The immediate consequence was almost a war with Spain. All English merchants and ships in that country were arrested and were not released for many months. Reneger asserted that he had only made just reprisal for the confiscation of a prize of his in Spain; and the Spaniards complained that he, although a known pirate, was swaggering at court as though he had done a meritorious deed. No doubt his merit consisted in a judicious distribution of shares of the plunder, after the manner of Drake in later times. Henry, who loved success and the man that gained it, and who was angry at the conduct of the Emperor in other matters, did not make any real attempt at enforcing reparation. It was only after his death that the Council compelled a partial restitution, and the affair was patched up. The richness of the prize may be gauged from the fact that the bribe of bullion offered to the king alone was worth at least £5,000 in modern currency. It was this sum (13 lb. 3 oz. of gold and 131 lb. 5 oz. of silver) which the Council ordered Reneger to restore. He is last heard of as Controller of the Port of Southampton in 1556.[[261]]
CHAPTER XI
THE AFRICAN VOYAGES
In the days of Queen Elizabeth, when Michael Locke and Martin Frobisher were contemplating the revival of the search for the North-West Passage, a certain James Alday wrote to the former, asking to be employed in the project.[[262]] As a recommendation he put forward the claim to have ‘invented’ the trade to the coast of Barbary in the reign of Edward VI. Sir John Lutterell and other merchants, he said, appointed him to command the first expedition to that land in the year 1551. But a great epidemic of the sweating sickness broke out; most of the promoters of the voyage died, and Alday himself was struck down. The ship, called the Lion of London, a vessel of 150 tons, was then at Portsmouth. Thomas Wyndham assumed the command and, leaving Alday behind, took her out to the Atlantic coast of Morocco to a port named Santa Cruz. There he traded, presumably with success, and returned, bringing with him two Moors of noble blood to England. Such is all that is now known of the opening voyage of the African trade, which assumed great importance in the decade which followed.
Thomas Wyndham was the son of a Norfolk knight who had served at sea against the French, and who became a councillor and vice-admiral under Henry VIII. He himself also served in the navy, taking part in the fighting against the French and Scots in 1544–5, and filling spare moments with piracy as did William Hawkins and others of Henry’s officers. In 1547 he was vice-admiral in the fleet which accompanied Somerset’s army up the east coast to the Battle of Pinkie. His next exploit was the Barbary voyage above described. By all accounts he was a fierce, masterful man, making more enemies than friends among his equals, but always able to command the loyalty of his crews; just the type of character of which the service and personality of King Henry bred such numerous examples, and whose traditions were handed on to the golden age of Elizabeth’s sea captains.
A second voyage to the Barbary coast was set forth in 1552, on a larger scale, and its history was written by Hakluyt[[263]] from the relation of James Thomas, Wyndham’s page on the expedition. Three vessels, the Lion, 150 tons, the Botolph, 80 tons, and a Portuguese caravel of 60 tons purchased at Newport in Wales, the whole fleet manned by 120 persons, sailed from Bristol at the beginning of May 1552 with Wyndham in chief command. Sir John Yorke, Sir William Gerard, Sir Thomas Wroth, Francis Lambert, and other London merchants, were the promoters or ‘adventurers’, as the investors were then called. After a prosperous passage, which occupied only a fortnight, the fleet arrived at Zafia on the coast of Barbary, in 32° latitude. Some goods were there set on shore to be conveyed to the city of Morocco, and they then proceeded to Santa Cruz, where the Lion had been in the previous year. A French ship was already in the port on their arrival, and hastened to take refuge under the walls of the town, a precaution which was not unjustifiable in view of the reputation for piracy which the English had by this time established at sea. The townspeople, mistaking their intentions, at first fired on them, but on recognizing them as having been there before, received them amicably. Three months were spent at this place before cargoes were completed, consisting of sugar, dates, almonds, and molasses.
On the return voyage the ships stood well out into the ocean in order to get a west wind for England. The Lion sprang a leak, and it was decided to make for Lancerota in the Canary Islands to effect repairs. Part of the Lion’s cargo was unloaded on the island, some of the men being set to guard it. The inhabitants took note of these proceedings and, seeing that the caravel was not of English build and supposing that she had been unlawfully acquired, made a sudden attack on the shore party. Some of the latter were captured and seventy chests of sugar were carried off. Seeing this, Wyndham sent three boats full of men to the rescue and put the Spaniards to flight, killing many and making prisoner the governor of the island, an old gentleman of seventy. After this, both sides having suffered losses, a parley ensued and a mutual restoration of prisoners was agreed upon. In addition, the Spaniards gave an acknowledgement of the damage inflicted which, it was decided, was to be recovered from the Spanish merchants residing in London.
The leak being mended the voyage was resumed. As the English were leaving the roadstead a Portuguese armed fleet sailed in, but did not give chase. The Portuguese had already taken great offence at the English trading on the African coast, and threatened to treat as belligerents any Englishmen found there. When it came to fighting, however, they were generally very faint-hearted, and they never succeeded in capturing an English ship.
After seven or eight weeks’ sailing Wyndham and his fleet reached Plymouth, and thence proceeded to London, arriving at the end of October 1552.
The experience gained in these voyages emboldened those interested to attempt a much more distant adventure, having for its object the acquisition of cargoes more valuable than dates and sugar. There was in London at that time a Portuguese refugee named Antonio Anes Pinteado. He is described as a skilled pilot and captain, who had formerly served on the coasts of Brazil and Guinea, and who was therefore well acquainted with the intricacies of the navigation in the latter region. The cause of his quarrel with his own country is not known, but he was so much in dread of his compatriots that he would not venture unaccompanied into their society even in London; neither was he to be deceived by the fair promises made him by the Portuguese Government, which doubtless was eager to stop the mouth of one who knew so much. This man placed his services at the disposal of the African adventurers, and was engaged by them to guide an expedition to the coasts of Guinea and Benin, where gold, ivory, and other rare commodities were obtainable. With him went Thomas Wyndham, who assumed the chief command. It does not plainly appear whether Pinteado was intended to have any share of the control of the expedition beyond what his duty as pilot entitled him to; if such was the intention of the promoters it was soon overruled by Wyndham, who kept the Portuguese in a strictly subordinate position.
The sole existing account of the voyage is not very satisfactory. It was written by Richard Eden and published by him in his Decades of the New World in 1555.[[264]] It is marred by the deep prejudice against Wyndham and a corresponding bias in favour of Pinteado displayed by the writer. Eden, although he did his contemporaries good service by arousing their interest in travel and geography, was one of those unhappy people who can discover nothing good in their own country and have nothing but censure for the acts of their own countrymen. His temperament can best be illustrated by a quotation of his own words. In the preface to the work above mentioned, after a general eulogy of the Spaniards and King Philip and a severe condemnation of those Englishmen who resented that monarch’s intrusion into the affairs of England, he proceeds: ‘Stoop, England, stoop, and learn to know thy lord and master, as horses and other brute beasts are taught to do. Be not indocible like tigers and dragons, and such other monsters noyous to mankind.... But oh, unthankfull England and void of honest shame! Who hath given the face of a whore and the tongue of a serpent without shame to speak venomous words in secret against the anointed of God ...’, with a great deal more to the same effect. To such a man Wyndham, asserting his authority, was an insane tyrant, ‘a terrible Hydra, with virtues few or none adorned’; while Pinteado, a renegade and traitor to his own country, selling that country’s most cherished secrets to its rivals, was ‘a wise, discreet and sober man, ... a man worthy to serve any prince, and most vilely used’. A realization of Eden’s infirmity is necessary to a just appreciation of his account of the voyage.