A gruesome sight, indeed, for the Queen—the courageous but gentle Katharine of Aragon—and her ladies!
There is a disposition in some quarters to regard the whole incident as fictitious, but this does not appear to be at all justifiable. Edward Hall, the Chronicler, was a lad of thirteen or fourteen at the time, and so may be regarded as, practically, a contemporary writer; while Bishop Leslie (1527-96) and George Buchanan (1506-82) must certainly have known many persons who remembered the fight. Moreover, it appears to be certain that the Lion and Jenny Pirwin were at that time added to the infant Navy, while the official correspondence of the King of Scotland tells of the grant and renewal of the letters of marque.
Barton was not entitled to the "handle" which the Elizabethan rhymester prefixes to his name: he was not a knight, though he might very possibly have become one, had he lived.
Whether or not he was, strictly speaking, a pirate is very doubtful; he was probably no worse in this respect than many, both in prior and later times, who have escaped the odium and the consequences of piracy. He was certainly empowered by his sovereign to overhaul and plunder Portuguese ships and appropriate the goods of Portuguese subjects; and if he permitted himself some latitude in the matter of Portuguese cargoes carried in English or other bottoms—well, there are some naval commanders of the twentieth century who would scarcely find themselves in a position to cast the first stone at him; there were some curious doings in the Russo-Japanese War, some of which still await the final decision of the courts.
Andrew Barton, as has already been hinted, was not, strictly speaking, a privateer; but he occupies an exceptional position, by reason of his intimate association with the two Scottish kings, which places him somewhat outside of the sphere of the ordinary letter of marque; while as an intrepid sea-fighter, in command of a private ship, he is second to none.
In the year 1592 the privateer Amity, of London, commanded by Thomas Whyte, captured two armed Spanish vessels, the St. Francisco and St. Peter, respectively of 130 and 150 tons. The crew of the Amity numbered forty-three, but we are not told her armament. The St. Francisco carried three iron guns, two copper pieces of twenty quintals each, and one of fourteen quintals—that is, two pretty nearly one ton in weight, and one about two-thirds of a ton; but it is not quite clear what weight of shot they fired. She had also twenty muskets on board, and carried a crew of twenty-eight men and two boys; she was licensed to carry twenty passengers. The force of the St. Peter is not given, but was probably slightly in excess of that of the St. Francisco. They were bound for the West Indies, with cargoes in which were included 112 tons of quicksilver—a pretty valuable freight—28 tons of papal Bulls,[3] and some wine.
The description of the action, by someone on board the Amity, is given in the Lansdowne MSS., and transcribed by Mr. M. Oppenheim, in his "History of the Administration of the Royal Navy," as below, except that the spelling is here modernised, to render the account more readily intelligible to the reader:
"The order and manner of the taking of the two ships laden with quicksilver and the Pope's Bulls, bound for the West Indies, by the Amity of London, Master Thomas Whyte.
"The 26th of July, 1592, being in 36 degrees, or thereabouts [somewhere off the Strait of Gibraltar], we had sight of the said ships, being distant from us about three or four leagues; by 7 of the clock we fetched them up and were within gunshot, whose boldness (having the King's arms displayed) did make us conceive them rather to be ships of war than laden with merchandise. And, as it doth appear by some of their own speeches, they made full account to have taken us, and was question among them whether they should carry us to St. Lucar [just north of Cadiz] or Lisbon. We waved each other amain [i.e. called upon each other to strike or lower the sails], they having placed themselves in warlike order, the one a cable's length before the other; we begun the fight, in the which we continued so fast as we were able to charge and discharge the space of five hours, being never a cable's length distant either of us the one from the other, in which time we received divers shots both in the hull of our ship, masts, and sails, to the number of 32 great shot which we told after the fight, besides five hundred musket-shot and harquebus à croc i.e. the St. Francisco], which was ahead the other, where lying aboard about an hour plying our ordnance and small shot, with the which we stowed all his men [i.e. drove them from the deck]; now they in the fly-boat[4]—the St. Peter—making account that we had entered our men, bare room with us [i.e. ran down upon us], meaning to have laid us aboard, and so to have entrapped us between them both, which we perceiving, made ready ordnance and fitted us so as we quitted ourselves of him, and he boarded his fellow, by which means they both fell from us