Edited by

Claire Jowitt

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Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

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

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

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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

Elizabeth Heale AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTHORSHIP IN RENAISSANCE VERSE Chronicles of the Self Claire Jowitt (editor) PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, 1550–1650

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

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Pauline Kiernan STAGING SHAKESPEARE AT THE NEW GLOBE

Edited by

Claire Jowitt

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Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

© 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.

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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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.

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For Patrick

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Contents List of Figures

ix x

Notes on Contributors

Part I

xii

Piracy? Some Definitions

1

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

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

90 105

118

vii

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Acknowledgements

viii Contents

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

236

viii

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Part III

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.

58

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

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List of Figures

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

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements xi

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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.

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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

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Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors xiii

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.

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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.

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Part I

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Piracy? Some Definitions

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

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

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Claire Jowitt

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

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4 Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

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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.

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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

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6 Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

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

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Claire Jowitt 7

8 Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

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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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

/ 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)

10.1057/9780230627642preview - Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650, Edited by Claire Jowitt

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Claire Jowitt 9

10 Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550–1650

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,

10.1057/9780230627642preview - Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650, Edited by Claire Jowitt

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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:

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