Casual and isolated traders visited the northern ports of Spain, more especially during the period of the English expedition to the north-east corner of that country in 1512, but internal communication in the Peninsula was so bad that the products of the south were only accessible to ships reaching the ports of Andalusia. Accordingly, the majority of English merchantmen sailed to Cadiz, to San Lucar at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and to Seville higher up the same river. The hereditary lords of San Lucar were the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, who, before the centralization of government had been effected, exercised an almost regal authority. English trade became sufficiently important to justify the merchants in asking for extensive privileges, which were granted by the then duke, Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, on March 14, 1517. The charter set forth that, in accordance with the petition of the English trading to his town of San Lucar de Barrameda, the duke granted them a piece of ground on which to build a Church of St. George; protection from the customs officials of Seville, Cadiz, and Xerez, who oppressed them because they preferred to land goods at San Lucar; restriction of the duties to amounts agreed upon in previous privileges; a promise to enforce payment of debts by Spaniards to Englishmen, the latter having suffered losses through the partiality of the law courts; protection to the English so that they might not be killed or molested, nor their goods sequestered; permission to the English to carry weapons by night and day; and several other minor concessions.[[192]] Some expressions in the document indicate that the English had already a governor and council, although the original charter of incorporation, if one ever existed, is not to be traced. Henceforward, San Lucar became the English head-quarters in Spain, being suitably situated for tapping the wealth of the southern part of the country, for the collection of merchandise from the Canaries and the West Indies, and for the transhipment of Mediterranean produce to English bottoms.
Matters proceeded smoothly until the divorce of Henry from Katherine of Aragon and the political reformation in England sounded the death-knell of the old friendship between the two countries. During this period Englishmen made fortunes in the Spanish trade, as may be judged from the example of Robert Thorne, who left £17,000, although he died comparatively young. Some of them even maintained factors in the jealously guarded Spanish colonies in the west. But ere long religious hatred was permanently to affect their position in the country. As early as 1528 a rupture was thought to be imminent between England and Spain, and the English were advised to withdraw their goods.[[193]] The expected struggle was avoided, but the merchants took steps to strengthen their position by a closer union among themselves and by obtaining renewed promises from the Spanish Government. On September 1, 1530, Henry VIII granted a licence to his subjects trading in Spain and Andalusia, who desired to associate for mutual relief and redress of grievances, to assemble once a year, or oftener if need were, and to elect one or more councillors with twelve ‘ancient and expert persons’ to be their assistants. The meeting might be held at Seville, Cadiz, or San Lucar, and the merchants of London, Bristol, and Southampton were to be represented. The councillor or governor (only one was actually elected at a time) was to be paid for his services and to be removable at the pleasure of his constituents. He and the twelve assistants were empowered to levy imposts and make ordinances for the welfare of the Company.[[194]] It will be seen that, in its general outlines, the constitution of the Spanish Company resembled that of the Merchant Adventurers. There was no hint of monopoly; any Englishman might engage in the trade so long as he paid the prescribed fees to the governor.
Confirmation of the above licence was obtained from Charles V, and the next step was to demand a renewal of the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s privileges of 1517, which had apparently not been maintained. On October 15, 1530, Richard Cooper, the newly-elected governor of the English, appeared before the justice of San Lucar and demanded fulfilment of the grant, which the judge ordered to be publicly proclaimed on two successive days.[[195]] The Church of St. George had already been built.
In the years following the incorporation of the Company the position of the English in Spain was not a happy one. They became unpopular with the people and still more with the Church. According to Spanish complaints the quality of English cloth fell off considerably, while an English letter of 1538 confesses that, owing to the use of many devices to defraud the customs, English credit was not so good as it had formerly been. Reference has been made, in the chapter devoted to Henry VII’s commercial policy, to a Spanish Navigation Act prohibiting the lading of foreign ships while native ones were lying idle in Spanish ports. Originally, the English were exempted from the operation of this law, but their privilege seems to have lapsed after the death of Henry VII. The law was not continuously enforced, but was revived from time to time after lying dormant, much to the hindrance of English trade. Another law, the enforcement of which was continuously held as a threat over English heads, forbade the import of ‘false’ cloths into Spain. The Spaniards frequently asserted that all the English cloth of this period was ‘false’ in the sense of the statute. It was not to the interest of Spain to put either of these laws into constant operation, but they served nevertheless as excellent pretexts for a sudden embargo on English trade. Such stoppages became increasingly frequent as time went on.
In spite of all disadvantages the volume of traffic was considerable. The Andalusian trade resembled that to Bordeaux, in that the bulk of the English vessels made their outward voyage in the autumn, arriving about the middle of October. The trading season was determined by the nature of the commodities obtained, the chief of which were wines, raisins, figs, oil, and salted meats. In one month sixty English ships were expected to arrive on the Andalusian coast.[[196]]
On April 24, 1539, the merchants at San Lucar assembled in the Church of St. George and confirmed the election of William Ostrigge or Ostrich, chosen as governor in the previous December. In accordance with the charter of Henry VIII they invested him with full powers of administration, and fixed a scale of dues to be paid to the Company by all English and Irish traders.[[197]] It was not long before Ostrich, who proved himself a capable governor, had matters of the utmost importance to deal with. Already, as early as 1534, Englishmen in Spain had been troubled by the Inquisition. In 1539 and 1540, the former of which years had been a time of the utmost tension between England and the Empire, there was a regular epidemic of persecution. Henry VIII had now finally repudiated the authority of the Pope, had abolished the smaller monasteries, had put down the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace with the utmost barbarity, and was in process of exterminating the remaining religious houses. His minister, Thomas Cromwell, was a known supporter of the Protestants, and was negotiating a matrimonial alliance intended to link England with the cause of the Protestant princes of Germany. Spanish bigotry had therefore every incentive to a savage persecution of such Englishmen as it could lay hands upon; and Charles V, who alone had the power to prevent it, held his hand and allowed matters to take their course.
In March 1539 it was reported, although the story lacks confirmation, that three English merchants were burnt in Spain, and that the Pope had granted remission of sins to any one who should kill an English heretic.[[198]] A letter from Henry VIII to Wyatt, who had been sent as ambassador to Spain in 1537,[[199]] explained that Flemish and Spanish ships had been arrested in England because ‘in sundry parts of the sea coast of Spain, English subjects are much molested at the instigation of slanderous preachers suborned thereto by the Bishop of Rome’s adherents’.[[200]] Relations were temporarily ameliorated by the inauguration, in April 1539, of the free trade policy by which foreign merchants had their duties reduced to the same amounts as those paid by Englishmen. But in January of the next year Wyatt wrote from Spain that the king should warn all English merchants that they traded to Spain at their own risk, for that there was a power there which depended upon their adversary the Pope. The Emperor refused to modify the action of the Inquisition.[[201]] Wyatt went so far as to threaten that if the Inquisition did not cease from troubling Englishmen commerce with Spain must cease.
The usual method of entrapping an Englishman was to engage him in conversation with regard to the Pope’s authority over Christendom. If he admitted it he was infringing the Act of Supremacy, which declared Henry to be the supreme head of the Church in England; if he denied it he was haled before the inquisitors, a heretic confessed. It speaks much for the loyalty and patriotism of Englishmen that they held firm on what was to most of them a purely political quibble, even when the shores of England were far away, and the dungeons of the Holy Office gaped close at hand.
The case of Thomas Pery furnishes a good illustration of inquisitorial methods. Writing from a Spanish prison to one of Cromwell’s servants, he describes how a priest got him into argument as to whether the king were a good Christian or no. On his maintaining that he was, he was arrested and taken to the Castle of Triana in Seville. He underwent numerous examinations, with and without torture, on the matter of the king’s orthodoxy, and was also pressed to say whether he thought the suppression of the monasteries was good or bad. Finally he, with four other Englishmen whom the Holy Office had seized for the same cause, were forced to do public penance, and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with forfeiture of all their goods. At the time of writing, he says, he was in prison without a blanket or garment to his back.[[202]] Ultimately, however, he was released, and came home to England to lay his complaint before the Council. The latter communicated with the Emperor, but it does not appear that any compensation was ever recovered.
William Ostrich convened a meeting of the merchants at San Lucar to protest against the treatment they were receiving, and a detailed complaint was transmitted to England. Thomas Pery and his companions had by this time been released, and had related their sufferings in person at San Lucar: