‘Most honourable and my singular good lord: so it is that I durst not put myself in press to sue unto your good lordship for any help or succour to be obtained at your hands in my poor affairs, until such time (as) I had first put my ship and goods in adventure to search for the commodities of unknown countries, and seen the return thereof in safety; as, I thank God, hath metely well happened unto me, albeit by four parts not so well as I suppose it should if one of my pilots had not miscarried by the way. Wherefore, my singular good lord, I now, being somewhat bold by the reason aforesaid, but chiefly for the great hope and trust I have in your accustomed goodness, I most humbly beseech your good lordship to be mean for me to the King’s highness, to have of His Grace’s love four pieces of brass ordnance and a last of powder, upon good sureties to restore the same at a day. And furthermore, that it may please His Grace, upon the surety of an hundred pound lands, to lend me £2000 for the space of seven years towards the setting forth of three or four ships. And I doubt me not but in the mean time to do such feats of merchandise that it shall be to the King’s great advantage in His Grace’s custom, and to your good lordship’s honour for your help and furtherance herein....
Your most bounden orator,
William Hawkyns of Plymouth.’[[259]]
If the above refers to trading voyages to Guinea and Brazil, as seems reasonably probable, it would appear that Hawkins had given up going in person with a single ship, and was acting as manager of a fleet of vessels which were sent out under employed captains in the manner of a modern shipping company. The trade was evidently thought worthy of cultivation.
Another sidelight on the Brazil trade is thrown by a letter of Chapuys to Charles V.[[260]] Writing on January 2, 1541, he says that to obviate piracy he will try to get it enacted that no armed ship shall sail from the ports of England for Brazil and such countries without giving security not to attack the emperor’s ships. This supports the theory of the regular traffic which Hakluyt described as being carried on from Southampton at the time. It is significant also of the growing interest in strange lands that in 1541 a request was made by the Privy Council that Englishmen might be allowed to accompany the next Portuguese navigation to Calicut to buy spices for English consumption. Needless to say, it was not granted. During this period French adventurers were also making voyages to Brazil. Francis I forbade the enterprise to his subjects in December 1538, but withdrew his prohibition in 1540. Early in the next year the English envoy in France reported that the Portuguese ambassadors were daily suing for the stay of the ships that were being permitted to sail to Brazil. If they persisted in going, he added, they were likely to suffer, as the Portuguese had sent many armed vessels thither. It is strange that we have no record of similar protests being made in England, especially as a Portuguese ambassador was in the country at the time. Whether they were or not, it would seem that the Brazil voyages were discontinued during the ‘forties’ of the sixteenth century. The reason was probably to be found in the renewal of war with France and the unsettled state of the narrow seas quite as much as in Portuguese remonstrances or warships. On the outbreak of war the large vessels suitable for transatlantic voyages would be requisitioned for the fleet; and thenceforward for many years Hawkins and the others found piracy, thinly disguised under letters of marque, more profitable than trade.
A few facts relating to Hawkins and Reneger may be of interest. The former was a supporter of Cromwell, and acted as one of his numberless correspondents—to use no harsher word—on the affairs of his part of the country. There was a bitter feud, for reasons now unknown, between Hawkins and a faction headed by Thomas Bolle, who was mayor of Plymouth in 1537. In the previous year the parties had been summoned before Sir Piers Edgecumbe, and had agreed to waive their differences and live together in peace according to the old customs of the town. Bolle, however, wrote to Cromwell, in 1537, protesting against Hawkins’s conduct and accusing him and his friends of disturbing the peace of the place. He further asked that the Hawkins faction might be expelled from the town council. Hawkins evidently triumphed in this affair, for he was chosen mayor in 1538–9, at which time he and his friend James Horswell, who had previously been banished, were engaged in taking over Church property for the Government.
The war of 1544 brought him to the front in a new capacity. In September of that year a commission was made out for Hawkins, Horswell, and John Elyot, empowering them to proceed to sea and annoy the French with four, six, or eight barks at their own charges, and also to impress such mariners, gunners, victuals, and artillery as they needed. In May 1545 Hawkins was denounced by a Spaniard for ‘colouring’ French goods. He was also charged, jointly with Thomas Wyndham, with capturing a ship belonging to the Spaniards. He apparently paid little attention to the charge, for, two months later, he was committed to prison by the Council for selling the Spaniards’ goods. Next year another privateer of which he was part owner—the Mary Figge—took some goods illegally. The owners of the Mary Figge were slow to disgorge, and the personal authority of the king had to be called in to coerce them. Henry, in spite of his tigerish fierceness towards any others who withstood him, could always find a soft place in his heart for his sailors who erred from over-boldness; and he ordered that they should be given another chance to make amends before being punished. As Hakluyt relates, Hawkins was ‘for his wisdom, valour, experience and skill in sea causes, much esteemed and beloved of King Henry’. He gradually attained a kind of official position, being entrusted with the construction of a fort at Plymouth and with the supply of victuals for the fleet. He was Member of Parliament for his town in 1539, 1547, and 1553. He died at the end of the latter year or at the beginning of 1554. Energetic, versatile, able to turn his hand to politics, trade, discovery, or war, headstrong and quarrelsome, defiant of the law in an age of dreadful penalties, and yet withal patriotic and humane to the weak, it is a pity that our knowledge is so scanty of a career which was so typical of the new, progressive Englishmen of the Renaissance.
Robert Reneger at Southampton was something of a counterpart to William Hawkins of Plymouth. Like him, he was not content with petty coasting voyages and European trade hampered by the surviving shackles of mediaevalism. Like him also, he abandoned the lucrative Brazil trade for still more lucrative privateering when the renewal of the wars rendered the western seas of Europe a treasure-ground for the brave. In 1543 he obtained letters of marque against the French, after entering into a recognisance not to attack the Emperor’s subjects. Nevertheless, in March 1545, he and his son John Reneger, with four ships and a pinnace, captured off Cape St. Vincent a Spanish treasure-ship homeward bound from Hispaniola with gold, pearls, and sugar, and worth the dazzling sum of 29,315 ducats. Such a prize, foreshadowing the exploits of the Elizabethans, must have furnished an object-lesson on the wealth of the Spanish Indies which was never forgotten by the seamen of the southern shores of England.
ENGLISH WARSHIP, TEMP. HEN. VIII.
From Cott. MS. Aug. I. ii. 70.