Instead, they both utilize and modify the literary tradition of the amazon, combining the amazon’s sexual transgression with the pirate’s political transgression to potent effect. Martia’s appearance in the guise of an amazon creates a significant moment of theatrical spectacle, attracting the audience’s attention and establishing the character’s sexual presence; the boy actor playing the role becomes an emblem for the gender ambiguity critiqued in Hic Mulier and Haec Vir. Martia is simultaneously a glamorous figure from classical and literary myth and a reminder of contemporary anxieties about women or men who refuse to conform to conventional gender roles. At the same time, her appearance on the pirate ship and in the company of her father, heralded by an enthusiastic account of her piratical activities, emphasizes her identity as a pirate and her capacity for amoral political disruption. As the cleric Thomas Adams told his congregation, ‘the Arch Pyrate of all is the Deuill’; in a society in which women were regularly reminded of Eve’s illicit alliance with the serpent, a female pirate would be doubly suspect. 32


The combination of sexual and political disruption embodied by Martia lends itself to the play’s fusion of generic structures, since Fletcherian tragicomedy characteristically mingles sexual material with the political preoccupations of tragedy.33 Jacobean pirate plays often culminate with the death of the protagonist; in what Mark Hutchings rightly calls in Chapter 5 of this volume a ‘contrived, stylized ending’ Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk even contravenes historical fact in order to provide the pirate Ward with a fittingly moralistic death. Twisting convention, Fletcher and Massinger allow the male pirate to survive the tragedy unscathed, his place taken by his disruptive daughter. Acknowledgement I am very grateful to Claire Jowitt for her comments on an earlier draft of this essay, and to Stephan Schmuck and Joan Fitzpatrick for drawing my attention to Erasmus’ Apophthegmes and Gráinne Ní Mháille respectively.

Part III Pirate Afterlives


8 Sir Francis Drake’s Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood Mark Netzloff

While ‘nationalism’, as Pheng Cheah observed, ‘has almost become the exemplary figure for death’, death itself has served as an abiding figure for the nation.1 Embodied by such monuments as tombs and war memorials, the foundations of national identity are often commemorative, forged through a memorialization of loss and invocation of the memory of the dead. But national identity is spectral in other ways as well. Its protean, notoriously amorphous expressions are not only phantasmic, the atavistic conjurations of an imputed national past, but also fantastic, the projections of an imagined national future. As Benedict Anderson has famously argued, nations come into being through imagined affiliation, affective fantasies of shared identity and history.2 Drawing on this observation, recent criticism has explored the analogous, and at times coeval, relation between national identity and historical memory.3 If nationalism is a figure for death, and vice versa, it is perhaps appropriate to begin this essay with a ghost story. At the end of World War I, during negotiations for the surrender of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, a mysterious drum beat was heard aboard the British ship The Royal Oak. A lengthy search failed to locate its source, however, and this phantom sound was said to have ceased once the surrender was finalized and the German flag lowered. This drum beat reemerged again at another time of crisis: during the Battle of Britain in 1940, a sentry heard this sound while patrolling the evacuated Hampshire coastline: as it was described at the time, ‘a distinct call […] a very incessant beat.’4 But, as before, no drum could be found. As with so many ghost stories, these incidents are enormously compelling, and like other such stories they have in common not only an underlying narrative structure but also a shared literary source: in his poem Drake’s 137


Drum (1885), Henry Newbolt had first represented Sir Francis Drake as a kind of guardian spirit for England, one who would be conjured by a drum beat to reappear and protect the nation, an idea that assumed folkloric status with its retelling in Alfred Noyes’ poem ‘The Admiral’s Ghost’, as well as in newspaper accounts and radio broadcasts throughout the period.5 The ubiquitous nature of this narrative reveals how it offered English sailors and patrolmen a comforting frame of reference at moments of crisis and danger, one that they could attempt to bring to life through acts of imagination. The ghost of Sir Francis Drake, the once and future pirate, offers a vivid example of the kind of ‘invented tradition’ that the Victorian period was so adept at constructing.6 In fact, Drake became an iconographic figure in the late nineteenth century, the subject of jingoistic verse, light opera, children’s literature, and heroic paintings. Seymour Lucas’ ‘The Surrender’, for example, depicts the chivalrous Drake, in a precedent for the Scapa Flow incident, accepting the surrender of the Spanish fleet, while the painter’s ‘Sir Francis Drake Bowling’ helped popularize the canonical image of Drake, having just received news of the Armada’s approach, completing his game of bowls before launching into action.7 Other canvases, such as Thomas Davidson’s ‘The Burial of Sir Francis Drake’, evoke another tradition, however, and represent Drake not in terms of his personification of an English brand of sprezzatura, but instead as a memorialized absence, a corpse that disappears after its sea burial. 8 In many ways, the English mariners and guardsmen of the World Wars invoked this image of Drake: after all, despite the mythic drum they heard to herald Drake’s ghost, Sir Francis’ spirit itself never actually appeared in their stories. Although the Victorian era’s fondness for conjuring the ghost of Drake is in keeping with the period’s pervasive efforts to locate precedents for British imperialism, what is not at all expected is the degree to which Drake and other Elizabethan privateers remained spectral figures during their own lifetimes as well as in the decades immediately following their brief careers and early deaths. As W. T. Jewkes notes in a collection commemorating the quadricentennial of Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe (1577–80), ‘[i]t is curious that Drake’s voyages and exploits have made such a small impact on major English literature, particularly in his own age’.9 This is not to say that the period completely lacked any literary images or references to Drake and his compatriots.10 But, as attested to by the fact that Jewkes confines his remarks to major English literature, these representations were often

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confined to ephemeral texts, including pamphlets written by admittedly ‘minor’ writers such as Charles Fitzgeffrey, Henry Robarts, and George Peele, as well as plays and poems by Thomas Heywood, Michael Drayton, and William Browne, figures who have retained a marginal position in the national literary canon. Drawing on Jewkes’ reference to the Elizabethan privateers’ exclusion from ‘major’ English literature, this essay will explore the possibility of alternative varieties of national sentiment, ‘minor’ English nationalisms, and their figuration in ‘minor’ English literature.11 The late Elizabethan and early Jacobean texts that invoked Sir Francis Drake did so for national causes far different from those of the Victorian age. In conjuring the spectral image of Drake, these texts often disjoined national affiliation from state power, constructing a populist affective bond with the nation that threatened to become distinct – if not even severed – from an ‘official nationalism’ meant to induce support for the monarchical state.12 As David Lloyd has noted, national sentiment does not always cohere to a state entity, and it may instead provide a communal discourse through which to critique state authority.13 Similarly demonstrating the multidirectional and diffuse workings of national identification in early modern England, the efforts to revive Drake, and thereby resuscitate a model of English adventurism, used his image for competing political ends: at times, to embody a militant, aggressively interventionalist foreign policy at odds with the positions of the Tudor and early Stuart state; at other moments, as a way to harness the potentially unruly energies of populist expressions of nationalism and channel them for the state’s benefit.14 As Shakespeare’s Henry IV keenly observed, ‘action hence borne out’, that is, removed to the distance of colonial settlement or military excursions abroad, may enable the state to ‘waste the memory of the former days’ (4.5.214–15).15 In contrast to their frequent invocation in the Victorian age, the body of contemporary literature treating Elizabethan adventurers like Sir Francis Drake was relatively small. The failure to translate these figures to poetry or the stage was also recognized at the time as a slight: Henry Robarts, one of the few poets to celebrate Drake during the latter’s lifetime, begins one of his panegyric poems, A most friendly farewell (1585), written to commemorate Drake’s departure for the West Indies, by noting that the publication of his own, admittedly inferior text was necessitated by the silence that met this event: ‘seeing none of the learned sort haue vndertaken to write according to custome’.16 Robarts views the exclusion of Drake’s exploits from print


as a conscious choice on the part of a literary elite, and in his prefatory dedication to Drake charges that such writers ‘haue sought to robbe you of your worthines’ (sig. A2v). This accusation of theft is suitably ironic, for the published records of Drake’s voyages often resemble a serial log of state-licensed maritime larceny.17 These voyages’ aspirations for ‘adventure’ were further undermined due to the legal fiction through which Elizabethan privateering was legitimated. Such practices were sanctioned only if one could legally establish a seized ship as ‘lawful prize.’ In theory, this could be applied only in the context of war, as a justification for seizing enemy ships, or in cases of ‘reprisal’, so as to compensate the voyage’s financial backers from previous losses suffered at the hands of ships from a given nation. Consequently, in accounts of Drake’s voyages, his practices of piracy are cast as defensive measures used to protect English commerce.18 Still, far from disqualifying Drake from literary memorialization, the piratical context of his fame and wealth would seem to make him ideally suited for such a role, particularly in the context of a genre like the Elizabethan adventure play. In a poem prefacing his A Farewell … to … Sir Iohn Norris & Syr Frauncis Drake (1589), the playwright George Peele casts Drake as a model of action surpassing that represented on the public stage, offering to ‘Bid Theaters and proude Tragedies, / … mightie Tamburlaine, / … Tom Stukeley and the rest / Adiewe’ and instead embrace the embodiment of heroism presented by ‘victorious Drake’ and his call ‘to Armes, to glorious Armes.’19 The popularity and visibility of the dramatic characters mentioned by Peele, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and Thomas Stukeley from his own play The Battle of Alcazar (1589), contrasts with Drake’s relatively inconspicuous presence in published accounts. Peele’s comment may also attempt to differentiate Tamburlaine’s ambition, and Stukeley’s status as a mercenary, from Drake’s own position as a subject loyally deferential to the crown. This issue is implicitly raised in Henry Haslop’s Newes ovt of the Coast of Spaine (1587), which reported Drake’s recent raid on Cadiz. By placing Drake in a tradition not only of classical heroes (Scipio, Hannibal, Alexander) but also conquering English monarchs (William I, Edward III, Henry V, and Henry VIII), the text exposes the complicated position occupied by a subject like Drake.20 Although his accomplishments are intended to mirror the greatness of England and its Queen, Drake’s elevated status reflects uneasily on the inability of his female monarch to occupy this martial role, a complication exacerbated by Peele’s invocation of a Virgilian model of epic, of arms and the man.

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Testifying to the problems resulting from an epic account of Drake, Peele’s text does not mention him after the opening poem, and instead moves abruptly to the domain of romance with its ensuing poem on the Fall of Troy. This transition from epic to romance is a strategic one. As David Quint has argued, these genres articulate the values of competing social forces, with epic aligned ‘with aristocratic, martial values’, and romance, albeit not exclusively, serving as a generic template through which a ‘mercantile, bourgeois’ form of adventure could be represented.21 Despite Peele’s effort to cast Drake in an epic role, the narratives of his voyages often resemble less an epic quest than the kind of digressive narrative structure that Quint associates with the romance form. And ‘the boat of romance’, with ‘no other destination then the adventure at hand’, offers a form able to displace troubling questions – like those regarding Drake’s deference to his monarch or his elevated social status – that would be raised by representing his voyages as more directed, epic quests.22 In this sense, if there are hints that Drake’s wealth has an ignominious origin, this perception derives not from an objection to privateering itself as theft disguised, but rather from the association of privateering with the mercantile classes: the view, in other words, that this form of commercial piracy was a domain unsuitable for gentlemanly adventure. Appropriately, when commenting on the absence of printed accounts of Drake, Robarts remarks that ‘I did expect some Ouids pen to paint his worthy praise’ (sig. B1v), a selection of an author whose work has often been placed in opposition to the epic tradition.23 In addition, the publication of panegyric texts written by such admittedly minor figures as Robarts would in itself undermine the epic possibilities of Drake’s biography. On the title-page to his A most friendly farewell, Robarts represents himself as ‘Henry Robarts of London Citizin [sic]’, a nomination that foregrounds the ways that Drake was appropriated by the urban mercantile classes as a figure through which they could represent their own model of adventure. Michael Nerlich has noted that the early modern period witnessed a divergence of two models of adventure, as a ‘bourgeois glorification of adventure’ became increasingly distinct from a ‘knightly ideology of adventure.’24 In this former paradigm, adventure became synonymous with ‘ventures,’ a process that divested international commerce of its neo-feudal, aristocratic mantle. The adventurer, in this context, became not a knight on an epic quest but an ‘order-loving entrepreneur.’25 In contrast to Laura Stevenson’s argument that non-aristocratic subjects were represented (and represented themselves) predominantly


through an appropriation of aristocratic models, I wish to foreground the ways that the image of the citizen adventurer offered an alternative framework through which a citizen subject was conceptualized.26 Whereas earlier new historicist criticism tended to view the ‘citizen’ as a figure anachronistic to early modern England, this essay follows the precedent established by the very diverse recent work of Étienne Balibar, John Michael Archer, and Julia Reinhard Lupton in arguing that some features of citizenship emerged from within category of the monarchical subject in this period.27 The casting of Drake and other Elizabethan privateers as citizen adventurers is reflected in the extent of their anonymity in narrative accounts.28 In their Victorian incarnations, figures such as Drake and Sir Richard Grenville are immediately recognizable in their characteristic, often-unhistorical poses (Drake at bowls, Grenville manning the helm). In contemporary texts, by contrast, especially in the documents assembled in Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations (1598–1600), the identity of these adventurers is subsumed within a larger corporate frame of reference. The representation of these figures as merely a component of a bureaucratic national project is a trait that derives from the context of an urban, citizen framework. As a result, Hakluyt does not bestow either authorship or authority to the Elizabethan adventurers: Drake, for instance, is not the author of any of the accounts of his voyages; moreover, Hakluyt’s frequent juxtaposition of multiple accounts of voyages deprives any narrative of exclusive authority, thereby emphasizing the underlying perspectivism of any single account. The narratives themselves are not biographies but chronicles of voyages, and their insistently diachronic structure, which follows a log-like progress through the course of the voyage, displaces the subjectivity of any figure, whether that of the account’s author (often a secretary or chaplain accompanying the voyage) or, especially, that of the voyages’ commanders. In fact, in the account of Drake and Hawkins’ last voyage (1595–96), Drake barely figures in the narrative. Consistently referring to him as ‘the Generall’, a highlighting of his corporate role, the text does not introduce any personal details about Drake that could distinguish him from Hawkins or any other commander. In addition, Drake’s sickness, death, and burial are allotted relatively little textual space. Depriving him of a final heroic scene, the narrative only vaguely refers to ‘some speeches’ Drake offers shortly before his death, and in fact devotes more attention to the arrangement of his will.29 By contrast, the 12-volume reprint of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, published by J. M. Dent in 1904, intersperses each volume with

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Victorian-era portraits of Elizabethan privateers such as Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake. These images establish the authority of the adventurers over the collection of narratives, a move that effectively displaces the role of Hakluyt as editor. As Mary Fuller has shown, these changes were part of a broader effort to transform Hakluyt’s text into ‘the prose epic of the English nation’ and thereby invent a historical tradition that could legitimate Britain’s high imperialist practices of the late Victorian era.30 Although Hakluyt’s text, as Richard Helgerson concludes, bears witness to ‘the emergence of an anti-imperialist and even anti-aristocratic logic of mercantile nationalism’, an ascendency, in other words, of a ‘merchants’ Hakluyt’ over a ‘gentlemen’s Hakluyt’,31 the Dent edition revives this latter tradition, restoring foreign trade’s correlation with a quasi-feudal, military ethos of adventure, despite the fact that this model was already becoming anachronistic even in Hakluyt’s own time. When Hakluyt does emerge from the anonymity of his role in order to make a statement about his text, as he does in his preface to the 1598 edition of Principal Navigations, his tone and stated intentions are far more complex, ambivalent, and even haunted than has generally been recognized. In this preface, Hakluyt offers the purpose of his collection as an attempt to ‘gather […], and as it were to incorporate into one body the torne and scattered limmes of our ancient and late Navigations by Sea, our voyages by land, and traffiques of merchandize by both.’32 Even as he celebrates the compendiousness of his collection, Hakluyt represents his task as a compensatory one, gathering the limbs of a political body ‘torn and scattered’ through trade and cultural exchange. Hakluyt’s difficulty in imagining the body politic reveals the ways that England’s commercial and colonial expansion undermined any representation of the nation’s integrity.33 Contradicting the longstanding conceptualization of the nation in bodily, organismic terms, Hakluyt locates a more appropriate metaphor for the nation – not the body politic, but instead ‘the haunted nation’, to use Pheng Cheah’s terminology. 34 Hakluyt’s English nation is haunted by spectres, including the implicit memory of those subjects lost in overseas ventures as well as the proto-gothic spectrality of the mangled corpse of textual remains that he attempts to reassemble. The tone of mourning that pervades Hakluyt’s preface is also attributable to the fact that many of the Elizabethan voyagers celebrated in his text were already dead, a recognition that transforms his text from encomium, as it is often interpreted, to a kind of memorial.


I am drawing attention to the forms of nostalgia and mourning inherent in Hakluyt’s text in order to emphasize the ways that Elizabethan nostalgia began to be formulated even during the late Elizabethan period, and not only in the reign of James I.35 As D. R. Woolf, Curtis Perry, and John Watkins have each noted, the conventional approach to the topic of Elizabethan nostalgia, which emphasizes the oppositional uses of such images in the early Stuart period, has tended to overlook the important continuities between Tudor and Stuart policies and self-representation.36 Moreover, in texts such as Charles Fitzgeffrey’s Sir Francis Drake his Honorable lifes commendation, and his Tragicall Deathes lamentation (1596) and Gervase Markham’s Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinville (1595), the decisive break from the past and loss of national promise occurs not with the death of Elizabeth, but rather with the premature deaths of Drake and other adventurers such as Hawkins and Grenville. For example, although Fitzgeffrey describes Drake as ‘divine ELISA’s champion’ (sig. D4), Elizabeth is notably absent throughout much of his poem, and Fitzgeffrey opts instead to deify Drake, whose shrine, he claims with bombastic praise, ‘emtombes a Deitie’ (sig. B3v). Yet the undramatic nature of Drake’s final illness from dysentery deprives his tragedy of its final catastrophe; as a result, Fitzgeffrey is forced to rationalize that at least ‘no prowd Spaniard hath his life bereft’ (sig. G4), an effort to reconstitute Drake postmortem as a model of English autonomy and resistance to Spanish imperialism. Extricating Drake’s memory from the embarrassment of his ultimate physical depletion, Fitzgeffrey instead transforms Drake’s fatal illness into a metaphor for the sacrifice of his body for his nation: while his raids on Spanish bullion fleets served to fill England ‘with store and plentie’, these efforts depleted his own physical being, ‘And filling it, himselfe was almost emptie’ (sig. F4v). As Mary Fuller notes in her discussion of voyage narratives, these texts succeed in mythologizing their subjects by ‘constructing a self whose authenticity was asserted especially through defensive strategies, claims of suffering, self-denial, wounding, and evacuation.’37 The somatic register of these strategies also serves to resituate English adventurers, and the ‘scattered limmes’ of their voyages, more securely within a national body politic headed by the monarch. Nonetheless, in the final section of his elegy, when Fitzgeffrey places Drake within a community of lost state agents, his memorialization of English adventurers represents their accomplishments as bearing only a tangential relation to Queen Elizabeth. When Fitzgeffrey contrasts the loss of these figures with the continuity provided by surviving national

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leaders, the understated celebration of the monarch’s preservation – ‘ELISA lives’ (sig. G7v) – is juxtaposed with a far more thorough praise of Essex, Cumberland, and Howard, who are depicted as the true bearers of future national prestige (sig. G7). As a means to offset the potential autonomy of these male state agents, figures embodying what Claire Jowitt has productively termed ‘masculine unruliness’, Jacobean texts tend to direct their nostalgic reverence more exclusively toward the figure of Elizabeth.38 Nostalgia for the age of Elizabeth, in this sense, was not only a later response to Stuart absolutism, offering a veiled mode through which to express dissatisfaction with state policy; this nostalgia was also provoked by tensions inherent in the late Elizabethan period itself, anxieties deriving from the threatening power – as well as alternative models of representation – embodied by unruly male agents and citizen adventurers such as Drake. In Jacobean texts, one strategy that helped contain state agents within a monarchically-based body politic was a masculinization of the figure of Queen Elizabeth. As Susan Frye has noted, the canonical image of an armoured Elizabeth rallying her troops at Tilbury was largely an invention of the early seventeenth century.39 The Armada scenes that conclude the Second Part of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody (1605) contributed substantially to this process: Elizabeth is transformed into a martial, masculine, and active figure, with the Queen depicted as having ‘put on a Masculine spirit’ (l.2697) by appearing at Tilbury ‘Compleately arm’d’ (l.2686).40 By centring the scene’s action on Elizabeth, the anonymous and corporate identity of her military commanders takes on a passive, deferential form: Lord Admiral Howard, for instance, is referred to only as ‘your Admirall’ (l.2756), and the description of the climatic sea fight enumerates English ships rather than the commanders who led them (ll.2898–904). Attesting to his increasing celebrity following his death, however, the text singles out Drake for his heroism, and a lengthy report of his actions is even added to the revised 1633 version of the scenes. Upon his entrance, bearing a captured Spanish standard, Elizabeth acknowledges that ‘well I know thy name … / Nor will I be vnmindfull of thy worth’ (ll.2865–6). Yet the play reinforces Drake’s secondary position by insisting on his passive obedience: his strategy of sending fire ships into the Spanish fleet, for example, is seen as having derived from ‘counsell’ with his monarch (l.2869). Although England’s overwhelming victory against the Armada would seemingly justify a portrayal of a divinely-ordained and bloodless conquest, Heywood’s play insistently memorializes the anticipated loss of


England’s commanders. For example, even though Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher survive the battle, they are still eulogized as necessary sacrifices for the nation. Elizabeth, in fact, repeatedly reconciles herself to their deaths – ‘If he die, / He liues an honour to his Nation’ (ll.2585–7 [1606 ed.]); ‘If he be dead, / Our selfe will see his funerall honoured’ (ll.2832–3). At one point, she even speculates that God could be punishing her by allowing, or perhaps even demanding, her commanders’ deaths (ll.2824–6). The ease with which Elizabeth adapts to this loss – ‘His will be done’ (l.2396) – entails an acceptance of higher authority that is correlated with the subject’s resignation to the will of the monarch. As Ernest Renan commented in his essay ‘What is a Nation?’, in the forging of a national history, one must not only remember certain narratives, but also remember to forget others.41 Despite the fact that Heywood’s play celebrates Drake to an extent unparalleled in his lifetime, the text nonetheless participates in an effort to contain him within the parameters of the monarchical state, to remember him, in other words, in order to forget him, along with those models of community with which he could potentially be associated. These forms of absence and spectrality were a prominent feature of late Elizabethan images of Drake and other Elizabethan privateers. Even during Drake’s lifetime, as Henry Robarts remarks in A most friendly farewell, Drake reflected an absence, as ‘Unthankfull Englishmen’ allowed him ‘to rest in oblivion, and his renowned deeds with unthankefulnesse, so soone to be forgotten’ (sig. A3).42 As in Heywood’s Armada scenes, the privateers are rendered as spectres even in their most characteristically active and heroic moments, let alone in the frequently invoked scenes of their deaths, as in Fitzgeffrey’s and Markham’s elegies of Drake and Grenville. Markham’s description of Grenville’s final stand, for instance, concludes with a final postscript noting the loss of the captured Revenge at sea, swept away in a storm along with much of the victorious Spanish fleet (sig. G8v). The ultimate erasure of the markers of Grenville’s heroics – his ship, as well as his corpse itself – stands in for a more general effacement of his narrative from national history. Fitzgeffrey similarly remarks on the disappearance of Drake from national memory, noting how Drake and Hawkins – like Grenville – ‘left your bodies far from home’ (sig. F2). In the early seventeenth century, the figure of Sir Francis Drake assumed a different form of spectrality: although at times his image was part of a broader cultural yearning to ‘harken back to Elizabeth’, his memory was also invoked as a way to intimate political oppositionality. The divergence of these expressions of nostalgia – for the

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age of Elizabeth, or for Drake and other adventurers – reflected both the emergence of, as well as the inability to conceptualize, new models of political community, particularly in terms of definitions of citizenship. These nascent models of citizenship altered not only the relation of subjects to a monarchical head, but also the very ways that the body politic was constituted. Spectrality, a conjuring of the nation’s ghosts, should not be equated with nostalgia, however. On the contrary, these expressions offer a register through which to articulate what Fredric Jameson has termed a ‘more future-oriented and active’ reimagining of the national community.43 As Derrida comments in Specters of Marx, ‘the specter is … the becoming-body’, one that refers not to the past but to the potentiality of the future.44 Although such a ghostly image would seem to present itself as a desire to reanimate a lost past, ‘only as that which could come or come back’, as with the recurring image of Drake revived, ‘[a]t bottom’, Derrida notes, ‘the specter is the future, it is always to come.’45 This future potentiality is, nonetheless, non-teleological, and Derrida emphasizes that a spectral ‘becoming-body’, such as that of the nation, remains beyond the limits of intelligibility at any present historical moment: unable to be named, fully conceptualized, or thereby rendered in bodily form.46 In other words, if English nationhood assumes a spectral form in the early modern period, this is not due to a loss of preexisting national integrity, nor does it reflect an ‘emergent’ national body or ‘proto-national’ discourse that is in the process of being realized; rather, this spectrality derives from the ontological impossibility of the national community itself: as Claire McEachern has cogently remarked, ‘the nation is an ideal of community that is, by definition, either proleptic or passing, ever just beyond reach.’47 Taken in these terms, it is understandable why Drake remained a spectral presence in texts of the Jacobean period. Nonetheless, when he was listed among ‘Our British brave Sea-voyagers’ in Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612; 1622), or featured prominently among Devon’s ‘Searuling men’ in William Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals (1613; 1616), his memorialization served as a mode of critique, as a way to intimate an underlying dissatisfaction with the Jacobean state.48 Yet these texts could offer merely a phantom critique, one that was unable to take on anything more than a spectral form, or ‘to produce other, as yet incoherent nationalist narratives’, as Michelle O’Callaghan has insightfully phrased it.49 As O’Callaghan comments in her analysis of Browne and other Jacobean Spenserians, in language reminiscent of Fitzgeffrey’s and Markham’s elegies of Drake and Grenville, ‘[i]t is the task of the


epic poet to commemorate the dead, but in Britannia’s Pastorals bodies are missing or monuments are lost.’50 Offsetting the Jacobean period’s correlation of Drake with forms of loss and mourning, Drake’s nephew and namesake oversaw an effort to reestablish his cultural presence in the 1620s by publishing first-hand accounts of his uncle’s voyages: Philip Nichols’ evocatively titled Sir Francis Drake Reuiued: Calling vpon this Dull or Effeminate Age, to folowe his Noble Steps for Gold & Silver (1626) presented a narrative of Drake’s Nombre de Dios voyage of 1572–73 based on the notes of members of his crew, while The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1628) derived from the notes of Francis Fletcher, Drake’s chaplain on the circumnavigation of 1577–80. As the titles of these texts not so subtly indicate, this effort to revive Drake’s reputation correlated a resuscitation of national honour with a revival of a martial paradigm of masculinity. This recuperation of masculine unruliness was part of an effort to drum up support for English military intervention on the continent in the early years of Charles I’s rule, a policy the new monarch himself briefly embraced in the wake of his embarrassment following the thwarted Spanish Match.51 Opposition to a marriage alliance with Spain had earlier prompted the publication of a series of texts purporting to have been written by dead Elizabethan adventurers. In Thomas Scott’s Robert Earle of Essex His Ghost (1624) and Sir Walter Ravvleighs Ghost, or Englands Forewarner (1626), as well as Thomas Reynolds’ Vox Cœli (1624), figures associated with anti-Spanish policies, including Raleigh, Essex, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Henry, returned from the dead to encourage their nation to adopt a more interventionalist stance against Spain and Catholic forces. Published illegally on the continent, and in open violation of James’ proclamations against published discussions of state affairs, these texts – appropriately, pirated editions smuggled into England – also ‘pirated’ representations of English nationalism. Yet the oppositional potential of their arguments could only be expressed through the language of mourning. Their imputed places of publication (‘Printed in Elesium [sic]’; ‘Printed in Paradise’) located political opposition in an otherwordly space, a nation nowhere. Countering critical assessments of the rise of a ‘country opposition’ in the 1620s, these texts reflect the relative formlessness of an oppositional discourse in the period. As David Norbrook has observed, ‘it is misleading to speak of a formal “opposition” based on a coherent ideology’ in this period.52 And although radical in their outspoken candour, the ghost pamphlets also critiqued the state from a position of abiding conservatism, one

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whose nostalgia for lost figures like Raleigh, Drake, Essex, and Elizabeth constructed an invented tradition of English militarism that elided the deep political fissures separating these figures during their lifetimes. In harnessing Drake’s image so as to give bodily form to a particularly invidious nexus of militarism, masculinity, and foreign interventionalism, these pamphlets offered an important precedent for Victorian, high imperial appropriations of Drake’s legacy. However, this version of Drake was not the sole or dominant form that he assumed in the seventeenth century. In conclusion, I want to engage in a kind of critical piracy, commandeering the figure of Drake by dislodging it from these imperial moorings. Coinciding with ‘patriot’ images of the martial Drake revived, or those of the spectral Drake memorialized, was a recurring admission of Drake’s status as a pirate. From Camden’s Annales (1615), in which Drake is cast as a pirate captain distributing seized treasure among his men, to William Davenant’s ‘The History of Sir Francis Drake’, the second act of his opera The Play-House to Be Let (1656), which features a chorus of Drake’s men rhapsodizing on the joys of plunder, the figure of Sir Francis Drake offered a means for imagining England’s emergence as an imperial power.53 By revealing – if not celebrating – the piratical foundations for England’s imperial aspirations, these texts conceded, and with remarkable candour, the underlying forms of extraction upon which the expansion of an English ‘trading empire’ was based. ‘Commercial capital’, as Marx notes, ‘is thus in all cases a system of plunder.’54 Whereas the circulation of capital necessitates a disembodied network of commodity and capital flows, one dependent upon an abstraction of labour, this acknowledgment of the piratical sources of England’s wealth offered a critique by emphasizing the material process of capital’s formation, including the debilitating toll of its expansion. Similarly, in Britannia’s Pastorals, William Browne juxtaposes his praise of Drake with a lament for mariners’ high mortality rate on East India Company voyages.55 As these examples show, seventeenth-century nostalgia for the age of Drake entailed a yearning for an earlier model of adventure, one that was accurately perceived as being increasingly superceded by the monopolistic commercial ventures of joint-stock companies. Thomas Fuller noted this transition in his biography of Drake that appeared in The Holy State (1642), a text that presents one of the period’s most remarkable accounts of this figure. In his discussion of the causes of Drake’s death, Fuller continues the tradition inaugurated by Robarts, Heywood, and others, and through his memorialization of


Drake articulates a populist, potentially oppositional expression of English identity. But Fuller also expanded his critique as a way to mark the transition from privateering to the joint-stock company, from a model of adventure to that of commercial ventures, and the resulting containment of potentially unruly state agents within the framework of monopolistic international commerce that such changes effected. In Fuller’s account, what kills Drake is, ultimately, capital: the demand for ever greater returns on investment in his voyages, ‘an interest and return of honour and profit’ expected to exceed ‘his former achievements’, triggers the self-consuming ‘apprehensions’ that produce Drake’s final illness.56 The profits of Drake’s voyages are, of course, legendary: in addition to yielding Queen Elizabeth a return of 47 times her investment, these profits were even seen as contributing to the capital that enabled the founding of the East India Company in 1600, four years after Drake’s death.57 Fuller’s account reveals how the unprecedented riches yielded by early modern English piracy created a cultural battle over surplus value, exacerbating social tensions that Robert Brenner locates as a key impetus for the revolutionary conflicts of the mid-seventeenth century.58 In contrast to the Victorian image of Drake as a point of origin for England’s trading empire, in Fuller’s text Drake’s spectral presence haunts aspirations for national unity and commercial expansion. As amorphous and protean in its shape as nationalism itself, the ghost of Sir Francis Drake provides a spectral figuration for nascent, alternative models of community, social relations formed – in appropriately piratical fashion – by seizing the mechanisms of capital.

9 Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Execution Claire Jowitt

This essay explores the politics of pirate executions. Focusing on the pirate scaffold speeches of Thomas Walton and Clinton Atkinson contained in the anonymous pamphlet Clinton, Purser and Arnold, to their countreymen wheresoever (1583), in Thomas Heywood’s and William Rowley’s tragic-comedy Fortune by Land and Sea (1607–09), and the execution of the ‘pirate’ Walter Ralegh in 1618, it seeks to read depictions of the manner of pirates’ deaths and their scaffold behaviour in political terms.1 The essay examines the various ways pirates were able, sometimes in surprising and resourceful ways, to use their scaffolds as a pulpit from which to express their antagonism to the state that condemns them. The figures of Purser, Clinton, and Ralegh, may not initially seem to have much in common, since Ralegh was executed in 1618 for treason not piracy. Yet ‘piracy’ against Spanish settlements in Guiana in 1617 was also part of the case against him. Furthermore, the pirates and Ralegh are also explicitly linked in terms of theatrical representation, since, as this essay shall establish, one of the subtexts for Heywood’s and Rowley’s representation of their play’s privateer hero, Young Forrest, (whose fate is contrasted with that of the pirates Purser and Clinton), is the career of Ralegh. Using the work of Michel Foucault, J. A. Sharpe and Peter Lake concerning the subversive politics of scaffold speeches more generally, this essay explores the conventions specific to pirate scaffolds. Similar to Mark Netzloff’s exploration of the ways in which Francis Drake’s memory ‘was invoked as a way to intimate political oppositionality’ (see Chapter 8), I shall discuss the ways in which these representations of pirate executions are sympathetic to the pirates themselves and offer a critique of contemporary institutions of statecraft. 151


Pirate executions In Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault suggestively argued, using the dramatic metaphor ‘the spectacle of the scaffold’, that early-modern French systems of punishment inscribed state power upon the body of the criminal: It is an element in the liturgy of punishment and meets two demands. It must mark the victim […] And, from the point of view of the law that imposes it, public torture and execution must be spectacular, it must be seen by all almost as its triumph.2 According to this line of thinking, the public hanging at Wapping of the English pirates Purser and Clinton (real names Thomas Walton (alias Purser) and Clinton Atkinson (alias Clinton or Smith)), and the beheading of Walter Ralegh in Old Palace Yard in the Tower of London, should be seen as the articulation of a power relation representing the ‘triumph’ of the state, and indeed of the monarch, upon the pirates’ bodies. In a scaffold drama ‘the all-powerful sovereign […] displays his strength’ as punishment is inflicted upon ‘the subject who has dared to violate the law.’ 3 However, as Foucault goes on to argue, executions should not always be seen as a total victory for state or monarchic authority: ‘snatching a condemned man from the hands of the executioner, obtaining his pardon by force, possibly pursuing and assaulting the executioners […] overturned the ritual of the public execution.’4 In the cases of Purser and Clinton, and Ralegh, there was no such straightforward rejection of royal authority, no obviously antiestablishment incident in which the crowd stampeded the scaffold to liberate the pirates and punish the executioners. Ralegh was beheaded on 29 October 1618, 15 years after the treason for which he had been condemned in 1603. 5 Purser and Clinton were hanged with seven other condemned pirates on the stretch of shoreline between high and low tide marks at Wapping on the 30 August 1583 – the eighth condemned man, William Arnewood, a gentleman of some position, was reprieved (not rescued through the interference of the crowd). 6 However, as both Foucault and J. A. Sharpe make clear, there can be other, less direct, signs of challenge to state authority in the ways that rites of execution are carried out and reported. 7 The ceremonies that inscribe sovereign authority might also generate and express resistance to that authority since, while

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executions might be intended to vindicate the justice and power of the state, they might also serve to glorify the criminal. Should the representation of pirate executions be interpreted in this way? Unlike other criminals who were gibbeted at Tyburn, those condemned for piracy were always hanged at Wapping. As the Elizabethan satirist and verse pamphleteer Samuel Rowlands humorously wrote: For though Pyrates exempted be From fatall Tyburne’s withere’d tree, They have an Harbour to arrive Call’d Wapping, where as ill they thrive As those that ride up Holbourne Hill, And at the Gallows make their Will.8 The justification for giving pirates a gallows to themselves on the mudflats at Wapping lay in the fact that the strip of land between the high- and low-water marks was under the jurisdiction of the Lord High Admiral not of the usual criminal courts.9 There was a fairly elaborate set of customs surrounding pirates’ executions. Those convicted of piracy were brought from Marshalsea Prison in Southwark via London Bridge and the Tower of London to Execution Dock in a cart accompanied by a chaplain. The procession was lead by the Admiralty Marshal or his deputy who carried a silver oar representing the authority of the Admiralty over crimes committed at sea. Stow, in his Survey of London (1598), describes the Execution Dock at Wapping as ‘the usuall place of execution for hanging of Pirats & sea Rovers’, and notes that, after hanging the bodies were chained to a stake ‘at the low water marke, there to remaine, till three tides had overflowed them.’10 Bodies were then smeared with pitch (normally used as a preservative for ships) and hanged on gibbets on the Isle of Dogs, Bugsby’s Reach, or Graves Point and left to rot slowly in order to warn sailors on ingoing and outgoing ships of the price of piracy. The 1605 edition of Stow’s The annales of England makes it clear that Purser and Clintons’ execution was a particularly flamboyant affair.11 For, as Purser went to the gallows he ‘rent his venetian breeches of crimosin taffeta, and distributed the same to such his old acquaintance as stood about him.’ This is the first recorded incident of a pirate doling out pieces of his garments from the scaffold, and the open distribution of the pirate’s sumptuous clothes to his sympathizers and supporters – his ‘old acquaintance’ – indicates that the pieces of taffeta are acting as a kind of memento mori and a way of


articulating a shared identity of anti-establishment beliefs. Clinton’s apparel is also criticized by Stow since his ‘velvet doublet with great gold buttons’ and his ‘coloured velvet Venetians laid with great gold lace’ are described as ‘apparell too sumptuous for sea rovers.’12 Stow’s disapproval can only be fully understood in the context of how much money such fine clothes cost. Opulent clothes represented an enormous financial investment in this period: according to Andrew Gurr ‘the Earl of Leicester paid £543 for seven doublets and two cloaks, at an average cost for each item rather higher than the price Shakespeare paid for a house in Stratford’: the pirates were, literally, wearing a fortune.13 Certainly this description of pirates’ finery indicates that their outfits aped the dashing attire of Elizabethan courtiers, especially that of gentlemen ‘privateers’ such as Drake or Ralegh, who were well known for their sartorial magnificence.14 Purser and Clintons’ splendour indicates something of a mimetic relationship to court fashion. Moreover, given that the Elizabethan sumptuary laws of 1562 and 1574 restricted the use of such rich cloth to the social elite, the pirates were evidently committing one last act of defiance of the authorities which had condemned them. The similarity in their style of dress with Elizabeth’s most famous and successful state-sponsored pirates – men like Hawkins, Drake, Gilbert and Ralegh – also indicates the difficulty of clearly distinguishing at this time between illegal piracy and that committed under commission by the sovereign’s granting of letters of marque and reprisal. 15 The late 1570s and early 1580s, the years in which Purser and Clinton were most active as pirates, were the time in which Elizabeth’s own leading naval officers and well-placed courtiers were involved in a proliferation of projects for trade, plunder and colonization, most of which involved piracy in one form or another. 16 Drake’s circumnavigation, his visit to the Spice Island of Ternate and his return to London with a king’s ransom in booty encouraged further commercial ambitions in the East and the rising tension in Anglo-Spanish relations in the period led to new strategic ideas by Gilbert for besting the Spanish at sea. Furthermore, by 1582 at least 11 English ships – including the Prosperity under the command of Clinton Atkinson – were at sea attacking Spanish shipping issued with letters of marque by Don Antonio, the Pretender to the Portuguese throne. 17 In other words it is not simply the clothes of the pirates Purser and Clinton that mimic those of their social superiors, since the pirates’ violence at sea is hardly distinguishable from the authorized violence of the courtiers and adventurers whose

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achievements are celebrated as the pinnacles of dashing heroic, and patriotic, endeavour. Moreover, as Foucault has suggested, the ‘gallows speech’ of the condemned man or woman forms an important instance of one of these carnivalesque moments which might ‘overturn’ the execution as the triumph of the dominant order: ‘[u]nder the protection of imminent death, the criminal could say everything and the crowd cheered’ in ‘the luxury of […] momentary saturnalia.’ 18 Scaffold speeches, frequently published in cheap broadsheet form in this period and therefore widely read, were supposed to form a rite of execution in which the condemned person acknowledged their crimes and the justice of their sentence. Yet, as we shall see in the cases of accounts of the deaths of Purser and Clinton, and especially in relation to Ralegh’s execution speech, they were in fact highly unreliable tools of the state apparatus. 19 ‘The last words of a condemned man’ genre was supposed to circulate by way of example and exhortation to the reading public, but he was often ‘transformed into a hero’ since ‘[a]gainst the law, against the rich, the powerful, the magistrates, the constabulary […] he appeared to have waged a struggle with which one all too easily identified.’20 Scaffold speeches were an equivocal political form, a potential multi-vocal discourse capable of multiple and contradictory readings. In one way they form part of the apparatus of ideological control warning the reader against a similar fate, but at the same time since they can lionize and glorify the condemned as exceptional, they might be seen to serve a subversive political agenda.21 Foucault and Sharpe’s analysis of the ambivalent ideological effects of the scaffold speech has been considerably refined in Peter Lake and Michael Questiers’ work on ‘moralized’ murder pamphlets and their ‘festive’ counterparts, the versions of these stories performed on stage.22 Thinking about this material in terms of the hermeneutic principle of the binary opposites of order and disorder Lake suggests that both versions blend moral and immoral elements. The ‘moralized’ version: involved a straight narrative of the descent of some poor felon, through […] temptation, into sin and finally murder, immediately followed by his or her capture, condemnation, repentance and good death on the gallows. Here the world was turned upside down, conventional notions of order were inverted by the sin of the central character, only to be turned up the right way again.23


Similar tropes operate in the ‘festive’ stage versions where ‘the moralized version always ultimately won out’, though ‘considerable titillating detail’ might be deployed in recounting the crimes committed: ‘[t]he point was always ostensibly to reaffirm order, to restore the integrity of the social body’.24 What Lake suggests here is that the presence of both titillating and moralized elements was structurally necessary, and moreover this dialogue between oppositional discourses produced ‘strains and tensions’ because of the ‘ambivalent and conflicted relationship […] between what one might term the legitimating and moralizing frame and the titillating content.’25 In the light of these arguments about order and disorder, this article focuses on the representations of pirates’ scaffold behaviour and the ways their antics either support or undermine state politics.

Subversive pirates? Soon after Purser and Clintons’ execution in 1583 a clutch of texts designed to take advantage of the popular interest in their case were published. Two of these ballads, Clinton’s Lamentacyon of 1583, and The Confessions of 9 Rovers, Clinton and Purser beinge chief’ of 1586, have not survived.26 However a third text is extant, dated 1583, and titled Clinton, Purser and Arnold, to their countreymen wheresoever. The text’s subtitle Wherein is described by their own hands their unfeigned penitence for their offences past: their patience in welcoming their Death, & their duetiful minds towardes her most excellent Maiestie indicates its avowed intention to keep within the bounds of political orthodoxy. The pirates’ acceptance of the justice of their executions and their deference to the author of their punishment, the Queen, has prompted Mark Netzloff to suggest that: The ballads […] insist […] on the pirates’ continued obedience to queen and country: Purser pleads repeatedly that ‘ever wisht my Queene and country well’, a point reinforced by Arnold’s assurance that ‘lives he not that can in conscience say, / Purser or Arnold made one English praye’[…] The ballads enable state power to speak through the pirates, representing the captains as endorsing the position of the state that condemns them.27 But can we be certain that the pamphlet does reaffirm the moral order so readily and completely? All three of the pirates’ speeches make clear that there are mitigating circumstances which might perhaps under-

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mine the wisdom of their execution, and imply that rival European nations have either caused, or will benefit from, the pirates’ fall from grace. Even as he acknowledges his guilt in his scaffold lament, Purser emphasizes that he was highly serviceable to the English state.28 He describes the way his protection from ‘forren foes’ has been used by those that condemn him: When they have crept, and croucht to us for aide, Like harmelesse birdes, whome falcones make afraid.29 The pirate does not specify exactly which groups of English men he has been protecting, but it is clear that he is embittered by their current disregard of him: ‘they forget that ere he did them good’.30 Furthermore, he anticipates that these fair weather friends may regret their decision: predicting that the ‘faithlesse French’ will be pleased to see his demise since this opens the way for their activities. ‘[L]ook abroad’, he counsels, ‘have care unto your Roades, / and cleanse your Coastes, of such unseemely Toades’.31 Without his protection, England is under threat. This anxiety concerning the vulnerability of the English nation is more interesting for what it does not say than for what it states openly. Nowhere in Purser’s speech, or indeed in Arnold’s or Clinton’s, is Spain named as the source of danger.32 Rather it is France that is singled out for attention as a potential enemy. Given the rising diplomatic tension between England and Spain in the early 1580s, the absence of references to antagonism between the pirates and the Spanish is significant, and may impact on the pirates’ allegiances. Had this representation been published after May 1585 – when hostilities against Spain became openly expressed after Philip II suddenly closed all Spanish ports to English merchants, sequestering substantial quantities of goods and shipping – the absence of hostile mention of Spain would undoubtedly have been a means of identifying the pirates as unpatriotic.33 But in a text published in 1583 – before the English translation of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Brevíssima relación de las destrucción de las Indias, (published by William Brome in the same year), had begun to propagate what became known as the Black Legend of Spanish atrocities – the absence of the Spanish as the source of danger to England is not decisive in signalling the patriotism of the pirates.34 In other words, the identification of ‘forren foes’ as French is ambiguous. Furthermore, ‘France’ here is also indeterminate: it might refer to the ruling Catholic Valois family, with whom England had varying relations, or the Huguenots


with whom seafaring activities against Spain were frequently mounted.35 Purser’s claim to patriotism is not proven either way by this account. Arnold’s lament is in the same vein. It also attempts to ameliorate the sense of the pirates’ guilt, since, though he was ‘by birth a gentleman’, he was forced to seek his living through seaborne crime because of the corrupt behaviour and accusations of an Irish, hence Catholic, ‘spitefall Priest’. 36 Arnold is here making his religious orthodoxy apparent since he, in contrast to an unnamed pirate whom the Catholic James Fenn (himself executed for treason in 1584) turned to the Romanish religion on the gallows in the 1580s, he remains Protestant. Fenn’s pirate adamantly refused the ministrations of Protestant ministers on the gallows and professed that ‘he died a catholic, and blessed the providence of God that had brought him to a place where he had met with such holy company as taught him to be a Christian’. 37 In the case of Arnold, against this climate of neglect and Catholic hostility, only the pirate Purser was prepared to help him by giving him a captured French ship, and Arnold claims that he only fell foul of the piracy laws through helping another French vessel which was in distress. 38 Similar to Purser’s account, here Arnold’s defence of his actions is ambiguous. England was not at war with France in this period, so Purser’s gift of the French ship is likely to represent an illegitimate attack on friendly shipping. Like Purser’s ambiguous allegiances, Arnold’s patriotism is not convincingly established by these actions. The last lament in the broadsheet, by Clinton, similar to the others, attempts to justify the pirate’s situation. This time, however, the pirate concentrates on the mutability of ‘Welth, wordly wit, Ambition or Renowne’ as ‘fickle Fortune sometime puls them down.’39 He describes his position as arch-pirate in explicitly monarchical terms: ‘Who raigned more then I that ruld the coast?’40 The reversal of fortune he describes as he catalogues his changing circumstances from King of the seas to a ‘Poore I’, acts as a warning to others of what may befall them. Riches, position, even royalty, Clinton asserts, are no security against changing fortunes as he finds himself betrayed and deserted: ‘The time hath bene when they to please me prest’, and describes how those he rescued now with their ‘double tongues […] do me wrong’.41 Clinton’s speech here acts as a caution to the powerful of their vulnerability to changing fortunes. Indeed, given that the Lord Admiral of England in 1583 was called Clinton, (more specifically Edward Fiennes de Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln) the pirate’s description of himself as a lord of the

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seas looks like a pointed allusion to contemporary politics. The fact that he has lost his position thus might be seen as a dark warning to that other, high-ranking Clinton, of the unpredictability of reversals of fortune. The pirate powerfully describes a climate of betrayal – though identifying no individuals apart from the generalized term of ‘Londoners’ – where no security or trust can be placed in friends and allies. Furthermore, Clinton was one of the set of aggressive, Protestant-minded courtiers who persistently argued for overseas expansion at Spanish expense, and he was a well-known investor in voyages of privateering and colonization, such as Drake’s roundthe-world voyage of 1577–80.42 The similarities between the two Clintons appear to be more significant than just a shared name. This pamphlet should be seen as hesitant in its support of the state power that condemns the pirates. There is no explicit attack on the Queen, or her representatives, but, perhaps, implicitly the three laments imply criticism of a regime that is incapable of accommodating such patriotic men, especially in times of national emergency against European enemies and rivals. Purser, Arnold and Clinton attempt to champion their piracy as an especially vivid form of patriotism, asserting that without them England will be at the mercy of foreign foes. The fact that the enemy Purser cites, the French, were not foes at this time, however, makes the pirates an ambiguously serviceable tool for the English nation. Properly harnessed their naval skills could be of considerable use to England, but only if they attack enemy shipping. The actual seaborne allegiances of the pirate Clinton Atkinson can be seen in this way. In the 1580s Clinton and his ship the Prosperity had an ambiguous and complex relationship with state authorities. He was one of the men issued with a licence by Don Antonio in 1582 to attack Spanish shipping, following the annexation of Portugal by Phillip II in 1580. In particular he took part in the scheme to oppose Philip’s sovereignty in the Azores, which was originally intended to be a combined operation of English, French and Don Antonio’s forces. Leicester, Walsingham, Drake and Elizabeth had initially been behind the scheme to garrison the island of Terceira in the Azores in order to cut the flow of treasure to Spain from the New World, but in the end only the French attempted the operation, unsuccessfully, in 1582.43 Clinton’s role here, then, is a liminal one: he was acting for a cause, Don Antonio’s attempt to gain the Portuguese throne, with which Elizabeth had sympathy, but he was part of a group that were notoriously lawless and which were known to be indiscriminate


in their choice of victim. The scaffold speeches of the three pirates might explicitly support the re-inscription of the moral order as they welcome their death, but in each case there are marked ambiguities which undermine the legitimizing and moral framework of the text. Furthermore, the inclusion of Arnold in the lament might also be seen, perhaps, as an ironic gesture on the part of the author, since Arnold was not executed with the other pirates on 30 August 1583. The tenth pirate recommended for execution before the trial, William Arnewood – ‘Arnold’ – was officially pardoned four months later, despite the fact he had already resumed his piratical career. 44 The orthodoxy of Arnold’s acceptance, even support, of his ‘execution’ in 1583 appears even more compromised by the fact that the pirate was in fact alive and well at sea.45 The political ambivalences in the 1583 version of the pirates’ executions are intensified in Heywood and Rowleys’ Jacobean depiction in Fortune by Land and Sea (1607–09).46 The play is set in the 1580s, the time of the real-life activities of Purser and Clinton. The text’s hero, Young Forrest, kills his brother’s murderer in a duel at the beginning of the play. He becomes a fugitive and, in an attempt to secure his pardon from Queen Elizabeth for the crime, captures Purser and Clinton at sea, and takes them to justice. The play concludes with the pirates’ hanging and Young Forrest’s pardon and marriage to a rich and virtuous widow. But the pirates’ deaths are not necessarily cause for celebration. Heywood and Rowleys’ representation is the closest to Stow’s 1605 account of their death: the play includes the execution procession of the Sheriffs and the ‘Silver Oare’, the pirates’ scaffold speeches and the doling out of their clothes to their supporters. In this scene we can see at work what Lake has called the ‘strains and tensions’ attendant upon the ‘ambivalent and conflicted relationship […] between what one might term the legitimating and moralising frame and the titillating content’. Cases in point are the pirates’ execution speeches, which Barbara Fuch’s aptly describes as ‘elegiac’. 47 The text is noticeably ambivalent concerning whether the death of such brave men should be welcomed or mourned; certainly, it is necessary to the plot to reincorporate Forrest into legitimate society, but it causes the loss to England of ‘gallant spirits’ who have ‘made Armadoes fly before our stream.’48 This reference to the Armada of 1588 is, of course, historically incompatible with the pirates’ 1583 execution, but it does clearly signal that they, like Forrest, have been attacking Spanish shipping.

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Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the ‘strains and tensions’ are apparent in the way the pirates give away their clothes. They first ask permission: ‘Mr. Sheriff, you see we wear good clothes, / They are payd for, and our own, then give us leave / Our own amongst our friends to distribute’.49 It is not just the pirates’ loyal supporters who share in the ‘good clothes’ here; the hangman, who has previously been baiting and insulting them, receives gifts as well: ‘The work man made them / Took never measure on Hangmans back; / Wear them for our sakes, and remember us; / There’s some content for him too’.50 In Lake’s terms the moralizing element, embodied by the presence of the avenging Hangman, is compromised by the sumptuous gifts he receives from the outlaw pirates. The final words by the Hangman, perhaps, sum up the way he has been influenced by the pirates, ‘Thank your worships’: through taking the gifts he has agreed to remember them since, as Jones and Stallybrass have suggested, the material ways clothes circulated in this period mean ‘[m]emories are literally worn’.51 But more significantly, the hangman might now be seen to support anti-establishment patterns of behaviour since ‘clothes retained or simulated the identity of former wearers’.52 The moralized figure of the hangman thus no longer appears to be the embodiment of punitive, state authority as his manner alters towards the outlaws and he will, presumably, in the future appear dressed in their clothes. Ralegh’s dignified, even heroic, deportment at his execution in 1618, and his 45 minute execution speech, can also be seen as undermining state authority in the same way. As Beer describes ‘[e]ven the executioner […] was affected by Ralegh’s performance’ since, according to one eyewitness, ‘the fellowe was much daunted (as it seemed to me) att his resolution and courage, in so much that Sr Walter Raleigh clapped him on his back divers times; and cheered him up’.53 In both cases, then, the executioner appears compromised and effected by the pirates to such an extent, that questions arise concerning the justice of the sentence to be carried out. But, perhaps, the most compelling reason for seeing this play as criticizing the regime that executes the pirates is the similarity between the latter and the play’s hero, Young Forrest. Young Forrest’s ship is involved in activities little different to those of Purser and Clinton. He represents himself as though he were in possession of letters of marque allowing him to make attacks on other shipping, and persistently attempts to articulate a difference between his exploits and those of Purser and Clinton, yet in the action that follows there appear to be little to choose between them.54 Like Drake in the 1570s and 1580s, or


Ralegh until his execution, Forrest and his men have been highly successful in capturing and routing Spanish ships. One of the mariners describes how they have prospered since taking Forrest onboard: When we first took you to our fellowship, We had a poor bark of some fifteen tun, And that was all our riches, but since then We have took many a rich prize from Spain.55 It is only once they are fortified with Spanish plunder that they turn their attention to the pirates, though of course it should not be forgotten that the inclusion of Purser and Clinton means that the action takes place prior to the Anglo-Spanish war, intensifying the resemblances between the actions of Forrest and the pirates. Indeed, similar to the scene on the pirate ship in which Purser and Clinton distributed the loot equally between the crew, Forrest makes plain that any booty has been shared out, ‘the riches of their ship / We ‘mongst you will divide in equal shares’.56 This distribution runs counter to the official Elizabethan policy of the prize being divided only on return to England, thus ensuring that the crown was awarded a certain percentage of the spoils. In fact Forrest is at this point as much of an outlaw – having killed a man – as are Purser and Clinton. Forrest might attempt to represent himself as though he is in the service of the Elizabethan state attacking Spain under letters of marque, but he is not. His desire to regain ‘my peace and pardon though a man condemned’ mark him as an outlaw pirate.57 Indeed, the confusion is made more apparent by the pirates’ choice of flag: like Forrest they also fly ‘the Cross of England and St. George’.58 Despite his protestations of English loyalty, and his serviceableness to the English state in attacking Spanish shipping, Forrest is just as much a pirate as Purser and Clinton. Indeed, the subtext of this encounter is that if Forrest is attempting to secure his pardon through capture of the outlaw pirates, by the same token so might they legitimately seek to compound for their crimes through his capture. So how should we read Heywood and Rowley’s double representation of piracy in this text? Under Elizabeth, the state had attempted to draw a somewhat rough and ready distinction between the nation’s commissioned and outlaw pirates, however difficult in practice those differences were to maintain.59 Hence the resemblances between young Forrest and Purser and Clinton are rather more significant than their differences. James’ proclamations made no distinction at all

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between outlaw and commissioned piracy against Spain or any other nation at this time: all piracy was a capital crime. In 1609 for instance, in what John C. Appleby describes in Chapter 2 of this book as ‘tough talk’ on the part of the government, piracies were described as being committed by ‘lewd and ill disposed persons, accustomed and habituated to spoil and rapine, insensible and desperate of the peril they draw upon themselves’. Indeed the King went further as he expressed the desire to ‘hang the pirates with my own hands, and my Lord Admiral as well’.60 In fact, although the Lord Admiral survived, more pirates were hanged in James’ reign than in the previous hundred years, 19 being despatched in a single day from Wapping Pier in December 1608, though the problem of pirates remained endemic for much of the reign.61 Hence Fortune by Land and Sea’s nostalgic representation of the Elizabethan past where the distinction was hard to maintain but there was at least some room for manoeuvre, implies the harshness of James’ blanket ban. The celebration of the ‘pirate’ Forrest’s activities as furthering the national interest – evident in the rewards bestowed on him by the Queen at the end of the text (as she did with Drake on the The Golden Hind) in effect acts as a plea for a less draconian and indiscriminate contemporary attitude to piracy. These ambivalences in the text’s representation of piracy make it less obviously the heinous crime James described in official proclamations. In fact, in the figure of young Forrest there are clear resemblances to Ralegh who, detested by James, was imprisoned in the Tower for advocating precisely the kinds of buccaneering activities that Elizabeth rewarded. On James’ accession Ralegh wrote A Discourse touching a War with Spain, which aggressively recommended the continuation of hostilities. Neither the tone nor the content of this ‘martial’ paper found favour with James, and Ralegh was subsequently charged with conspiring with Lord Cobham and others to kill James I and place the King’s cousin, Lady Arabella Stuart, on the throne with the financial assistance of Spain. Cobham was interrogated and signed a sworn confession (later recanted), which served as the chief evidence against Ralegh.62 Tried and condemned, Ralegh’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Transcripts of Ralegh’s 1603 trial – at which he eloquently defended himself – circulated so widely that the public responses to Ralegh changed from vilification to sympathy.63 In Young Forrest we see the expression of similar aggressive, expansionist policies at odds with James’ pacifist beliefs. The text’s championing of Young Forrest through his twin rewards of knighthood and marriage to an honourable, rich wife, for activities


that are indistinguishable from those of the executed pirates, poses some awkward questions for both the Elizabethan past that the play revives and the Jacobean present. In the play it is Elizabeth’s penal system which executes the pirates and rewards Young Forrest for largely identical actions. The execution of the pirates appears to be a missed opportunity to harness such potentially serviceable men to the interests of the state. Yet the Elizabethan state was able to reward and reincorporate Young Forrest in ways that the Jacobean government would not. Under James both the pirates and Forrest would be condemned since, with the nation at peace with Spain, Forrest’s bellicosity was out of kilter with James’ pacific foreign policy. In Lake’s terms the pirates’ execution and Young Forrest’s success reveal the ‘strains and tensions’ in state attitudes to piracy and plunder in both the Elizabethan and Jacobean regimes. Elizabeth was unable to utilize the pirates for state purposes, and executed them; James saw no difference between them and Young Forrest, so would have executed him as well. In neither case does the outcome appear just, but the less draconian and indiscriminate Elizabethan policy would appear preferable. Fortune by Land and Sea’s Elizabethanism concerning piracy is matched by the last scaffold spectacle I wish to discuss in this chapter. Walter Ralegh, ‘the last Elizabethan’, was finally executed in 1618 for the treason he had been convicted of in 1603, the commuted sentence being enforced because of the failure of his second voyage to the gold mines of Guiana in 1617 either to bring back tangible results or to avoid violent confrontation with Spaniards in the region.64 Ralegh’s execution was one of the most controversial political events of the early seventeenth century, since his punishment was widely seen as unjust, especially as published versions of his scaffold speech, and manuscript copies of his 1618 Apologie for his voyage to Guina (written between 28 and 31 July) circulated widely becoming ‘part of the political hagiography surrounding Ralegh.’65 Because Ralegh had been ‘civilly dead’ – that is dead to law and society – since 1603, no new trial was needed to condemn him.66 However, as Beer describes, the King and his ministers debated the best method to justify and manage the execution, the latter recommending to James that Ralegh be called up in front of the ‘whole body of your Council of State, and your principal Judges […] and that some of the nobility and gentlemen of quality be admitted to be present to hear the whole proceedings’.67 The King, anxious that Ralegh’s popularity might turn such a large gathering against the crown’s position, eventually decided that Ralegh should only be examined by those he had faced before, and that when

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the execution warrant was signed, a declaration should be published justifying the government’s actions.68 Such was the interest that the case generated that more than one transcription of Ralegh’s last speech, and short account of the circumstances of its delivery, was made by friends, officials and curious spectators.69 In all versions of the speech Ralegh refuses to acknowledge his guilt, and at no point does he glorify the King, both potentially seditious acts in themselves. Dr Robert Tounson, who prepared the prisoner for execution, observes: Ralegh ‘hoped to perswade the world that he dyed an innocent man […]. Therat I told him, that he should do well to advise what he sayd: men in these days did not dye in that sort innocent, and his pleading innocency was an oblique taxing of the Justice of the Realm upon him.’70 The crown was so concerned about Ralegh’s postexecution popularity, that two works were published in an attempt to discredit him, The Humble Petition, ascribed to Ralegh’s keeper Sir Lewis Stukleley, but probably written by Dr Lionel Sharpe, and A Declaration of the Demeanor and Cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh, credited to Francis Bacon, though it is more likely that he edited a draft drawn up by a member of his legal staff.71 What concerns me here is the way the charge of piracy was used by both the crown and Ralegh in their confrontation, taking on an ideological significance as it acts as shorthand for larger political standpoints. This charge is something Ralegh is particularly concerned to refute in his Apologie: ‘it was bruted, both before my departure out of England and by the most men beleived, that I meant nothing lesse then to go to Guiana: but that being once at liberty and in mine owne power, having made my way with some Forraigne Prince I would turne Pyratt and utterly forsake my Countrey.’72 Here ‘piracy’, like ‘Turning Turke’, stands in for an abdication of national identity, as in the pay of another monarch, presumably with letters of marque, it is rumoured that Ralegh would turn against his country.73 Towards the end of the document he returns to the issue, again discussing piracy in relation to indiscriminate attacks on shipping in search of gold: I say, that, there is no reason […] to lay it to my charge, that I carryed them with a pretence of Gold […]: if it had bin to have gotten my liberty, why did I not keep my liberty when I had it, Nay why did I put my life in manifest peril to forgo it? if I had had a purpose to have turned Pyrate, why did I oppose my self against the greatest number of my Company, and was there by in danger to be slaine or cast into the Sea because I refused it?74


‘Piracy’ in this context refers to the type of buccaneering activities favoured under Elizabeth particularly in the years of the Anglo-Spanish war, but outlawed by James. Noticeably Ralegh represents himself as bravely standing up against the ship’s company who, he asserts, did wish to ‘turne Pyrate’. However, notwithstanding Ralegh’s protestations of his refusal to ‘turne Pyrate’, one of the state’s chief indictments against him was that he did follow these Elizabethan patterns of behaviour: when the prosecution of this imaginarie Mine vanished […] Sir Walter Raleigh called a Councell of his Captaines […] where hee propounded to them, that his Intention and designe was; First, to make to the New-found lands, and there to revictuall and refresh his Ships; And thence to goe to the Westerne Islands, and there to lie in waite to meete with the Mexico Fleete, or to surprise some Carrackes; and so hauing gotten treasure, which might make him welcome into any forreine Countrey, to take some newe course for his future fortunes […] his cogitations imbracing East and West […] And although some old Pirates, either by his inciting, or out of feare of their owne case, were fierce and violent for the Sea, and against the returne, yet the far greater number were for the return […] which hee perceiuing, for feare of further mutinie, professed in dissimulation, that hee himselfe was for the returne into England, and came and stood amongst them that had most voyces; But neuerthelesse, after that he despaired to draw his companie to follow him further, hee made offer of his owne Ship (which was of great value) to his company, if they would set him aboard a French Barque: The like offer he made, when hee came vpon the Coast of Ireland, to some of his chiefe Officers there.75 Bacon’s version of the intended piracy is in marked contrast to Ralegh’s. Bacon here repeatedly emphasizes Ralegh’s eagerness to turn to piracy (‘his cogitations imbracing East and West’), and his duplicity in pretending to be against it when it appears that his favoured plan does not find enough support to be carried, despite the wishes of ‘some old Pirates’ amongst them. The epithet ‘some old Pirates’ also associates these men, like Ralegh, with Elizabethanism, evoking a previous age when privateering was a mainstay of the nation’s foreign policy, and the niceties of distinguishing the nationality of the ship to be attacked were often breached. However the actual, rather than the anticipated, crime of piracy indicted against Ralegh by Bacon was specifically concerned with attacks

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on Spanish conquistadors. As is seen in his letters to his monarch, Philip III, the Spanish Ambassador, Count Gondomar, had always seen the mission to Guiana purely in piratical terms, advising that it offered Spain a good opportunity to punish the piratical Ralegh because of ‘what Ralegh had done’ and that King James had already promised to do whatever the Spanish suggest to ‘remedy and redress it.’76 As Bacon describes it, Gondomar ‘tooke great alarme, and represented vnto his Maiestie by loud and vehement assertions […] that he knew and had discouered the intention and enterprise of Sir W. Raleigh to bee but Hostile and Piraticall, and tending to the breach of the Peace betweene the two Crownes.’77 According to Bacon, in the light of Gondomar’s fears concerning Ralegh’s ‘piracy’, James carefully framed his commission: ‘his Maiestie himselfe did oft peruse and reuise, as foreseeing the future euents; the tenor whereof appeareth to be so farre from giuing Sir Walter Raleigh warrant, or colour to inuade any of the Territories, occupate and possest by the Spaniards, as it tended to a direction, rather of commerce, then spoile, euen towards the Sauages themselues.’78 Bacon’s reading, and Gondomar’s, makes no distinction between hostile encounters between Ralegh and his men with Spanish forces or with any other foreign nationals: all these skirmishes are represented as crimes of piracy. Ralegh’s Apologie, however, does not recognize his encounters with the Spanish in Guiana as ‘piracy’. He only acknowledges the crime in relation to potential encounters with the Spanish elsewhere – that is not in the vicinity of his Guianan mine – or with other nationals – which, as we have seen, he denies (‘if I had had a purpose to have turned Pyrate, why did I oppose my self against the greatest number of my Company, and was there by in danger to be slaine or cast into the Sea because I refused it?’). Instead, Ralegh represents the Spanish as the aggressors in Guiana, since he finds them illegitimately occupying areas that are English: An unfortunate man I am, and it is to me a greater losse then all I have lost, that it pleaseth his Majestie to be offended for the burning of a Spanish towne in Guiana; of which these parts bordering the River Orrenoque, and to the South as farre as the Amazones doth by the Law of Na[…]ions belong to the Crowne of England, as his Majestie was well resolved when I prepared to goe thither, otherwise his Majesty would not have given once leave to have landed there; for I set it downe under my hand that I intended that enterprise and nothing else, and that I meant to enter the Country by the River of Orrenoque; It was not held to be a breach of peace neither by the State here nor the Spanish Ambassadour.79


‘Piracy’ is clearly a contested term between Ralegh’s and the crown’s versions of the voyage. The differences between the two understandings of ‘piracy’ play out the larger political differences between adventurer and monarch. Ralegh refuses to see himself as a ‘pirate’, instead representing himself as preserving a robust defence against aggressive Spanish interlopers attacking his country’s national interests. With relentless logic, Ralegh establishes his innocence of the charge of piracy since as England owns the Guianan mine, a fact that James recognized through authorizing the voyage in the first place, then his skirmishes with Spanish forces in the region are justified. Indeed Ralegh’s scaffold performance – where he conjured up a vanished Elizabethan age of honour and militarism (demonstrated most potently through descriptions of his relationship with the Earl of Essex), and failed either to confess his crimes or to offer any glorification of the King, is of a piece with the political valencies of ‘piracy’ offered in the Apologie.80 Similar to Purser and Clintons’ scaffold behaviour, Ralegh’s demeanour at execution and, more particularly, his discussion of what does and what does not constitute piracy, adds up to a powerful critique of the political inconsistencies and arbitrary justice of the state, and monarch, who condemns him. The scaffold spectacles explored in this essay variously reveal, then, the ways in which those condemned for piracy might resist submitting to the authority that executes them through their words and actions. In particular, the execution performances and textual representations of their ‘piracy’ discussed here expose the disputed nature of the crime for which they are condemned, where distinctions between outlaw and commissioned violence at sea appear arbitrary and compromised. By revealing the overlaps between legitimate and illegitimate violence at sea all the texts discussed here question the justice of the legal system that condemns the ‘pirates’, and the government and monarch in whose name ‘justice’ is executed.

10 Of Pirates, Slaves, and Diplomats: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire Gerald MacLean

I want to begin by quoting the words of George Bush regarding Islam, the Islamic World, and how to read the prophecy of Daniel as the key to a correct Christian interpretation of Revelations 9.1: ‘And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth …’ Bush writes: Commentators at the present day are almost universally agreed in regarding the fifth trumpet as symbolizing and predicting the appearance of the Arabian imposter, his spurious religion, and his Saracen followers […] As a striking coincidence with the signs here predicted, it is worthy of note, that a remarkable comet immediately preceded the birth of Mohammed; and that an eclipse of the sun, of extraordinary degree and duration, attended the first announcement of his pretended mission.1 No one, I am sure, imagines that the current President of the United States really believes such superstitious nonsense or holds such racist views; but it does seem that during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there were many residents of what I shall call ‘Young America’ – that nation of migrants, settlers and colonialists who had recently fought against and declared independence from Great Britain – who did so believe. Among them was George Bush, not the Texan President, but a possible ancestor of his, the early nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and orientalist of considerable standing who taught Oriental languages at New York University, denied the resurrection of the body, supervised the American Bible Society’s version of the King James Bible, converted to Swedenborgianism, and was the first American to write a substantial life of Muhammad in American 169


English. George Bush’s The Life of Mohammed, from which I have been quoting, first appeared in 1830 and was reprinted in 1844 and again in 2002. To early modern scholars of comparative religions, Bush’s reading of Daniel and Revelations will be a familiar one. It places the rise of Islam within a providentialist and millenarian theory of history that belongs firmly within a Protestant tradition of anti-Islamic propaganda initiated at the time of Martin Luther and Englished by George Foxe. For many extreme Protestants, Daniel’s prophecy helped explain the emergence of Islam as part of a divinely ordained apocalyptic scheme that justified contempt for Muslims. In describing this tradition, Nabil Matar has shown how Reformation theologians in England and Scotland used Daniel and Revelations to cope with the twin threats of Ottoman sea power and the Counter-Reformation while, at the same time, explaining the failure of the Christian crusaders to recapture the sacred lands of the Near East.2 Implicit in this scheme are emergent ideologies of progress and of national exceptionalism by which the story of the past merely confirmed Anglo-Protestant Young Americans in the sense of their own godly superiority: pro-Israelite but profoundly anti-Jewish, pro-Arab but anti-Saracen, pro-Roman (and Republican) but stoutly anti-Catholic and hostile to papal supremacy. In an attempt to address, if not redress, this kind of self-serving vilification of Islam and Muslims, I propose to explore some of the literary forms and tropes which circulated these ideas, and to trace their roots in early writings in English about the Maghrib and the writing of the national script – by which I mean the various processes by which language becomes literature, something that happened to English during the long seventeenth century.3 Elsewhere I have shown how this scripting of the nation was fully and inextricably underway in England by the time of the Stuart Restoration, an event that in many ways signalled the arrival of what we continue to recognize as ‘English literature’ – the national literature first defined and described by Dryden. More recently, I have argued that oriental travel writing very quickly assumed a very important place in this scripting and reveals crucial ways that, from the late sixteenth century on, English readers were invited to think of themselves in relation to the many places in the world to which their fellow countrymen were travelling and the cultures they were directly encountering, often for the first time.4 For the early modern English, the rise of oriental travel was, in crucial ways, about the place of writing and literary culture within the formations of the national script.

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Early English writing about piracy, captivity, and diplomacy, developed a variety of rhetorical and literary conventions to represent different forms of contact with the Maghrib during the decades when the English were first sailing into the Mediterranean in significant numbers. One direction we might take in order to study the substantial archive of contemporaneous writings that described and debated Mediterranean piracy might be the contextualized case study, such as Matthew Dimmock provides in Chapter 4 of this volume. A further instance would be the continuing appearance throughout the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century of popular ballads and tracts celebrating John Ward’s exploits; such a study might lead us to conclude that this notorious Jacobean pirate had become a hero of the free trade movement.5 Another direction, the one on which I want to venture here, is to turn to the earliest writings – both literary and diplomatic – produced in Young America of earliest contact with the Maghrib as reported by writers of an emergent nation whose new flag provided no protection from Mediterranean predators. It may not be so surprising, then, to discover that several Young Americans wrote about Algeria. In what follows, I argue that before there was writing in English about the Mediterranean, there was trade; with trade came cultural infusion and contestation as well as piracy or ‘free trade.’ In sixteenthcentury England, a range of widely diverging attitudes regarding piracy and the ‘Turks’ were all given voice. This diversity of attitudes influenced the subsequent development of several literary forms. By the end of the century, the emergence of imperial ambitions under Queen Elizabeth was accompanied by the emergence of ideas of ‘national literature’ based on a history of native writers as described by Dryden and his contemporaries.6 For Young American writers, the imperative for their new nation to establish a foundational myth and national literature was already in place as soon as the concept of the United States of America came into being and Young American merchants started sending ships into the Mediterranean. Writers such as Colonel David Humphreys of Connecticut and Royall Tyler of Boston were innovators and Young American literary firsts: Humphreys wrote the first sonnets and epic verse, Tyler wrote some of the earliest plays and prose fiction. Both writers responded in ‘new United States literary forms’ to the discovery that the United States flag would be subject to new obligations in the Islamic Mediterranean. In characteristic rhetoric, Humphreys’ epic Poem On the Happiness of America (c. 1786) develops accounts of Young


America first entering into the internecine negotiations that sought to make formal distinctions between pirate and corsair, and did so with a view to establishing the legitimacy of a unilateral invasion of Algeria by United States military forces that would utterly destroy Muslim North Africa in the name of a millenarian eschatology that has regularly characterized United States foreign policy ever since. While the earliest English accounts of Mediterranean piracy develop from residual humanistic attempts to understand the nature and range of Ottoman imperialism spurred by imperial envy, the earliest efforts of the first United States commentators aimed to forge a language and literature of national identity based on – in the words of Colonel Humphreys – ‘the illustrious task of rearing an empire.’ What we now call ‘gun-boat diplomacy’ has, it would seem, a long and distinguished place in United States foreign policy.

Early English writings on the Maghrib: trade, captivity and diplomacy The English had evidently been travelling to and trading in Maghribian ports long before 1581 when formal agreements – the so-called ‘capitulations’ or ahid-name – were signed between Queen Elizabeth and the Ottoman Sultan Murad III. Indeed, English merchants had been active in the area even before the Ottomans arrived, and a strong sense that England was entitled to enjoy a special place in the area steadily took shape during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The earliest writings in English concerning the Maghrib suggest how contact through trade soon led to a broad and general interest in the land, to a fascination with its people, and to a curiosity about their cultures and languages. As early as 1547, for instance, the first book on surgery to be published in English, Andrew Boorde’s The Breviary of Healthe, promised to provide ‘the obscure terms of Greke, Araby, Latyn, and Barbary, in English.’7 Boorde clearly recognized that ‘Barbary’ constituted a language in its own right alongside Greek, Latin and Arabic, and that it contained valuable information that was worth knowing. This willingness to learn about and from Maghribian peoples, and to assimilate useful knowledges and skills, exceeds any simple desire for North African sugar and gold. The earliest recorded trading contacts between English-speaking peoples and the Maghrib can be traced back to the early fifteenth century.8 Writing in 1764, the economic historian Adam Anderson noticed that ‘the first Instance … of Englishmen trading to Morocco’

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took place in 1413. Citing the eighth volume of Thomas Rymer’s Foedera, Anderson writes: ‘In this Year, [1413] it seems, a Company of London Merchants laded several Ships with much Wool and other Merchandize, to the Value of 24,000l. towards the western Parts of Morocco.’ The venture proved unsuccessful, however, because ‘some Genoese Ships, emulous of this Commerce, made Prize of these London Ships outwards-bound, and carried them into Genoa. Whereupon King Henry IV grants the Sufferers Reprisals on the Ships and Merchandize of the Genoese wherever they can find them.’9 These early merchants also made their own alliances independently of the crown. Two years later, in 1415, according to Walsingham’s Latin Chronicle, English merchants gave ‘ayde and assistance … to King John the first of Portugall, for the winning of Ceuta in Barbarie.’10 In his commentary on international trade for the year 1492, when Granada fell, Anderson observes: Upon this same Year, we may farther remark, from Mr. Lewis Roberts his well known Map of Commerce, That it was near about this Time when the English Trade to Morocco first commenced, (or rather was of any Consequence;) for we have seen that we did carry on some Trade thither so early as the Year 1413. And although by the Wars between Morocco and Fez that Trade was smothered, (as our Author phrases it) yet that out of this Trade to Barbary, sprung the English Levant or Turkey Company, tho’ not till Queen Elizabeth’s Reign.11 Such reports of how the Levant Company sprang from early fifteenthcentury trade with Morocco have regularly been ignored by later historians who have relied instead on Richard Hakluyt’s report of two subsequent trading ventures undertaken in 1551 and 1552.12 However, these accounts of earliest trade between England and Morocco reveal how three important themes that would characterize Anglo-Maghribian relations for the next three hundred years were already becoming evident. First, rivalry among competing Christian nations would cause English merchants greater problems than negotiating with Muslims; secondly, the English crown was ready to support the merchants, but only when doing so – by licensing them to predate upon other ships in the area – would cost the royal exchequer nothing; and thirdly, strategic and often temporary alliances between crown and merchants, like those between otherwise-competing national interests, would set the terms for diplomacy in the area rather than religious beliefs. As Rhoads Murphey astutely observed of conditions in the early seventeenth century, ‘it is premature to expect


the convergence of trade and politics’ since trade was still most often a matter of particular merchants acting in ad hoc ways rather than hand-in-hand with state policy.13 Religious differences, meanwhile, were seldom of great concern when there were profits to be made. Nonetheless, seventeenth-century English merchants were often eager to aggrandize their activities by associating themselves with royal authority and, in one case at least, with a radical Protestant commitment to the apocalyptic unfolding of divine providence. In 1613, one ‘I. H.’ edited and published Late Newes out of Barbary. In A Letter written of late from a Merchant there to a Gentl. not long since imployed into that country from his Majestie. In the preface, I. H. promised that the news contained in this letter would be of great comfort to all true English Protestants because it confirmed that they really were living in sight of the second coming. Evidence found in news from abroad, as so often in the popular press of the time, provided the stuff of millenarian prophecy about imminent last days. The letter reports the recent appearance and growing power of a ‘new Saintish King’ in Morocco who claimed to be a divine messenger. So sudden and furious had been the military successes of this new king, ‘Mulley Om Hamet Abdela’, that the Catholic nations of Spain, Italy, and France expected to be overrun by his forces at any time. The good news, according to I. H., is that Mulley Om Hamet ben Abdela has insisted on his friendship to the English and has promised to allow them continued free trade; but presumably only until time itself comes to an end.14 This frisson of excitement as the English assume their privileged position in the region also appeared in more mundane terms, requiring not so much an apocalyptic leap of faith as an active literary imagination. Reporting on his experiences as a member of Sir Robert Mansell’s expedition against ‘the Pirates of Algiers’, John Button addressed his readers directly: […] to make this Discourse the more pleasing to thee, such Spanish ships and gallyes, besides Turkish Pirates, as we encountred with at Sea, shall appeare sayling, in all their gallantry before thee. Imagine (as thou readest) that thou hearest the Canon playing, and Turkes by hundreds tumbling into the Seas, our owne stretching out hands to save a miserable number of poore Christians made slaves to the barbarous Turke & crafty Moore, but delivered from that servitude by us, God assisting our labours.15 The Algiers expedition of 1620 would be the only military campaign undertaken by command of King James, and Mansell’s fleet was the first

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English naval force to enter the Mediterranean since the Crusades.16 At the time, several well-informed commentators – including the Secretary of State Sir John Coke, as well as Sir John Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Roe, and Sir William Monson – considered the adventure to have been little more than an inglorious and expensive failure, while others – such as the dramatist Thomas Middleton – suspected it had been undertaken simply to appease the Spanish.17 For his part, Button remained generally non-committal on the success or failure of the campaign. Of more interest here is his explicit invitation to readers to see the sights and hear the sounds of armed conflict at sea, and to derive vicarious literary pleasure from imagining themselves part of this great and glorious action. Amidst the gallant spectacle and din of battle, what counts are not so much high affairs of state but rather those images of hundreds of ‘Turkes … tumbling into the Seas’ and the hands of those imagined English mariners reaching out ‘to save a miserable number of poore Christians.’ From the imaginary pleasures of such sights and sounds are national fantasies and even identities forged. For the English, however, the enemy were never simply barbarous ‘Turks’, renegades, or crafty Moors since the dangers the English faced when sailing into the Mediterranean were just as likely to come from natives of southern European countries. From the mid-sixteenth century on, the threat of capture by Catholic Spain, or by corsairs operating from Corsica, Sicily, and Genoa, was ever present and, for many English mariners, of greater concern than danger from the Ottoman regencies. Published in 1590, Edward Webbe’s account tells of a series of captivities, each one worse than the last. First he is held prisoner of war for five years by the ‘crymTartarians otherwise named the new Christians’, who set him ‘to wipe the feete of the kinges horses … to fetch water, cleave wood, and to doe such other drudgerie.’18 After being ransomed, he has the misfortune to be captured en route to Alexandria and spends the next five years suffering worse conditions chained to an oar in an Ottoman galley. Yet Webbe manages never to lose his rather laconic sense of humour. He observes ‘[t]he foode which I and others did eat, was verie black, far worse then Horse bread: and our drinke was stinking water, unlesse it be when wee came to the places where we tooke in fresh sweet water, at which time we supposed our diet to be verie daintie’.19 Eventually Webbe persuades his Muslim captors that he has valuable skills as a mastergunner, and in that capacity travels with the Ottoman army to Persia, Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, Goa, Ethiopia, and along the Red Sea coast before being returned to Istanbul where, in 1582, he organized a


fantastic firework display for the celebrations accompanying the circumcision of the future Sultan Mehmed III.20 After a total of 13 years in captive service to the Ottomans, Webbe gained his freedom thanks to the efforts of William Harborne, Elizabeth’s first representative at the Ottoman Porte. While returning to England, he was briefly arrested on suspicion of heresy in Padua, held prisoner for 19 days in Rome where he was interrogated and tortured by ‘the English Cardinal Doctor Allen, a notable Arch papist’, only to be released and then rearrested in Naples on suspicion of being a spy. Here, he reports being thrown into a dungeon and tortured in terms that are at once clinical and yet surprisingly free from resentment, self-pity or even anger: Thrice had I the strappado, hoysted up backward with my handes bound behind me, which stroke all the jointes in my armes out of joint, where a Phisition was readie to set my armes in joynt againe presently. I was also constrained to drink salt water and quicklyme, and then a fine lawne or callico thrust down my throat and pluckt up againe, readie to pluck my hart out of my belly, all to make me to confesse that I was an English spye. After this there were foure harde horses prepared to quarter me, and I was still threatned to dye, except I would confesse some thing to my harme. […] Thus seven monethes I endured in this misery.21 By grim contrast, his treatment at the hands of the Ottomans, who regularly beat him with ‘an Oxe pissle,’ might seem rather benign. Webbe was by no means alone in reporting how much worse he was treated while in captivity to Christians than when held by Muslims. One Mr. Roberts, after more than a year’s captivity aboard corsair ships flying Livornese, Portuguese and Venetian colours, exclaims that he ‘should prefer seven Years Slavery in Algier, as a far better Choise than to live 16 Months in a Crusal.’22 Such moments of ironic black humour – surely few would choose either form of captivity – often accompany early English captivity narratives, serving both to modulate the tone of what might otherwise prove unremitting tales of suffering, and to distinguish English attitudes towards North African Muslims from their views on other Christian nations. For the puritan William Okeley, who was held captive in Algiers from 1639 to 1644, the cruelty and covetousness of his Muslim masters, terrible as they were, arose from the fact they were followers of ‘the greatest Impostor that ever seduced the Nations, but One.’ That ‘One’ who was an even greater ‘Imposter’ than the prophet

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Muhammad was, of course, the Pope, whose followers, having perverted the true Christian religion, deserved even greater contempt than adherents to ‘the Mahumedan unbelief.’23 Hostility between Christian nations, especially when compounded by commercial rivalry, regularly proved greater than animosity toward Muslims, and several writers insisted that ‘Commerce and Trafficke’ served to ameliorate religious and cultural differences.24 Writing in 1637 to mark the visit of a Moroccan ambassador to London, an anonymous author celebrated trade because ‘it acquaints each nation with the Language, Manners, Behaviour, Customes, and carriage of one another; so that by these meanes men are made capable of understanding and knowledge; and therefore preferre knowledge before wealth and riches, for the one soone fadeth, the other abideth for ever.’25 These are very high ideals, perhaps, but such claims do at least suggest how English attitudes towards the peoples and cultures of Muslim North Africa during the early modern period were certainly more complicated, and indeed more selfreflexive, than some twentieth-century historians would have us believe. Peter Earle, for example, begins his much-cited Corsairs of Malta and Barbary with a chapter entitled ‘The Holy War in the Mediterranean’ in which he writes: ‘Unlike normal wars the war of the corsairs had neither beginning nor end. It was an eternal war.’ 26 Leaving aside the question of what he could possibly mean by the concept of ‘normal wars,’ Earle’s emphatic claim is simply ignorant and represents a dangerously inept history liable to perpetuate the errors of the past and to prolong needless conflict. As these few examples suggest, English representations of their earliest contacts with the Maghrib and its peoples were complicated and, in many respects, confused by the distinct and often conflicting agendas of those who wrote them. Humanist scholars such as Boorde were interested in what could advantageously be learned from remote peoples; zealous puritans eagerly sought evidence from events in North Africa to support their apocalyptic visions; former captives claimed to prefer Muslim over Catholic masters; while advocates of trade could find themselves defending alliances that were often at odds with crown policy. Refracted through competition with other European nations, especially those loyal to the Roman Catholic religion, Anglo-Protestant attitudes toward, and understanding of, Islam and the Muslim nations of the Maghrib remained just as unstable and contradictory throughout the early modern period as the sense of what it meant to be English to an Englishman or woman of the time.


In the words of W. Montgomery Watt: ‘it is clear that the influence of Islam on western Christianity is greater than is usually realized […] it provoked Europe into forming a new image of itself.’27 And so it was for many English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seeking to forge a coherent sense of their own national identity.

Young American attitudes to the Maghrib: or, ‘the illustrious task of rearing an empire’ For the earliest United States authors writing about the Maghrib, however, such complexities and conflicting agendas had little or no bearing amidst the nationalistic euphoria that accompanied victory over, and independence from, Great Britain. Having triumphantly thrown off rule by a distant parliament and absentee-king, postindependence writers – such as the soldier-poet Colonel David Humphreys, the Boston-born lawyer and wit Royall Tyler, and the captives John Foss and James Riley – all saw the task of forging a ‘new image’ of their nation to be a straightforward matter of asserting the divinely-ordained exceptionality of the United States from every and any nation that had ever gone before in a distinct literary language and its suitable forms.28 Here is an extract from the Preface to Humphreys’ lengthy verse ‘Address to the Armies of the United States of America’ (1784): To inspire our countrymen now in arms, or who may, hereafter, be called into the field, with perseverance and fortitude, through every species of difficulty and danger, to continue their exertions for the defence of their country, and the preservation of its liberties, is the object of this address […] For where is the man to be found, who, after all that has been done and suffered – after such a profusion of blood and treasure has been expended – and such important advantages have been obtained – would basely relinquish and leave unfinished the illustrious task of rearing an empire, which, from its situation and circumstances, must surpass all that have ever existed, in magnitude, felicity, and duration?29 Throughout his poetic efforts, Humphreys regularly adopts this sententious style in order to inspire patriotic fervour: evoking strong feeling proves as crucial to his vision of poetry as it was to his oratorical presumptions. Following Nabil Matar’s argument in Chapter 3 of this volume, for Humphreys and his readers schooled in Christian

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tradition, the extreme sufferings of the righteous provided material evidence of a spiritual condition that promised eventual victory. In his lengthy Poem on the Happiness of America (c. 1786), Humphreys asserts what would later be known as the manifest destiny of the United States and he does so by means of a rhetoric of self-righteous indignation that expresses and encourages visceral contempt and utter disdain for every other nation that has ever been. Following several hundred lines detailing the glorious victory of the colonial army over the British, and foretelling the even greater glories to be achieved in the future, the progress of the American dream – figured at this point in the poem as the growth of United States overseas trade – is suddenly interrupted by the Algerian corsairs. In ‘The Argument’ prefixed to the poem, Humphreys summarizes his historical topics from this point in his story and adopts an abbreviated, fragmentary style that will usefully convey more than a little of his purpose and perspective while summarizing his subsequent verses: America called upon to employ her sons, on discoveries, in the carrying trade, fishing and whaling – commerce – interrupted by the Algerines – sensation produced by it on the Americans – invocation for powers of expression to excite them to revenge – a view of the miseries of the prisoners – which terminates in an anathem on the perpetrators of such cruelties – friends of the captives and ruined merchants how affected – exhortation to arms unless an equitable peace can be obtained – apostrophe to the tributary powers – resolution to be taken by us – our resources hinted from a glance at the late war – Great Britain and Algiers contrasted – prayer to the Supreme Being – an army raised – preparations for war – a navy formed – naval combat with the corsairs – their defeat – their woe – the utter destruction of their country – return and rejoicings of the victors – a prospect.30 Passionate intensity clearly counted for a great deal to Humphreys. By recalling and evoking the ‘sensation produced’ by news that ‘Algerines’ had prevented Americans from pursuing ‘discoveries’ and ‘commerce,’ Humphreys craves ‘powers of expression’ that will ‘excite’ Young America’s sons to seek ‘revenge.’ Since United States forces had so recently defeated those of Great Britain, it follows that they will have little difficulty vanquishing the Algerian corsairs, bringing them ‘woe’, and achieving the ‘utter destruction of their country.’


As this extract from Humphreys’ summary suggests, the narrative logic of his poem relies heavily on rhetorical assertion and is rather light on rational analysis or argument, and it depends on an unquestioning belief in revealed religion: strong and violent feelings are positive proof that God is working directly through and within his chosen people. In the poem, Humphreys explains how the inevitable progress of American commerce has been stalled not so much because the Algerians were powerful, but rather more because European nations have been despicably weak. He addresses Great Britain and the other European nations that paid for their ships to enter and trade in the Mediterranean: O ye great pow’rs, who passports basely crave, From Afric’s lords, to sail the midland wave – Great fallen pow’rs, whose gems and golden bribes Buy paltry passports from these savage tribes – … And shall the weak remains of barb’rous rage, Insulting, triumph o’er th’enlighten’d age?31 Such being the case, it falls to Humphreys’ fellow countrymen to further the divine plan and set the world to rights by forcefully insisting on the right of United States shipping to trade freely wherever it goes: Then, O my friends, by heav’n ordain’d to free, From tyrant rage, the long-infested sea Then let us firm though solitary, stand, The sword, and olive-branch in either hand: An equal peace propose with reason’s voice, Or rush to arms, if arms should be their choice.32 Sword or olive branch? This sounds rather more like an ultimatum than a framework for a negotiated settlement. Any ‘equal peace’ could only be one that is favourable to those setting the terms and defining free trade according to their interests. Humphreys evidently imagined that United States trade into the Mediterranean should carry on without paying regard to local customs and duties. And in the very next line of his poem (‘Stung by their crimes, can aught your vengeance stay?’) however, Humphreys makes it clear that, to his ‘friends’ who were ‘by heav’n ordain’d to free’ the Mediterranean to

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United States shipping, there could be no question of negotiation: do as we say, or die. For Humphreys, ‘th’enlighten’d age’ on behalf of which he claims to speak, has very little to do with ‘reason’s voice,’ and rather more to do with visceral appeals to the inner light of the Young American patriot whose very intensity of feeling provides proof of divinelyordained righteousness and the godliness of the mission. Unlike the Muslim writers discussed by Nabil Matar in Chapter 3, for whom descriptions of sufferings at the hands of Christian captors were designed ‘to enlarge on the commitment and pious effort of the ruler’ to effect their rescue, Humphreys dwells upon pain and despair in order to arouse indignation, contempt and martial fury: But first with me, Americans! prepare To view th’abode of horror, pain, despair – Prepare to feel your blood with fury boil, Your bosoms palpitate, your steps recoil, In ev’ry pulse resentment beating high, While the red lightning flashes from your eye.33 With all the force of a motivational huckster selling some universal remedy, Humphreys instructs and inspires his readers how to feel and see. Inspirational rhetoric capable of arousing strong sensations and powerful sentiments ‘prepares’ readers ‘to feel’ and replaces logic, objective analysis, or even historical accuracy. Humphreys’ summons to his fellow Young Americans recalls their victory over Britain (‘the first of Nations, as the queen of isles – / Britain, whose fleets, that rul’d the briny surge, / Made navies tremble to its very verge’) and reminds them how their defeat of such forces as these assures them of an easy victory in Algeria. Notice how, amidst the language of hatred, Humphreys simplifies by claiming that he and his compatriots automatically represent ‘the rights of man’, while the Maghribians are necessarily to be reviled as ‘pirates.’ But what are these whose threatnings round you burst? Of men the dregs, the feeblest, vilest, worst; These are the pirates from the Barb’ry strand, Audacious miscreants, fierce, yet feeble band! Who, impious, dare (no provocation giv’n) Insult the rights of man – the laws of heav’n!34


One might have hoped that Humphreys – who shortly after publishing these lines would be appointed United States minister to Lisbon in charge of negotiating with Algiers for the return of American captives – would have had at least some understanding of the laws of the sea. What might his response have been if North African merchants’ ships, aiming to trade, had shown up in United States ports? But he seems only interested in arousing martial fury in the breasts of his patriotic readers: But hark! the trumps, as if by whirlwinds blown, Sound from cold Lawrence to the burning zone! Thy cause, humanity, that swells their breath, Wakes in each bosom cool contempt of death.35 At this heroic moment of contempt for death, Humphreys’ poetic vision silently shifts narrative register, and he describes the rousing of a United States army and its mission against Algeria as if these were events that had already taken place. Clearly, there was no doubt in this Young American writer’s view that dying in a patriotic cause was not simply a virtue, but a founding sentiment of a national identity that boldly and unquestioningly branded anyone who dared challenge its presumptive right to sail and trade wherever it wished as a ‘pirate’: By rumbling drums, from distant regions call’d, Men, scorning pirate rage start unappall’d; With eye-balls flaming, cheeks of crimson flush, From rice-green fields, and fir-clad mountains, rush High-mettled youth – unused to sights of slain, Of hostile navies, or the stormy main – Enrag’d, they leave unfinish’d furrows far, To dare the deep, and toil in fields of war.36 Untried in battle, the nation’s patriotic youth are soon joined by ‘stern-visag’d veterans’ with their ‘rattling arms,’ and they in turn are joined by long-haired but patriotic sharp-shooting hunters from the backwoods: From Erie’s inland vales, unnam’d in song, In native fierceness pour the hunter throng; Beneath their rapid march realms roll behind; Their uncomb’d locks loose floating on the wind: Coarse their worn garbs – they place their only pride

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In the dread rifle, oft in battle tried. With aim unbalk’d, whose leaden vengeance sings, Sure as the dart the king of terror brings: So erst, brave Morgan, thy bold hunters sped – Such light-arm’d youths the gallant Fayette led, Ere Steuben brought the Prussian lore from far, Or Knox created all the stores of war.37 Evidently the fascination among American men with guns and firearms has a long and distinguished heritage. Describing swords and canons being cast in a foundry, Humphreys indulges in periphrasis: ‘Now preparation forms the gleaming blade: / In moulds capacious pond’rous deaths are made.’ With the possibility of those ponderous deaths before him, he never really believed in the olive branch or the need to negotiate. Preparations over, the next hundred lines of the poem describe an entirely fictitious battle at sea in which United States forces utterly destroy the Algerian fleet before landing marines who set about destroying the city and laying waste to all the surrounding countryside. Humphreys wants us to share his delight at visualizing the total destruction of Algerian civilization that follows the arrival of those vengefully enraged United States forces: Woe to proud Algiers; to your princes woe! Your pride is falling with your youths laid low Woe to ye people, woe, distress, and fears! Your hour is come to drink the cup of tears: A ghastly paleness gathers on your cheeks, While mem’ry haunts your ears with captive shrieks; Then stifled conscience wak’ning dares to cry ‘Think on your crimson crimes, despair, and die.’ Then ruin comes, with fire, and sword, and blood, And men shall ask, where once your cities stood?38 With a delight in destruction that would thrill Milton’s Satan, Humphreys relishes the ruination that will follow the arrival of Young Americans on North African soil. He describes a great cloud of black smoke hanging over Algiers harbour: ’Tis done! Behold th’uncheery prospects rise; Unwonted glooms the silent coasts surprise:


The heav’ns with sable clouds are overcast, And death-like sounds ride on the hollow blast The rank grass rustling to the passing gale: Ev’n now of men the chearful voices fail No busy marts appear, no crouded ports, No rural dances, and no splendid courts; In halls, so late with feasts, with music crown’d, No revels sport, nor mirthful cymbals sound. Fastidious pomp! how are thy pageants fled! How sleep the fallen in their lowly bed! Their cultur’d fields to desolation turn’d, The buildings levell’d, and th’enclosures burn’d.39 Lest any might question the legitimacy of rejoicing at such waste and devastation, Humphreys immediately reassures readers that everything he says conforms to divine plan, for these scenes of destruction are ‘The direful signs, which mark the day of doom’ when: The stars shall fall, the sun be turn’d to blood, The globe itself dissolve in fluid fire, Time be no more, and man’s whole race expire.40

By way of conclusion If United States history of the twenty-first century already makes such triumphal fantasies peculiarly alarming, it might be worth recalling their debt to earlier English writers who evoked millenarian prophecy to explain the worldly success of Muslim nations. Within the world of Anglo-Protestant millenarian thinking, all that is historical or factual melts into air. It is by no means beside the point to observe that nothing like the events described by Humphreys ever took place. Humphreys knew only too well that no United States forces ever demolished the Algerian fleet or brought desolation to the land. Also to the point, there is little reason to suppose that Humphreys’ views on United States-Maghribian relations had very much immediate effect upon government policy. Perhaps the point is that factual arguments have seldom mattered either in diplomacy or in nation building. To paraphrase Matthew Dimmock’s essay in this volume (Chapter 4), while earliest English writings voiced a complex tangle of allegiances in which conceptions of national and religious differences became flexible among trading allies and rigidly defined between enemies, the

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earliest Young American writers swiftly celebrated an ‘apocalyptic endgame’ that would seem to have returned to haunt United States foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Between 1784 and 1786, when his epic poem was probably first published, Humphreys had himself served in Europe as secretary of a committee to negotiate commercial treaties, working directly with Thomas Jefferson.41 His verses ‘On the Happiness of America’ – here quoted from the 1789 edition of his Poems – appeared at a time when the United States was itself following the very same policy of those ‘great fallen pow’rs’ and was indeed ‘basely’ craving immunity by the payment of ‘golden bribes’ to the Algerian Deys. By 1791, when he was appointed United States minister to Portugal, Humphreys’ views must have been well known. In 1795, Humphreys was put in personal charge of the grand sum of 800,000 dollars to pay for the costs of a mission to obtain the release of American captives from Algiers, and to purchase some of those ‘paltry passports’ for the seeking of which he had earlier reviled European nations.42 Reporting to the President in 1797, a decade after Humphreys’ poetic diatribe first appeared, the Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, more soberly wrote of ‘a sum of money necessary to purchase the usual peace presents.’43 In concluding his epic on the ‘happiness’ of America, with a motivational call to battle against ‘proud Algiers,’ and to imagine Young America’s sons leaving their fields to manufacture arms and build ships in which they could set out to seek revenge, and then describing an imaginary battle after which American forces devastate the North African coast, Colonel David Humphreys might claim to have been the very first – perhaps only – representative of a United States government ever to have used the imaginative license of heroic poetry to circulate disinformation as if it were historical fact, and to do so in order to arouse his fellow countrymen in pursuit of a unilateral military agenda that many would consider racist if not genocidal. Inherited from the English, the providentialist and millenarian language of first encounter, which gives this fantasy its bearings, put United States commercial, military and imperial ambitions in the Mediterranean firmly onto the agenda of the new nation. Acknowledgements With special thanks to Abdeljelil Temimi of the Fondation Temimi, Tunisia; Abdelkader Belhorma of the Bibliotèque Centrale, Université‚ Abou Bakr Belkaid, Tlemcen, Algeria; Abdellah Abdi and Rafia Ghalmi of the Bibliotèque de l’Université d’Alger; and especially to Professor


Ali Tablit of l’Université d’Alger for hospitality, intellectual stimulation, and for drawing my attention to the early United States writings on Algeria. Thanks also to the librarians of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, and the Boston Public Library, for assistance with source materials.

Notes Introduction: Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650 1 Heliodorus, Ethiopian Story, trans. Sir Walter Lamb (London: Everyman, 1961). 2 Jaques Lezra, ‘Pirating Reading: The Appearance of History in Measure for Measure’, English Literary History, 56 (1989), 255–92. 3 Anon., A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton, a Pirate and Rover on the seas (London: Printed for E. W., 1630). All references are to this edition, and are given as line numbers. 4 John Russell, The Story of Leith (London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1922), p.203. 5 See R. L. Mackie, King James IV of Scotland: A Brief Survey of His Life and Times (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1958), pp.207–11. 6 See Athol Murray, ‘Robert Barton (d. 1540)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004); http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/69898; Norman Macdougall, ‘Barton, Andrew (c. 1470–1511)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1594. 7 Russell, The Story of Leith, pp.205–6. 8 R. L. Mackie, King James IV of Scotland, p.207; Russell, The Story of Leith, p.204. 9 Russell, The Story of Leith, p.204. On the use and history of letters of marque see Janice E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp.22–6. 10 R. L. Mackie, King James IV of Scotland, pp.208–10. 11 Acta Dominorum Concilii, MS, Edinburgh, General Register House, vol. XXII, fol.112. 12 Epistolae Jacobi Quarti, Jacobi Quinti et Maria Regum Scotorum, eorumque tutorum et regni gubernatorum, ad Imperatores, Reges, Pontifices, Principes, civitates et alios ab anno 1505 ad annum 1545 (Edinburgh, 1722), I, pp.120–1. 13 Edward Hall, Henry VIII, ed. Charles Whibley, 2 vols (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1904), I, 37. 14 Edward Hall, Henry VIII, p.38. 15 Mackie, King James IV of Scotland, p.210. 16 N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660–1649 (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co, 1997), pp.168–9. 17 Edward Hall, Henry VIII, p.38. 18 Edward Hall, Henry VIII, p.38. 19 Edward Hall, Henry VIII, p.39. 20 See Christopher Harding’s chapter in this volume, pp.20–38. 21 See Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1857–8), 8 vols; Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Oxford Book of Ballads (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910); Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry 3 vols, 4th edn (London: L. A. Lewis, 1839). 187

188 Notes 22 Child argued that ‘[t]he ballad (Henry Martin) must have sprung from the ashes of Andrew Barton, of which name Henry Martyn would be no extraordinary corruption’; Cecil Sharp considered that Henry Martin was the older ballad, and was probably recomposed as Andrew Barton in the reign of James I. 23 Henry Martin, in Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, IV, no. 250. 24 See Maurice Lee, The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles I, 1625–1637 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp.771–8. 25 Sharpe, The Personal Rule, p.775. 26 See Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, pp.347–63. 27 Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, p.361. 28 Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, pp.361–2. 29 Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, p.271. 30 J. Ashburnham to E. Nicholas, 26 October 1627; quoted by Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, p.363: Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592–1628 (London and New York: Longman, 1981), p.283. 31 See Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, pp.21–42. 32 Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932); David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life among the Pirates (London: Random House, 1995); Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality (London: Abacus, 2003); Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003); Jo Stanley, Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages (London: Pandora,1995); Kenneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering. English privateering during the Spanish War, 1585–1603 (Cambridge: CUP, 1964); Trade, Plunder and Settlement. Maritime enterprise and the genesis of the British Empire 1480–1630 (Cambridge: CUP, 1991); David Delison Hebb, Piracy and the English Government 1616–1642 (Aldershot: Scolar 1994); Janice Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns; Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas 1500–1750 (London and New York: Armonk, 1997); Sir Godfrey Fisher, Barbary Legend: War Trade and Piracy in North Africa 1415–1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957); Jacques Heers, The Barbary Corsairs Warfare in the Mediterranean 1480–1580 (London: Greenhill, 2003); Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp.118–38; Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (New York and Houndmills: Palgrave, 2003), pp.207–62; Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: CUP, 1987); Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Hans Turley, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1999). 33 Thomson provides working definitions of these different categories. See Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns, pp.22–6, 44–6. 34 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns, p.44; Klein, ‘“We are not pirates”: Piracy and Navigation in The Luciads, p.110.

Notes 189 35 See Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion, 1997). 36 For discussion see Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America and Literature from Utopia to the Tempest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp.149–92; Bruce McLeod, The Geography of Empire in English Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), pp.11–31; Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk, pp.1–24.

1 ‘Hostis Humani Generis’ – The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea 1 L. Oppenheim, International Law, ed. H. Lauterpacht, 2 vols, 7th edn (London: Longman, 1948), 1, p.559. Oppenheim further defines an international crime as one which ‘either every State can punish on seizure of the criminals, of whatever nationality they may be, or which every State has by the Law of Nations a duty to prevent’, p.307. 2 The present international rules relating to maritime piracy are codified in Articles 100–7 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. See Article 100 for a statement of the duty on the part of States to cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the suppression of piracy. 3 The death sentence for such piratical conduct was finally removed by Section 36 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. 4 Judgement of Sir William Scott, in the case of Le Louis, Forest in the High Court of Admiralty, 15 December 1817 (1817) 2 Dods. 210; quoted from 3 British International Law Cases 691, pp.704–5. The language used in the judgement presents the pirate as a wanton terrorist, while the slave trader appears more like an entrepreneur engaging in ‘transactions’. 5 Hillier, for instance, writes that ‘a number of other offences have since joined piracy in being regarded as capable of subject to universal jurisdiction’, and proceeds to discuss slave trading, war crimes and crimes against humanity. See Tim Hillier, Sourcebook on Public International Law (London: Cavendish, 1998), p.281. 6 Attorney-General of the Government of Israel v Eichmann, judgement of the District Court of Jerusalem, 36 International Law Reports 5 (1961), paragraph 12. In support of its argument, the Jerusalem Court later cites the historical example of dealing with piracy as a precedent for such ‘universal jurisdiction’ (paragraph 13). 7 This follows from the definition of piracy under international law, as an offence committed on the high seas and thus outside national jurisdiction, which ended at the outer limit of the territorial sea (see Article 101 of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention; for a statement on the customary international law of piracy, see Oppenheim, International Law, note 1 above, at pp.746–7). It should be noted that piracy might be differently defined as a matter of national law: for instance, under English law piracy also included acts of slave trading, and piracy committed within the area of the territorial sea. However, taking a broad legal view there has for a long time been a

190 Notes

8

9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20

21 22

23

core or classic understanding of piracy corresponding to the international legal sense, as an act perpetrated on the high seas and that is the sense of the term used in the discussion in this chapter. Antonio Cassese, International Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.24. He makes the same argument in International Law (2nd edn: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p.15. I understand Cassese’s term ‘community value’ to convey a sense of deep-rooted and widely held moral imperative as compared to the more functionally motivated ‘joint interest’. There are very few reported cases of criminal prosecutions of pirates in which courts have relied upon universal jurisdiction: see Alfred P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy (2nd edn, Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1998), p.302; Eugene Kontorovich, ‘The Piracy Analogy: Modern Universal Jurisdiction’s Hollow Foundation’, Harvard International Law Journal, 45 (2004), 183–92. See also Lauren Benton, ‘Oceans of Law: The Legal Geography of the Seventeenth Century Seas’, Proceedings of the Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges Conference, 12–15 Feb. 2003, Library of Congress, Washington DC, September 2005, www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/seascapes/ benton.html, at p.11. Kontorovich, ‘The Piracy Analogy’, p.183. Kontorovich, ‘The Piracy Analogy’, pp.210–11. See, for example, Attorney-General of the Government of Israel v Eichmann. See C. Kevin Marshall, ‘Putting Privateers in Their Place: the Applicability of the Marque and Reprisal Clause to Undeclared Wars’, University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997), 953–4; Kenneth R. Andrews: Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering During the Spanish War 1585–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). Kontorovich, ‘The Piracy Analogy’, pp.214–15. See Janice E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp.69–76. US Constitution, Article 1, paragraph 8, the main point of which is to attribute the power to grant letters of marque and reprisal to Congress rather than the executive. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, p.22. Barbara Fuchs, ‘Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renegadoes, and the English Nation’, ELH, 67 (2000) 45. Grover Clark, ‘The English Practice with Regard to Reprisals by Private Persons’, American Journal of International Law, 27 (1933) 694. See Donald A. Petrie, The Prize Game: Lawful Looting on the High Seas in the Days of the Fighting Sail (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999). On legal arguments in relation to these commissions, see Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.7. Andrews, ‘Elizabethan Privateering’, in Joyce Youings (ed.) Raleigh in Exeter 1985: Privateering and Colonisation in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1985), p.5. See also Claire Jowitt’s Chapter 9, which mentions the use by Clinton Atkinson of letters of marque issued by Don Antonio in 1582. Andrews, ‘Elizabethan Privateering’, p.13.

Notes 191 24 Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (Yale: Yale University Press, 2000), p.392. 25 According to Kelsey historians have invested ‘these sixteenth-century rascals with more dignity than their contemporaries were usually willing to give them’, Sir Francis Drake, p.11. 26 Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.30. 27 Daniel Vitkus, ‘Venturing Heroes: Narrating Violent Commerce in Seventeenth-Century England’, Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) Conference Papers, April 2004, www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/history/emsi/papers, p.16. 28 See Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns; Vitkus, ‘Venturing Heroes’, p.16. 29 Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake, p.394. For a detailed study of the representation of Drake and piracy in Lope de Vega’s poem, see: Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.139–63. Mark Netzloff’s Chapter 8 in this volume examines further the uses to which Drake’s posthumous representations could be put in the service of English national identity (pp.137–50). 30 Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake, p.395. 31 Stephen J. Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles (Yale: Yale University Press, 1973), p.6. 32 Matthew Teorey, ‘Pirates and State-Sponsored Terrorism in EighteenthCentury England’, vols 1, 2 (2003) Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness 53, 55. 33 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp.231–2. 34 G. E. Manwaring and W. G. Perin (eds) The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, 2 vols (London: Navy Records Society, 1920–22), II, p.18. 35 See Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970); John B. Wolf, The Barbary Coast: Algiers Under the Turks 1500–1830 (New York: Norton, 1979); Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, pp.44–5, 110–13. 36 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Richard Proudfoot et al., The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works (London: Thompson, 1998) I, iii, 31–4. Fernand Braudel refers to Mediterranean piracy during this period as a ‘secondary form of war’ between Christianity and Islam in The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols (London: Collins, 1973), II, p.865. 37 See Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.11. 38 Hugo Grotius, De Iure Belli ac Pacis, 1625, Book III, Chapter II (New York: Oceana, 1964). 39 Alberico Gentili Hispanicis Advocationis, 1661, Book 1, Chapters IV and XXIII (New York: Oxford University Press, trans. Frank Frost Abbott, 1921). 40 Gentili’s approach thus allowed more easily the argument that Corsair seizures were piratical, so that title to property taken in that way could not be subsequently passed on by resale. 41 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, pp.110, 145. 42 See Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, pp.115–20.

192 Notes 43 Paul Baepler, ‘Introduction’, in Paul Baepler (ed.) White Slaves: Indian Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). It is estimated for example that there may have been 20,000 Christian captives in Algiers in the 1620s and 1630s. 44 Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 45 See generally: Ellen G. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1983); Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures; Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp.31–79. 46 Nabil Matar, ‘Introduction: England and Mediterranean Captivity, 1577–1704’, in Daniel Vitkus (ed.) Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p.14. See also Nabil Matar’s discussion of Muslim captivity by Christians in Chapter 3 of this volume. 47 The term ‘renegado’ was used in this context to indicate a pirate who had renounced European allegiance and converted to Islam. For discussion see Fuchs, ‘Faithless Empires’, 50. 48 Earle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003), p.28. 49 Earle, The Pirate Wars, pp.28–9. 50 Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.11. 51 See Ian Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 52 Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.3 et seq. 53 See the account provided by Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p.25. 54 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p.25. 55 Carey was related to the Queen and to the Lord Admiral; Seckford was Groom of the Chamber and Keeper of the Privy Purse. For a discussion of Lord Howard’s role as Lord Admiral, see Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p.23. 56 Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.6. See also Franklin Jameson (ed.) Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, Illustrative Documents (London: Macmillan, 1923). 57 Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.9. 58 One argument used by Ralegh was that Guiana was English and not Spanish territory, following the cession of territory to the English Crown by native chieftains on his previous journey there in 1595. 59 Ralegh was sick and not present at San Thomé and his own account in his Apologie maintains that his orders were disobeyed. See Raleigh Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (London: Penguin 2002), p.501. 60 See Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh, pp.506–7. For the view that Ralegh was trapped in a ‘no-win’ situation by the terms of James’ authorization for the expedition, see Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp.161–2. 61 Earle, The Pirate Wars, p.59, where he indicates that James’ navy had limited resources for operating beyond the English Channel in dealing with pirate fleets. 62 Earle, The Pirate Wars, p.57. 63 Andrews, ‘Elizabethan Privateering’, p.3. 64 C. L’Estrange Ewen, The Golden Chalice: A Documentated Narrative of an Elizabethan Pirate (privately printed, 1939), p.10; Earle, The Pirate Wars, pp.19–20.

Notes 193 65 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, p.50. 66 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, p.50. 67 Christopher Hill, Liberty Against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies (London: Penguin, 1996), p.117. 68 See the discussion in Claire Jowitt’s Chapter 9 in this volume. 69 Christopher Hill, Liberty Against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies, p.115. 70 Evelyn Berckman, Victims of Piracy: the Admiralty County, 1575–1678 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979), pp.11–12. 71 See Jowitt, ‘Scaffold Performances’: such execution performances and textual representations of piracy ‘expose the disputed nature of the crime for which [the pirates] are condemned, where distinctions between outlaw and commissioned violence at sea appear arbitrary and compromised.’ (at p.168 of this volume). 72 See Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (New York: Tudor, 1946), p.104. 73 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, pp.107–8. 74 Cicero, De Officiis, iii, 29 (ed. W. J. Woodhouse, London: Tutorial University Press, 1899). 75 See Georg Schwarzenberger, ‘The Problem of an International Criminal Law’, in Gerhard O. W. Mueller and Edward M. Wise (eds) International Criminal Law (New York: Fred B. Rothman, 1965). 76 Benton, ‘Oceans of Law’, p.1. 77 Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh, pp.554–5. 78 Andrews, ‘Elizabethan Privateering’, p.15. 79 Hill, Liberty Against the Law, pp.121–2. 80 Fuchs argues that ‘the trajectory from privateer to pirate is somewhat of a state fantasy in the first place – the pirates are always already there, before the state uses them and also once it no longer has any use for them.’ See ‘Faithless Empires’, 46. 81 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, p.108. 82 See Richard van Dulmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990). 83 See Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas 1500–1750 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998). 84 Vitkus, ‘Venturing Heroes’, p.4. 85 See, for example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract (1762), trans. Roger D. Masters and Judith R. Masters (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978), p.50.

2

The Problem of Piracy in Ireland, 1570–1630

1 K. R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War 1585–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); C. M. Senior, A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in its Heyday (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1976). For a discussion of the wider legal context to English piracy see Chapter 1 by Christopher Harding in this volume, pp.20–38. 2 P. Earle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003), pp.32–3; C. M. Senior, ‘The Confederation of Deep-Sea Pirates: English Pirates in the Atlantic 1603–25’, in M. Mollat (ed.) Course et Piraterie: Etudes présentée à la

194 Notes

3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

13

14

Commission Internationale d’Histoire Maritime à l’occasion de son XVe colloque international pendant le XIVe Congrès International des Sciences historiques, 2 vols (Paris: Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975), I, pp.334–5; M. Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp.256–7. G. E. Mainwaring and W. E. Perrin (eds) The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring 2 vols (Navy Records Society, 1922), II, pp.15–16. R. Dudley Edwards (ed.) ‘Letter-Book of Sir Arthur Chichester 1612–1614’, Analecta Hibernica, 8 (1938), 69, 112–13. See also J. McCavitt, Sir Arthur Chichester: Lord Deputy of Ireland 1605–1616 (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1998), pp.169–72. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 113. Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 108. See, for example A. K. Longfield, Anglo-Irish Trade in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1929), pp.43–4. See Earle, The Pirate Wars, pp.32–3; M. Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (London: Verso, 2004). Calendar of State Papers Ireland 1600, pp.446–7 (hereafter cited as CSPI); CSPI 1600–1601, pp.258–9. Grannia O’Malley was one of the most celebrated pirate leaders of the O’Malleys during the later sixteenth century. See A. Chambers, Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley c. 1530–1603 (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1979). Rev. J. MacInnes, ‘West Highland Sea Power in the Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 48 (1972–74), 530; O. Connellan (ed.) The Annals of Ireland, translated from the original Irish of the Four Masters (Dublin: Bryan Geraghty, 1846), p.561 for Scots activity along the west coast. MacInnes, ‘West Highland Sea Power’, 539, 543–4; N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea. A Naval History of Great Britain: Volume One, 660–1649 (London: HarperCollins, 1997), p.290. MacInnes, ‘West Highland Sea Power’, 548–9; CSPI 1615–25, pp.57–9, 132–6; Acts of the Privy Council 1615–16, pp.529–30, 632; J. H. Ohlmeyer, ‘“Civilizinge of those Rude Partes”: Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s–1640s’ in N. Canny (ed.) The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp.128–30. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland 1613–1616, pp.758–60, 764–5, 769–70 for rebellion in the Isles. On the Macdonnells see George Hill, An Historical Account of the Macdonnells of Antrim (Belfast: Archer & Sons, 1873), pp.195–229; Micheline Kerney Walsh (ed.) ‘Destruction by Peace’: Hugh O Neill after Kinsale (Armagh: Cumann Seanchais Ard Mhacha, 1986), pp.366, 375–7; J. H. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, marquis of Antrim, 1609–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp.21–6, 167–8, 194–7 for privateering during the 1640s. M. Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London: Pimlico, 1991), pp.241–2; K. M. Brown, Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union, 1603–1715

Notes 195

15

16

17 18 19

20 21

22

23 24 25 26

27

28 29

(London: Macmillan, 1992), p.92; MacInnes, ‘West Highland Sea Power’, 552. Acts of the Privy Council 1552–54, pp.222, 230, 236, 245; F. J. Levy, ‘The Strange Life and Death of Captain Henry Stranguishe’, Mariner’s Mirror, 48 (1962), 133–7. CSPI 1588–92, p.192; D. Mathew, The Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe: A Study of the Celtic and Spanish Influences on Elizabethan History (London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933), pp.300, 303, 305. CSPI 1588–92, p.190. CSPI 1588–92, p.254; CSPI 1598–99, p.471. This was the source of considerable tension between the Atlantic pirates and those who operated in the Mediterranean. Bishop, one of the leaders of the former, reportedly detested John Ward, one of the leaders of the latter, for ‘his associating with Turks at sea, his taking of Christians and selling them, with divers other outrages’. CSPI 1608–10, pp.279–80. Senior, Nation of Pirates, p.69 for Easton. Public Record Office Kew, H.C.A. 1/47, ff. 90–3v, 310–11; Kerney Walsh (ed.) ‘Destruction by Peace’, pp.278–9. For a discussion of piracy and patriotism see Chapter 9 by Claire Jowitt in this volume, pp.151–168. Senior, Nation of Pirates, pp.7–11. And see the comments of Sir Ferdinando Gorges below. Mainwaring and Perrin (eds) Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, II, pp.14–15, 40–1; R. Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting, (eds) D. B. Quinn and A. M. Quinn (Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, 45, 1993), pp.28–32, 120; Philip L. Barbour (ed.) The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631) 3 vols (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), III, pp.238–9. S. G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London: Longman, 1998), p.353 for depopulation; M. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland 1583–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp.151–2. British Library, Harleian MS. 697, ff.36–7, 194–4v. British Library, Harleian MS. 697, ff.103–3v, 195. British Library, Harleian MS. 697, f.94. British Library, Harleian MS. 697, ff.188–8v. The matter was discussed on several occasions in Spain, but the Spanish were unwilling to break the peace with England. Kerney Walsh (ed.) ‘Destruction by Peace’, pp.115–17, 129, 153, 260–1, 362. Senior, Nation of Pirates, p.54. Benefit of clergy in England was removed under the statue of 1536. G. R. Elton (ed.) The Tudor Constitution (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p.159. Subsequent legislation of the reign of Edward VI seems to have provoked doubt about its removal, and the issue was discussed by the common lawyers in 1605. But in England ‘there is no evidence … that benefit of clergy was ever actually allowed at Admiralty Sessions in the sixteenth-century’. M. J. Prichard and D. E. C. Yale (eds) Hale and Fleetwood on Admiralty Jurisdiction (London: Selden Society, 108, 1992), pp.ccviii–ccx. CSPI 1603–1606, pp.382–3; R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, 3 vols (London, 1909–16, rep. London: The Holland Press, 1963), I, p.101. CSPI 1603–1606, pp.382–3.

196 Notes 30 CSPI 1608–10, pp.29, 71; Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 62, 113; M. Oppenheim (ed.) The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, 5 vols (Navy Records Society, 1902–14), V, 292–3. 31 CSPI 1606–1608, pp.550–1; CSPI 1608–10, p.29. 32 CSPI 1603–1606, p.383. 33 CSPI 1608–10, p.42. 34 Senior, Nation of Pirates, pp.68–70; Mainwaring and Perrin (eds) Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, II, pp.9–10. 35 E. Hogan, Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Burns & Oates, 1894), p.395 ff. (I am indebted to Brian Jackson for this reference). Senior, Nation of Pirates, pp.49–50 for cosmopolitan crews. 36 CSPI 1608–10, p.277; Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 136. 37 CSPI 1603–1606, p.383. In July 1610 Chichester informed Salisbury of a warning from one pirate captain that ‘they are resolved to prey upon the subject as well as the strangers’, if they did not receive a pardon. CSPI 1608–10, p.480. 38 CSPI 1608–10, p.42. 39 CSPI 1608–10, p.277. 40 CSPI 1611–14, p.302; Senior, ‘Confederation of Deep-Sea Pirates’, pp.333–5. 41 T. Heywood and W. Rowley, Fortune By Land and Sea ed. Herman Doh (New York: Garland, 1980), 1585–6. For a wider discussion of this play see Chapter 9 by Claire Jowitt in this volume, pp.151–168. 42 CSPI 1608–10, p.278; Senior, Nation of Pirates, pp.67–71. 43 Public Record Office Kew, H.C.A. 1/47, ff.177–8, examination of James Bell. John Smith noted intense factions among the pirates, Barbour (ed.) Complete Works, III, p.240. 44 CSPI 1611–14, p.99. 45 J. C. Appleby (ed.) A Calendar of Material relating to Ireland from the High Court of Admiralty Examinations 1536–1641 (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1992), pp.119–20, 123–5, 127–30; MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation, pp.218–19; Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, I, pp.101–7. 46 British Library, Cotton MS. Otho E VIII, f.368. 47 N. Canny, Making Ireland British 1580–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp.150–1, 315. 48 J. C. Appleby, ‘Women and Piracy in Ireland: from Grainne O’Malley to Anne Bonny’, in Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd (eds) Women in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), pp.59–63. 49 Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 62. 50 British Library, Harleian MS. 697, ff.36, 103–3v, 194–5; Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 62. 51 CSPI 1603–1606, p.385. 52 Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 62; British Library, Cotton MS. Otho E VIII, f.368. 53 Appleby (ed.) Calendar, p.139. 54 Public Record Office Kew, H. C. A. 1/47, ff.79v–83, 90–3v, 246–7; H. C. A. 13/98, ff.18v–19; MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation, pp.155–6, 219–21; Lambeth Palace, Carew MS. 629, ff.119, 125–6.

Notes 197 55 J. C. Appleby, ‘Settlers and Pirates in Early Seventeenth-Century Ireland: A Profile of Sir William Hull’, Studia Hibernica, 25 (1989/90) 82. 56 Lambeth Palace, Carew MS., 629, ff.177–8. 57 Appleby (ed.) Calendar, pp.119–20, 124–5; Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 44. 58 Appleby (ed.) Calendar, pp.130–2; Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 63–4. 59 Appleby (ed.) Calendar, p.138. During 1609 captain James Harvie sailed into Baltimore with 8000 crowns and a ring of gold. R. G. Marsden (ed.) Documents relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea, 2 vols (Navy Records Society, 1915–16), I, pp.382–3. 60 Public Record Office Kew, H.C.A. 1/48, ff.104–4v; Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 110; Appleby (ed.) Calendar, pp.122–3. 61 CSPI 1608–10, p.42. 62 British Library, Cotton MS. Otho E VIII, f.378. 63 Appleby (ed.) Calendar, pp.125–39. 64 Heywood and Rowley, Fortune By Land and Sea, 2185. For later behaviour see Rediker, Villains of All Nations, pp.71–3. 65 British Library, Harleian MS. 697, ff.36–6v; MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation, pp.218–20; Public Record Office Kew, S.P. 14/48/103, Nottingham to Salisbury, 10 October 1609. 66 Public Record Office Kew, S.P. 14/65/16, Gorges to Salisbury, 5 July 1611. 67 Public Record Office Kew, S.P. 14/65/16, Gorges to Salisbury, 5 July 1611. 68 Oppenheim (ed.) Naval Tracts, IV, pp.107–9. 69 CSPI 1608–10, p.278. 70 Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 120–1; CSPI 1625–32, pp.46, 623–4. 71 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, I, pp.99, 101, 104–5. 72 Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 120. According to one recent study, James was only able to send out ‘token’ missions against pirates. E. Milford, ‘The Navy at Peace: The Activities of the Early Jacobean Navy, 1603–1618’, Mariner’s Mirror, 76 (1990), 30–1. 73 Dudley Edwards, ‘Letter-Book’, 110; Senior, Nation of Pirates, pp.145–50. 74 B. Jennings (ed.) Wadding Papers 1614–38 (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1953), pp.101, 321; CSPI 1625–32, pp.576, 621–2, 645; J. C. Appleby, ‘The Defence of Ireland: A Naval Journal of 1627’, Analecta Hibernica, 37 (1998), 237–48. 75 CSPI 1608–10, p.100; Bagwell, Ireland under the Stuarts, I, pp.207–10.

3 Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary 1 Abu Bakr Albu Khasibi, Adwa’ ala Ibn Yajjabsh al-Tazi (Dar al-Bayda’: A. Albu Khasibi, 1972), p.146. 2 Andrewe Boorde, The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, ed. F. J. Furnivall (London: Early English Text Society, 1870), p.213. 3 Ahmad Bu Sharab, ‘Mawarid al-Magharibi al-Muqimeen bi-lburtughal’, Majalat Kuliyat al-Adab w-al Ulum al-Insaniya, 19 (1994) 88. 4 Bu Sharab, Maghariba fi al-Burtughal (Rabat: Kuliyat al-Adab w-al Ulum al-Insaniya, 1996), pp.26–7.

198 Notes 5 Ibn abi Mahali, Isleet, National Library, Morocco, MS Kha Mim, 100, 18. 6 See the edition of the text by Muhammad Razzuq, Nasir al-din ala al-qawm al-kafirin (al-Dar al-Bayda’: Kuliyat al-Adab w-al Ulum al-Insaniya, 1987), and the translation and edition by P. S. Van Koningsveld, Q. Al-Samarrai, and G. A. Wiegers, The Supporter of Religion against the Infidels (Madrid: al-Majlis al-a’la lil-abhath al-ilmiya, 1997), p.30. 7 L. P. Harvey, ‘The Morisco who was Muley Zaidan’s Spanish Interpreter’, Miscelánea de Estudios Arabes y Hebraicos, 8 (1959) 78, from the autobiography of Ahmad bin Qasim. 8 See the list of names of various ‘yngles’ ship owners, Henri Lapeyre, Géographie de l’Espagne Morisque (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959), pp.234–5. 9 SP 71/12/vol. 2/200. 10 Linda Colley, Captives (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), p.86. 11 Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), xvii. 12 Bu Sharab, Wathaiq wa dirasat (Rabat: Dar al-Aman, 1997), p.147; and Chapter 4 in Maghariba fi al-Burtughal. 13 A Hadith was fabricated in this period stating that Muhammad had been sent as a prophet to all people, including those who are black and red: Miquel Asin Palacios, ‘La Polemica antichristiana de Mohamed el Caisi’, Revue Hispanique, 21 (1909) 346 in 339–51. I do not find convincing the argrument that the red-skinned were not American Indians but Moroccans: Fatima Harrak, ‘Mawaly Isma’il’s ‘Jaysh al-‘Abid: Reassessment of a Military Experience’, in Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa, ed. Miura Toru and John Edward Philips (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 2000), pp.177–96. 14 Louis Cardaillac, ‘Le Probleme Morisque en Amerique’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 12 (1976) 289–90. 15 Álvar Núnˇez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relatión, trans. Martin A. Favata and José B. Fernández (Houston: University of Houston, 1993). 16 See also Boyer, ‘La Chiourme turque des Galeres de France de 1665–à 1687’, in Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Mediterranee, 6 (1969) 72. 17 Abderrahmane El Moudden, ‘“The Sharif and the Padishah” Three letters from Murad III to ‘Abd al-Malik’, Hesperis Tamuda, 29 (1991) 113–25. 18 Ahmad bin Muhammad Al-Maqqari, Nafu ul-Tib, ed. Ihsan Abbas, 8 vols (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1968), 6: pp.278–80. 19 Abu Ismail bin Awdah al-Mazari, Tulu’ Sa’d al-Su’d, 2 vols (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1990), 1: p.212. 20 Abd al-Qadir al-Mashrafi al-Jazairi, Bahjat al-Nadhir, ed. Muhammad bin Abd al-Karim (Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, n.d.), pp.14–15. 21 Ibtihaj al-Qulub, Rabat, National Library, MS Kaf 363, fol.24. 22 Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Omar al-Udwani, Tarikh al-Udwani, ed. Abu al-Qasim Saadallah (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1996), pp.296–7. 23 Bruce Taylor, ‘The enemy within and without: an anatomy of fear on the Spanish Mediterranean littoral’, in William Naphy and Penny Roberts (eds) Fear in Early Modern Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp.78–99. 24 See for instance the cold-blooded murder of the jurist accompanying the Persian ambassador to Spain in 1604, Don Juan of Persia, trans. G. Le Strange

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27

28

29

30 31

32

33 34 35 36 37

(New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1926): ‘[…] some man of an insolent temper in the crowd, and lacking bowels of compassion, for there was no apparent provocation, struck out […] and killed him on the spot’, p.297. According to the nineteenth-century historian, al-Zayyani, cited in Moulay Belhamissi, al-Jazair min khilal rihlat al-Maghariba (Jazair: al-Sharikah al-Wataninyah, 1979), p.188. Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi, Al-Mi’yar al-mu’arrab, ed. Muhammad Hajji, 12 vols (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1981), 2:118; 2:159; 2:198–200. Although he was writing about the captivity of Muslims in Spain, al-Wansharisi’s decisions guided Muslims in North Africa in the following centuries. See also al-Yusi who quoted the Malikite jurist al-Lakhmi that if a captive gave his word, even against his will, he should not escape, because such an action would negatively effect the welfare of other Muslim captives: Rasa’il Abi Ali al-Hasan bin Maso’ud al-Yusi, ed. Fatima Khalil al-Qibli, 2 vols (Dar al-Bayda’: Dar al-Thaqafa, 1981), 1: p.262. P. S. Van Koningsveld and G. A. Wiegers, ‘Islam in Spain during the Early Sixteenth Century’, in Poetry, Politics and Polemics, ed. Otto Zwarjes et al. (Amsterdam: Atlanta, GA: 1996), p.147. Mohamed Mezzine, ‘Les Relations entre les Places occupées et let localités de la région de Fès aux Xvéme Siècles, a partir de documents locaux inédites: Les Nawazil’, in Relaciones de la Península Ibérica con el Magreb Siglos XIII–XVI, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and María J. Viguera (Madrid: Instituto Hispano Arabe de Cultura, 1988), p.522. Lubnan fi ahd al Amir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma’ni al-Thani, ed. Asad Rustum and Fuad Afram al-Bustani (Beirut: Manshurat al-Jami’a al-Lubnaniya, 1969), p.222. See my chapter on ‘Moors in British Captivity’, in Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 2005). See H. A. R. Gibb, ‘Islamic Biographical Literature’, in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962). Translated by David James in ‘The “Manual de Artilleria” of Ahmad al-Andalusi with Particular Reference to its Illustrations and their Sources’, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 41 (1978), 237–59 (251). See also the article about the author by Muhammad ’Abdullah ’Annan, ‘Min turath al-adab al-andalusi al-murisqi: kitab al-’iz wal rifa’ wal manafi’ lil-mujahidin fi sabil Allah bil-madafi’, Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid, 16 (1971) 11–19. The title of the book is slightly different in each manuscript. Ibn al-Qadi, Al-muntaqa al-maqsur, ed. Muhammad Razzuq, 2 vols (Rabat: Maktabat al-Masarif, 1986), 1: pp.347, 251. Al-Fishtali, Manahil al-Safa, ed. Abd al-Karim Karim (Rabat: Matbat Wizarat al-Awqaf, 1972), pp.230–1. Al-Qadiri, Nashr al-mathani, ed. Muhammad Hajji and Ahmad al-Tawfiq, 4 vols (Rabat: Maktabat al-Talib, 1978–1986), 1: p.216. Kitab Nasir al-Din, ed. Koningsveld, Samarrai, and Wiegers, p.147. Jamal Vanan, Nusus wa wathaiq fi tarikh al-Jazair al-hadith 1500–1830 (Algiers: n.p., n. d.), pp.144–5.

200 Notes 38 Abu Abdallah Muhammad bin Ayshun al-Sharat (d. 1697), Al-Rawd al-atir al-anfas bi-akhbar al-aalihin min ahl Fas, ed. Zahra’ al-Nazzam (Rabat: Kuliyat al-Adab w-al Ulum al-Insaniya, 1997), p.315. 39 Fawaid al jamma bi isnadi ‘ouloumi al-Oumma, ed. Colonel Justinard (Chartres: Durand, 1953), p.21. 40 See Ahmed Abdesselem, Les Historiens tunisiens (Qarhaj: Bayt al-Hikma, 1993), pp.149–53. 41 Nur al-Aramsh fi manaqib sidi Abi al-Ghaith al-Qashash, ed. Lutfi Issa and Hussein Bujarra (Tunis: Al-Maktaba al-Atiqa, 1998), p.158. Contrast this account with the one by Ibn al-Qadi, Al-Muntaqa al-maqsur, 1: p.7. 42 Nur al-Armash, pp.152–3. It is interesting that the manuscript of this text at the National Library of Tunis re-arranges the chapters, and opens with the one about the saint’s karamat to the captives, MS 3883 Tunis, 5v–7r. The episode about ransoming the captive was retold by Ibn al-Qadi who raised the sum to 3000 ounces of gold, Durrat al-Hijal, ed. Muhammad al-Ahmadi Abu al-Nur (Cairo: Dar al-Turath, 1970–71), pp.261–2. 43 Nur al-Aramsh, p.156. 44 The Adventures of Captain Alonso de Contreras, trans. Philip Dallas (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p.24; see also Salvatore Bono, Les Corsairs en Méditerranée, trans. Ahmad Somaï (Rabat: Editions de Porte, 1998), the chapter on ‘Les corsairs privé’ for other examples. 45 Rudt de Cottenberg, ‘Le baptème des Musulmans esclaves à Rome au xvii et xviii siècles’, Melanges de l’Ecole Francaise de Rome, 101 (1989) 9–181. 46 Cited in Bu Sharb, ‘Mawarid al-Magharibi al-muqimeen bi-l-burtughal’, Majalat Kuliyat al-Adab wa-al-Ulum al-Insaninya, 19 (1994) 96. 47 Quoted in C. R. Boxer, Mary and Misogyny (London: Duckworth, 1975), p.15. 48 Al-Fishtali, Manahil al-Safa, p.197. 49 Mohammad bin Yousuf al-Zayyani, Dalil al-hayraan wa anis al-sahraan fi akhbar madinat Wahran, ed. Al-Mahdi Abul-’abdali (Algiers: al-Sharikah al-Wataniyah, 1978), pp.150–1. 50 Al-Mazari, Tulu’ Sa’d a’s-Su’u’d, XXXXX p.231. Although al-Mazari may have taken the story from al-Zayyani, he added extra information to it. 51 Kenneth Parker, ‘Barbary in Early Modern England, 1550–1685’, in The Movement of People and Ideas between Britain and the Maghreb, ed. Abdeljelil Temimi and Mohamed Salah Omri (Zaghouan: Fondation Temimi, 2003), p.133. 52 Jorge de Henin, Wasf al-Mamalik al-Maghribiyya, trans. Abd al-Wahid Akmir (Al-Dar al-Bayda: Manshurat Markaz al-Dirasat al-Arabiya al-Ifriqiya, 1997), p.151. 53 There was some exception in the case of royalty: see the example discussed by Jaime Oliver Asin, Vida de Don Felipe de Africa, Principe de Fez y Marruecos (1566–1621) (Madrid: Instituto Miguel Asin, 1955). 54 See my discussion in Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Colombia University Press, 1999), pp.172–5. 55 ‘There was, however, never anything approaching segregation based on color’ in North Africa, Leon Carl Brown, ‘Color in Northern Africa’, in Color and Race, ed. John Hope Franklin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968), pp.88–204 (191).

Notes 201 56 Muhammad bu Jindar, Muqadimmat al-fath min tarikh Ribat al-Fath (Rabat, 1345 AH), p.280. The sultan was Muhammad bin Abdallah. 57 James Clifford, ‘Travelling Cultures’, in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997), pp.18–19. 58 For the branding of Muslims, see Charles Andre Julien, L’Hisotire de L’Afrique du Nord, 2 vols (Paris: Payot, 1966), 2: p.280. 59 Ithaf ahl al-zaman, ed. Muhammad Shammam, 8 vols (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiya lil-Nashr, 1989–90), 2: p.52.

4 Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95 1 Anon., The miserable estate of the Citie of Paris at this present, with a true report of sundrie straunge visions, lately seene in the ayre vpon the coast of Britanie, both by Sea and lande (London: Thomas Nelson, 1590), p.7. The frontispiece of this text features two remarkable woodcuts of the celestial visions it relates. 2 The miserable estate, p.7. 3 See A. L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall [1941] (Truro: Truran Books, 2005) pp.380–420. 4 Simon Harward, The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour (London: Thomas Orwin for Thomas Wight, 1592) sig. B. 1v. 5 On apocalyptic exegesis, see Frances Carey (ed.) The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (London: British Museum Press, 1999). 6 Harward, The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour, sig. C. 4v and sig. C. 1v. 7 ‘A Proclamation to be published in Cornewall, Deuonshire, Dorcetshire and Hampshire, for restitution of goods lately taken on the Seas from the Subiects of the king of Spayne by way of Reprisall’ (1591) in Humfrey Dyson (ed.) A Booke Containing All Svch Proclamations as were published During the Raigne of the late Queene Elizabeth (London: B. Norton and J. Bill, 1618) f.302. It is worth noting here that the first recorded use of the term ‘privateer’ in the OED is not until 1664. 8 ‘A Proclamation concerning the goods taken in the great Spanish Carraque brought into Dartmoth, 23. Septembris’ (1593) in Dyson, A Booke Containing All Svch Proclamations, f.311. 9 See Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 10 See Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, pp.380–420. 11 See B. W. Dillie and G. D. Winius (eds) Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415–1580 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977). 12 Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, p.400. 13 As a consequence, the slow fortification of Scilly began in 1593, mainly due to the petitions of Sir Francis Godolphin. See Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, p.402. 14 Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, p.400. 15 For Lyly’s comments see Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, no. 573 January 23 1590, ‘W. Lyly to Walsingham’ pp.337–8; for reference to the ‘Scots’ companies, see Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, no. 491 November 19 1589, ‘O. Smith to Walsingham’, p.301.

202 Notes 16 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, no. 467 November 20 1590, ‘Sir Roger Williams’s Advice for France’, p.295. In a later letter, Williams points out that Blavet is ‘the best harbour in France for vessels of any burden’: Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, no. 486 January 13 1591, ‘Sir Roger Williams’s Opinion on Brittany’, p.304. 17 Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, pp.400–1. 18 Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, pp.406–10. 19 These illustrations appear on the frontispieces of all of the printed texts that appear in this discussion and should be considered part of the wider genre of captivity narratives that tend to feature such pictures. Anon., The Honourable Actions of that most Famous and Valiant Englishman, Edward Glemham Esquire, latelie obtained against the Spaniards, and the Holy League, in Foure Sundrie Fightes (London: A. J. for William Barley, 1591). 20 John Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley of Naunts in Brittaine, from the Spanyards and Leaguers, with the releasement of 153. Galley slaues, that were in her: by Iohn Bilbrough, Prentice of London (London: for Richard Oliffe, 1591), p.1. The phrase ‘Turning Turk’ is explored in detail in Daniel Vitkus, ‘Turking Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 48 (1997) 145–76. See also Chapter 5 by Mark Hutchings in this volume, pp.90–104. 21 Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.2. 22 Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.2. 23 These ‘Witnesses of the truth of this Matter’ are: John Wilkes of London, John Harley, William Ward, Richard Bavance, Richard Taylor, Laurence Adams and George Oliver. Beneath their names is written, ‘And vnder the great seale of Rochell.’ Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.10. 24 Anon., A Declaration of great troubles pretended against the Realme by a number of Seminarie Priests and Iesuits, sent, and very secretly dispersed in the same, to worke great Treasons vnder a false pretence of Religion, with a prouision very necessarie for remedie thereof (London: Christopher Barker, 1591), p.9. 25 Besides those mentioned below in n.27, see for example Bartholomej Georgijevic’s The ofspring of the house of Ottomanno, and officers pertaining to the greate Turkes Court … all Englished by Hugh Goughe (London: Thomas Marshe, 1569/70), also discussed in Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp.81–2. See also Daniel Vitkus, Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 26 Harward, The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour, sig. B. 1r. See Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 27 Richard Hasleton, Strange and Wonderful Things Happened to Richard Hasleton … in His Ten Years’ Travails in Many Foreign Countries (London: A. J. for William Barley, 1595) and Edward Webbe, The Rare and most wonderfull things Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome trauailes, in the Cities of Ierusalem, Damasko, Bethlehem and Galely: and in the landes of Iewrie … newly enlarged and corrected by the Author (London: for William Wright, 1590). 28 Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.2.

Notes 203 29 Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.4. 30 Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.9. 31 Anon., The Valiant and most laudable fight performed in the Straights, by the Centurion of London, against fiue Spanish Gallies. Who is safely returned this present Moneth of May (London: publisher unknown, 1591). 32 Anon., The True Report of a great Galley that was brought vnto Rochell, vpon the sixt of Februarie last (London: John Wolfe for William Wright, 1592) sig. A. 3v. 33 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 4r. 34 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 4v. 35 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 4v. 36 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 4v. See also Anon., The Explanation of the True and Lawfull Right and Tytle, of the Most Excellent Prince Anthonie, the first of that name, King of Portugall, concerning his warres, againste Phillip King of Castille, and againste his Subiectes and Adherentes, for the Recouerie of his Kingdome (Leiden: C. Plantyn, 1585). 37 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 5r. 38 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 5v. 39 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 5v. 40 See J. H. Elliot, Europe Divided, 1559–1598 (Glasgow: Fontana, 1968) pp.279–81. 41 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, no. 929 July 17 1591, ‘Barton to Burghley’, p.499. 42 See also Anon., A Fig for the Spaniard, or Spanish Spirits. Wherein are Liuelie Portraied the Damnable Deeds, Miserable Murders, and Monstrous Massacres of the Cursed Spaniard (London: John Wolfe, 1592) sig. B. 3r. 43 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 6r. 44 The True Report of a great Galley, sig. A. 5v. 45 SP 12/240. There is no signature and very little crossing out – this is undoubtedly a neat copy, intended for official consumption. There appears to be an imprint of a seal (perhaps a crown) on the bottom right of the page. In pencil has later been written ‘Eliz … Sept 1591’, but as the text itself is undated this seems likely to reflect the dated material on either side in the State Papers – the previous document is a letter from Thomas Sherley dated 29 September 1591. 46 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, no. 869 April 2 1591, ‘Barton to Burghley’, p.467. 47 This campaign is wrongly dated to 1593 in Dimmock, p.167. All explicit reference to Islam is removed from the Anglo-Ottoman Capitulations of 1580 as reproduced by Richard Hakluyt in his Principal Navigations (London, 1589). These omissions are also examined in Dimmock, New Turkes, pp.89–90. 48 See Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, pp.400–20. 49 Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) pp.20–1. 50 Amezola’s account is translated and reproduced in Robert Dickinson, ‘The Spanish Raid on Mount’s Bay in 1595’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, vol. X, Part I (1986–7) pp.178–86 and Richard Carew’s account (apparently based upon the first-hand account of Sir Francis Godolphin)

204 Notes

51

52

53 54

55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62

63 64

65 66

67 68 69 70 71

72

can be found in his The Survey of Cornwall (London: S. S. for John Jaggard, 1602), pp.156r–8v. Dickinson, ‘The Spanish Raid on Mount’s Bay in 1595’, p.181. See also Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, no. 33 July 25 1595, ‘Examinations of Englishmen, taken by the Spaniards, and landed in Mount Bay, out of the four galleys of Bluett, before Sir Fras. Godolphin and Thomas Saint Aubin’, p.79. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, no. 33 July 25 1595, ‘Examinations of Englishmen, taken by the Spaniards’, pp.78–80. The raid is also discussed in Dan Cruickshank, Invasion: Defending Britain from Attack (Basingstoke and Oxford: Boxtree, 2001), p.60. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, p.403. Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, p.156r. Two of these original pillars and an arch remain, just behind the pulpit, one of them still blackened by the fire of 1595. They, along with the surviving granite tower, were incorporated into the rebuilding of the church. Dickinson, ‘The Spanish Raid on Mount’s Bay in 1595’, p.181. Dickinson, ‘The Spanish Raid on Mount’s Bay in 1595’, p.181. Greene’s Alphonsus features ‘Mahomet’ as an idol, a ‘brazen head’ that breathes forth ‘flakes of fire’ (IV.i.29). For more on this play, see Dimmock, New Turkes, pp.177–80. Dickinson, ‘The Spanish Raid on Mount’s Bay in 1595’, p.181. See Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, p.408. Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, p.158r. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, p.406. Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, p.158v. The actual prophesy, as recorded by Carew goes as follows: ‘Ewra teyre a war mearne Merlyn/Ara Lesky Pawle, Pensans ha Newlyn’ (p.159r). See Philip Payton’s introduction to the Cornish Classics edition: Rowse, Tudor Cornwall, pp.1–6. See Gulru Necipoglu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London: Reaktion, 2005); Diarmid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003), p.559. Cruickshank, Invasion, p.60. See Anon., A Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles, Presupposed to be Intended Against the Realm of England (n.p: n.pub., 1592); Anon., The Holy Bull, And Crusado of Rome: First published by the Holy Father Gregory the xiii. and afterwards renewed and ratified by Sixtus the fift (London: J. Wolfe, 1588). Described in Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (London: University of Chicago Press, 1988) p.362. The Holy Bull, And Crusado of Rome, p.8. A Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles, p.48. See John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 2002). One example of an English ‘pirate … coming to serve the king [of Spain]’ can be found in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, no. 48 May 21 1597, ‘Capt. Watson to the Lord Admiral and Sec. Cecil’, p.417. Bilbrough, The Taking of the Royall Galley, p.2.

Notes 205

5

Acting Pirates: Converting A Christian Turned Turk

1 See for example Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Meredith Anne Skura, Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); and Louis Adrian Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 2 In addition to note 1 see for example Joseph Lenz, ‘Base Trade: Theater as Prostitution’, English Literary History, 60 (4) (Winter 1993), 833–55. The Rose theatre may well have been used as a bear-baiting arena as well as for plays, and Philip Henslowe famously had interests in both theatre and brothels. 3 For a detailed analysis of these regulations, see Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Brighton: The Harvester Press Ltd, 1983), pp.141–68. 4 Margaret Jane Kidnie (ed.) Philip Stubbes, ‘The Anatomie of Abuses’ (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), p.71. 5 On the signification of costume on stage see Peter Stallybrass, ‘Worn Worlds: Clothes and Identity on the Renaissance Stage’, in Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass (eds) Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.289–320; and Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 6 See for example Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp.193–221; Mark Thornton Burnett, ‘Tamburlaine: An Elizabethan Vagabond’, Studies in Philology, 84 (1987), 308–23; Thomas Cartelli, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the Economy of Theatrical Experience (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp.71–88; Roger Sales, Christopher Marlowe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 57–9; Emily Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp.53–81; and Richard Wilson, ‘Visible Bullets: Tamburlaine the Great and Ivan the Terrible’, English Literary History, 62 (1995), 47–68. 7 See Peter Berek, ‘Locrine Revised, Selimus, and Early Responses to Tamburlaine’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, XXIII (1980), 33–54, and ‘Tamburlaine’s Weak Sons: Imitation as Interpretation Before 1593’, Renaissance Drama, n.s. XIII (1982), 55–82; and Maurice Charney, ‘The Voice of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine in Early Shakespeare’, Comparative Drama, XXXI (1997), 213–23. 8 The sheer scale of this ‘Turkish’ narrative is remarkable: of the 3000 plays written during the period 1567–1642 some 600 survive; of these more than one third refer to Turks or matters Ottoman. 9 See Kenneth Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering During the Spanish War, 1583–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); D. B. Quinn and A. N. Ryan, England’s Sea Empire, 1550–1642 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983); David Delison Hebb, Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1642 (London: Scolar Press, 1994); and Janice E. Thomson,

206 Notes

10

11

12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20

Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterratorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). The Levant Company’s success ensured that it had political clout, too, both during James’ reign and later. See Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1650 [1993] (London: Verso, 2003), and Lee W. Eysturlid, ‘“Where Everything is Weighed in the Scales of Material Interest”: Anglo-Turkish Trade, Piracy, and Diplomacy in the Mediterranean During the Jacobean Period’, Journal of European Economic History, 22 (1993), 613–25. See W. W. Greg (ed.) Henslowe Papers: Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary (London: A. H. Bullen, 1907), pp.66–85, and David Bradley, From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre: Preparing the Play for the Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.89–90. See for example Lois Potter, ‘Pirates and “turning Turk” in Renaissance Drama’, in Jean-Pierre Macquerlot and Michèle Willems (eds) Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.124–40; Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.54–61, and Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp.61–3; Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.124–5; Claire Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics 1589–1642: Real and Imagined Worlds (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp.157–75; Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.141–58; and Gerald MacLean, ‘On Turning Turk, or Trying to: National Identity in Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turn’d Turke’, Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 29(2) (Winter 2003), 225–52. In 1615 Lithgow reported Ward to be living in a ‘faire Palace, beautified with rich Marble and Alabaster stones’; quoted in Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, p.175. Potter, ‘Pirates and “turning Turk” in Renaissance drama’, p.127; Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, p.128. Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, p.124. See Nabil Matar’s suggestion that this play operates as propaganda, condemning pirates and Turks, in ‘The Renegade in the English SeventeenthCentury Imagination’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 33 (1993), 489–505, 492–5, and Islam in Britain, pp.54–8. In Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery, p.61, Matar remarks that A Christian Turned Turk ‘specifically demonized [Captain John] Ward’. Like a fellow dramatist who wrote a single play on Turks, John Mason (The Turk [1607]), Daborne later went into the Church. Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, p.157. Paul Mulholland (ed.) The Roaring Girl (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987). Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.) Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p.151. All references to the play are to this edition. Samuel Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p.532; Potter, ‘Pirates and “turning Turk” in Renaissance drama’, p.131.

Notes 207 21 Matar, Islam in Britain, p.57; Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, p.125, remarks that ‘although he might betray England, the text suggests, he cannot be allowed to survive his betrayal’. 22 See G. Starr, ‘Escape from Barbary: A Seventeenth Century Genre’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 29 (1965–6), 35–52; Margo Todd, ‘A Captive’s Story: Puritans, Pirates, and the Drama of Reconciliation’, The Seventeenth Century, XII (1997), 37–56; Roslyn Knutson, ‘Elizabethan Documents, Captivity Narratives, and the Market for Foreign History Plays’, English Literary Renaissance, 26 (1996), 75–110; Kenneth Parker (ed.) Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London: Routledge, 1999); and Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.) Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 23 On conversion to Islam among European Christians see Matar, ‘“Turning Turk”: Conversion to Islam in English Renaissance Thought’, Durham University Journal, ns LV no.1 (January 1994), 33–41, and Islam in Britain, pp.15–19, and especially pp.34–49. 24 Gerald MacLean, ‘On Turning Turk, or Trying to’, 233–4, reads these lines ironically. Daniel Vitkus suggests that the play may have failed because it portrays ‘Ward … as sympathetic, even heroic’; Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, p.232. 25 Richard Levin, ‘The Contemporary Perception of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, I (1984), 51–70. A further measure of the character’s fame was the occurrence of the name in baptismal registers; see Rick Bowers, ‘Tamburlaine in Ludlow’, Notes and Queries, 243 (1998), 361–3. 26 See Nick de Somogyi, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp.11–53. 27 Similarly Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, p.127, reads Purser and Clinton, two famous pirates ‘staged’ in Thomas Heywood and William Rowley’s Fortune by Land and Sea (c. 1607–09), as appropriating symbols of national authority, comparing their triumphs with the coronation of a monarch. On the stage appropriating state machinery of justice in another context, see Molly Easo Smith, ‘The Theater and the Scaffold: Death as Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 32 (1992), 217–32. 28 See Alain Grossrichard, The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East [1979] trans. Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1998). 29 See Avig der Levy (ed.) The Jews of the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 30 On doubling on the early modern stage, see for example David Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp.104–13; A. C. Sprague, The Doubling of Parts in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: society for Theatre Research, 1966); William A. Ringler, Jr, ‘The Number of Actors in Shakespeare’s Early Plays’, in Gerald Eades Bentley (ed.) The Seventeenth Century Stage: a Collection of Critical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp.110–34; Richard Fotheringham, ‘The Doubling of Roles on the Jacobean Stage’, Theatre Research International, 10 (1985), 18–32; T. J. King, Casting Shakespeare’s Plays: London Actors and their Roles, 1590–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Alan C. Dessen, ‘Conceptual Casting in the Age of Shakespeare: Evidence from Mucedorus’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 43(1) (Spring 1992), 67–70.

208 Notes 31 See for example Ralph Berry, ‘Hamlet’s Doubles’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 37(2) (Summer 1986), 204–12, and John C. Meagher, Shakespeare’s Shakespeare: How the Plays Were Made (New York: Continuum, 1997). 32 Peter Thomson, On Actors and Acting (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000), pp.19–20. 33 Peter Hyland, ‘The Performance of Disguise’, Early Theatre, 5.1 (2002), 77–83; 79. Andrew Gurr kindly provided me with a copy of his unpublished paper, ‘Disguise and Doubling’. 34 Sprague, The Doubling of Parts in Shakespeare’s Plays, 14, distinguishes between ‘deficiency’ or ‘emergency’ doubling (i.e. doubling for practical purposes) and ‘virtuoso’ doubling, where there is a clearly designed interpretative rationale for a particular doubling. 35 Vitkus (ed.) Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, p.154. 36 Bradley, From Text to Performance, p.238. 37 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p.48. 38 Eysturlid, ‘“Where Everything is Weighed in the Scales of Material Interest”’, pp.619, 621. 39 Eysturlid, ‘“Where Everything is Weighed in the Scales of Material Interest”’, p.620. 40 On Turkish attire and habits, and their appeal in early modern England, see Nabil Matar, ‘Renaissance England and the Turban’, in David Blanks (ed.) Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World before 1700 (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1997), pp.39–54. 41 Matar, Islam in Britain, p.15. 42 Vitkus (ed.) Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, p.236. 43 Chew, The Crescent and the Rose, p.532. 44 See James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), especially pp.114–21. 45 See Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp.166–9. 46 Anthony B. Dawson, ‘Performance and Participation: Desdemona, Foucault, and the Actor’s Body’, in James C. Bulman (ed.) Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.29–45, 43. 47 The text is ambiguous about when Ward dies, and indeed it may not have been clear in performance; Vitkus inserts a stage direction ‘[Dies.]’ at line 321. 48 Jones & Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, p.183, stress the use and reuse of costume in the playhouse: ‘actors again and again took existing clothes and “translated” them’. 49 Matar, Islam in Britain, p.15.

6 ‘We are not pirates’: Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads 1 See A General History of the Pyrates [1724/1728], ed. Manuel Schonhorn (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999), pp.383–439. Following a long tradition, Schonhorn identifies the author of the General History as Daniel Defoe, but this attribution remains disputed. On Libertalia, see Marcus Rediker, ‘Libertalia: The Pirate’s Utopia’, David Cordingly (ed.) Pirates. An

Notes 209

2

3 4 5 6

7 8

9 10

11

12 13 14

Illustrated History of Privateers, Buccaneers, and Pirates from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (London: Salamander, 1996), pp.124–39; and Hubert Deschamps, Les pirates à Madagascar aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Editions Berger–Levrault, 1972). Rediker treats Libertalia as fiction, Deschamps as fact. On the maritime origins of early capitalism see Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Alan Villiers, The Indian Ocean (London: Museum Press Limited, 1952), p.176. Villiers, The Indian Ocean, p.182. Villiers, The Indian Ocean, pp.182–3. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra. Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon, 2000), p.162. See also Rediker’s more recent study, Villains of all Nations. Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon, 2004). See K. V. Krishna Ayyar, The Zamorins of Calicut (Calicut: Norman Printing Bureau, 1938), p.146. For surveys of the social, cultural and economic history of the Indian Ocean (including the early modern period), see Auguste Toussaint, History of the Indian Ocean [1961], trans. June Guicharnaud (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966); K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean. An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean. A History of People and the Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); and most recently Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003). See also Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.) Maritime India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), a reprint of Holden Furber’s Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (1976); Sinnapah Arasaratnam’s Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century (1994); and McPherson’s The Indian Ocean. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.112. Ayyar, The Zamorins of Calicut, pp.153–7; R. P. Anand, Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea. History of International Law Revisited (The Hague et al.: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983), p.49. Offering a ceremonial gift was part of traditional Indian Ocean etiquette in a merchant-friendly port city such as Calicut. According to the only eyewitness account to survive from the voyage, da Gama’s gift fell far short of what would have been considered appropriate for a local potentate, containing no gold or silver but only ‘twelve pieces of lambel [striped cotton cloth], four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case containing six wash-hand basins, a case of sugar, two casks of oil, and two of honey’. A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, 1497–1499, trans. and ed. E. G. Ravenstein (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1898), p.60. Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, p.60. Anand, Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea, pp.50–1; Subrahmanyam, Vasco da Gama, pp.180–1. O. K. Nambiar, The Kunjalis. Admirals of Calicut (London: Asia Publishing House, 1963), pp.33–4; Subrahmanyam, Vasco da Gama, p.183.

210 Notes 15 Anand, Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea, p.53; Subrahmanyam, Vasco da Gama, p.206. 16 Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, pp.14, 69; Subrahmanyam, Vasco da Gama, pp.109–12. 17 The Book of Ser Marco Polo, trans. and ed. Sir Henry Yule, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1903), vol. 2, p.389. 18 The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D. 1325–1354, vol. 4, trans. C. Defrémery, B. R. Sanguinetti, and C. F. Beckingham (London: Hakluyt Society, 1994), p.865. 19 See G. R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese, being a translation of Kitab al-Fawa’id fi usul al-bahr wa’lqawa’id of Ahmad b. Majid al-Najdi (London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971), p.202. 20 See also the discussion in Pearson, The Indian Ocean, pp.105–7, 126–7. 21 See James Warren, Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization, Maritime Raiding, and the Birth of Ethnicity (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2002). 22 Anand, Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea, p.115. See also the related discussion in Pearson, The Indian Ocean, pp.126–7. 23 On the concept of a ship’s ‘sufficiency’, see David W. Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Stuart Times, 3 vols (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, sec. ed. 1978), vol. 1, pp.40–1. 24 All original quotes are taken from Luís de Camões, Os Lusíadas, ed., intr. and annot. Frank Pierce (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973). References are to canto, stanza and line numbers. 25 ‘Que quasi todo o mar têm destruído / Com roubos, com incêndios violentos’. All English translations of The Lusiads are taken from Luis Vaz de Camões, The Lusiads, trans. Landeg White (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997). I quote Camões in English whenever the translation is close enough to the Portuguese in image and idiom. For comparison, the original lines are quoted in accompanying endnotes. 26 ‘cristãos sanguinolentos’. 27 ‘Não somos roubadores que, passando / Pelas fracas cidades descuidadas, / A ferro e a fogo as gentes vão matando, / Por roubar-lhe as fazendas cobiçadas’. 28 Available in a 1898 English translation (see note 11 above). 29 ‘gentes inquietas, / Que, os mares discorrendo ocidentais, / Vivem só de piráticas rapinas, / Sem Rei, nem leis humanas ou divinas.’ 30 See especially the early paper by Christopher Hill, ‘Radical Pirates?’, The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. 3 (Brighton: Harvester, 1986), 161–87; and the latest book by Marcus Rediker, Villains of all Nations. 31 ‘Porque, se eu de rapinas só vivesse, / Undívago ou da Patría desterrado, / Como crês que tão longe me viesse / Buscar assento incógnito e apartado?’ 32 ‘Mas antes descansar me deixaria / No nunca descansado e fero grémio / Da madre Tethys, qual pirata inico / Dos trabalhos alheios feito rico.’ 33 ‘Corrupto já e danado o mantimento’. 34 ‘Crês tu que já não foram lavantados / Contra o seu capitão, se os resistira, / Fazendo-se piratas, obrigados / De desesperação, de fome, de ira?’ 35 ‘Daquela portuguesa alta excelência / De lealdade firme e obediência.’ 36 The example is Aristotle’s, from The Art of Rhetoric. See the discussion of paradiastole by Quentin Skinner, ‘Moral Ambiguity and the Renaissance Art of Eloquence’, Essays in Criticism, 44, no. 4 (1994), pp.267–92.

Notes 211 37 ‘da soberba Europe navegando, / Imos buscando as terras apartadas / Da Índia’. 38 Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.14. 39 Roger C. Smith, Vanguard of Empire. Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.174. 40 ‘[N]ouas ylhas / nouas terras / nouos mares / nouos pouos: e o que mays he: nouo ceo: e nouas estrellas’. Pedro Nunes, Obras, vol. 1: Tratado da sphera [1537] (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002), p.120. English translation quoted from Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, p.100 (epigraph to chapter). The lines appear in the separate treatise Tratado em defensam da carta de marear which was included in the original edition of the Tratado da sphera com a Theorica do Sol e da Luna (Lisbon: Germão Galharde, 1537). On Nunes in general, see Pedro Nunes 1502–1578 (Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional, 2002). 41 John Dee, Mathematicall Preaface to The Elements of Geometrie of the most auncient Philosopher Evclide of Megara (London: John Daye, 1570), sig. d.iiijv. 42 Iohn Minsheu, A Dictionarie in Spanish and English [London, 1599], facs. ed. (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2000), entry ‘Sutiléza, or Subtiléza’. 43 Pedro de Medina, The Arte of Nauigation, trans. John Frampton (London: Thomas Dawson, 1581), fol.3v. My italics. Frampton’s translation follows the Spanish edition closely; the original version of the passage cited can be found in Pedro de Medina, Arte de nauegar (Valladolid: Francisco Fernandez de Cordova, 1545), sig. a.iii.r. On de Medina, see the introduction in A Navigator’s Universe: The Libro de Cosmographía of 1538 by Pedro de Medina, trans. and intr. Ursula Lamb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp.1–30. 44 See Pearson, The Indian Ocean, p.3; and George F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times [1951], rev. and exp. by John Carswell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp.105–10. For an early document describing the extensive trade routes in the western Indian Ocean and attendant navigational practices, see the first-century merchants’ manual The Periplus Maris Erythraei, intr., trans., and annot. Lionel Casson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 45 See Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean. 46 See Die topographischen Capitel des indischen Seespiegels Mohît, trans. Maximilian Bitter, intr. Wilhelm Tomaschek (Vienna: K. K. Geographische Gesellschaft, 1897). 47 See João de Barros, Décadas (1552), quoted in Francis Maddison, ‘A Consequence of Discovery: Astronomical Navigation in Fifteenth-Century Portugal’, T. F. Earle and Stephen Parkinson (eds) Studies in Portuguese Discovery I (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992), pp.71–110: 71–2. The discussion reported by Barros is largely conjectural, but that does not mean it entirely misrepresents that type of encounter at sea. 48 He reported it was inferior to the quadrant but that may just as well indicate either wrong usage or that the transfer of navigational knowledge from one ocean to another (Cabral tested the kamal in the Atlantic) was more complex than contemporaries allowed. 49 See Maddison, ‘A Consequence of Discovery’, pp.73–4. For a brief and useful survey of sixteenth-century navigational techniques see J. H. Parry,

212 Notes

50 51 52 53 54

55 56

‘Pilotage and Navigation’, The Age of Reconnaissance. Discovery, Exploration and Settlement, 1450–1650 [1963] (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), pp.83–99. A fuller account is found in Waters, The Art of Navigation, vol. 1, Chapter 2, pp.39–77. Waters discusses the kamal on pp.53–4. See A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, p.7n1. In relating this episode, the editor of the Journal relies on João de Barros, Décadas (1552). McPherson, The Indian Ocean, p.138. McPherson, The Indian Ocean, p.138. ‘Verás as várias partes, que os insanos / Mares dividem, onde se apousentam / Várias Nações que mandam vários reis, / Vários costumes seus e várias leis.’ Nabil Matar calls the poem ‘one of the most anti-Muslim epics in the national literature of Renaissance Europe’. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p.164. McPherson, The Indian Ocean, p.189. Martin Cortes, The Arte of Nauigation, trans. Richard Eden (London: Richard Jugge, 1561), sig. CC.i.r. My italics.

7 Virolet and Martia the Pirate’s Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger’s The Double Marriage 1 The Double Marriage must have been premiered before 5 July 1623, when one of its actors, Nicholas Tooley, was buried; most commentators agree on 1620–1. See G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941–68), 3: p.331; Bertha Hensman, The Shares of Fletcher, Field and Massinger in Twelve Plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, Salzburg Studies in English Literature (Salzburg: Institut für Englishe Sprache, 1974), pp.189–93; Cyrus Hoy (ed.) The Double Marriage, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Fredson Bowers, vol. 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.97. 2 The Sea Voyage was licensed by the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert, on 22 June 1622. The Island Princess was performed at court on 26 December 1621 and it is generally thought to have been premiered between 1619 and 1621. See Fredson Bowers (ed.) The Sea Voyage, in Dramatic Works, vol. 9, p.3; Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 3: pp.347–50. Most commentators agree that The Unnatural Combat dates from the mid-1620s. See Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson (eds) The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 3: pp.181–4; Claire Jowitt, ‘Piracy and Court Scandals in Massinger’s The Unnatural Combat’, Cahiers Elisabethains, 67 (2005), 33–41. There is some agreement that the extant text of Love’s Cure represents a Beaumont and Fletcher collaboration as it was reworked by Massinger, possibly after Fletcher’s death in 1625. See Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 3: p.365; Cyrus Hoy, ‘The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (VI)’, Studies in Bibliography, 14 (1961), 46–69; George Walton Williams (ed.) Love’s Cure, in Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Bowers, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp.3–7.

Notes 213 3 See Simon Shepherd, Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth Century Drama (Brighton: Harvester, 1981), pp.84–7; Sandra Clark, ‘Hic Mulier, Haec Vir, and the Controversy over Masculine Women’, Studies in Philology, 82 (1985), 157–83. On The Sea Voyage see Gordon McMullan, The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), pp.235–54; Michael Hattaway, ‘“Seeing Things”: Amazons and Cannibals’, in Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, ed. Jean-Pierre Maquerlot and Michèle Willems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.179–92; Claire Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp.196–213. 4 Part One of The Fair Maid of the West seems to have been written towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, while Part Two was probably written to accompany the revival of Part One c. 1631. See Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 4: pp.568–71; Robert K. Turner (ed.) The Fair Maid of the West, Parts I and II (London: Edward Arnold, 1968), xi–xiv. 5 See Jean E. Howard, ‘An English Lass Among the Moors: Gender, Race, Sexuality and National Identity in Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West’, in Women, ‘Race’, and Writing in the Early Modern Period (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp.101–17; Charles Crupi, ‘Subduing Bess Bridges: Ideological Shift in the Two Parts of The Fair Maid of the West’, Cahiers Elisabethains, 54 (1998), 75–87; Barbara Fuchs, ‘Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renegadoes, and the English Nation’, English Literary History, 67 (2000), 45–69. 6 See Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, esp. pp.140–90. Fuchs notes that piracy was ‘a constant source of tension and embarrassment for the Jacobean state’ (‘Faithless Empires’, p.45). 7 See, for instance, Shepherd, Amazons and Warrior Women, pp.179–201; Ira Clark, The Moral Art of Philip Massinger (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993), pp.191–204; Sandra Clark, The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), pp.74–7, 125–6. 8 Paul Salzman, Literary Culture in Jacobean England: Reading 1621 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp.101–3. 9 Hoy (ed.) The Double Marriage, 2.1.32, 2.1.67SD. All references are to this edition. 10 On The Double Marriage as tragicomedy see Eugene Waith, The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), pp.132–4; Suzanne Gossett, The Influence of the Jacobean Masque on the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (New York: Garland, 1988), pp.256–66. 11 For an account of the development of ‘the idea of women pirates’ see Jo Stanley (ed.) Bold in her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages (London: Pandora, 1995). 12 See Mary O’Dowd, ‘Gráinne O’Malley [Grace] (fl. 1577–1597)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Anne Chambers, Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley, c. 1530–1603, revised edn. (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1998). 13 Eugene Waith, ‘The Sources of The Double Marriage by Fletcher and Massinger’, Modern Language Notes, 64 (1949), 505–10. See also Hensman, Shares of Fletcher, Field and Massinger, pp.173–89.

214 Notes 14 For texts see The Elder Seneca: Declamations, trans. M. Winterbottom, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols (London: William Heinemann, 1974), 1: pp.135–51 (‘The Pirate Chief’s Daughter’); 2: pp.317–45 (‘The Woman who was Tortured by the Tyrant for her Husband’s Sake’). 15 See 3.3.248–55. 16 Martia’s sexual preoccupation is clear in her plea to Virolet, ‘Receive me to your love, sir, and instruct me; | Receive me to your bed, and marry me’ (2.4.152–3). 17 The phrase ‘hal’d the Barke’ may indicate that Martia hoisted the boat’s sails, but ‘hal’d’ may also pun on hail (to call), often used in nautical contexts. If so, Fletcher and Massinger are suggesting her unruly speech: she is not only physically active, but also disruptively noisy. 18 A comparison can be drawn with Love’s Cure, in which the excessively feminine and housewifely Lucio is told by Bobadilla ‘you have a better needle, I know, and might make better work, if you had grace to use it’ (1.2.17–18). 19 The Old Arcadia, ed. Katherine Duncan Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp.24–5. As Lisa Jardine notes, the reworking of this passage in The New Arcadia is even more provocatively sexual; see Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983), p.36. 20 Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters, p.29. 21 Kathryn Schwartz, Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000), p.5. 22 See Jacques Heers, The Barbary Corsairs: Warfare in the Mediterranean, 1480–1580, trans. Jonathan North (London: Greenhill, 2003), 232–6. 23 This moment also strongly recalls the Jacobean masque. See Gossett, Influence, who notes that ‘Martia is presenting herself, and the role she has chosen is that of the scornful conqueress’ (p.261). 24 See D’Orsay W. Pearson, ‘“Unkinde” Theseus: A Study in Renaissance Mythography’, English Literary Renaissance, 4 (1974), 276–98. 25 Like most of the Fletcher/Massinger collaborations, The Double Marriage was first published in the ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ folio collections of 1647 and 1679. 26 See Anthony Parr (ed.) Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p.22; McMullan, Politics of Unease, pp.197–256. Like The Tempest, The Unnatural Combat is preoccupied with the problematic relationship between father and daughter, acting out The Tempest’s latent sexual tensions in its portrayal of Malefort’s lust for his daughter Theocrine, and Theocrine’s rape by a man who was once a suitor to her own mother. 27 On parallels between The Double Marriage and The Tempest see David Norbrook ‘“What cares these roarers for the name of King”: Language and Utopia in The Tempest’, in The Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After, ed. Gordon McMullan and Jonathan Hope (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.21–54 (p.35); McMullan, Politics of Unease, p.183; Kevin Pask, ‘Caliban’s Masque’, English Literary History, 70 (2003), 739–56 (p.741). 28 Stephen Orgel (ed.) The Tempest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 1.2.152–3. 29 Erasmus, Apophthegmes […] Now Translated into Englyshe by Nicolas Udall (London: Richard Grafton, 1542), 2C1r.

Notes 215 30 ‘A Pyrate’, in Sir Thomas Overbury his Wife […] As Also New Newes, and Divers More Characters (London: Edward Griffin for Laurence L’Isle, 1616), H7r. 31 In this respect, The Double Marriage can again be compared with The Unnatural Combat, which in its early scenes creates unnerving parallels between Malefort, an admiral who boasts of the spoil he has taken through privateering, and his pirate son, Malefort Junior, who is eventually killed by Malefort. See Jowitt, ‘Piracy and Court Scandal’, 33–41. 32 Thomas Adams, ‘The Spirituall Navigator, Bound for the Holy Land’, in The Blacke Devil or the Apostate Together with The Wolfe Worrying The Lambes and The Spiritual Navigator, Bound For The Holy Land (London: William Jaggard, 1615), D2v. 33 See Verna A. Foster, ‘Sex Averted or Converted: Sexuality and Tragicomic Genre in the Plays of John Fletcher’, Studies in English Literature 32 (1992), 311–22.

8 Sir Francis Drake’s Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood 1 Cheah, Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p.1. 2 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983; London: Verso, 1991). 3 For discussion, see my chapter ‘Forgetting the Ulster Plantation’ in England’s Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.171–99, as well as Philip Schwyzer, Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004). On theories of memory, see especially Kerwin Lee Klein, ‘On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,’ Representations, 69 (Winter 2000) 127–50, Pierre Nora (ed.) Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, 3 vols, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), and Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 4 Quoted in W. T. Jewkes, ‘Sir Francis Drake Revived: From Letters to Legend,’ in Norman J. W. Thrower (ed.) Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577–1580: Essays Commemorating the Quadricentennial of Drake’s Circumnavigation of the Earth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p.119. 5 The BBC had aired a program called ‘Drake’s Drum’ in August 1940, which might explain the guardsmen’s subsequent collective hallucination; see John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1990), p.323. 6 See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 7 The story of Drake at bowls has a long history, first appearing in Thomas Scott’s Second Part of Vox Populi (London: William Jones, 1624); see Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p.321. 8 On posthumous images of Drake, see Jewkes, ‘Sir Francis Drake Revived’; John Cummins, ‘“That Golden Knight”: Drake and his Reputation,’ History

216 Notes

9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16

17

18

19 20 21 22 23

24

25 26 27

Today, 46 (January 1996) 14–21; Christopher Hodgkins, ‘Stooping to Conquer: Heathen Idolatry and Protestant Humility in the Imperial Legend of Sir Francis Drake’, Studies in Philology, 94 (1997) 428–64. Jewkes, ‘Sir Francis Drake Revived’, p.112. See Benjamin P. Draper, ‘A Collection of Drake Bibliographic Items, 1569–1659’ in Thrower, Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, pp.173–206. My point is influenced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s discussion of ‘minor literature’ in Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), esp. 16–27. On ‘official nationalism’ see Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp.83–111. David Lloyd, ‘Nationalisms Against the State’, in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd (eds) The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp.173–97. For a related discussion, see my chapter ‘A Nation of Pirates’ in England’s Internal Colonies, esp. pp.51–73. William Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV, ed. A.R. Humphreys, Arden Shakespeare (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). Henry Robarts, A most friendly farewell, Giuen by a welwiller to the right worshipful Sir Frauncis Drake knight (London: Walter Mantell and Thomas Lawe, 1585), sig. A2v. The Elizabethan state also had an interest in barring published accounts of Drake’s voyages, which Spanish merchants could use as evidence in claiming remuneration. On efforts to prevent a literal ‘accounting’ of Drake’s profits, see Kelsey, pp.214–17. See, for example, Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation (1598–1600; London: J. M. Dent, 1927), 10 vols, pp.7:77–97. Peele, A Farewell. Entituled to the famous and fortunate Generalls of our English forces: Sir Iohn Norris & Syr Frauncis Drake (London: I. C, 1589), sig. A3. Haslop, Newes ovt of the Coast of Spaine (London: W. How, 1587), sigs. B2–B2v. Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p.248. Quint, Epic and Empire, p.249. Quint, Epic and Empire, pp.76–83, 139–47. Other texts, by contrast, placed Drake in the framework of epic: see, for instance, William Goodyear’s translation of Jean de Cartigny’s The voyage of the wandering Knight (London: Thomas East, 1581), a text dedicated to Drake. Nerlich, Ideology of Adventure: Studies in Modern Consciousness, 1100–1750, Volume 1, trans. Ruth Crowley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p.116. Nerlich, Ideology of Adventure, p.112. Stevenson, Praise and Paradox: Merchants and Craftsmen in Elizabethan Popular Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Étienne Balibar, ‘Citizen Subject’, in Who Comes After the Subject, ed. Eduardo Cadava et al. (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp.33–57; John Michael Archer, Citizen Shakespeare: Freemen and Aliens in the Language of the Plays (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Julia Reinhard Lupton, CitizenSaints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (Chicago and London: University of

Notes 217

28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40

41

42 43

Chicago Press, 2005). Among earlier studies, see Patrick Collinson, ‘De Republica Anglorum: Or History with the Politics Put Back’ and ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, in Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon, 1994), pp.1–30, 31–57 and J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). On a related note, Deleuze and Guattari argue that a ‘collective’ value and function is a key characteristic of ‘minor literature’, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, p.17. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 8: p.194. Mary Fuller, Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.141–74. Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp.187, 175. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1: p.19. For an expanded discussion of this issue, see my England’s Internal Colonies, esp. pp.91–134. Cheah, Spectral Nationality, p.12. Among other sources on this topic, see Anne Barton, ‘Harking Back to Elizabeth: Ben Jonson and Caroline Nostalgia’, ELH, 48 (1981) 706–31. D. R. Woolf, ‘Two Elizabeths? James I and the Late Queen’s Famous Memory’, Canadian Journal of History 20 (1985) 167–91; Curtis Perry, ‘The Citizen Politics of Nostalgia: Queen Elizabeth in Early Jacobean London’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 23 (1993) 89–111, republished in The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the Renegotiation of Elizabethan Literary Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), pp.153–87; John Watkins, Representing Elizabeth in Stuart England: Literature, History, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002). Fuller, Voyages in Print, p.15. Claire Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics 1589–1642 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003), pp.61–103, 140–90. Elizabeth Frye, ‘The Myth of Elizabeth I at Tilbury’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 23 (1992) 95–114. Thomas Heywood, If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody Part II, ed. Madeleine Doran (Oxford: Malone Society Reprints, 1935). Unless otherwise noted, I have cited the expanded 1633 version of the Armada scenes throughout. On the differences between this edition and the 1606 quarto, see Doran’s introduction as well as Teresa Grant, ‘Drama Queen: Staging Elizabeth in If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody’, in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.120–42. Ernest Renan, ‘What is a Nation?’ in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.) Nation and Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp.8–22. Cf. Anderson’s discussion of Renan in Imagined Communities, pp.199–201. On the forgetting of Drake during his own lifetime, see also Haslop, sigs. A3–A3v. Fredric Jameson, ‘Marx’s Purloined Letter’, in Michael Sprinker (ed.) Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.60.

218 Notes 44 Jaques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), p.6. 45 Derrida, Specters of Marx, p.39. 46 Derrida, Specters of Marx, p.6. 47 Claire McEachern, The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590–1612 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.6. 48 Among references to Drake, see Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, 19:308–22 and William Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals, Book 2, Song 3, p.43; Book II, Song 4, p.69; Book III, Song 1, p.139; Book III, Song 1, p.152, in The Whole Works, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt (New York and Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1970). 49 Michelle O’Callaghan, The ‘Shepheards Nation’: Jacobean Spenserians and Early Stuart Political Culture, 1612–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), p.128. 50 O’Callaghan, The ‘Shepheards Nation’, p.112. 51 Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p.97. 52 David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p.198. 53 William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth Late Queen of England, ed. Wallace T. MacCaffrey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p.209; William Davenant, The Dramatic Works of Sir William D’Avenant, vol. 4 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), pp.53, 55, 58, 65. 54 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. David Fernbach (London: Penguin/New Left Review, 1981), p.3:448. For a relevant discussion, see Barbara Fuchs, ‘Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renagadoes, and the English Nation’, ELH, 67 (2000) 45–69. 55 Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals Book 2, Song 4, pp.89–90. 56 Fuller, The Holy State, p.140. 57 Joan Pong Linton, The Romance of the New World: Gender and the Literary Formations of English Colonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), p.45. William Camden was the first to posit a connection between Drake and the founding of the East India Company (History, p.301). 58 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

9

Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Execution

1 Atkinson Clinton and Thomas Walton, Clinton, Purser & Arnold, to their countreymen wheresoever (London: John Woolfe, 1583); Thomas Heywood and William Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, ed. Herman Doh (New York: Garland, 1980). 2 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1977), p.34. 3 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p.49. 4 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp.59–60.

Notes 219 5 See Anna R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his readers in the Seventeenth Century (Basingstoke; Macmillan, 1997), pp.82–108. 6 C. L’Estrange Ewen, ‘Organised Piracy round England in the Sixteenth Century’, The Mariner’s Mirror, 35 (1949) 29–42 7 J. A. Sharpe, ‘“Last Dying Speeches”: Religion, ideology and public execution in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present, 107 (1985), 147–65. 8 Samuel Rowlands, Epilogue. Thus Hart to Dimond yields his place, from The Knave of Harts. Haile Fellow, well met (London; 1613), lines 13–18. 9 Leslie Hotson, ‘Pirates in Parchment’, The Atlantic Monthly (August 1927), 1–11, 2. 10 John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1908), 2 vols, II, Chapter 59. 11 John Stow, The Annales of England (London: 1605), p.1175. 12 Venetian breeches were well fitting and finished below the knee with points, the material was covered with panes (diamond-shaped openings) which made the lining visible. 13 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 (Cambridge: CUP, 1980), p.13. 14 See Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: CUP, 2000). 15 See C. M. Senior, A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in its Heyday (New York: Crane, Russack & Co., 1976); Kenneth R. Andrews, ‘The expansion of English privateering and piracy in the Atlantic, c.1540–1625’, in Course et Piraterie, ed. Michel Mollat (Paris: Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975), 2 vols, I, pp.196–230, p.200; Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003), p.22. 16 John C. Appleby, ‘War, Politics and Colonization, 1558–1625’, in The Origins of Empire, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford: OUP, 1998), pp.60–6. 17 See Appleby, ‘War, Politics and Colonization’, p.63; see also Kenneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585–1603, (Cambridge: CUP, 1964), pp.202–3. 18 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p.60. 19 See Anna Beer, ‘Textual Politics: The Execution of Sir Walter Ralegh’, Modern Philology, 94 (1996), 19–38. 20 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p.67. 21 See Sharpe, ‘“Last dying speeches”’, 147–165; see also Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge: CUP, 1991). 22 Peter Lake and Michael Questier, The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002). 23 Lake, The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat, xxi. 24 Lake, The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat, xxi. 25 Lake, The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat, xxi. 26 Edward Arber, A Transcript of the registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 A.D. (Gloucester, Massachusetts: P. Smith, 1967), 5 vols, II, p.197, 210b. See also Mark Netzloff, England’s Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.51–90.

220 Notes 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58

Netzloff, England’s Internal Colonies, p.66. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, A2r. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, A2v. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, A2v. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, A2v. See J. H. Elliot, Imperial Spain 1469–1716 (London: Penguin, 1963). On English interventions in the colonial activities of other European nation states see K. R. Andrews et al. (eds) The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1979); D. B. Quinn and A. N. Ryan, England’s Sea Empire, 1550–1642 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983); Appleby ‘War, Politics and Colonization, 1558–1625’, pp.55–78. See Pauline Croft, ‘Trading with the Enemy 1585–1604’, The Historical Journal, 32 (1989), 281–302. On the influence of de las Casas’ text see Thomas Scanlan, Colonial Writing and the New World 1583–1671 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), pp.8–32. On English seafaring alliances with the Huguenots, see N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660–1649 (New York and London: Norton, 1997), pp.238–48. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, A3v. G. Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, 4 vols (Ware and Great Wakering, 1968–1977), I, p.251. See Lake, The Anti-Christ’s Lewd Hat, p.219. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, A4r. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, Bv. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, Bv. Clinton, Purser & Arnold, B2r. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea, p.244. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp.202–3. L’Estrange Ewen, ‘Organized Piracy’, 42. See C. L’Estrange Ewen, ‘Pirates of Purbeck’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 71 (1949), 88–109. On dating the play see Herman Doh, ‘Introduction’ in Fortune by Land and Sea, pp.32–7. See Barbara Fuchs, ‘Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renegadoes and the English Nation’, English Literary History, 67 (2000), 45–69, 52. Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, lines 2200, 2208. Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, lines 2245–7. Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, lines 2250–3. Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, p.204. Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, p.196. Anna Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh, p.88; British Library, MS Harley 6353, f.85v. See Janice E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, lines 1682–5. Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, lines 1850–1. Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, line 1698. Heywood and Rowley, Fortune by Land and Sea, line 1759.

Notes 221 59 See Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp.22–31. 60 A Royal Proclamation By the King. A Proclamation against Pirates, Whitehall, 8 January 1609, in Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, ed. Daniel Vitkus (New York; Columbia University Press, 2000), p.353; David Delison Hebb, Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1642 (Aldershot: Scolar, 1994), p.9. 61 Earle, The Pirate Wars, p.58; see also Chapter 2 of this volume by John C. Appleby, ‘The Problem of Piracy in Ireland 1570–1630’, pp.41–55. 62 See Rosalind Davies, ‘“The Great Day of Mart”: Returning to Texts at the Trial of Sir Walter Ralegh in 1603’, Renaissance Forum, 4 (1999), 12 pages; http://www.hull.ac.uk/renforum/v4no1/davies.htm 63 See William Stebbing, Sir Walter Raleigh. A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891), p.230. 64 The title ‘The Last of the Elizabethans’ was coined by Edward Thompson in 1935 and repeated by A. L. Rowse, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Stephen Coote. See Davies, ‘“The Great Day of Mart”’, 1. 65 On the different manuscript and printed versions of Ralegh’s speech see Beer, ‘Textual Politics: The Execution of Sir Walter Ralegh’, 19–38, 35. 66 Davies, ‘“The Great Day of Mart”’, 1. 67 Quoted by Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh, p.97. 68 See Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp.97–104. 69 See R. H. Bowers, ‘Raleigh’s Last Speech: The “Elms” Document’, The Review of English Studies, 2, 7 (1951), 209–16. 70 Quoted by Beer, Textual Politics: The Execution of Sir Walter Ralegh’, 28. 71 Lewis Stukeley, To the Kings most Excellent Maiestie. The humble petition and information of Sir Lewis Stucley, Knight, Vice-admirall of Devon, touching his owne behaviour in the charge committed unto him, for the bringing up of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the scandalous aspersions cast upon him for the same (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618); Francis Bacon, A Declaration of the Demeanor and Cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, as well in his voyage, as in, and sithence his returne and of the true motiues and inducements which occasioned His Maiestie to proceed in doing iustice vpon him, as hath bene done (London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1618). See Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp.96–7; Bowers, ‘Raleigh’s Last Speech’, 15. 72 Ralegh, Sir Walter Raleigh his Apologie for his voyage to Guiana (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1650), p.4. 73 See Fuchs, ‘Faithless Empires’, 45–69; Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (London and New York: Palgrave, 2003). 74 Ralegh, Sir Walter Raleigh his Apologie, p.25. 75 Francis Bacon, A Declaration, pp.20–2. 76 See Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh, p.84. 77 Bacon, A Declaration, pp.4–5. 78 Bacon, A Declaration, p.14. 79 Ralegh, Sir Walter Raleigh his Apologie, pp.25–6. 80 For details of this ‘Elizabethan’ reading of the scaffold speech see Beer, ‘Textual Politics: The Execution of Sir Walter Ralegh’, 29–30.

222 Notes

10 Of Pirates, Slaves, and Diplomats: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire 1 George Bush, The Life of Mohammed (1830; rpt. San Diego, CA: Book Tree, 2002), pp.196, 197. 2 See Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Chapter 5, ‘Eschatology and the Saracens’, pp.153–83. For the use of prophecy in pre-Reformation anti-Islamic propaganda, see Kenneth M. Setton, Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999). 3 I have used ‘English’ throughout when referring to writers and writings of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries since a key concern here is with the place of these writers and their works upon the development of a national literature that has most commonly been referred to as ‘English literature’, and reserved ‘British’ for the political and military forces from which the late eighteenth-century New World colonialists sought independence. 4 See MacLean, ‘Literature, Culture, and Society in Restoration England’, in Gerald MacLean (ed.) Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.3–27, and The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004). 5 See MacLean, ‘On Turning Turk, or Trying to: National Identity in Robert Daborne’s “A Christian Turn’d Turke”,’ Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 29:2 (Winter, 2003), 225–52. 6 See MacLean, Time’s Witness: Historical Representation in English Poetry, 1603–1660 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), Chapter 2, ‘English Poetry and the Struggle for a National History’, pp.64–126. 7 Andrew Boorde, The Breviary of Healthe, for all maner of sicknesses and diseases the which may be in man or woman, doth followe. Expressing the obscure terms of Greke, Araby, Latyn, and Barbary, in to Englishe concernyng Phisicke and Chierurgerie (London: William Middleton, 1547; rpt. 1548, 1552, 1556, 1557, 1575, 1587, 1598). 8 Citing Polidore Virgil and Froissart, R. L. Playfair dates the earliest AngloMaghribian encounter to 1390, when a combined force of English and French soldiers set out to assist the Genoese against attacks from ‘Barbary corsairs’, The Scourge of Christendom (London: Smith, Elder, 1884), p.1. 9 Adam Anderson, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, From the Earliest Accounts to the Present time 2 vols (London: A. Millar et al., 1764), 1: 239. 10 Cited in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation 8 vols (1589; rpt. London: Dent, 1907), 4: 21. 11 Anderson, Historical and Chronological Deduction, 1: 312. For Roberts’s observations on the origins of the Levant Company in the Barbary trade, see Lewes Roberts, The Merchants Map of Commerce: Wherein the Universal Manner and Matter of Trade is Compendiously Handled (1638; rpt. London: R. Horne, 1671), pp.269–70. 12 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 4: 32–3, 33–35. See T. S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade (1959; rpt. Manchester: Manchester University

Notes 223

13

14

15

16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23 24

25

26 27 28

Press, 1968), pp.98, 118–20, 168–71; Susan Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey 1578–1582 (London: British Academy, 1977), p.23; and pp.107–8, for translations of the safe-conducts. Rhoads Murphey, ‘Merchants, Nations and Free Agency: An Attempt at a Qualitative Characterization of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1620–1640’, in Alastair Hamilton et al. (eds) Friends and Rivals in the East: Studies in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Levant from the Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp.25–58 (p.30). Late Newes out of Barbary. In A Letter written of late from a Merchant there to a Gentl. not long since imployed into that countrie from his majestie (London: Arthur Jonson, 1613), preface. J[ohn] B[utton], Algiers Voyage in a Journall or Briefe Reportary of all occurents hapning in the fleet of ships sent out by the King his most excellent Majestie, as well against the Pirates of Algiers, as others (London: B. Alsop, 1621), sig. A3v. Playfair, Scourge, p.38. See David Hebb, Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1642 (Aldershot: Scolar, 1994), pp.105–7, 79. Edward Webbe, The Rare and most wonderfull things which Edw. Webbe an Englishman borne, hath seene and passed in his troublesome travailes, in the cities of Jerusalem, Damasko, Bethlehem and Galely: and in the landes of Jewrie, Egypt, Grecia, Russia, and Prester John (London: William Wright, 1590), sig. A4v. Webbe, Rare and most wonderfull things, sig. Bv. Webbe, Rare and most wonderful things, sigs. B5–C3v. Webbe, Rare and most wonderful things, sig. D. ‘Mr. Robert’s his Voyage to the Levant, with an Account of his sufferings amongst the Corsairs, their Villanous way of Living, and his Description of the Archipelago islands. Together with his Relation of Taking, and Retaking of Scio, in the year 1696’, in William Hacke (ed.) A Collection of Original Voyages (London: J. Knapton, 1699), p.13. William Okeley, Eben-Ezer: Or, A Small Monument of Great Mercy (London: Nat. Ponder, 1675), Preface, sig. A8. For an example of a seventeenth-century captive who assailed the Dutch, ‘a Low-Country people’ with ‘feign’d professions of Christianity’, rather than those professing ‘Mahumetisme’, see Emanuel D’Aranda, The History of Algiers And it’s Slavery with Many Remarkable Particularities of Africk. Written by Sieur Emanuel D’Aranda, Sometime a Slave there. Englished by John Davies of Kidwelly (London: John Starkey, 1666), sig. A2v. Anon., The Arrivall and Intertainements of the Embassador, Alkaid Janrar Ben Abdella, with his Associate, Mr. Robert Blacke. From the High and Mighty Prince, Mulley Mahamed Sheque, Emperor of Morocco, King of Fesse, and Suss (London: J. Okes, 1637), p.3. Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970), p.1. W. Montgomery Watt, The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe (1972; rpt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1987), p.84. See Royall Tyler, The Algerine Captive; Or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill: Six Years a Prisoner among the Algerines (‘Published according to Act of Congress. Printed at Walpole, Newhampshire, By David

224 Notes

29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

Carlisle, Jun. 1797’); John Foss, A Journal of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Foss; Several Years a Prisoner at Algiers (Second Edition ‘Published according to an Act of Congress. Newburyport, MA: Printed by Angier March’, [1798]). James Riley’s An Authentic Narrative of he loss of the American Brig Commerce, wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the month of August 1815 (New York: For the Author, 1817) was reprinted twenty two times, making it one of Young America’s best-sellers. See Gordon Evans, ed., Sufferings in Africa (New York: Potter, 1965), H. G. Barnby, The Prisoners of Algiers: An Account of the Forgotten American-Algerian War, 1785–1797 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), and Osman Bencherif, The Image of Algeria in Anglo-American Writings, 1785–1962 (Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 1997). David Humphreys, Poems by Col. David Humphreys, Late Aid-de-Camp to His Excellency General Washington. Second Edition: With Several Additions (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1789), p.iii. David Humphreys, A Poem on the Happiness of America; Addressed to the Citizens of the United States (London: [n.pub.], 1786?]), pp.2–4. Humphreys, Poem, p.44. Humphreys, Poem, p.44. Humphreys, Poem, p.37. Humphreys, Poem, p.45. Humphreys, Poem, p.45. Humphreys, Poem, pp.45–6. Humphreys, Poem, p.46. Daniel Morgan (1736–1802) was commissioned in 1776 to raise a brigade of sharpshooters in Virginia, and in 1781 led the cavalry regiment that won a decisive victory at the battle of Cowpens: see Robert Don Higginbottom, Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1961) and North Callahan, Daniel Morgan: Ranger of the Revolution (New York: Holt, 1961). Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, the Maquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) was a French statesman who traveled to the New World in 1777 to fight the British alongside George Washington. Much celebrated after the Revolutionary War, the number of towns bearing his name throughout the Mid-West may confirm the popular belief that he was eager to help populate the new nation. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin, Baron von Stueben (1730–94), was a professional Prussian soldier who arrived in 1777 and introduced techniques of military training unknown to either the French or British armies at the time. His ‘Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States’ formed the basis for the ‘blue book’ later adopted at the United States Military Academy, West Point. Henry Knox (1750–1806) was Washington’s Secretary of War. He proved brilliantly efficient at keeping the Revolutionary army supplied with artillery and other supplies, and helped found the United States Military Academy, West Point: see North Callahan, Henry Knox: George Washington’s General (New York: Rinehart, 1958). Other references can be found in Dumas Malone (ed.) Dictionary of American Biography (London: Oxford University Press and New York: Scribners, 1933). Humphreys, Poem, p.49. Humphreys, Poem, pp.49–50. Humphreys, Poem, p.50.

Notes 225 41 His Poem to the Armies of the United States of America was published in New Haven (1784) and reprinted in London and Paris (1785). The undated first edition of Humphrey’s Poem is assigned to 1786 in the British Library Catalogue. 42 A detailed chronological account, including costs, of Humphreys’ mission between March 1795 and July 1796, appears in Reports of the Secretary of State, and of the Secretary of the Treasury, Relative to the Present Situation of Affairs with the Dey and Regency of Algiers. Accompanying a Confidential Message from the President of the United States, Received the 19th of January, 1797 ([np: np, nd]), provided courtesy of the Boston University Library. 43 Reports of the Secretary of State, p.3.

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230 Select Bibliography Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1977). Fuchs, B., ‘Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renegadoes and the English Nation’, English Literary History, 67 (2000), 45–69. Fuchs, B., Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Fuller, T., The Holy State (Cambridge: Printed by Roger Daniel for John Williams, 1642). Glete, J., Warfare at Sea, 1500–1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe (London: Routledge, 2000). Gosse, P., The History of Piracy (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932). Gossett, S., The Influence of the Jacobean Masque on the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (New York: Garland, 1988). Greg, W. W. (ed.) Henslowe Papers: Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary (London: A. H. Bullen, 1907). Greenblatt, S., Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Grossrichard, A., The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East [1979] trans. Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1998). Gurr, A., The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642 3rd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). ——— ‘Disguise and Doubling’ (unpublished paper). Hall, E., Henry VIII, Charles Whibley (ed.) 2 vols (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1904). Hakluyt, R., The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation 8 vols (London, 1589; rpt. London: Dent, 1907). Hakluyt, R., The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation 10 vols (London, 1598–1600; London: J. M. Dent, 1927). Harward, S., The Solace for the Souldier and Saylour (London: Thomas Orwin for Thomas Wight, 1592). Haslop, H., Newes ovt of the Coast of Spaine (London: T. How, 1587). Hattaway, M., Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). Hattaway, M., ‘“Seeing Things”: Amazons and Cannibals’, in Jean-Pierre Maquerlot and Michèle Willems (eds) Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.179–92. Hebb, D. D., Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1642 (Aldershot: Scolar, 1994). Heers, J., The Barbary Corsairs Warfare in the Mediterranean 1480–1580 (London: Greenhill, 2003). Helgerson, R., Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Heywood, T., If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody Part II, Madeleine Doran (ed.) (Oxford: Malone Society Reprints, 1935). Heywood T. and Rowley, W., Fortune by Land and Sea, Herman Doh (ed.) (New York: Garland, 1980). Hill, C., ‘Radical Pirates’, The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. 3 (Brighton: Harvester, 1986), pp.161–87.

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232 Select Bibliography Linebaugh, P. and Rediker, M., The Many-Headed Hydra. Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon, 2000). Linton, J. P., The Romance of the New World: Gender and the Literary Formations of English Colonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Lockyer, R., Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham 1592–1628 (London and New York: Longman, 1981). MacCarthy-Morrogh, M., The Munster Plantation: English Migration to Southern Ireland 1583–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). MacCulloch, D., Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003). MacLean, G., ‘On Turning Turk, or Trying to: National Identity in Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turn’d Turke’, Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 29(2) (Winter 2003), 225–52. Mackie, R. L., King James IV of Scotland: A Brief Survey of His Life and Times (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1958). Mainwaring, G. E. and Perrin, W. G. (eds) The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, 2 vols (Navy Records Society, 1922). Malone, D. (ed.) Dictionary of American Biography (London: Oxford University Press and New York: Scribners, 1933). Marsden, R. G. (ed.) Documents relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea 2 vols (Navy Records Society, 1915–16). Matar, N., ‘The Renegade in English Seventeenth-Century Imagination’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 33 (1993), 489–505. ——— ‘“Turning Turk”: Conversion to Islam in English Renaissance Thought’, Durham University Journal, ns LV no.1 (January 1994), 33–41. ——— ‘Renaissance England and the Turban’, in David Blanks (ed.) Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World before 1700 (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1997), pp.39–54. ——— Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). ——— Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Colombia University Press, 1999). ——— Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 2005). Mathew, D., The Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe: A Study of the Celtic and Spanish Influence on Elizabethan History (London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933). McCavitt, J., Sir Arthur Chichester: Lord Deputy of Ireland 1605–1616 (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1998). McLeod, B., The Geography of Empire in English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). McMullan, G., The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). McPherson, K., The Indian Ocean. A History of People and the Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Meagher, J. C., Shakespeare’s Shakespeare: How the Plays Were Made (New York: Continuum, 1997). Miege, J., ‘Captifs Marocains en Italie XVIIe-XVIIIe Siècles’, in Revue Maroc-Europe, no.11 (1997–8), 165–70.

Select Bibliography 233 Mollat, M. (ed.) Course et Piraterie 2 vols (Paris: Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975). Montrose, L. A., The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Mullaney, S., The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Nadal López, G., El corsarisme mallorquí a la Mediterrània occidental, 1652–1698, un commerç forçat (Palma de Mallorca, 1986). Netzloff, M., England’s Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Nerlich, M., Ideology of Adventure: Studies in Modern Consciousness, 1100–1750, Volume 1, trans. Ruth Crowley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). Nichols, P., Sir Francis Drake Reuiued: Calling vpon this Dull or Effeminate Age, to folowe his Noble Steps for Gold & Silver (London: Nicholas Bourne, 1626). Okeley, W., Eben-Ezer: Or, A Small Monument of Great Mercy (London: Nat. Ponder, 1675). Oppenheim, L., International Law 2 vols, 7th edn (London: Longmans, 1948). Parker, K. (ed.) Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London: Routledge, 1999). ——— ‘Barbary in Early Modern England, 1550–1685’, in Abdeljelil Temimi and Mohamed Salah Omri (eds) The Movement of People and Ideas between Britain and the Maghreb (Zaghouan: Fondation Temimi, 2003), pp.125–51. Pearson, M., The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003). Peele, G. A Farewell. Entituled to the famous and fortunate Generalls of our English forces: Sir Iohn Norris & Syr Frauncis Drake (London: I. C. 1589). Percy, T., Reliques of Ancient English Poetry 3 vols, 4th edn (London: L. A. Lewis, 1839). Potter, L., ‘Pirates and “turning Turk” in Renaissance Drama’, in Jean-Pierre Maquerlot and Michèle Willems (eds) Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Playfair, R. L., The Scourge of Christendom (London: Smith, Elder, 1884). Quiller-Couch, A., The Oxford Book of Ballads (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910). Quinn, D. B. and Ryan, A. N., England’s Sea Empire, 1550–1642 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983). Ralegh, W., Sir Walter Raleigh his Apologie for his voyage to Guiana (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1650). Rediker, M., Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). ——— Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (London: Verso, 2004). Ringler, W. A., ‘The Number of Actors in Shakespeare’s Early Plays’, in G. E. Bentley (ed.) The Seventeenth Century Stage: a Collection of Critical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp.110–34. Robarts, H. A most friendly farewell, Giuen by a welwiller to the right worshipful Sir Frauncis Drake knight (London: Walter Mantell and Thomas Lawe, 1585). Rodger, N. A. M., The Safeguard of the Sea. A Naval History of Great Britain: Volume One, 660–1649 (London: HarperCollins, 1997).

234 Select Bibliography Rowse, A. L., Tudor Cornwall [1941] (Truro: Truran Books, 2005). Rubin, A. P., The Law of Piracy 2nd edn (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1998). Russell, J., The Story of Leith (London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1922). Sales, R., Christopher Marlowe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). Salzman, P., Literary Culture in Jacobean England: Reading 1621 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Scanlan, T., Colonial Writing and the New World 1583–1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Schwartz, K., Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000). Seed, P., Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Senior, C. M., A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in its Heyday (New York: Crane, Russack & Co., 1976). Shapiro, J., Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Sharpe, J. A., ‘“Last Dying Speeches”: Religion, ideology and public execution in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present, 107 (1985), 147–65. Sharpe, K., The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992). Shepherd, S., Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth Century Drama (Brighton: Harvester, 1981). Skura, M. A., Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Smith, M. E., ‘The Theater and the Scaffold: Death as Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 32 (1992), 217–32. Smith, R. C., Vanguard of Empire. Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Somogyi, N. de., Shakespeare’s Theatre of War (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). Sprague, A. C., The Doubling of Parts in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1966). Stallybrass, P., ‘Worn Worlds: Clothes and Identity on the Renaissance Stage’, in M. de Grazia, M. Quilligan and P. Stallybrass (eds) Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.289–320. Starr, G. ‘Escape from Barbary: A Seventeenth Century Genre’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 29 (1965–6), 35–52. Stanley, J., Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages (London: Pandora, 1995). Stow, J., The Annales of England … collected out of the most Autenticall Authors, records, and other Monuments of Antiquitie, … encreased and continued from the first habitation untill this present yeare 1605 (London: G. Bishop and T. Adams, 1605). ——— A Survey of London, Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (ed.) 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1908). Subrahmanyam, S., The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Sugden, J., Sir Francis Drake (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1990). Thomson, J. E., Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

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Index Abd al-Karim Karim, 199n34 Abd al-Malik, Moroccan ruler, 61, 198n17 Abd al-Qadir al-Mashrafi al-Jazairi, 61, 198n20 Abderrahmane El Moudden, 198n17 Abdesselem, Ahmed, 200n40 Abu Abdallah Muhammad bin Ayshun al-Sharat, 200n38 Abu Bakr Albu Khasibi, 197n1 Abu Ismail bin Awdah al-Mazari, 198n19 Adams, Thomas, 215n32 Admiralty Court, the, 33 Africa, 6, 15–16, 18, 48, 53, 56, 57, 61, 70, 108, 172, 177, 182–3 Aghadir, 68 Ahmad bin Muhammad Al-Maqqari, 61, 198n18 Ahmad bin Muhammad bin al-Qadi, 65 Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi, 62, 199n26 al-Araish, 57 Al-Fishtali, 199n34, 200n48 Al-Mazari, 61, 198n19, 200n50 al-Qadiri, Ahmad, 65, 199n35 Al-Samarrai, Q., 198n6 al-Zayyani, 199n25, 200n50 Algeria, 15, 60, 67, 172, 182–3 Algiers, 29, 66, 68, 174, 182–3 Amazons, 17, 118, 120–9, 132–3, 167 American national identity, 27, 67, 78–9, 86, 104, 137, 139, 165, 172, 178, 182, 191n29, 213n5 Anand, R. P., 110, 209nn10, 13, 210nn15, 22 Anderson, Adam, 172–3, 222nn9, 11 Anderson, Benedict, 137, 215n2 Andrews, K. R., 25, 29, 188n32, 190nn22–3, 191nn28, 33, 192nn53–5, 63, 193n78, 193n1, 205n9, 219nn15, 17, 220nn32, 59

Anglo-French relations, 63, 65–7, 71,77, 81–2, 152, 157–9, 222n8, 224n34 Anglo-Irish relations, 15, 42–5, 48, 51, 53–4, 120, 158 Anglo-Ottoman relations, 29, 60–1, 71, 75, 82–4, 88, 91, 97, 170, 172, 175–6, 203n47 Anglo-Spanish relations, 12, 15, 25, 27–8, 37–8, 41, 44–7, 67, 71, 91, 116, 138, 144–8, 154–62, 166–8, 174–5, 192n58, 195n26, 201n8, 216n17 Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95, 74–89 Anstruther, G., 220n37 Antonio, Don, 81–82 Appleby, J. C., 15, 109, 119, 163, 196nn45, 48, 53, 197n55, 58–9, 74, 219nn16–17, 221n61 Arasaratnam, Sinnapah, 209n8 Arber, Edward, 219n26 Archer, John Michael, 142 Archer, John Michael, 216n27 Armada, the, 12, 16, 45, 74, 76, 80, 82, 87–8, 138, 145–6, 160, 217n40 Arnold, 156–60 Arwennack, 86 Ashburnham, J., 188n30 Asin, Jaime Oliver, 200n53 Atkinson, C., 13, 18, 34, 151, 153–62, 168, 190n22, 207n27, 218n1 Atlantic, 43, 46, 49, 55, 61 Ayyar, Krishna K. V., 209nn7, 10 Bacon, Francis, 165–7, 221nn71, 75, 77–8 Baepler, Paul, 192n43 Balibar, Étienne, 142, 216n27 Baltimore, 50, 52 Barbary states, 12–13, 29–31, 79, 88, 172–4, 222n11 piracy and captivity in the early modern Mediterranean, 56–73 236

Index 237 Barnby, H. G., 224n28 Barrie, J. M., 13 Bartels, E., 205n6 Barton, Anne, 217n35 Barton, Sir Andrew, 4, 7–8, 10, 12, 188n22 Battle of Flodden, 11 Beckingham, C. F., 210n18 Beer, A. R., 219nn5, 19, 220n53, 221nn65, 67–8, 70–1, 76, 80 Bencherif, O., 224n28 Bentley, G. E., 212nn1–2, 213n4 Benton, L., 27, 31–2, 36, 190nn10, 21, 191nn26, 37, 192nn45, 50, 52, 56–7, 193n76 Berckman, E., 193n70 Berek, P., 205n7 Berry, R., 208n31 Bevington, D., 207n30 Bilbrough, J., 80, 82, 202nn20–2, 28, 203nn29–30, 204n72 bin Abi Diyaf, Ahmad, 73 bin Ghanim, Ahmad, 64 Biscaner, 55 ‘Black Legend’, 157 Boatswain, 121 Boorde, A., 56, 197n2, 222n7 Bowers, F., 212n2 Bowers, R. H., 221n69 Bowers, Rick, 207n25 Boxer, C. R., 200n47 Boyer, 198n16 Bradley, D., 99, 206n11, 208n36 Braudel, Fernand, 191n36 Brazil, 57, 114 Brenner, R., 150, 206n10, 208n37, 218n58 British Isles, 33, 42, 44, 55 Britishness, 14, 28, 33–5, 42, 44, 73, 137–8, 179, 222n3, 224n37, 225n41 Brome, William, 7 Brotton, Jerry, 189n35 Brown, K. M., 194n14 Browne, William, 139, 149, 218nn48, 55 Bu Sharab, A., 57, 197nn3–4, 198n12 Burnett, M. T., 205n6

Bush, G., 222n1 Button, J., 174–5 Cadiz, 57, 61 Calicut, 16, 105–9, 114–15 Callahan, North, 224n37 Camden, William, 218nn53, 57 Canny, N., 194n12, 196n47 Captivity, 55, 94, 119, 171, 192n46, 202n19 Barbary captivity, 79, 88 of Maghribian ports, 172–8 Muslim captivity, 15, 199n26 and piracy, in the early modern Mediterranean, 56–73 Cardaillac, Louis, 198n14 Carew, R., 204nn54, 60, 62 Carey, F., 192n55 Carswell, John, 211n44 Cartelli, T., 205n6 Cassese, Antonio, 22, 190n8 Casson, Lionel, 211n44 Catholicism, 14, 28, 44, 49, 67, 75–80, 87, 148, 157–8, 170, 174–7 Chambers, Anne, 213n12 Charles I – attitude to piracy, 11, 148 Charles I, 148 Chaudhuri, K. N., 209n8, 210n16 Cheah, Pheng, 137, 143, 215n1, 217n34 Chew, S., 93, 102, 206n20, 208n43 Chichester, Sir Arthur, 42, 47–8, 55, 196n37 Child, F. J., 187n21, 188n22 China, 108, 110 Circumcision, 102, 176 Clark, Grover, 190n19 Clark, I., 213n7 Clark, S., 213n7 Clifford, James, 201n57 Cogswell, Thomas, 218n51 Colley, L., 57, 198n10 Collinson, Patrick, 217n27 Colonisation, 34 Columbus, Christopher, 107 Constantinople, 83, 91 Conversion, 16, 30, 65, 70, 79, 91–4, 97–102, 202n20, 207n23 Cordingly, D., 188n32, 208n1

238 Index Corsairs, 12–15, 60–3, 109, 172, 175–179, 191n40, 223n22 infidel corsairs and European renegades, 29–31 Cortes, Martin, 212n56 Counter-Reformation, 170 Criminality, 15, 20–6, 31, 34–8, 46–7, 52, 107, 152–5, 189n1, 190n9 Croft, P., 220n33 Cross-dressing, 97 Cruickshank, D., 87, 204nn52, 65 Cummins, John, 215n8 D’Aranda, E., 223n24 da Gama, Vasco, 105, 108, 111–12, 114–15, 209n11 Daborne, Robert, 3, 6, 92–3, 95, 101, 103, 120, 206n12 Davenant, W., 149 Davidson, Thomas, 138 Davies, Rosalind, 221nn62, 64, 66 Dawson, A. B., 208n46 de Amezola, Don Carlos, 203n50 de Barros, João, 114, 211n47 de Camões, Luís Vaz, 105, 110, 115–16 de Cartigny, Jean, 216n23 de Cottenberg, Rudt, 200n45 de Grazia, Margreta, 205n5 de Henin, Jorge, 200n52 de Medina, Pedro, 114, 211n43 de Somogyi, Nick, 207n26 de Vaca, Cabeza, 60 de Vega, Lope, 191n29 Dee, John, 113, 211n41 Defrémery, C., 210n18 Dekker, Thomas, 60, 93, 96 Deleuze, Gilles, 216n11, 217n28 Dent, J. M., 142 Derrida, Jaques, 147, 218nn44–6 Deschamps, H., 209n1 Dessen, A. C., 207n30 Dickinson, R., 87, 203n50, 204nn51, 55–6, 58 Dillie, B. W., 201n11 Dimmock, M., 15–16, 171, 184, 204n57 Diplomatic Relations, 7, 69, 91, 157, 171 Doh, Herman, 220n46 Domestic policy – English, 14

Doran, Susan, 217n40 Drake, Sir Francis, 17, 38, 26–8, 45, 85, 138–9, 141–2, 146, 148–51, 154, 159, 161, 163, 191n29, 215nn7–8, 216nn17, 23 Draper, Benjamin P., 216n10 Drayton, Claire, 218n48 Drayton, Michael, 139, 147 Dryden, John, 18, 170–1 Dunluce Castle, 44 Earle, P., 31, 188n32, 191nn35, 42, 192nn48–9, 61–2, 64, 193n2, 194n8, 221n61, 223n26 East India Company, 149 Eden, Richard, 116 Edwards, Philip, 212n2 Edwards, R. Dudley, 196nn30, 36, 49–50, 52, 197nn57–8, 60, 70, 72 Egypt, 60, 64, 109 Elizabeth I – attitude to piracy, 44, 123, 144–6, 213n4, 217nn36, 40 Elizabeth, 91–2, 150, 159 Elliot, J. H., 203n40 Ellis, S. G., 195n22 Empire, 7–19, 20–38, 41–57, 63, 65, 70 Anglo-American writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire, 169–86 British Empire, 14, 149 European empire, 60–1, 71, 73 Holy Roman Empire, 7 Ottoman Empire, 14, 29, 82, 91, 97 Spanish empire, 28 Young American attitudes to the Maghrib, 178–84 England, 4, 8, 11, 13–14, 27, 33, 41, 44–5, 52, 71, 76–7, 81–3, 85, 86, 145, 157, 168, 173 English Channel, 74, 110 English law, 21, 36, 47, 189n7 Englishness, 91, 94–5, 99, 102, 119–20, 138–50, 154–9, 167 English writings on the Maghrib, 172–8 and Moroccan society and civilization, 70 and Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95, 74–89

Index 239 Erasmus, 214n29 Ethiopia, 175 Europe, 29, 87, 107–9, 175 Eysturlid, L. W., 206n10, 208nn38–9 Favata, Martin A., 198n15 Female captives, 68, 127 Female pirates, 118, 120–3, 133 Female sexuality, 119 Ferdinand, 54, 59, 94–6 Fernández, José B., 198n15 Fisher, G., 188n32 Fitzgeffrey, C., 139, 144, 146–7 Fletcher, F., 118, 121, 127, 129, 133–4, 148, 214n17 Fletcher, John, 118, 213n13 Foreign policy – English, 18–19, 27, 91, 119, 139, 164, 166, 172, 185 Foss, J., 224n28 Foster, Verna A., 215n33 Foucault, M., 18, 151–2, 155, 218nn2–4, 18 France, 4, 7, 11, 41, 65, 66, 70, 84, 82, 88 Free trade, 18, 171, 174, 180 Freeman, Thomas S., 217n40 Friedman, Ellen G., 192n45 Frye, Elizabeth, 217n39 Frye, Susan, 145 Fuchs, B., 25, 92, 160, 188n32, 190n18, 191n29, 192n47, 193n80, 207n27, 220n47, 221n73, 206nn12, 15 Fuller, Mary, 143–4, 149–50, 217n30, 37, 218n56 Furber, Holden, 209n8 Furnivall, F. J., 197n2 Gaelic Ireland, 43, 109 Gender behaviour, 4, 11, 15, 17, 90, 118–34 Genoa, 57, 175 Genre, 13, 17, 60, 92, 118–34, 120, 140–1, 155, 202n19 Gentili, Alberico, 30, 191nn39–40 Georgijevic, Bartholomej, 202n25 Gesellschaft, Geographische K. K., 211n46

Ghosts, 137–50 Gibb, H. A. R., 199n31 Gibson, Colin, 212n2 Gilbert, 154 Ginzburg, Carlo, 198n11 Gismund, 94–6, 100 Goa, 109, 175 Gosse, P., 188n32, 193n72 Gossett, S., 213n10, 214n23 Great Britain, 178, 180 Greenblatt, Stephen J., 28, 191n31, 192n60, 205n6 Greene, Robert, 86, 204n57 Greg, W. W., 206n11 Grenville, Sir Richard, 142, 144, 146–7 Grossrichard, Alain, 207n28 Grotius, Hugo, 30, 191n38 Guattari, Félix, 216n11, 217n28 Guiana, 33, 151, 164, 168 Gunner, 121, 131 Gurr, A., 205n1, 219n13 Hacke, William, 223n22 Hakluyt, R., 142–3, 173, 195n21, 203n47, 216n18, 217nn29, 32, 222nn10, 12 Hall, E., 6–8, 187nn13–14, 17–19 Harding, Christopher, 14–15, 91, 187n20, 193n1 Harvey, L. P., 198n7 Harward, S., 201nn4, 6, 202n26 Hasleton, Richard, 79, 202n27 Haslop, H., 216n20, 217n42 Hattaway, M., 208n45 Hawkins, 85, 154 Hazlitt, W. Carew, 218n48 Hebb, D. D., 188n32, 205n9, 221n60, 223n17 Heers, J., 188n32, 214n22 Helgerson, R., 189n36, 217n31 Heliodorus, 187n1 Henry III, King, 76 Henry IV, King, 173 Henry VIII – attitude to piracy, 7, 9, 11, 140 Henry VIII, King, 7, 9, 11 Hensman, Bertha, 212n1 Herbert, Sir Henry, 212n2

240 Index Heywood, T., 18, 49, 120, 123, 126, 139, 145–6, 149, 151, 196n41, 197n64, 207n27, 217n40, 218n1, 220nn48–50, 55–8 Hill, C., 34–5, 37, 193nn67, 69, 210n30 Hill, George, 193n79, 194n13 Hillier, Tim, 189n5 Hobsbawm, Eric, 215n6 Hogan, E., 196n35 Holland, Henry, 28 Holt, P. M., 199n31 ‘Holy War’, 16, 80, 87–8, 177 Hostis humani generis, 14, 20–38 Hotson, Leslie, 219n9 Hourani, G. F., 211n44 Howard, Jean E., 10, 12, 213n5 Hoy, 213n9 Humphreys, D., 19, 178–85, 224nn29–40, 42 Hutchings, Mark, 16, 31, 77, 80, 202n20 Hyland, P., 98, 208n33 Ibn abi Mahali, 57, 198n5 Ibn al-Qadi, 199n33 Ibn Ghanim, 65 Ibn Majid, Ahmad, 114 Imperialism, 17–19, 25, 28, 44, 57, 60, 71, 110–11, 113–17, 138, 143–4, 149, 171–2, 185 India, 6, 16, 109 Indian Ocean, 16–17, 105, 111, 114–15, 209n18, 209n11, 211n44 pirates of, 106–10 International Law, 20–2, 189n7 Ireland, 13, 15, 42–3, 50, 53–5 Islam, 16, 56, 60–4, 69–71, 86, 91, 97, 101, 115, 169–71, 177–8, 191n36, 192n47, 203n47, 207n23 Islamdom, 71 James I and VI, King, 11, 44, 54, 118 James III, King, 6 James IV, King, 4, 6, 9–10 James I and VI – attitude to piracy, 11, 34, 36, 44, 54, 118, 144, 163, 188n22, 217n36 Jameson, Franklin, 192n56

Jameson, Fredric, 147, 217n43 Jardine, L., 126, 205n3, 214n20 Jennings, B., 197n74 Jerusalem, 22, 175 Jewkes, W. T., 138, 215n4, 215nn8–9 Jews, 16, 46, 92, 97 Jingoism, 138 Joao de Nova, 108 Jones, A. R., 205n5, 208n48, 219n14, 220nn51–2 Jones, Katherine Duncan, 214n19 Jonson, Arthur, 223n14 Jowitt, C.,17, 35, 93, 97, 119, 145, 190n22, 193nn68, 71, 195n19, 206nn12, 17, 212n2, 217n38, 213n6, 215n31 Julien, Charles Andre, 201n58 Kelsey, H., 26–8, 191nn24–5, 29–30, 215n7, 216n17 Kevin Marshall, C., 190n13 Kidnie, Margaret Jane, 205n4 King, T. J., 207n30 Klein, Bernhard, 14, 16–17 Klein, Kerwin Lee, 215n3 Knapp, J., 189n36 Knutson, R., 207n22 Kontorovich, E., 23, 190nn9, 10–11, 14 L’Estrange Ewen, C., 192n64, 219n6, 220nn44–5 Lake, P., 18, 151, 155, 219nn22–5 Lane, K. E., 188n32, 193n83 Law of Nations, 21–2, 189n1 Law of the sea, 20–38, 189nn2, 7 Le Strange, G., 198nn24–5 Lee, M., 188n24 Legal definitions of piracy, 14–15 Lenz, J., 205n2 Letters of marque, 6–7, 24–5, 32, 154, 161–2, 165, 187n9, 190nn16, 22 Letters of reprisal, 6, 25–6 Levin, R., 95, 207n25 Levy, Avig der, 207n29 Levy, F. J., 195n15 Lewis, Bernard, 199n31 Lezra, Jaques, 187n2 Linebaugh, P., 209n6

Index 241 Linton, J. P., 218n57 Lisbon, 105, 107 Lithgow, William, 206n13 Lloyd, David, 139, 216n13 London, 97, 153 Longfield, A. K., 194n7 Lord High Admiral, 12, 32, 153 Lupton, Julia Reinhard, 142, 216n27 Lyly, W., 201n15 Lynch, M., 194n14 MacCarthy-Morrogh, M., 195n22 MacInnes, Rev. J., 194nn10–12 Mackie, R. L., 7, 187nn5, 8, 10, 15 MacLean, G., 18–19, 206n12, 207n24, 222nn4–6 Maddison, Francis, 211n49 Magharibi, 71 Maghrib, 63, 178 Mainwaring, G. E., 42, 191n34, 194n3, 195n21 Malabar, 109, 115 Male sexuality, 120, 122–3, 126, 133, 145 Maquerlot, Jean-Pierre, 213n3 Markham, Gervase, 144, 146–7 Marlowe, Christopher, 95 Marsden, R. G., 197n59 Marshalsea Prison, 153 Martin, Henry, 188n23 Marx, Karl, 218n54 Massinger, Philip, 118, 121, 127, 129, 133–4, 213n13, 214n17 Matar, N., 15, 30, 78, 84, 87, 108, 170, 178, 181, 192nn44, 46, 201n9, 203n49, 206nn12, 16, 207nn21, 23, 208nn41, 49, 212n54, 222n2 Mathew, D., 195n16 McEachern, Claire, 147, 218n47 McLeod, B., 189n36 McPherson, K., 115, 209n8, 212nn51–2, 55 Mediterranean, 41, 52, 61, 92, 97, 109, 115, 175, 180 Merchants, 6–12, 24, 26–9, 32, 38, 51, 65, 78, 94–9, 103, 107–9, 115, 143, 157, 171–4, 182, 209n11, 211n44, 216n17

Mezzine, Mohamed, 199n28 Middleton, Thomas, 93, 96, 175 Millar, A., 222n9 Minsheu, Iohn, 211n42 Mohammad bin Yousuf al-Zayyani, 200n49 Mollat, M., 193n2 Montgomery Watt, W., 223n27 Montrose, L. A., 205n1 Morocco, 15, 56–7, 60, 64–6, 69–70, 173–4 Mozambique, 110–11 Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Omar al-Udwani, 62, 198n22 Muhammad bu Jindar, 201n56 Muhammad, Prophet, 70 Mulholland, Paul, 206n18 Mullaney, S., 205n1 Munro, Lucy, 17, 98 Munster, 42, 45–6, 48, 50, 52 Murad III, Ottoman Sultan, 61 Murphey, Rhoads, 173, 223n13 Murray, Athol, 187n6 Mustapha, Jean Armand, 70 Nambiar, O. K., 209n14 National Identity, 19, 27, 67, 78–9, 86, 104, 137, 165, 172, 178, 182, 191n29, 206n12, 213n5 Nationhood, 137–50 Naval history, 187n16, 194n11, 220n35 Navigation, 16–17, 28–9, 34, 211n48, 211–12n49 and piracy, in The Lusiads, 105–17 Necipoglu, Gulru, 204n64 Nerlich, M., 141, 216nn24–5 Netzloff, M., 17, 151, 156, 191n29, 219nn26–7 New World, the, 25, 28, 60, 116, 159, 222n3, 224n37 Nicholas, E., 188n30 Nichols, P., 148 Norbrook, David, 148, 214n27, 218n52 Noyes, Alfred, 138 O’Callaghan, Michelle, 147, 218nn49–50 O’Dowd, Mary, 213n12

242 Index O’Malley, Grannia, 43–4, 194n9 Ohlmeyer, J. H., 194n12 Okeley, W., 223n23 Oppenheim, L., 21, 189nn1, 7 Oppenheim, M., 197n68 Orgel, Stephen, 214n28 Oriental travel, 170 Ottoman empire, the, 29, 82, 91, 97 Outlaws, 13–15, 107, 161–3, 166, 168, 193n71 pirates as, in the early modern law of the sea, 20–38 Overbury, Thomas, 131 Parker, K., 69, 200n51, 207n22 Parr, Anthony, 214n26 Parry, J. H., 211n49 Payton, Philip, 204n63 Pearson, D’Orsay W., 214n24 Pearson, M., 209n8, 210n20, 211n44 Peele, G., 139–41, 216n19 Penzance, 84, 86 Perin, W. G., 191n34 Perrin, W. E., 194n3, 195n21 Perry, Curtis, 144 Petrie, Donald A., 190n20 Philip II, 157, 159 Piracy – definitions of, 1–38 Pirates as criminals, 20–6, 31, 34–8, 46–7, 52, 107, 152–5, 189n1, 190n9 Pirates as heroic figures, 13, 27, 37, 75, 79, 94–7, 105–12, 117, 138, 142, 146, 155, 161, 182, 185, 207n24 Pirates as legal defendants, 31–5 Pirates – fictional, 65 Playfair, R. L., 223n16 Pocock, J. G. A., 217n27 Polo, Marco, 109 Portugal, 6, 13–14, 41, 56, 56–7, 61, 69, 76, 81–2, 88, 105, 107, 109, 110, 113 Potter, L., 206nn12, 14 Privateering – definitions of, 24–9 Prize law, 25 Protestantism, 14, 28, 45, 75–81, 158–9, 170, 174, 177, 184

Purser, 13, 18, 49, 151–62, 168, 207n27 Questier, Michael, 155, 219n22 Quilligan, Maureen, 205n5 Quinn, D. B., 205n9, 220n32 Quint, David, 141, 216nn21–3 Ralegh, W., 18, 32–3, 36, 38, 148–9, 151–2, 154–5, 162–8, 192nn58–9, 221nn65, 72, 79 Ranger, Terence, 215n6 Ravenstein, E. G., 209n11 Razzuq, Muhammad, 198n5 Red Sea, 108–9, 175 Rediker, M., 188n32, 194n8, 208n1, 209nn2, 6, 210n30 Reformation, the, 47, 75, 170, 222n2 Renan, Ernest, 146, 217n41 Renegades, 13, 16–17, 29–31, 75, 79, 86, 92–4, 119, 175, 206n16 Restoration, the, 170, 222n4 Reynolds, Thomas, 148 Ricoeur, Paul, 215n3 Riley, James, 224n28 Ringler, W. A., Jr, 207n30 Robarts, H., 139, 141, 146, 149, 216n16 Robert Don Higginbottom, 223n22, 224n37 Roberts, Lewes, 222n11 Rodger, N. A. M., 7, 187nn16, 26–9, 220nn35, 42 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 193n85 Rowlands, Samuel, 153, 219n8 Rowley, W., 18, 49, 120, 151, 196n41, 197n64, 207n27, 218n1, 220nn48–50, 55–8 Rowse, A. L., 86, 201nn3, 10, 13–14, 202nn17–18, 203n48, 204nn53, 59, 61 Rubin, A. P., 190n9 Russell, J., 187nn4, 7, 9 Ryan, A. N., 205n9, 220n32 Rymer, Thomas, 173 Sales, R., 205n6 Salzman, P., 119, 213n8 Sanguinetti, B. R., 210n18

Index 243 Scaffold speeches, 18, 35, 97, 151–68, 193n71, 221n80 Scanlan, T., 220n34 Schonhorn, Manuel, 208n1 Schwartz, K., 126, 214n21 Schwarzenberger, Georg, 193n75 Schwyzer, Philip, 215n3 Scotland, 4, 8, 11, 43–4, 77 Scott, Sir William, 189n4 Scott, Thomas, 148, 215n7 Seed, P., 211n38 Senior, C. M., 193nn1–2, 195nn20, 27, 219n15 Setton, Kenneth M., 222n2 Shakespeare, William, 3, 29, 38, 122, 128, 139, 154, 191n36, 216n15 Shapiro, J., 208n44 Sharpe, Dr Lionel, 151–2, 155, 165 Sharpe, J. A., 18, 219nn7, 21 Sharpe, K., 11, 188n25 Shepherd, S., 213n3, 213n7 Sidi Ali Çelebi, 114 ‘Silver Oare’, 160 Skilliter, Susan, 223n12 Skinner, Quentin, 210n36 Skura, M. A., 205n1 Slavery and slave trade, 16, 30, 37, 56, 63, 69, 71, 78, 83, 176 Smith, M. E., 207n27 Smith, R. C., 211n39 Spain, 11–14, 27, 34, 37, 41, 46–7, 52, 56–7, 61, 65–6, 75, 82, 84, 87–8, 91, 148, 151, 153, 159, 162–4, 175 Sprague, A. C., 207n30, 208n35 Stallybrass, P., 205n5, 208n48, 219n14, 220nn51–2 Stanley, J., 188n32, 213n11 Starr, G., 207n22 Stebbing, William, 221n63 Steele, Ian, 192n51 Stevenson, Laura, 141, 216n26 Stow, J., 219nn10–11 Stubbes, Philip, 90 Stukeley, Lewis, 221n71 Stukeley, Thomas, 140 Subrahmanyam, S., 209nn8–9, 14, 210nn15–16 Sugden, J., 215n5

Tamburlaine, 95 Taylor, Bruce, 198n23 Teorey, Matthew, 28, 191n32 Thompson, Edward, 221n64 Thomson, J., E., 14, 35, 37, 188nn31–3, 189n34, 190nn15, 17, 191nn35, 41, 193n65–6, 73, 81, 205n9, 220n54 Thomson, P., 98, 208n32 Thrower, N. J. W., 215n4 Tibault Suxbridge, 50 Tibbetts, G. R., 210n19, 211n45 Todd, M., 207n22 Tolan, J., 204n70 Trade, 4, 9, 13, 18, 25, 29, 34, 37–8, 41, 44, 47, 50–7, 71, 91, 99, 106–10, 133, 143, 154, 171–82, 189n4, 211n44, 222n11, 223n13 captivity and diplomacy, 172–8 Travel Writing, 3, 170 Trevelyan, R., 36, 192nn59–60, 193n77 Tripoli, 29, 68 Tunis, 29, 57, 68, 98, 100, 103 Tunisia, 15, 60 Turkey, 30, 57, 60 Turley, H., 188n32 Turner, Robert K., 213n4 ‘Turning Turk’, 31, 92, 100–4, 165, 202n20, 206n12, 207n24 Tyerman, C., 205n67 Tyler, R., 19, 223n28 Tyrants, 17, 65, 119–21, 131, 133, 180 Ulster, 42, 44 United States, 13, 18–19, 24, 61, 106, 178–85 Utopia, 106–7, 208n1, 214n27 Van Koningsveld, P. S., 198n6, 199n27 van Dulmen, Richard, 193n82 Vanan, Jamal, 199n37 Villiers, A., 106, 209nn3–5 Vitkus, Daniel, J., 27, 37, 188n32, 189n36, 191n27, 193n84, 202n25, 206n12, 206n19, 207n24, 208nn35, 42

244 Index Waith, E., 121, 213nn10, 13 Walton, T., 18, 151, 218n1 Wapping, 152–3 Ward, John, 195n19, 206n13 Warfare at sea, 24–6, 27–30, 37 Warren, James, 110, 210n21 Waters, David W., 210n23 Watkins, John, 144 Watt, T., 219n21 Webbe, E., 202n27, 223nn18–21

Wexford, 47–8, 52 Wiegers, G. A., 198n6, 199n27, 222n12 Willems, Michèle, 213n3 Williams, George Walton, 212n2 Williams, Sir Roger, 202n16 Wilson, R., 205n6 Winius, G. D., 201n11 Winterbottom, M., 214n14 Wolf, John B., 191n35 Woolf, D. R., 144, 217n36

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