The intercession of the Council, and also that of the queen, was unavailing: Philip, seeing the great principle involved, was obdurate, and commanded that the voyage should be stayed. In a later communication (December 17, 1555),[[278]] he expressed a wish to have the merchants compensated, but took no active steps to secure that end. A memorandum of the Council’s affairs, however, suggests that the queen herself paid them the costs of the goods which they had provided for the trade.[[279]] On December 30 Edward Castlyn, Jeffrey Allen, Rowland Fox, and Richard Stockbridge were summoned before the Council to hear its reluctant decision. By the queen’s command they and all other merchants concerned were to bring their ships to such places as were convenient, and there to discharge all the wares they had provided for the Guinea trade, such as were not vendible in any other place; receipts should be given and compensation paid. As to their other expenses, the matter of compensation should be considered.[[280]]
The queen at the same time wrote a letter to the King of Portugal acquainting him with the above decision.[[281]] The Venetian envoy, in a dispatch to his Government, states that the queen interceded with the ambassador of Portugal to consent to the Guinea voyage being made ‘this once only’, but that he would not agree. He adds that two or three ships had nevertheless gone secretly.[[282]]
The official prohibition of the Guinea trade was more ostensible than real. The Council had no intention of stopping it—possibly some of its members were financially interested—and was not prepared to go further than a purely paper submission to the demands of Philip and the Portuguese. Even the steps taken to prevent the individual voyage of Castlyn and his associates were not effectual; for although metal basins and sham jewellery formed part of the cargoes taken to Guinea, there was also generally a considerable quantity of cloth, which would not come under the description of goods not vendible elsewhere, and which would therefore not be surrendered. Such being the attitude of the Council, that of the customers and port authorities throughout the country may well be imagined. When large armed vessels were being manned and provisioned for long voyages and laden with goods which would find a market in no European port, they shut their eyes, or looked another way. And so, besides the three remaining Guinea expeditions of Mary’s reign of which Hakluyt has preserved the particulars, there are traces of several others, doubtless quite as successful, which King Philip, with all his influence over the queen, was quite unable to prevent.
While the official decision had been still under consideration, and while the ships of the syndicate already mentioned had been under a provisional arrest pending a final prohibition, another expedition had slipped off to Guinea on September 30, 1555, sailing from Newport in the Isle of Wight. It was under the command of William Towerson, a merchant of London, and was probably unconnected with the venture of Castlyn and his friends, of whom no mention is made. Towerson, who is himself the narrator of the voyage,[[283]] refers to the presence of other merchants in the ships, but it is very likely that he himself was the principal adventurer. This time there were only two ships, the Hart, of 60 tons, commanded by John Ralph, who had sailed with Locke in the previous year, and the Hind, commanded by William Carter, and probably not much larger, since Towerson himself sailed in the Hart. After finally clearing from Dartmouth on October 20 they made a fair run down to the Canary Islands, which were sighted on November 6. Thence standing in to the main land they fished in 14 fathoms and caught a quantity of sea bream. A day or two later they saw six Portuguese caravels fishing in the neighbourhood of the Rio del Oro in the present Spanish territory to the south of Morocco, and overhauling one of them they took various stores out of her which they liberally paid for.
On December 12 they sighted the Guinea coast, and on the 15th entered the River St. Vincent, eight leagues to the eastward of the River of Sestos. They found it impossible to beat back to the latter river on account of the winds and currents which set always to the eastward. In the River St. Vincent they obtained a small quantity of grains and ivory, but found the inhabitants very greedy and no profitable trading to be done. After coming very nearly to blows they departed and sailed on towards the Ivory Coast, doubling Cape Palmas on the 23rd. During the ensuing week they bought ivory in a river lying about 40 miles to the east of the cape, and on January 3, 1556, they sighted Cape Tres Puntas, the westernmost boundary of the Gold Coast. Arriving at the town of Samma, where last year a man had been kidnapped and the ships fired upon, they went in cautiously and were able to do little trading at first, but afterwards obtained a fair quantity of gold there. They next proceeded to Don John’s town, beyond the Mina, and after some bartering the sons of that chief attempted to betray them to the Portuguese. Some of the Hart’s men narrowly escaped an ambush, whereupon cannon were mounted in the ships’ boats, which sailed in close to the shore and engaged in an artillery duel with the Portuguese upon a hill. The English suffered no damage. At another place they found the negroes distrustful because some of them had been carried off by the master of the John Evangelist in the previous voyage.
From January 14 to February 4, however, they did excellent business on the more easterly portion of the coast, taking several pounds of gold daily. On the latter date, having taken stock of the provisions, and finding them running low, and finding also that the beer, without which no sailor at that time considered himself properly fed, was turning sour, they decided to begin the return voyage. One entry in Towerson’s log is significant as pointing to the existence of other clandestine expeditions at this time: ‘The fifth day we continued sailing and thought to have met with some English ships, but found none.’ He had evidently received information of their presence on the coast.
Towerson made a better homeward passage than did his predecessors. By February 13 he was clear of Cape Palmas, having passed the whole of the Gold and Ivory Coasts in nine days. He had found by experience, he says, that from two hours after midnight until eight in the morning the wind blew off the shore from the north-north-east, although all the rest of the time it was at south-west. On March 22 he had reached the latitude of Cape Verde, and a month later that of the Azores. On May 14, 1556, both his vessels dropped anchor at Bristol after a most prosperous voyage. Apparently not one man died in either crew. He does not give the total amount of the treasure secured, but a reckoning up of the various daily takings mentioned shows a total of about fifty tusks and 130 lb. of gold. Considering the small size of the two ships employed, and consequently of the general working expenses, this must have yielded an excellent return on the outlay.
The successful return of the Hart and the Hind was the signal for renewed preparations for further Guinea adventures, and for a fresh outburst of activity on the part of the Council, ostensibly intended to frustrate the same. On July 7, 1556, orders were sent to all customers, &c., not to permit any one to ship goods for ‘Mina, Guynye, Bynney or any other place thereabouts within the King of Portingales dominions’; and on the 28th the command was repeated with instructions for warning to be given to all merchants. Again on August 8 the Council addressed a letter to Anthony Hussey, Governor of the Merchant Adventurers in the Low Countries, to the effect that they had heard that Miles Mordeyne, a London merchant, had prepared a cargo in Flanders to be sent to Bristol and thence to Guinea. Hussey was to make search for the wares and sequester them until further orders, sending particulars as to their condition and value. On the same date they also sent word to the Mayor and Customers of Bristol to arrest and unload two ships which certain merchants contemplated setting forth for Guinea. The cargoes had been secretly conveyed to the Welsh coast to be loaded. Miles Mordeyne, who was apparently at Bristol, was to be sent before the Council. On September 22 Giles White and Thomas Chester were held to bail in £500 as a guarantee of their appearance when called upon in the matter of sending two ships from Bristol to Guinea.[[284]]
These measures give the impression that the Council was actually in earnest; but the fact remains that, in spite of them, Towerson and others were able to sail once more for Guinea in this same autumn. If there had been any genuine desire to put a stop to these enterprises nothing would have been easier than to imprison the adventurers on their return and to confiscate their spoils. The fact that this was never done leads to the conclusion that the Council was merely making a show of zeal to deprecate Philip’s anger.
Towerson, on his second expedition,[[285]] had to use more precaution than formerly in order to get safely away. The Tiger, of 120 tons, his principal ship, was equipped at Harwich, and sailed from thence to Scilly on September 14, 1556. At Scilly he was to meet the Hart and a pinnace of 16 tons which had been prepared at Bristol. These may have been the two vessels which the Council professed itself so anxious to arrest. The Hart and the pinnace failed to appear at the rendezvous, at which the Tiger arrived on the 28th. After waiting for some time Towerson in the Tiger put back to Plymouth, being joined there by his consorts shortly before the middle of November, and on the 15th of that month the whole squadron set sail for Africa nearly two months after the intended time of departure. The nature of the intrigue which finally set them at liberty can only be imagined, as no clue has survived, but it is difficult to suppose that they departed otherwise than with the knowledge and connivance of the Council.