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The State University

The Graduate School

College of the Liberal Arts

THE ATLANTIC GATE:

THE ANGLO-HUGUENOT CHANNEL COMMUNITY, 1554-1685

A Dissertation in

History

by

Philip J. Hnatkovich

© 2014 Philip J. Hnatkovich

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May 2014

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The dissertation of Philip J. Hnatkovich was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Daniel C. Beaver Associate Professor of History Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

A. Gregg Roeber Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Studies

Matthew Restall Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History, Anthropology, and Women’s Studies

Deryck W. Holdsworth Professor of Geography

Michael Kulikowski History Department Head Professor of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

* Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.

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ABSTRACT

This study examines a system of trade, Protestant activism, privateering, and kinship that connected port communities in the during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing on evidence from urban archives in , , and , it considers the effect of Calvinist conversion, refugeeism, and the outbreak of religious warfare on port relationships in the trading region of southwest , , and Atlantic . This came to a peak after 1568, when a militant alignment of Huguenot and Elizabethan provincial elites oversaw a decades-long collaboration in privateering and experimental transatlantic plantation ventures. In the seventeenth century, the maritime society of the Channel region became a base for international Reformed family networks stretching to English and French North America. Altogether, the study seeks to link the social history of the with the expansion of transoceanic commercial enterprise in England and France and, in doing so, contribute to a more integrated, transnational history of the early Atlantic World. It contends that the Anglo-Huguenot Channel community produced merchant capital, maritime expertise, and formative models for northern trade and colonial settlement in a theretofore Spanish-dominated .

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………….. v Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..vi

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 Towards a new geography of the early Atlantic World.…………………………..1 Defining region on ’s Atlantic façade……………………………………..8 Plan of study……………………………………………………………………..22

Chapter 1. MEN OF SALT: REGION AND ECONOMY IN THE WESTERN CHANNEL………………………………………………………………………………25 A connected history of exchange………………………………………………...27 Regional economies and culture…………………………………………………34

Chapter 2. TWO MARITIME ……………………………………...77 Maritime in the western Channel………………….………………....79 Marian refugees in coastal Normandy: the roots of alliance…………………...114

Chapter 3. THE TRADE, MILITANT: CHANNEL PRIVATEERING IN THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY………………………………………………………………143 Sixteenth-century institutions and industries of reprisal………………………..147 Anglo-Huguenot alliance at La Rochelle, 1567-9……………………………...157 The western Channel privateering system, 1569-76…………………………....180 The Anglo-Huguenot Atlantic project, 1562-1603……………………………..207

Chapter 4. ENGLISH MERCHANTS AND PROTESTANT COMMERCIAL KINSHIP AT LA ROCHELLE, 1628-61……………………………………………………….....230 English merchants at La Rochelle, seventeenth century…………………….….236 Notarial evidence and Calvinist commercial practice………………………….244 Commercial kinship and Calvinist survival at La Rochelle……………..…...…250 The geneology of an Anglo-Huguenot elite…………………………………….256

CONCLUSION. NEW WORLDS, NEW MEN……………………………………..…263

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………....268

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ABBREVIATIONS

ADCM Archives départementales de la -Maritime (La Rochelle, France) Barbot Amos Barbot, “Histoire de La Rochelle,” Archives historiques de la et de l’ 14, 17, and 18 (1886, 1889-90) CSP Calendar of State Papers DRO Record Office (Exeter, ) NA National Archives (, United Kingdom) PWDRO Plymouth and Record Office (Plymouth, United Kingdom) SP English State Papers, National Archives

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I leave graduate school indebted to many people, without whose guidance and support this study would not have come to fruition. Dr. Daniel Beaver’s knowledge, direction, and attention to detail color the pages that follow. Through our many conversations over the years, Dr. Beaver has challenged me to be a better historian; he has been a dedicated advisor, a patient teacher, and a good friend. Drs. A. Gregg Roeber, Matthew Restall, and Deryck Holdsworth have also provided invaluable criticism and advice during my time at Penn State, for which I am forever grateful. She has not survived to read this, but Dr. Beth Fitch first introduced me to English history as an undergraduate. I think of her storytelling each time I enter the classroom, even if I fall short of the lofty standards she set. My graduate colleagues Spencer Delbridge, John Hoenig, Jeff Rop, Russell Spinney, and Jason Strandquist left their mark on this project through conversations, questions, and criticism. In the process of reasearching, we come to rely on the expertise and generosity of others. The Department of History at Penn State, North American Conference on British Studies, and the Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities provided essential material support towards the completion of this study. The archivists at the Devon Record Office, Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, National Archives, and the Archives départementales de la Charente-Maritime demonstrated unending patience in answering many simple questions. Their knowledge of the records and manuscripts that serve as the foundation of this study is humbling. Richard and Jennifer Parker opened their home to me on a number of trips to the archives. I hope that I have the opportunity to repay their kindnesses in the future. My father may not know it, but poring through piles of his navy service books as a child fueled my curiosity in boats and sea travel. His unconditional love and support for my studies are always on my mind. I said goodbye to my mother during my first weeks of graduate study, but memories of her personal energy have been a source of encouragment each day since. Finally, this study belongs as much to my partner Melissa as to myself. When we started it there were two of us; now there are three.

INTRODUCTION

“We'll rant and we'll roar all on the salt sea Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England; From Ushant to Scilly is but 35 leagues.” – “Spanish ,” an eighteenth-century shanty1

Towards a new geography of the early Atlantic World

Historians of the English Atlantic World have reconstructed the transmission of

European socio-economic and cultural systems to colonial outposts in North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their research has created a greater appreciation of the ways that knowledge – accumulated through processes of encounter, adaptation, and innovation – acted as the arbiter of cultural transformation in the early modern Atlantic.2 Nonetheless, English adventurers did not arrive with an empty storehouse of knowledge. As Bernard Bailyn remarks in his methodological survey of

Atlantic history, “the transatlantic crossings and settlements of the colonial years were but the middle links in immense chains of related displacements and adjustments” in the process of early modern European expansion.3 Literature for New England, for instance,

1 Roy Palmer, The Oxford Book of Sea Songs (Oxford: , 1989). 2 Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge: Press, 2005), 59-62; David Hackett Fischer provides an ambitious overview of these processes in David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). A list of micro-historical studies would have to include Paul G. Clemens, The Atlantic Economy and Colonial ’s Eastern Shore: From Tobacco to Grains (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980); Christine Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial , 1690-1750 (: W.W. Norton, 1984); Stephen Innes, Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-Century Springfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970). 3 Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1986), 8. 2 has emphasized the importance of legal, social, and cultural inheritances in the early history of settlement.4

Arriving at the “first link” in the chain has proven to be difficult, and the Atlantic field still wants for a micro-historical grounding in the regional bases from which maritime knowledge and expertise emerged in Europe. Of late, the proliferation of global history has challenged Atlanticists to consider more carefully the geographic limitations of their framework, given the diffusion of early modern networks into multiple ocean spaces.5 Such histories have urged scholars to be more conscious of the contingencies that initiated the Atlantic-bounded system of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Alison Games has encouraged investigations of European social exchanges that predate westward enterprises, including trade patterns and regional migration; ultimately, she locates the origins of English global “cosmopolitanism” within experiences gained in intra-European travel.6 The study of small-scale and regional European markets, as

Maryanne Kowaleski has observed, offers insights in early merchant capitalism imperceptible within macroeconomic models created by Braudel and others.7

4 David Grayson Allen, In English Ways: The Movement of Societies and the Transferal of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, NC: University of Press, 1981); David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Daniel Beaver, “Politics in the Archives: Records, Property, and Plantation Politics in Massachusetts Bay, 1642-1650,” Journal of Early American History 1, no. 1 (2011), 3-25. Elsewhere in British America see A.G. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 5 Peter A. Coclanis, “Atlantic World or Atlantic/World?” William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 4 (Oct. 2006): 725-42; Davis Eltis, “Atlantic History in Global Perspective,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999), 141- 61; Horst Piestchmann, “Introduction: Atlantic History in Global Perspective—History between European History and Global History,” in Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System 1580-1830, ed. Pietschmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 35-43. 6 Alison Games, “Beyond the Atlantic: English Globetrotters and Transoceanic Connections,” William and Mary Quarterly 4 (Oct. 2006), 677. Also see Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Empire, 1560-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), chapter 1 passim. 7 Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1-2. 3

Such sentiments are echoed in David Armitage’s speculative framework for “cis-

Atlantic” history, which consists of studies of European regions, states, or ports that focus

“not on the ocean itself but rather on the way specific regions were defined by their relationship to that ocean.” Armitage cites precedents in historical geographer D.W.

Meinig and archaeologist Barry Cunliffe, both of who have produced studies of unconventional European regions whose ocean-facing positions integrated them in common political, economic, and cultural contexts. He argues that similar approaches, particularly when applied to port cities, have the potential to destroy artificial distinctions in subject matter – internal/external, domestic/foreign, and national/imperial – that have persisted in transatlantic histories to the present.8

The “cis-Atlantic” concept not only promises to draw attention toward the

European origins of American development, but at the same time to reckon with the continuing division of national histories in the early Atlantic World. This is particularly evident in Anglophone histories, which have gravitated toward the interior development of the British commercial empire in North America and the subsequent early national history of the . In order to redress that imbalance, Eliga Gould and others have advocated a turn toward “entangled,” or “connected” history, which would seek out patterns of “mutual influencing” and intertwined “processes of constituting one another”

8 David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 24-26. Armitage juxtaposes “cis-Atlantic” history with international (“trans-“) and transnational (“Circum-“) approaches. Along with Meinig and Cunliffe, Armitage also references David Harris Sacks’s history of early modern – all three works focusing on regional oceanic networks in the western English Channel. Barry Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples, 8000 BC – AD 1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 4 in contiguous societies along the Atlantic Rim.9 This is not unlike similar transnational or borderlands fields that have gained momentum in the last few decades.10 Transnational studies of merchant communities are woefully underrepresented for Northern Europe when compared with the relatively well-developed state of that field in the early modern

Mediterranean.11

Studies of European region in an Atlantic context, and particularly transnational networks, are essential to understanding the “cultural preconditions” for early modern maritime expansion: the processes that produced the intellectual propellants for emigration, and the practical social skills necessary for colonial planting on a broad level.

Meinig’s formulation of regional “culture hearths” suggests how shifts in patterns of interaction between European societies produced unique “instruments of expansion” – a set of economic and cultural innovations that encouraged the accumulation of surplus wealth and provided the impetus for the extension of the new system from the region of

9 Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (June 2007), 766-7, 784-5. Another influential piece speaking to the roughly analogous concept of “connected” history is Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 735-62. 10 Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples In Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 1999), 814-841; David J. Weber, “The Spanish Borderlands of North America: A Historiography,” Magazine of History 14, no. 4 (2002), 259-71. The borderlands field is strongly focused on Spanish America, but notable exceptions for French and English America include Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years’ War in and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004). 11 E.g. the still-referenced work Henri Lapeyre, Une famille de marchands, les Ruiz (: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1955) and most recently Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). See also the imbalance toward Southern-oriented essays in the recent volume Christopher H. Johnson, David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, and Francesca Trivellato, eds., Transregional and Transnational Families in Europe and Beyond (New York: Berghahn, 2011). Exceptions for Northern Europe include Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton, 1567-c.1620 (London: Huguenot Society of and Ireland, 1997). 5 origin.12 He identifies two culture hearths that cultivated the social forms that would come to characterize the Americas between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries: one centered in the Iberian Peninsula, and the other in northwest Europe. His approach has shaped this study’s attempt to establish a specific English “geography of expertise,” a spatial zone in which domestic patterns, overseas exchange, and early experimentation converged, producing such skills as shaped subsequent channels of English mercantile and colonial development.13

Scholars should also consider the influence of social networks that facilitated new patterns of exchange, which – while not explicitly economic – nonetheless had commercial implications. The international network formed among sixteenth-century

Protestant reform movements, especially in the adjoining coastal regions of northwest

Europe, is one such example. Protestant internationalism included the movement of ideas through vast networks for print. It also involved mass migrations of coastal peoples and new inter-state forms of political organization.14

Historians have long recognized the special place of French Calvinist communities in constituting these networks.15 Huguenot persecution at the hands of the late Valois and Bourbon states led believers to seek alliances with foreign allies,

12 Meinig, 52-3. 13 Meinig, Atlantic America, 43-55. 14 Menna Prestwich, ed., International Calvinism 1541-1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Also see Ole Peter Grell, “Merchants and Ministers: the foundations of International Calvinism,” in Calvinism in Europe, 1540-1620, eds. Andrew Pettegree, Alastair , and Gillian Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 254-73; Ole Peter Grell, Brethren in Christ: A Calvinist Network in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600-1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 15 Philip Benedict, The Faith and Fortunes of France’s : 1600-85 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001); Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer, eds., Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Jane McKee and Randolph Vigne, eds., The Huguenots: France, Exile & Diaspora (Portland, OR: , 2013); D.J.B. Trim, ed., The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context. Essays in Honour and Memory of Walter C. Utt (: Brill, 2011). 6 particularly during the late sixteenth-century Wars of Religion. Official persecution, culminating in the revocation of Calvinist political recognition in 1685, led to the largest

European diaspora of the early modern period. Their migrations are well documented in early modern scholarship. Huguenot communities established themselves anew in the

Palatinate, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, Scandinavia, England, and Ireland. Anglo-

Huguenot exchange via French resettlement in England and British North America has been of great interest; studies credit their presence with stimulating English advances in industry and enriching the religious culture of colonial Massachusetts, New York,

Pennsylvania, Virginia, and .16

In comparison, however, the international networks of the Huguenot sixteenth century have been passed over. This period coincided with the initial phase of French maritime organization in the Atlantic, a realm of activity dominated by the coastal

Calvinist communities of Normandy and Saintonge-Aunis.17 Periods of official alliance with the Elizabethan state and naval collaboration with English coastal elites in the western ports of the English Channel guaranteed Huguenot victories in the crucial Third

16 J.F. Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century,” The William and Mary Quarterly 52, vol. 1 (1995): 77-102; Paula Wheeler Carlo, Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York: Becoming American in the Hudson Valley (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001); Raymond Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots and the Refuge, 1662-1745: An Unlikely Haven (Portland, OR: Sussex, 2005); Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517-1751 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, eds., Memory and Identity: the Huguenots of France and the Atlantic Diaspora (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003); Samuel Smiles, The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland, 3rd ed. (London, 1869). 17 Philip P. Boucher, “Revisioning the ‘French Atlantic’; or, How to Think About the French Presence in the Atlantic, 1550-1625,” in The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624, ed. Peter C. Mancall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 274-306. In Francophone scholarship, the works of Frank Lestringant are unparalleled. These include Le huguenot et le sauvage: L’Amerique et la controverse colonial, en France, au temps des guerres of religion (1555-1589), 3rd edition (: Librairie Droz, 2004), L’Experience huguenote au nouveau monde (XVIe siècle) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996), and Lumière des martyrs: essai sure le martyre au siècle des Réformes (Paris: Honore Champion Editeur, 2004). 7 and Fourth Wars of Religion. Joint Anglo-Huguenot privateering fleets, organized out of the Huguenot political capital of La Rochelle, pillaged Catholic shipping in the English

Channel and after 1568. In combination with the English privateering war launched against , the Channel region saw an almost constant state of confessional naval warfare until the start of the seventeenth century. Anglo-Huguenot naval alliance extended across the Atlantic, where it facilitated a series of aggressive commercial and colonial experiments on the edges of Spanish America; scholars identify these experiments as being crucial to the future of English enterprise in North America.18

This study contributes to this literature by offering a more precise view of the sociogenesis of Anglo-Huguenot relationships within the coastal region of the western

English Channel. The English southwest and Huguenot towns in western France became nurseries for maritime entrepreneurship – Huguenot adventurers from Saintonge, Aunis, and Normandy initiated most French overseas projects prior to 1625, and collaboration with seasoned Huguenot seamen provided southwestern mariners with the deep-sea navigational skills, military experience, and capital needed for later transatlantic ventures.

As maritime commodities markets became more viable after the , Anglo-Huguenot traders contributed to the Calvinist International – a complex network of commerce shaped by kinship and religious ties that launched early transatlantic trade. To date, no work in English- or French-language scholarship has documented this paradigm of community in the western Channel region.

18 Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 30-7. 8

Defining region on Europe’s Atlantic facade

The term “Western Channel Community” can be attributed to Meinig, who broadly defined it as part of a sixteenth-century “Atlantic Protestant region” encompassing the southwestern , Lower Normandy, , and the entire French Biscayan seaboard.19 Consolidating Meinig’s definition, this study conceives of the western Channel region as incorporating the port communities of

England’s historical “” (including the coasts from Southampton to Bristol) and the Channel Islands, as well as France’s western and northwestern provincial ports

(stretching from to the River).20 Subsequent chapters will demonstrate that the region gained singularity as a focal point for Protestant activism, maritime innovation, and transatlantic activity during the early modern period.

At first glance, the expansive bi-national space of the western Channel appears to offer an unconventional model for early modern community – one that lies substantially outside the administrative vocabulary of region and province honed by European states.

Nonetheless, like more orthodox communities, it was rooted in historical ties, a common cultural order, shared social spaces, economic collaboration, and family bonds. In conceptualizing the western Channel region as a historical subject, this study draws inspiration from the work of Cheryl Fury, Isaac Land, and others associated with the school of “new” . Defined in a recent monograph on Elizabethan sea labor by Fury, this approach aims at the “integration of maritime topics into analyses of

19 Meinig, Atlantic America, 47-8. 20 In England, this conceptual area includes the following counties (with major early modern port destinations in parenthesis): Hampshire (Southampton), (Poole, Dorchester, Portland), Devon (Exeter, Dartmouth, , , ), (Looe, Falmouth, Penryn, Penzance, Scilly), and (bordering the City of Bristol). In France, these provinces: Normandy (Le Havre, Cherbourg), Brittany (St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, , Penerf, Bay of Quiberon), (Les Sables d’Olonne), Aunis (La Rochelle, St. Martin-de-Ré), and Saintonge (Le Chateau-d’Oléron, Marennes, Tremblade). 9 society and culture ashore”; in the phrasing of Glen O’Hara, it marks the convergence of

“green and blue histories.”21 These studies embody an attempt to recontextualize early modern seafarers, not as historical subjects within an exotic and isolated ocean space, but as men who spent most of their days in terrestrial port communities. Land’s “coastal history” similarly attempts to integrate domestic and oceanic subjects, drawing on environmental history, urban studies, and historical geography.22

Environment

In 1905, Maurice Bures published a famed sociological sketch of nineteenth- century Saintonge. In his brief study, he adopted the common vigneron (winemaker) of the Charente Valley as his ideal type. This subject’s pragmatic commercial mind, he asserted, was a cultivar of the rugged and riverine topography of Saintonge.23

Unfortunately, few have followed him in fashioning an environmental history of Atlantic

France. However, when viewed in retrospect, Bures stands near the head of a lengthy

21 Cheryl Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men: The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1580-1603 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 127; Glen O’Hara, Britain and the Sea since 1600 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 7. See also similar mission statements in Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling, eds., Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), xi; Michael Duffy and Joyce Youings, “Introduction,” in The New Maritime , Vol. 1: From Early Times to the Late Eighteenth Century, ed. Michael Duffy, Joyce Youings, et al. (Exeter: , 1992), 12. Creighton and Norling were among the first to trace the lineage of a “new social (and cultural) history of seafaring” in Anglophone Atlantic scholarship, though the term “new maritime history” appears to have been used in a similar way by the editors of the Devon volumes. Works that Creighton and Norling include in this tradition are Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 3 (1968), 371-407; Peter Linebaugh, “All the Atlantic Mountains Shook,” Labour/Le Travail 10 (1982), 87-121; Daniel Vickers, “Nantucket Whalemen in the Deep-Sea Fishery: The Changing Anatomy of an Early American Labor Force,” The Journal of American History 72 (Sept. 1985), 277-98; Timothy Runyan, ed., Ships, Seafaring, and Society: Essays in Maritime History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987); Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Apart from Fury’s book, a more recent reading list might include Vincent V. Patarino Jr., “‘One Foot in Sea and One on Shore’: The Religious Culture of English Sailors, 1550-1688” (PhD diss., University of Colorado, 2002); Cheryl Fury, ed., The Social Seamen, 1485-1649 (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2012). New maritime history also appeared as the partial subject of a in American Historical Review; see “AHR Forum: Oceans of History,” American Historical Review 111 (June 2006), 717-80. 22 Isaac Land, “Tidal Waves: the New Coastal History,” Journal of Social History 40, no. 3 (2007), 731-4. 23 Maurice Bures, Le type saintongeais (Paris, 1908; reprint, Paris: Le Croît Vif, 1991). 10 twentieth-century historiography touching coastal mentalité in Western Europe.24 The size and contiguity of the western Channel region as part of Europe’s Atlantic seaboard invites a similar discussion regarding common responses to the environment among its peoples.

Positioned on the western fringe of the European peninsula, geographical circumstance left western Channel settlements at a distance from traditional centers of political and cultural influence. Devon was a large, mountainous, and sparsely populated county. Roads and communications were sure as far west as Exeter, but increasingly challenging beyond the heights of . After crossing the into

Cornwall, heavy wagons and even horse traffic were limited. Early modern visitors to these counties remarked on their difficult terrain and the parochial outlook of their inhabitants; indeed, the national stereotype of the dull-witted West Country farmer persists into the twenty-first century.25 Likewise, there is irony in the fact that La

Rochelle, the central port of the French west country, was estranged from the rest of the realm. The inhospitable salt marshes (marais) to its immediate north and south in Aunis rendered it a virtual peninsula, accessible only by a single road from Surgères and via

24 E.g. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Alain Cabantous, Le ciel dans la mer: Christianisme et civilisation maritime, XVIe- XIXe siècle (Paris: Éditions Fayard, 1990); Alain Corbin, The Lure of the Sea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Barry Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean; Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Louis Sicking and Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, eds., Beyond the Catch: Fisheries of the North Atlantic, the and the Baltic, 900-1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). There are few examples particular to the western Channel region, but compare Maryanne Kowaleski, “The Seasonality of Fishing in Medieval Britain,” in Ecologies and Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Studies in Environmental History for Richard C. Hoffmann, ed. Scott G. Bruce (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 117-47; François Julien-LaBruyère, Paysans charentais: Histoire des campagnes d’Aunis, Saintonge, et bas , vol. 1, Économie rurale (La Rochelle: Rupella, 1982). 25 Mark Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality: Popular Allegiance in Devon during the (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994), 7-8. 11 river from and Angoulême.26 Even more isolated was the island grouping on the city’s western edge – the cluster of Ré, Aix, and Oléron (including the desolate peninsula that lies adjacent to the latter). The intransigent salt and vine laborers of early modern Ré habitually referred to the French realm as “the continent.”27 These geographies, in the words of Barry Cunliffe, contributed to a historical “feeling of separateness” in these communities, which “looked to the sea before them, rather than the land behind.”28

The water systems of northwest Europe imposed an internal unity on the region and made it fertile ground for marine industries. The western Channel lays at the confluence of four different maritime spaces: Britain’s Western Approaches, the Irish Sea

(the so-called “British Mediterranean”), the Bay of Biscay, and the North Sea. For this reason, Cunliffe identified it as the “northern core” of Europe’s maritime system. It served as a gateway to the rich internal networks of the North Sea and Baltic; a role evoked in geographer H.J. Mackinder’s description of it as Britain’s “marine antechamber.”29 The transport routes traversing the western French basin also integrated it with Iberia and the Mediterranean. Finally, prevailing westerly and southwesterly currents facilitated the function of various western Channel ports as entry points for transatlantic goods. West Country coastal communities such as Exeter and Falmouth became popular landing points for cargo bound for the London metropole. Due to its

26 John G. Clark, La Rochelle and the Atlantic Economy during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 3. Bures repeatedly refers to early modern Aunis as a peninsula (presqu’île) in his work. 27 Kevin C. Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea. La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 13-14. 28 Cunliffe, 565. 29 Cunliffe, 33-4; H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas (New York: D. Appleton, 1914), 19-21. 12 proximity on the seaboard, La Rochelle was an entrepôt for commodities from New

France and the , in spite of its lack of reliable overland routes to the interior.30

Where water met land, slow processes of geological evolution and flooding created thick zones for marine transport that linked coastal ports with communities far to the interior. Much of the Channel littoral – from southwest England to Brittany, Poitou,

Aunis, and Saintonge – features rocky, peninsular coastlines broken irregularly by deep flooded inlets. Visitors to the modern coastal paths lining the English and French west countries are confronted by folded limestone cliffs characteristic of a common geology. This contemporary facade comes as the result of centuries of steady coastal erosion and rising water levels. As ocean waters imposed themselves on low-lying areas of southwest England and Brittany, the consequence was the formation of wide, inundated river inlets called rias.

In England, the communities of , Exe, Dart, Tamar, and Severn organized their labors around these “drowned valleys.”31 Officials of Totnes, a South

Hams town upstream of Dartmouth, articulated the economic differentiation that occurred within these river systems. Pleading for financial concessions from a 1619 contribution, they described the diverse traffic of the Dart, differentiating coastal

Dartmouth’s “owners of ships” who “cheifelie depend uppon fishinge voyages to the

30 June Palmer, ed., The Letter Book of Thomas Hill, 1660-1661: Westcountry mercantile affairs and the wider world, vol. 51 (NS) of Devon and Cornwall Record Society (Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 2008), xv-xvi; Étienne Trocmé, “La Rochelle protestante,” in Histoire de la Rochelle, ed. Marcel Delafosse (: Éditions Privat, 1985), 128-31. 31 Alan P Carr, “The Environmental Background,” in The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 18-20; Cunliffe, 23-6; J.A. Steers, The Coastline of England and , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 210. The geographical term originated in Galicia, another coastal area subject to these particular oceanic effects. Steers observed that England’s southwestern coast “differs from (most of) that of the rest of the country in that it is far more crenulate and indented” with “deep and often narrow valleys made by the rivers partially drowned in their lower courses.” 13

Newfoundland” from their own “meere marchanntes,” who “depend cheifely uppon the trade of wollen clothe transported for Roane in Normandie and the coasts of Brittanie.”32

Rias facilitated unusually close convergences of port and hinterland in Devon, bringing seafarers, merchants, and domestic artisans into intimate contact.33

Meanwhile, the river systems of the Vilaine, , Sèvre, Charente, , and

Gironde formed their own commercial ecosystem in Atlantic France. The productive heart of the early modern Biscayan shore was formed around the Charente Valley, in the provinces of Aunis and Saintonge. Several thousand years prior, its outer estuary was part of a large inundated zone called the Gulf of Saintonge, which pressed at least ten miles inland between the islands of Ré and Oléron. Eroding alluvium from Brittany eventually filled in the greater gulf, leaving behind the half-submerged salt marshes called the marais. As late as the sixteenth century, a trip from the coastal town of Marennes to

Broue (ten miles to the southeast) still required a forty-ton vessel.34

As the waters receded, new communities sprung up along the Charente and the nearby Seudre. In conjunction with coastal fleets, these towns cultivated artisanal products that attracted wide interest in northern Europe: white wines (later, eau de vie and ) and salt. Trade in these goods was lucrative enough to make the fortunes of neighboring shipping ports such as La Rochelle, whose medieval fleet specialized almost entirely in relaying Saintongeais goods to its markets. Like in Devon, the riverine environment of the Charente encouraged close contact between coastal seamen and the

32 DRO 1579A/16/41. The identification of river inundation with the English southwest appears to be long-running, even crossing over into local onomastics. The Roman name for their westernmost fort was Isca Dumnoniorum (literally “water of the tribe”), from which both Exeter and the derive their modern names. 33 Alan P. Carr, “Environmental Background,” 18. 34 Bures, 27; Maxime Le Grelle, Brouage : Foi de Pionniers (St. Jean-d’Angély: l’Imprimerie A. Bordessoules, 1977), 11. 14 common paysans of the interior. Bures described the vigneron (winemaker) of the

Charente as being more open-minded (“l’esprit plus ouvert”) than most peasants, due to his working in proximity with the more worldly mariners of the river fleets.35

Nevertheless, historically embattled by dangerous storms and currents along the north Atlantic, anxieties about coastal life were part of the cultural tapestry of the western

Channel. The dangers of rocky shallows, shifting sand, and erratic currents are wellknown to sailors rounding Pointe du Raz in Brittany or the Lizard of west Cornwall.

Further south, the sea lanes around La Rochelle were considered by royal officials to be some of the most difficult nautical challenges in the French realm, as local shippers had to avoid shifting shoals and endure strong wintertime gales.36

Parallel oral traditions concerning submerged cities found within the Celtic- derived cultures of the region – the Breton legend of Ker Ys, Cornwall’s , and the Welsh Cantre’r Gwaelod – were born out of such unrelenting environments.37 This interpretation resonates in Émile Souvestre’s nineteenth-century account of Ker Ys, as told by a fisherman of Finistère. In beginning the story of a city flooded in retribution for

35 Bures, 39, 42, 59. 36 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 10-11. The Lizard peninsula is known colloquially as the “graveyard of ships” due to its challenging coastline and history as a site of many shipwrecks. The Raz de Sein strait, just offshore from the Pointe du Raz in western Brittany, remains a heavily trafficked and hazardous shipping lane. In a notorious incident of winter 1925-6, two Corsican veterans were stranded for months in one of the lighthouses (La Vieille) that guard the strait. Unnerved by the unrelenting environment of winter duty, the men begged for reassignment; however, the ferocity of the winds and surf meant that no relief ships could come near until the end of the season. They were described by their rescuers as “black as devils and literally in tatters.” See Pierre Nora, Rethinking France: Les Lieux De Memoire, Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 71. 37 Cunliffe, 6-7. Ker Ys was thought to have existed in Douarnenez Bay, Lyonesse (probably) between Lands End and the Isles of Scilly, and Cantre’r Gwaelod in the Bay of Cardigan. These were the most persistent of many “lost lands” traditions in Celtic Europe. For the narrative of Ker Ys, see Hersart de la Villemarque, Barzaz-Breiz: Chants populaires de la Bretagne, vol. 1 (Paris: A. Franck, 1846), 63-74. On the origins of Lyonesse, which derives from the twelfth-century story of Tristam and Yseult, see A.D.H. Bivar, “Lyonesse: The Evolution of a Fable,” Modern Philology 50, no. 3 (1953): 162-70. For a description of Cantre’r Gwaelod (and a comparison with the Ker Ys narrative, see James Doan, “The Legend of the Sunken City in Welsh and Breton Tradition,” Folklore 92 (1981): 77-83. 15 the wickedness of its inhabitants, Souvestre noted that a breeze “carried to us the thousand odors of the shore and the sea rumbled at our feet with a remnant of anger.”38

Folk themes treating the sea as a divine instrument emerged more widely within western

Channel Christianity. A stained-glass panel within the gothic chapel of St. Martin-de-Ré depicts a man thrown overboard from a brig during a lightning storm; nevertheless, he is shielded by the protective presence of the Virgin Mary and Child, angels, and a single star. Each of these examples speaks to the insecurities of communities perched on the margins of an intemperate sea.

Port cities and region

Port communities, perched vulnerably on the edges of this flooded terrain, served as the main sites for economic and cultural exchange in the Channel. This study adopts the region’s chief ports – Exeter, Dartmouth, Plymouth, and La Rochelle – as a base unit of examination. While there exists in early modern urban history a tradition of treating cities primarily as hermetic social and political spaces, Anglo-French comity provides a corrective by emphasizing the dependent order formed by cities with their hinterlands, each other, and larger sociopolitical units. Here I take special inspiration from David

Harris Sacks’s evocation of Bristol as a society whose sense of self was complicated by

“the widening of its economic gates.” Port cities could not be “closed arenas” bound solely by their internal connections. Rather, their sense of community was bound up in the fortunes of the wider European network of trade in which they were implicated.39

Indeed, the long-running subfield of historical geography relating to European urban systems provides several useful models for contextualizing the overlapping civic

38 Émile Souvestre, Le Foyer Breton, contes et récits populaires (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1853), 231. See discussion in Doan, “Sunken City,” 77. 39 Sacks, Widening Gate, 4, 350. 16 cultures of western Channel cities. The older of these models, first fronted by Walter

Christaller in the 1930s, conceives of cities as central places for the concentration and distribution of goods essential to their surrounding regions.40 In a broad adaptation of the

Central Place concept for Western Europe three decades later, Robert Dickinson surmised that beyond its administrative bounds “every city forms part of an economic, social, cultural, and political unit, upon which its development depends.” This was the “city- region,” in which town and country were mutually related in overlapping areas of trade, cultural and educational association, migration, and patterns of land usage.41 A parallel model associated with James Vance emphasizes the dependence of city and region on outside networks of goods, migration, and knowledge. In such a Network System, individual city-regions become gateways to multinational constellations of cities, each with their own core and periphery.42

In dissecting the historical interrelationship between region, city, and maritime network in the western Channel, this study follows the approach of Hohenberg and Lees by synthesizing the Central Place and Network System functions of urban societies.

Considered in tandem, these reflect the overlapping internal and external dependencies of

Channel cities; in the titular phrasing of B.J.L. Berry, “cities are systems within systems

40 Walter Christaller, Central Places in Southern , trans. Carlisle Baskin (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966). Though not intended as a model with broad applicability, Christaller’s framework has been critiqued and adapted by subsequent generations of scholars working in any number of contexts. For an early attempt to adapt it to medieval and Europe, see Josiah Cox Russell, Medieval Regions and their Cities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972). More recently, see Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1994, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 41 Robert E. Dickinson, The City-Region in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 1967), 95-7. 42 Network Systems theory emerged in the 1970s from Vance’s critique of Christaller. Vance initially dubbed his approach the “mercantile model,” since it emphasizes the role of cities as merchant rather than market centers. See James Vance, The Merchant’s World: The Geography of Wholesaling (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970), 8-9, 150-55. 17 of cities.”43 This formulation points to a significant aspect of the emerging merchant capitalist order in English and French ports, as it complicates the division of local markets into internal and external categories.44 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, port merchants fostered the specialized production of their surrounding hinterlands in order to develop export-based economies in touch with burgeoning overseas trading networks. So it was that the “complex flowering of the rural economy at home as well as in a distant plantation of staple-producing colonists,” in Vance’s model, flowed from the same exogamous drive among urban entrepreneurs.45 Urban systems, of course, facilitated the spread of information and culture as much as they did goods. In this regard, cities simultaneously served as central places for the consolidation of regional and national culture (a process called orthogenesis), as well as entry points for heterogenetic cultural influences from urban trading partners further afield.46

This discussion would be incomplete without an acknowledgment of the ascendant influence of state power in the affairs of the western Channel ports. English and French port cities were legal creatures of their respective corporate states, a fundamental fact that structured the ways in which their residents conceived and ordered their social relationships. As an essential component to early modern political centralization, corporatism conceived of societies as a collection of groups vying for

43 Hohenberg and Lees, 3-7, 65, 70-1; B.J.L. Berry, “Cities as Systems within Systems of Cities,” Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Science Association 13 (1964): 147-163. 44 Maryanne Kowaleski’s work on Exeter’s medieval trade highlights the interdependency of regional trade – typically relegated to domestic studies of economy for England – and overseas markets, a view to which the present study is heavily indebted. See Kowaleski, Medieval Exeter. 45 Vance, 11. Vance’s book posits a model for the early modern Atlantic economy, unheralded in the way that it foreshadowed the preoccupations of the much larger school that developed in the wake of Bernard Bailyn’s Atlantic World seminars at Harvard in the mid-1980s. 46 Hohenberg and Lees, 39. The cultural categories cited derive originally from Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, “The Cultural Role of the Cities,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 3 (1954): 52-73. 18 monarchical grants and favors.47 The corporate ideal is suggested in the word “corps” itself. Much like the physical body, the state community was supposed to be “a single entity, its members subsumed in a common substance and presumed to possess a united interest.”48 Port communities were certainly reliant upon the acquisition of official favors

– principally, the legal sanctions for governance provided by charters of incorporation, special customs arrangements, and trading privileges – from which derived economic advantage and vitality.

It follows that their inhabitants internalized their position in the emerging statist order; notwithstanding, the competition for state patronage sharpened urban solidarities as it offered new modes of self-governance and discretion to their elites. Royal charters of incorporation granted to English boroughs – which in legitimizing urban government literally convened the community into a corporate body – exemplified this.49 Indeed, the holism of the Anglo-French city mirrored that of the state. Patrick Collinson envisioned

England’s cities as little “republics” within the realm, each with “semi-autonomous, self- governing political cultures.”50 The dialogue of state power with local civic culture was nowhere more apparent than in the political rituals of sixteenth-century La Rochelle.

Residents viewed their historical traditions of self-rule embodied in the city’s droit de commune as a reflection of authority and its elected mayors annually swore féaulté to the ’s law. Yet, upon a visit by the monarch, custom held that the

47 Phil Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007), 1017-18. 48 James R. Farr, Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in , 1550-1650 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 14. 49 Withington, “State Formation,” 1025-7. 50 Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 19, cited in Withington, “State Formation,” 1024-5. 19 assembled body of councilmen would bar the with a silk ribbon until the king swore to uphold the privileges of the commune.51

Interactions between western Channel cities and their respective states pervade this study. The fashion of English and French administrations for mercantilist policies – the centralizing, regulatory philosophy that emerged as the economic arm of the early modern corporate state – brought an unprecedented level of state intervention into port economies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Commercial affairs were a normative concern for early modern English and French since customs and taxes formed a disproportionate share of royal revenue. These funded the expansion of central administration, and the increasing costs of coastal defenses and military campaigns; the array of offices, licenses, and charters created to regulate trade served as a powerful tool of royal patronage.

Thus, national politics intersected with commercial process within western

Channel cities at almost every level: the operation of local admiralty offices in Devon and

La Rochelle, the charters in trade granted to mercantile companies in major ports such as

Exeter and Bristol, the broad privileges of taxation given to the merchant bourgeoisie of

La Rochelle, and the royal notarial officials who governed the creation of commercial contracts. Crown interventions had an ambivalent effect on exchange among Channel ports. Royally bestowed privileges – La Rochelle’s port status, royal interests in the ports of Plymouth and Dartmouth, and the charter in the French trade granted to Exeter –

51 Philip Benedict, “French cities from the sixteenth century to the Revolution: An overview,” in Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, ed. Philip Benedict (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 19- 21; Clark, La Rochelle, 7-8. The ribbon ritual was no mere show: when Charles IX refused to take the oath on a 1565 visit – and his horseman Montmorency slashed the ribbon with this sword – the mayor briefly grabbed the reigns of the King’s horse and the assembled bourgeois chased him nervously through the city. For an extended telling of this story, see Kamil, Fortress of the Soul, 27-34. 20 enabled the traditional economy that undergirded the Western Channel Community.

Nonetheless, the incursions of the Bourbon and Stuart kings into the commercial politics of the ports during the later 1620s also dismantled much of the framework for that economy.

Archives

This project draws most of its sources for a recovery of the economy and maritime culture of the western Channel from local urban archives in England and France.

Record offices at Exeter, Plymouth, and Barnstaple contain municipal archives for

Devon’s largest ports and trading centers.52 These include materials such as port books,

Receiver’s reports, the complete sixteenth-century minutes of Exeter’s French company, and a file of Tudor and early Stuart probate materials for Exeter’s overseas merchants.53

The Archives départementales de la Charente-Maritime house early modern commercial and church records for La Rochelle and its subsidiary ports in the pre-Revolutionary provinces of Aunis and Saintonge. Included in the archive’s holdings are the volumes of contracts produced by urban notaries that, absent any surviving port books, are the main source for a history of trade and foreign merchant communities in the city during the space of this study. It also holds a small, but invaluable archive of the proceedings of the

Huguenot admiralty in La Rochelle during the Third War of Religion. The Médiathèque

Michel Crépeau (formerly the Bibliothèque municipale de La Rochelle) contains assorted municipal records and unpublished manuscripts that I have used to frame the commune’s politics at the height of Calvinist oligarchy in the city.

52 County archives include the Devon Record Office (which includes the former Exeter City Archives) and Westcountry Studies Library in Exeter, the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office in Plymouth, and the Record Office in Barnstaple. 53 Most probate records housed in Exeter fell casualty to German bombing of the city in 1942; fortunately, a set of merchants’ wills and inventories prior to the early Stuarts has survived. 21

The maritime holdings of the National Archives at Kew have informed this study’s examination of Anglo-Huguenot naval collaboration during the Habsburg-Valois wars, the , and the Anglo-Spanish War. Foremost are the indictments, examination books, and act books for the High Court of Admiralty, which record prosecutions for piracy and other sea crimes in the second half of the sixteenth century. Outside of their role in the High Court’s process, testimonies of English, French, and Dutch witnesses contained in the examination books are an unparalleled source for understanding shipboard culture and interactions among western Channel seafarers.

Various portions of the State Papers series ground discussions of the networks formed between , the Huguenot grandees of western France, and the English state.

The print sources that appear in this study are many and varied. Texts produced by the Calvinist print houses of La Rochelle suggest the circulation of international religious texts in western France.54 Rochelais antiquaries have preserved a number of local histories and diaries containing communal perspectives on the civil wars in the

French west country; works by Joseph Guillaudeau, Amos Barbot, and others have been published in the volumes of the Société des archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis.55 Other published histories with perspectives on La Rochelle and the French west supplement these throughout.56 Finally, Chapter 3 makes use of printed accounts of

54 The most well known are the imprimeries of Barthélemy Berton (1563-73) and the Haultin family (1571-1623). Louis Desgraves summarizes their output in volumes 1 and 2 of L’Imprimerie a La Rochelle (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1960). 55 Joseph Guillaudeau, “Diaire de Joseph Guillaudeau, Sieur de Beaupréau,” Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis 38 (1908) and Barbot. 56 Louis-Étienne Arcère, Histoire de la ville de La Rochelle et du pays d’Aulnis, 2 vols. (La Rochelle, 1756); François de la Noue, Discours politiques et militaires (Basel, 1588); Lancelot Voisin de La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire des troubles et choses mémorables avenues tant en France qu’en Flandres, et pays circonvoisins depuis l’an 1562 (La Rochelle, 1573). 22

New World voyages originating in the western Channel as well as other published sources from English, French, and Spanish archives.57

Plan of study

The chapters that follow examine the western Channel as a distinct coastal region, joined by routes of traditional trade, integrated social networks, and a common maritime culture. In the , sea trade in the Channel and Bay of Biscay formed around complementary exchanges of specialized regional products: western French wine and salt for English West Country textiles and fishing hauls. By the start of this study, that trade fostered the maturation of wealthy city-regions – governed by merchant oligarchies and backed by extensive production regimes in their rural zones of influence – that boasted the densest concentrations of maritime resources in their respective kingdoms. Religious reform movements in northwest Europe during the sixteenth century deepened knowledge networks and human exchange in the region. Persecutions of the adherents of

Protestant reform in England, France, and Flanders drove refugee migrations that created new émigré communities along the coasts of southern England and Normandy.

Population displacement stimulated industrial innovations within the regional staple trades, transnational forms of political organization, and the expansion of maritime

57 E.g. accounts from the trading voyages of John Hawkins and English ventures in Tierra Firme collected in Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, and histories of Huguenot plantation adventures in by René Goulaine de Laudonnière and Nicolas Le Challeux. Modern source collections consulted include Kenneth R. Andrews, ed., English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, 1588-1595 (Cambridge: University Press/Hakluyt Society, 1959); Charles Bennett, ed., Laudonniere & : History and Documents, 2nd ed. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011); David Beers Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590. Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to North America Under the Patent Granted to in 1584, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955); David Beers Quinn, ed., The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of (London: Hakluyt Society, 1940; reprint Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967); I.A. Wright, ed., Documents Concerning English Voyages to the , 1569-1580, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1932). 23 reprisal as an industry in the ports. These subjects form the subject matter of Chapters 1 and 2.

In part, this study contributes to the growing literature on international Reformed networks, examining their operation within a localized community. Chapter 3 argues that the Anglo-Huguenot political alliance during the post-1568 Navarrese occupation of La

Rochelle – reified in the transnational armée de mer that organized out of Saintonge-

Aunis and Devon – served as the vehicle for Reformed collaboration in the western

Channel. Furthermore, it was a point of convergence for controversies surrounding reform movements in England, France, and the . Expanding to incorporate the Dutch sea-beggars under Nassau in the early , the sea army numbered among the earliest forms of Reformed political organization in northwest Europe – effectively sustaining the Huguenot and Dutch causes in their most vulnerable initial stages.

The Rochelais sea army, initially a fundraising arm of the Calvinist political cause, also drove maritime commercial expansion in the region. Huguenot and Dutch commissions instigated a mass mobilization of predatory commercial enterprises in southern England, predating by decades the mass national drive traditionally associated with the Anglo-Spanish conflict. The legal and ideological pretexts provided by the grandee regime at La Rochelle helped to expand western Channel sea enterprise across the Atlantic. The long-range reprisals of the sea army served to consolidate earlier

English and French experiments in contraband trade and plantation in the Spanish New

World. They marked the birth of a more ambitious form of northern enterprise that mixed commercial and anti-Iberian political objectives, which saw its first employment in a wave of aggressive predations targeting Central America in the 1570s. With the 24 resumption of mass privateering in England after 1585, the western Channel model for

Atlantic commercial insurgence was absorbed into larger enterprises sponsored by the

Elizabethan state and London merchant syndicates against Spain and its empire. Devon’s mercantile privateers remained central to this project, now national, which generated the navigational and organizational expertise essential to the success of new joint stock ventures under James I.

International Reformed commercial networks, encompassing northwest Europe and reaching across the Atlantic, were reflective of the proliferation of transnational forms of identity first evidenced in western Channel port relationships. Thus, the transnational mercantile community at La Rochelle profiled in Chapter 4 serves as an epilogue of sorts, speaking to the continuities in western Channel relations deep into the seventeenth century. However, the legal controversy over foreign Calvinist immigration to the city in the wake of its post-1628 Catholicization is of further significance to the field, demonstrating the ability of new maritime approaches to marry the “interior” politics typically explored in urban histories with “exterior” developments found in transoceanic histories of empire. In this case, the role of Reformed immigration and intermarriage in the survival strategies of Rochelais mercantile families after the collapse of their civic power suggests the integration of La Rochelle into Atlantic Calvinist business networks. The rubric of international “commercial kinship” explored here represents a literal mapping of the escape routes used by Huguenot families in their post-

1660 diaspora out of western France, across the Channel, and onto English America.

25

CHAPTER 1

MEN OF SALT: REGION AND ECONOMY IN THE WESTERN ENGLISH CHANNEL

“The Grocer with the Vintener, And Mercer profit reape: When Spices, Silks, and Wines, come store, By Marchants ventures great. .... The Sailers herehence gets their skill, To rule the stately Ship And so become right worthy men, For Sea and Land most fit.” -- John Brown, c158958

One of the most striking holdings of the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office is the city’s Black Book, or “Town Ligger”. Spanning two centuries, it is principally a volume of civic miscellanea that careens from corporate statutes and oaths to indenture contracts. It is also a peculiar monument to communal memory, inscribed in many hands, over the course of the late medieval and early modern periods. This is nowhere more apparent than in the opening folios, where a reader is confronted with a nearly contextless list of the city’s mayors, each entry followed by a reckoning of significant events for that year. By far the densest accounts pertain to Tudor and early Stuart happenings, where the unknown authors juggle diverse and divergent threads: Reformation landmarks,

Continental geopolitics, and westward maritime adventures lie alongside the ongoing, rapid construction of town harbors and defenses.59 Individually, the entries appear irreconcilable; as a narrative, they suggest a complex local worldview, one in which contemporaries, informed by their expanding commercial geography, sought to organize their port’s civic life within the turbulent framework of Europe’s Confessional Age.

58 John Browne, The Marchants Avizo (London, 1589), [unnumbered dedicatory poem]. 59 PWDRO 1/46, ff. 1r-21v. 26

Such an expansive sense of identity was well-rooted in the western Channel by the sixteenth century. As an economic archipelago located at the furthest extents of western Europe, the western Channel region was culturally anomalous. It was, on one hand, sparsely populated, politically distant, and isolated by land. Nonetheless, southwest

England and western France were also potent, interdependent maritime centers.

Containing the largest proportions of able-bodied seamen and ships in their respective nations, they looked outward to the waters of the Atlantic for their well being. Among the regional exchanges of northwest Europe, English Channel commerce was a pivotal, if often overlooked first encounter for both the English and French merchant marine. Over many centuries, this exchange had become intrinsic to corporate institutions, learning, commercial custom, industry, and material life in regional communities.

This initial chapter seeks to define the features of the Western Channel

Community as a historical maritime region. Part of this task involves a broad historical review of western Channel development, including the environmental, demographic, and dynastic circumstances that affected its port communities. By the accession of in 1558, the region already contained a degree of economic and cultural contiguity – much of it deriving from relationships nurtured under the Plantagenet imperial system of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The experiences of early moderns at sea in the western Channel were steered strongly by this medieval legacy. A traditional trade in wines, cloth, salt, and fish dating from this period remained a cornerstone of regional exchange into the seventeenth century. Secondly and above all, I reconstruct aspects of the regional world that these English and French coastal communities inhabited in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Those going to sea were participants in a shared 27 maritime culture, the core of which was a common regional “geography of expertise.”

While the Western Channel Community covered thousands of miles of diverse provincial landscapes, common and interdependent social ways emerged in categories such as family life, learning, and labor. Taken together as part of an experiential geography, they reveal some of the formative aspects of regional consciousness and identity.

A connected history of exchange

From late antiquity, proximity and historical circumstance bred interdependencies among western Channel ports. The earliest of these lay between the peninsular regions of

Devon, Cornwall, and Brittany, who were incorporated as part of an ancient Celtic

Atlantic that also included southern Ireland, Wales, and Galicia. As migrating tribes spread south from Ireland and western Britain, they contributed to a “long complicated heritage of local commerce and smuggling, dynastic ties, political intrigue, military forays, and refugee movements” within the Channel.60 The Dumnonii tribe of southwestern Britain – ultimately derived from migrants of southern Ireland – enjoyed strong economic and religious contact with the peoples of Armorica in western from at least the late third century CE. In the fifth and sixth centuries, pressured by conflict with Anglo- to the east, large numbers of elite families from the Dumnonii and

Welsh tribes resettled in Armorica. The result was less of an emigration than an expansion of the southwestern Britannic kingdom into Armorica, which was already referred to as Brittany by the sixth century.61

60 D.W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 48. 61 Myles Dillon and Nora K. Chadwick, The Celtic Realms (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 86-9; Seán McGrail, “From the Ice Age to Early Medieval Times,” in The New Maritime History of 28

The enhanced movement of goods and between the Britannic landmasses in this period extended the knowledge of cross-Channel passages among their peoples.62

Brittany and southwest England remained economically and culturally twinned throughout their subsequent history. Trades in cloth and canvas were steady between east

Devon and St. Malo into the early modern period. Exchange was bolstered by the ethno- linguistic particularism that persisted among the Breton and Cornish peoples, even after the appearance of strong political states to their east. During the fourteenth-century

Breton War of Succession, popular support fell to the English-supported Montfort over the French-backed , due in part to provincial reliance on trade with England.63

While this Celtic heritage proved to be significant, the indelible historical factor driving western Channel exchange was the dynastic unification of much of the region under the medieval Plantagenet Empire. This came to be in 1154, with the accession of

Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy to the English throne (as Henry II). Taking together his territorial inheritance in Norman France, marriage to Eleanor of , and subsequent conquests of Brittany and Ireland, Henry and his successors controlled the entirety of Europe’s Atlantic littoral between Scotland and Iberia. While this development was essentially a dynastic accident, the result was something more: a seaborne empire held together by the “mutual interest” of complementary economies along the Atlantic sea route of western and northwestern France. Political stability under

Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 40-1; Malcolm Todd, South West to AD 1000 (London: Longman, 1987), 238-9. 62 McGrail, i: 41. 63 Barry Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples, 8000 BC – AD 1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 463, 545. Cultural correlation in the western Channel is echoed in the toponymy of Brittany. Its two largest internal kingdoms were named after the Britannic migrants that settled there: Cornouaille (in Breton, Kernev) consisted of the coastal region of lower Brittany and Domnonée (Domnonea) included almost all of the northern coast. 29 the Plantagenets encouraged the formation of a unified trading system spanning

Aquitaine, Poitou, Normandy, Brittany, , and southwest England.64

The coastline between the Loire and Gironde rivers became the focal point of a

Plantagenet maritime-viticultural system: imperial markets opened the western French economy and, in turn, its cities provided the Crown with great revenues in the form of tolls and duties. The largest and most important port of that region, La Rochelle in Aunis, materialized under the trading boon that English support provided. Officially founded only two decades before the marriage of Henry II and (1131), La

Rochelle gained its communal privileges and commercial stature under English control.

When the nobles of the west revolted in support of the estranged Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Young King in 1173-4, La Rochelle’s loyalty ensured that Henry II retained control over Poitou. In gratitude, Henry and his son Richard confirmed the privileges of the Rochelais and additionally granted them the self-governing privileges of a commune jurée.

Political stability and English market demand under the Plantagenet system fostered the city’s reputation as the premier wine exporter in Atlantic France during the thirteenth century. The success of city merchants hinged on their role as distributors for inexpensive, high-quality white wines from inland Aunis and the Charente Valley.

Annual English fleets arriving at the port during the traditional October vendanges – primarily from the Channel ports of Devon, Cornwall, and Hampshire – enjoyed special privileges of safe conduct and low customs. Flemish merchants from Damme, too, became important northern buyers of Aunisien goods. Breton shippers from Cornouailles and Goëllo supplemented this trade by distributing Rochelais wine and cereals to markets

64 John Gillingham, The (London: Arnold, 2001), 62, 66. 30 in the , , Flanders, and . Under this commercial constellation,

La Rochelle’s international trade ramified; in 1224, the city population included Flemish,

Spanish, English, Italian, and Jewish merchants.65

The coherence of the Plantagenet maritime system is best evidenced by the customary unity that developed among its trading states and their neighbors. The promulgation of a set of commercial laws known as the Rôles d’Oléron in the thirteenth century simultaneously stands as evidence and impetus for the consolidation of maritime culture in the western Channel. Written around the start of the thirteenth century, the

Rolls consist of several dozen articles governing common matters of dispute among mariners and merchants, including ship procedures, contractual obligations, labor relations, property rights, mercantile ethics, and the exigencies of a shipwreck.66 Because of their recognized importance as the foundation of modern maritime law in various western states, authorship of the articles has been the subject of a long historical debate.67

The content of the Rôles makes clear that they originally operated in the specific context of the Channel wine trade under the jurisdiction of the Plantagenet kings. They chronologically simulate the voyage of a cog from Île d’Oléron – an ancient center for shipbuilding and mariners along the Atlantic seaboard – to lading ports at La Rochelle or

Bordeaux, then continuing on to northern markets in Brittany, Normandy, England,

65 Robert Favreau, Histoire de la Rochelle, ed. Marcel Delafosse (Toulouse: Editions Privat, 1985), 11-13, 19-20, 37, 65-6; Gillingham, 62-3. 66 A fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman transcription of the document can be found in P. Studer, ed., The Book of Southampton, 3 vols. (Southampton: Southampton Record Society, 1910), II: 54-103. 67 Past theories have attributed authorship to , Otto of Saxony, or the maritime court at Île d’Oléron. The most popular (and oft-repeated) theory attributes the Rolls to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was traditionally thought to have commissioned them at Oléron in after her return from crusading with her husband. She was believed to be inspired by the idea of creating a unified body of maritime law for northwest Europe, much like the ancient Lex Rhodia that governed the whole of the . Modern authors generally discount these theories, though the view that the Rôles were decisions rendered by the court at Oléron still retains some currency. For discussion, see Timothy J. Runyan, “The Rolls of Oleron and the Admiralty Court in Fourteenth-Century England,” The American Journal of Legal History 19, no. 2 (1975), 98-9; Studer, Oak Book, II: xxix-xxxvii. 31

Scotland, and Flanders. Thus, it seems most likely that the Rôles were a charter of a maritime association of Oléron involved with the wine trade, though they may have been based on customs familiar to other participants in the Plantagenet trade sphere.68

Oléron’s laws lent an authoritative voice to older customs and, in the process, helped to universalize a form of western French maritime expertise. Indeed, the subsequent acceptance of the Rôles by state courts outside of the region supports a view of them as the “principal source of the maritime law of all the countries of the Atlantic seaboard of Europe.”69 In the English case, law followed from the experience of its seamen, who internalized the customs in the process of conducting the French trade.

They entered use in the southwest as early as 1351, when they were cited during a Bristol inquest. The de facto acceptance of the Rôles as binding statute led to their adoption as the basis for English maritime law by the High Court of Admiralty in the fifteenth century.70 Other wine traders of western Europe adopted the customs concurrently, including Castile (c.1266), ports in Brittany and Normandy (thirteenth century), Flemish ports of the Zwijn River (Damme and Bruges in the late fourteenth century), and the

Hanseatic cities of the North Sea and Baltic (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries).71

68 James W. Shephard, “The Rôles d’Oléron: A lex mercatoria of the Sea?” in Comparative Studies in Continental and Anglo-American Legal History, vol. 24, From Lex Mercatoria to Commercial Law, ed. Vito Piergiovanni (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2005), 217, 243-9. 69 Shephard, 249. Also see Runyan, “Oleron,” 98. 70 Runyan, “Oleron,” 103; Shephard, 251. The fourteenth-century compendium that serves as the basis for English maritime law – the Black Book of the Admiralty – begins with an transcription of the Rolls of Oléron. Parliament petitioned the Admiralty in 1402 asking that it use the Rôles over English customary law, and various articles were cited in subsequent cases in the fifteenth century. Other contemporary copies appear in corporate legal volumes such as the Red Book of Bristol and the Oak Book of Southampton, as well as (more unusually) in Walter Raleigh’s manuscript letter to Henry Stuart. See HCA 12/1; “Sir Walter Raleigh and the ‘Art of War by Sea’: A Lost Treatise,” Devon Notes and Queries IV (July 1907), 237-8; Jean Vanes, Education and Apprenticeship in Sixteenth-Century Bristol (Bristol: Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1982), 23. For other existing manuscripts in England, see Studer, Oak Book, II: xlii-xliv. 71 Phillipe Dollinger, The German Hansa, ed. and trans. D.S. Ault and S.H. Steinberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 148; Studer, Oak Book, II: xxix-xli. The Oléron customs became source 32

The centrality of western France to English commercial empire under the

Plantagenets was such that the loss of La Rochelle in 1224 has long been viewed by historians as marking its nadir. In the immediate aftermath, southern Flanders (Bergues,

Saint-Omer, and Gravelines) overtook England as La Rochelle’s primary northern market and Rochelais goods in English ports were impounded under Henry III. England, however, retained a firm foothold in western French trade through its remaining possessions in Aquitaine, including the Île d’Oléron, , and .72 The overall loyalty of the ports of Aquitaine under the Plantagenets, coupled with the enormous expenditures undertaken by the Crown in retaining that territory after the mid- fourteenth century, are a prima facie argument for the persistence of their symbiotic relationship in the later Middle ages. Rather than viewing England’s defense of its western French possessions as a wayward adventure, Malcolm Vale has argued that the

“political, economic, and cultural benefits” of the Anglo-Gascon relationship were essential to dynastic policy.73

Indeed, the persistence of the English Crown’s dynastic and commercial interests in western France helped to open the maritime in the mid-fourteenth century. The conquest of by Edward III’s son, the “Black” Prince of Wales, in the opening phase of the Hundred Years War returned much of Saintonge and Aunis

(including La Rochelle) to full English sovereignty under the new principality of

Aquitaine. Edward’s creation of the for his son’s household in 1337

material for Hansa maritime law through a Flemish translation circulating in the Zwijn cities (the fourteenth-century “Customary of Damme”). This version informed the sixteenth-century “Sea Law of Gotland” that governed the Hanseatic naval court at Visby. 72 Favreau, La Rochelle, 23, 31; Malcolm Vale, The Angevin Legacy and the Hundred Years War, 1250-1340 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 19, 140-2, 147. 73 Vale, 18-20. 33 was an important precondition for those conquests. The Duchy consisted of a number of manors in Cornwall, but contained land in Devon and other counties as well.74 Among these, the prince could claim the rights to the best deep-water harbors in Devon: Sutton

Pool at Plymouth and Dartmouth. Both expanded from small fishing hamlets to major ports under the Duke’s investment, serving as the embarkation point for military campaigns and supplies headed to Gascony.75

Thus, the Black Prince administered a commercial lane that extended from the

Devonian and Cornish ports to those of Aquitaine. As the king’s representative in these lands after 1360, the Prince resided at courts in Bordeaux and Angoulême known for their sumptuousness. Edward III’s official confirmation of Rochelais communal privileges established continuity with the Angevin regime of the previous century.76

Meanwhile, Plymouth and Dartmouth flourished as a result of their roles in the western

Channel supply line. Campaigns injected cash into their local economies through lump- sum royal purchases of supplies, victuals, and services. More broadly, the war increased the county share in the Gascony trade, which advanced from 8% to 22% of the national total between 1350 and 1450.77 However, the wartime campaigns were not as generous to the economy of Saintonge-Aunis, which declined precipitously in the same period. La

Rochelle returned to French control in 1371 and England relinquished the rest of its western French possessions by 1453. The Rochelais had exited the grip of English empire after a long epoch of dynastic flux, though remnants of the commune’s foreign heritage

74 Edward Windeatt, “Charter of Creation of the Duchy of Cornwall,” Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries 10 (1918-19), 135-44. 75 Kowaleski, Exeter, 36-7. 76 For more on the tenure of the Prince of Wales in France, see David Green, : Power in Medieval Europe (Harlow: Pearson, 2007), Chapter 4 passim; Jean Glénisson, “Le temps des malheurs,” in La Charente-Maritime: L’Aunis et la Saintonge des origines à nos jours, ed. Jean-Noel Luc (Saint-Jean-d’Angély: Editions Bordessoules, 1981), 161-6. 77 Kowaleski, Exeter, 36-7. 34 remained. When the commune re-acquired taxation privileges from King Charles V, the early modern local historian Louis-Etienne Arcère noted that they did so “in the status of strangers who entered in submission to France.”78

* * * * *

Well before the sixteenth century, the outlines of the western Channel as a maritime region were in place. Anglo-French trade was the anchor for one of the largest economic and customary zones in medieval Western Europe, encompassing many of its richest maritime communities. From Southampton to Saintonge, the northern Atlantic seaboard provided idiosyncratic circumstances for human development. While conducive to social and political separatism by land, its principal ports were well-positioned for integration with more distant northern European markets. Thus, its cities and their hinterlands generated sophisticated microeconomies that prospered in spite of their demographic isolation. The political imbrication of the greater region under the English

Crown allowed for the emergence of a stable, specialized regional economy based on western French products. By the end of the Middle ages, these developmental factors combined to form something of a local cultural order, manifest in the shared maritime customs and mentalities of western Channel cities.

Regional economies and culture

As a short history of the medieval western Channel demonstrates, the region was first defined by economic exchange between its English and French ports. Its traditional

78 Louis-Étienne Arcère, Histoire de La Rochelle et du pays d’Aulnis (Paris, 1756), xxv; Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517- 1751 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 32.

35 economy, which overlaps in large part with the chronology of this study, consisted in the bilateral trade of commodities produced in the backcountries of these cities. That trade can be reduced to two complementary sets: the exchange of French wines for English cloth and French salt for English-caught fish. Wine and cloth were separate staple products that, as seen in medieval trade licenses in Devon, merchants often directly exchanged for one another.79 Salt and cured fish were linked in the supply chain of fishing endeavors that represented a collaborative, Anglo-French Atlantic industry beginning in the fourteenth century. The peoples of the western Channel reshaped their coastal environments to suit this trade over time, cultivating economic monocultures based on one or two export products.

Western French and southwest English cities developed sophisticated marketing and maritime resources to serve their regional export industries. La Rochelle and Exeter held large bodies of merchants who provided capital and organized labor for production in their rural backcountries. In carrying their products along the Atlantic seaboard, they relied on nearby pools of maritime tradesmen and sailors; La Rochelle looked south to

Arvert and Île d’Oléron in Saintonge, while Exeter relied on the inhabitants of coastal parishes surrounding Plymouth and Dartmouth.80

Finally, sea traffic and market exchange in the western Channel focused on the city space of La Rochelle itself. A number of factors fed its role as the primary hub of its

Anglo-French network system, many of which will be discussed in detail below.

Medieval grants of communal liberties defined its function as an entrepôt for western

79 Kowaleski, Exeter, 235-6. 80 Marc Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, vol. 3, Le début des temps modernes, 1480- 1610 (: Geste éditions, 2005), 91; Todd Gray, “Devon’s Coastal and Overseas Fisheries and New England Migration, 1597-1642” (Ph.D. diss., University of Exeter, 1988), 58-9. 36

French products. Most importantly, these included a free port regime that afforded extravagant privileges to visiting foreign merchants. Partially as a result of this, early modern Rochelais merchants remained sedentary and the city developed a foreign- controlled overseas carrying trade.81 Thus, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, northern merchants employed seasonal fleets to carry goods to and from La Rochelle, in the process developing large resident communities in the city. These trends accelerated in its period of official Calvinist rule (1568-1628), when new confessional networks in

Protestant Europe embellished the Rochelais relationship with England and the

Netherlands.

The classic era of the western Channel economy – the peak of intercity trade in staple commodities – extends roughly from the rapid expansion of Exeter’s overseas trade in the late fifteenth century to the collapse of Rochelais Calvinist governance in the successful royal siege of 1627-8. To understand what lay behind these political events, one must first appreciate the local habitats for commerce, industry, and socialization in western Channel cities during that period. That appreciation must begin with a discussion of the production regimes of the principal city-regions and their specializations within the

Anglo-French economy. Only then can one undertake a more focused comparison of the civic cultures forged by merchants in the largest western Channel ports of La Rochelle and Exeter. In doing so, I emphasize the structures of corporate privilege, family, and expertise that undergirded their traditions of political leadership and business acumen.

Saintonge-Aunis

For much of the early modern age, the city-region of La Rochelle commanded the landscape and economy of the French west country. Its population peak of 23,000 urban

81 Favreau, La Rochelle, 20, 61; Clark, La Rochelle, 26. 37 residents in the early seventeenth century placed it among France’s largest fifteen cities.

Of urban areas on the Atlantic seaboard, it was equivalent in size to and somewhat smaller than Bordeaux (36,000), though easily the biggest ocean-sited port in the western part of the kingdom.82 Yet for a city of its stature, La Rochelle occupied a dichotomous geographical position echoed in the adopted motto of its more recent inhabitants, belle et rebelle: a city estranged by natural boundaries from much of the

French realm, but whose generous backcountry lands were wild, diverse, and fertile.

Fortunately, in charting the bounds of a regional urban system around La

Rochelle, the French régionalisme movement of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has provided much groundwork. This school, headed by Jean Charles-Brun and gathering scholars from a number of academic disciplines, proposed various bases for defining regions outside of bureaucratic categories that took into account overlapping political, historical, economic, and cultural factors.83 Looking toward the French west country, régionalistes Charles-Brun and Vidal de la Blache identified La Rochelle as the chef-lieu of an expansive reaching from Poitiers in the northeast to the river in the southwest.84 That area lies almost entirely south and east of La Rochelle; the

Poitevin marshes along the Sèvre-Niortaise that divided Aunis from the Pays de la Loire also stunted the northern commercial reach of the commune. The lack of an extensive road network out of its immediate suburban area in Aunis posed a logistical challenge for

82 Kevin C. Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea. La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 48; Philip Benedict, “French cities from the sixteenth century to the Revolution: An overview,” in Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, ed. Philip Benedict (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 24-5. Applying the more recent population estimate offered by Robbins to Benedict’s rankings, 1620s La Rochelle would have been proximate in size to , , , and . 83 See the discussion in Robert E. Dickinson, The City-Region in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 1967), 203-16. 84 Jean Charles-Brun, Le Régionalisme (Paris: Bloud, 1911); Vidal de la Blache, “Les Regions Françaises,” Revue de Paris (15 Dec. 1910), 821-49. 38 which locals compensated by developing water transport lanes (in local parlance, routes d’eau) into the interior via river and marsh barges. Shipping lanes along the Biscayan coast provided access to the abutting Atlantic city-regions of Nantes and Bordeaux.85

Landscape divided La Rochelle’s backcountry, yet its four subsidiary regions evolved specialized practices of labor and production that together comprised an interdependent system. The first of these corresponded to the ancien regime province of

Aunis, of which La Rochelle was capital. Outside the city walls, this 600-square-mile area was sequestered from its neighboring provinces by the dense forest in the east and marshes to the north and south.86 Open plains and a good road network connected the communities within those boundaries. Aunis itself was solid ground, perched atop a plank of Jurassic limestone that held it above its marshy environs and offered arable soils for viniculture. The political and economic shadow cast by La Rochelle covered most of the

Aunisien population. About half of the province figured in post-thirteenth-century statute as its banlieue, a suburban area under the direct authority of the commune’s powerful bourgeois administration. Its inhabitants were subject to the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the Rochelais mayor’s court, as well as royal privileges of taxation and commercial regulation granted to the merchant-dominated city council. City hegemony extended to control on the land – most in the banlieue was tied up in massive vineyard estates owned by bourgeois merchants.87

85 Favreau, La Rochelle, 59; Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 20-1; Pierre Rézeau, Dictionnaire du français regional de Poitou- et de Vendée (Paris: Bonneton, 1990), s.v. “route d’eau.” 86 Maurice Bures, Le type saintongeais (Paris: Le Croît Vif, 1991 reprint), 17. 87 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 32, 35-37, 41. The growth of bourgeois estates derived from a 1312 grant from Philip IV that exempted citizens from paying feudal levies on noble estates that they acquired. By Robbins’s , 70% of Rochelais senior councilors owned estates in the banlieue. 39

The Atlantic islands of Saintonge-Aunis (Ré, Oléron, Aix) and the coastline facing them make up a second region named the pays d’isles. During the middle ages, the islanders of Ré and Oléron had gradually secured military self-sufficiency and commercial freedom from mainland authorities. Their merchants and landowners traded on their strategic location during the Hundred Years War to extract privileges from the

French Crown that included perpetual exemptions from royal tailles and subsidies.88

Virtually flat, prone to flooding, and enjoying more sunlight hours than any other area of

France, the islands proved to be a fruitful site for vineyards and salt pans. Island merchants exported wines, vinegars, and salts out of their primary ports (Saint-Martin-de-

Ré and Chateau-d’Oléron, respectively) and the entrepôt market of La Rochelle. Their mainland neighbors in the pays inhabited a desolate, inundated stretch of coastline from the mouth of the Charente southward to the Gironde. Along with Oléron, salts gathered out of the marais of Brouage and the Seudre were the most prized of all of western

France during the sixteenth century. Maritime trades thrived in nearby ports at Tremblade,

Marennes, and Chateau-d’Oléron, due to the uptick in salt trade and the ever-present demand for maritime labor at La Rochelle.89

To the east, the other two areas that comprised the inland portion of the Rochelais city-region were its most fertile. The hilly and arable region to the east of Aunis, Basse

Saintonge-Poitiers, represented La Rochelle’s single overland link to the road system of interior France. Travellers could reach Poitiers in two days via an old Roman road through Surgères and Niort.90 The road also carried much-needed, locally grown cereals

88 Arcère, Histoire, 64, 83. 89 Favreau, 59; Seguin, Temps modernes, 87, 91-4. On average, the Saintonge-Aunis coast enjoys 20% more sunlight days each year than Paris and 12% more than Bordeaux or Dijon. 90 Delafosse, La Rochelle, 110. 40 to La Rochelle and its banlieue. A final area consisted of the riverine communities of the

Charente Valley in Saintonge and parts of Angoumois. Laying mostly to the east of the

Saintongeais coastal wetlands, the meadows and small valleys of the Charente contained good soils and a temperate climate. These conditions yielded bountiful cereals and the best viniculture in the French west. “If France was an egg,” as went the old local proverb,

“then Saintonge would be the yolk.”91

Very early in its history, La Rochelle’s harbor became an entrepôt for goods from the French west country. That role posed a challenge for a city that measured only one and a half square miles within its original fortified walls. Faubourgs popped up along three of its sides by the seventeenth century, though the urban core remained densely populated, cut by noisy, narrow streets that led to and from the quais. Strong smells purportedly accompanied its concentrated population and maritime trades. Tar, fish remnants, and other organic wastes coated many of the sidewalks in the core parishes.92

Its medieval stone harbor, which opened at its southern extent between the Tour Saint-

Nicolas and Tour de la Chaîne, initially supported commercial operations in the commune because of its ability to handle the thousand-ton cogues that arrived from medieval markets in Flanders and the Baltic Hansa cities.93 Unfortunately, by the mid- sixteenth century, silting in the ocean channel of the Vieux-Port made it nearly impossible for vessels to pass in or out at low tide. Ships larger than a 200-ton barque were compelled either to dock along the mud flats of the outer bay or the auxiliary deep- water harbors of Coureilles and Chef-de-Baie. Those that could enter the harbor – only

91 Nicolas Alain, De Santonum regione, et illustrioribus familiis (Bordeaux, 1598), 39. 92 Clark, La Rochelle, 5. 93 Gillingham, 62; François Julien-LaBruyère, Paysans charentais: Histoire des campagnes d’Aunis, Saintonge, et bas Angoumois. Tome I: Économie rurale (La Rochelle: Rupella, 1982), 306-8; Dollinger, 141-2. 41

300 yards long and half as wide – moored awkwardly side-by-side at right angles and unloaded through the use of planks.94

The fact that the Rochelais economy reached unprecedented levels of prosperity in the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in spite of these deficiencies, speaks in no small part to the valuable produce of Saintonge-Aunis. The merchants of La Rochelle headed a focused export economy based on their successful marketing of two commodities: salt and wine. Again, geographical circumstance played a role in their success. The Rochelais city-region occupied the furthest northern position on

Europe’s Atlantic seaboard with the climactic conditions to produce quality salt and wine.

That made it an attractive destination for traders from southern England, northern France, and Flanders, whose home regions harbored industries that complemented those of the

French west.

Coastal salt-making was the longest-tenured of the regional industries and the main staple of the Rochelais in their western Channel trade. Even the civic leadership of sixteenth-century Saintes, a large town thirty miles to the interior of Saintonge, recognized it as “le principal revenu” of their region.95 The craft of the artisan saunier clustered around saltworks built on wetland ponds (marais) within the islands region. In a process that mirrored local viticulture, producers conducted a harvest (une récolte) of their ponds at the end of each summer. Perhaps underestimated are the value and variety of salts cultivated on a micro-regional scale in Saintonge-Aunis – crues that differed according to their immediate terroir, irrigation sources, and the skillfulness of individual sauniers. Most prized was the “bay” salt of Baie de Bourgneuf and the pure white variety

94 Delafosse, La Rochelle, 111; Clark, La Rochelle, 1-2. 95 René François Eugène Eschassériaux, Études, documents, et extraits relatifs á la ville de Saintes (Saintes, 1876), 218. 42 of Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, but this retailed alongside specialized vintages like the red-hued salt of Périgold, the grey ones found near , and the black salt of Brouage. A small, but valuable luxury market existed for the Brouageais variety, which arose after

François I presented it as a gift to Henry VIII.96

Demand from northwest European fishing fleets, insatiate and ever-increasing, accounted for most local profits. Given the scarcity of fishing enterprises in Saintonge, much of the production focused on exports to Basque, southwest English, and Breton fleets, which expanded dramatically after the opening of the cod fishery near

Newfoundland. Salt accounted for most of Devon’s imports from western France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because of their investment in and dependence on that commodity for their most valuable maritime industry, English West Country merchants were scrupulous in their pursuit of pure salts for curing operations. The most well-read southwestern merchants’ manual of its period instructed its readers on how to evaluate their potential purchases. The salt should be “the brightest, and whitest,” but new salt should be avoided; the latter quality could be “perceiued by the moistnes of it, and by the sticking of it to your fingers, after hard wringing of it in your hand.”97

Rochelais vendors also took pains to assuage customers regarding the purity and authenticity of their products. Notary contracts (ventes) marking the sale of Oléron salt regularly employed the language “blanc comme neige” (“white as snow”) to describe the product.

96 Seguin, Temps modernes, 108; Favreau, La Rochelle, 20; David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 15. 97 John Browne, The Marchants Avizo (London, 1589), 25. Browne was a native of Bristol and tailored his advice to the young merchants of that city. However, his manual was the most widely read of its time, going through six editions by the start of the 1640s. 43

Viticulture in the French west was nearly as old a practice as that of its salt- makers. Insofar as it opened overseas markets to their goods, Plantagenet rule in the twelfth century gave initial impetus to winemaking vignerons to expand the plantation of new vines in Aunis and Saintonge. Winemaking nurtured La Rochelle in its initial years as an entrepôt port. Since its haven could accommodate the heavy Flemish cogs that could not penetrate the Saintongeais river system, it encouraged the creation of transport networks to and from the estuarine wine villages. Under that system, the merchants of the commune negotiated special trading privileges in the northern markets; thus, western

French wines first reached Liège in 1198 and England (outside of London) in 1204.

Medieval winemakers in west-central France introduced a successful production regime based on two different grapes: le chemère, a white grape similar to the pineau blanc of the Loire Valley, and le chauché, a black variety related to the Burgundian pinot rouge. Vignerons made mostly white wines from these grapes (or in the case of le chauché, a red-tinted vin gris) that gained a positive international reputation as cheaper alternatives to the vintages of Bordeaux or Nantes.98 In Aunis, success led to further vineyard encroachment on the banlieue. Grape-growing by the Rochelais bourgeois choked off most other agricultural activity from the commune to Thairé in the south and frequently necessitated the importation of cereals from far afield. An early marker of this dangerous monoculture can be found in a 1279 request of the bourgeois for release from a royal prescription for training mares, due to the fact that “neither pasture, nor decent

98 Roger Dion, Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France des origins au XIXe siècle (Paris : Clavreuil, 1959), 342-4, 362; Julien-Labruyère, Paysans charentais, 306-10. 44 places where they could have them” could be found near the city.99 In 1500, vines covered close to three-quarters of viable farmland in the banlieue.100

By the mid-sixteenth century, the wines of the city-region had gone in two very different directions. While those of the Charente Valley (Cognac, Saint-Jean-d’Angély) and Île de Ré maintained their stature based on continued cultivation of chemère and chauché, Aunisien vintages declined in quality and overseas reputation.101 A plant disease of the later sixteenth century caused the catastrophic failure of grape harvests in the province. The historian Arcère indicated that local proprietors showed poor judgment by transitioning to inferior varietals – balzac and folle – with which they could cheaply restore their export production.102 In crisis, they experimented with distillation methods, using technology (the alembic) imported from Flanders, in order to create a viable product. The first maker of distilled eau-de-vie, Jehan Serazen, appeared in the commune in 1571; eight faiseurs operated there by 1604, with production extending outward to Ré and Tonnay-Charente in the 1620s. The table brandy made by these proprietors, a foul- tasting spirit by French standards, nonetheless formed a major export stream to England in the seventeenth century.103 Artisans near Segonzac in Saintonge eventually discovered that the flavor profile of eau-de-vie could be improved by another round of distillation.

99 Quoted in Favreau, La Rochelle, 34. 100 Étienne Trocmé, “La Rochelle de 1560 à 1628, tableau d’une société réformée pendant les guerres de religion” (Ph.D. diss., Paris, 1950), 9-11. 101 Aunisien wine sales dwindled gradually in the market cities of Dutch Republic after the turn of the seventeenth century. De Bruyn Kops has found that “Seranten” (Charente) wines disappeared entirely from commodity listings after 1628. See Henriette de Bruyn Kops, A Spirited Exchange: The Wine and Brandy Trade between France and the Dutch Republic in its Atlantic Framework, 1600-1650 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 178, 200-02. 102 Clark, La Rochelle, 173; Arcère, Histoire, i: 3-4, ii: 463. 103 Étienne Trocmé and Marcel Delafosse, Le Commerce Rochelais de la fin du XVe siècle au début du XVIIe (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1952), 112-13; Julien-Labruyère, Paysans charentais, 314- 15. 45

Their efforts resulted in the brand now known as Cognac, which saw steady growth in northern European wine markets from the early seventeenth century onward.104

Devon

Unlike La Rochelle’s uncontested dominance within the Aunis-Saintonge region, maritime commerce in Devon fell to a group of city-regions. The diversity of its environment – by far the largest county in southern England – often remains understated within scholarship that tends to fixate on its craggy remoteness. By the sixteenth century,

Devon’s localized ecologies encouraged its urban centers to develop specialized, yet complementary commercial cultures. Having more coastline and port havens than any other English shire, its principal cities were directly sited on the sea or one of the navigable rivers that wound generously among its inland parishes. These served as outlets for industries that grew out of the county’s abundant natural resources and prefaced its relationships with other western Channel cities. In introducing the landscapes and cities of Devon, this study follows the organizational schema of Mark Stoyle. These divide the county into four regions, each corresponding to one or several of the urban-commercial systems that became centers for cross-Channel trade.105

East Devon encompassed the lowland segment of the county stretching from the border with Dorset and Somerset in the east, west to the River Exe, and northward to the forested hills near Rackenford that marked the southern extent of . Both the relatively flat downland near Dorset and the red-hued soil of the Exe Valley were long recognized for their fertility, supporting the largest medieval concentration of population

104 Pauline Reverchon, Cognac: Charente (16) (-Ingersheim: S.A.E.P., 1973), 85-6. French brandewijn appeared generically in Amsterdam market listings after 1609, while that of Conjack was first listed in 1630. See tables in de Bruyn Kops, 200-01. 105 Mark Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality: Popular Allegiance in Devon during the English Civil War (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994), 9-13. 46 and plough teams in the entire southwest region. Under a countywide system of convertible husbandry – a flexible practice in which land was converted to pasture or cropping according to population pressure and demand – most land in the eastern county shifted to permanent pasture for sheep and cattle by the early seventeenth century.106 This transition was so dramatic that, by the , local topographer Thomas Westcote commented that the county was “hardly able to feed itself” except by imported cereals.107

Still, this wood-pasture profile – along with the abundance of small rivers and streams in the Vale of Exeter – supported the most significant concentration of population in Stuart

Devon and encouraged the early industrialization of many eastern towns. Large towns such as Tiverton and in the upper Exe Valley cultivated cloth and lace industries, respectively.108 Even relatively small villages like Colyton became quite wealthy, housing a dozen merchants and six fulling mills as early as the .109

The largest city in the east was Exeter, which in addition to becoming the primary market center for the clothmaking towns served as the administrative and episcopal capital of the county. By every marker – consumer demand, commercial wealth, and industrial productivity in its hinterland – Exeter could claim to be the greatest of Devon’s ports from the late middle ages through the mid-seventeenth century.110 At the height of its traditional economy in the 1610s, average yearly customs revenues ranked second only to Hull for provincial ports; Westcote referred to it a few decades later as the

106 William George Hoskins, Devon (London: Collins, 1954), 16; Kowaleski, Exeter, 10-12, 13- 16; Pamela Sharpe, Population and Society in an Parish. Reproducing Colyton, 1540-1840 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), 126-7. 107 Thomas Westcote, A View of Devonshire in 1630 (Exeter: William Roberts, 1845), 60. 108 Tristam Risdon, The Chorographical Description or Survey of the County of Devon (Plymouth, 1811), 5; Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 9. 109 Sharpe, Colyton, 78-80. 110 Kowaleski, Exeter, 222, 231. 47

“emporium of the Western parts” of the realm.111 With these resources it sustained a population close to 3,000 adult males in 1642.112

Exeter was situated four miles from the Exe estuary and ten miles from the open waters of the Channel, an unusual geographic position for a successful early modern port.

Even as early as the fourteenth century, river silting made it all but impossible for large vessels to make their way up to the city quay. Medieval construction of a series of weirs downstream by the Courtenay family, who owned land on both sides of the estuary below the city, worsened its prospects.113 Therefore, its merchants cultivated the development of an outport at Topsham, a manorial holding of the of Devon that lay at the highest navigable point on the river. Exeter’s commercial viability relied on its relationship with

Topsham and an unusually large coastal trade with re-export centers at Dartmouth,

Plymouth, and Southampton.114 A pound lock canal constructed in the 1560s partially alleviated this situation by allowing lighter traffic to and from the deeper estuary.115

In spite of such adversity, the corporation and its merchants maintained jurisdictional control within the space of the Exe. It levied town customs on all goods passing into estuarine ports; after the thirteenth century, it required all goods to be offloaded at Topsham and collected fines from those who wished to do so elsewhere.116

111 W.B. Stephens, Seventeenth-Century Exeter: A Study of Industrial and Commercial Development, 1625-1688 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1958), 8; Westcote, Devonshire, 135. 112 I draw this population estimate and the ones that follow from A.J. Howard and T.L. Stoate, eds., The Devon Protestation Returns (A.J. Howard, 1973). They provide a fair and comparative sense of population among county ports near the height of their traditional economic relationship with French cities across the Channel. 113 Joyce Youings and Peter W Cornford, “Seafaring and Maritime Trade in Sixteenth-Century Devon,” The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 99. 114 Kowaleski, Exeter, 222-4, 225-33. 115 W.B. Stephens, “The Exeter Lighter Canal, 1566-1698,” Journal of Transport History (1957): 1-11. The canal was the first of its kind in the kingdom and undoubtedly a reflection of the wealth of Tudor Exeter’s mercantile establishment. 116 Kowaleski, 222-4. 48

The vast extent of Exeter’s inland commercial network made this degree of control possible. This hinterland included 200 square miles of lowland reaching from the cloth towns of the Exe and Culm Valleys outward to parts of northern Devon and western

Somerset – by far the most concentrated industrial and consumer market in the county, and surpassed only by Bristol and Southampton in the West Country.117 Cloth exports generated by this eastern hinterland fueled the dramatic expansion of Exeter’s maritime trade at the start of the Tudor age. At peak production between 1501-10, city exports averaged 8,600 pieces of cloth each year (more than 10% of the national average). Its population surged from 3,000 total residents in 1377 to 7,000 in the 1520s; in a period of urban decline, it became England’s most successful provincial city.118

The highland region known as Mid-Devon encompasses the center of the county from the Exe to the border with Cornwall on the Tamar. Much of it is dominated by the vast granite landmass known as Dartmoor, the largest open area in southern England at

364 square miles. Remote even at present, the moorland reaches heights above 1,500 feet and snowfall is common in winter months. With its imposing rocky outcroppings and infertile soils, its prominence on the landscape has tended to skew perceptions of the county’s accessibility. While Mid-Devon contained several notable Tudor-Stuart era cloth towns in and , its primary significance lay in its ambivalent effect on commercial development in the more populous northern and southern coastal regions. On one hand, most of Devon’s navigable river systems drain radially from the

117 Stephens, Exeter, xx. Kowaleski provides an excellent mapping of Exeter’s medieval hinterland in Exeter, 274-8. 118 Kowaleski, Exeter, 88; Youings and Cornford, 101. The phenomenon of Exeter’s early Tudor growth is chronicled in E.M. Carus-Wilson, The Expansion of Exeter at the Close of the Middle Ages (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1963). For figures relating particularly to its cloth trade, see E.M. Carus- Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 1275-1547 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 105-19, 143-5. 49 moor, which ultimately provided the conditions for port growth along the Dart estuary,

Taw-Torridge system, and Plymouth Sound. It was also a base for the tin industry that, while smaller than that of Cornwall, remained a staple county export throughout the early modern period. Nonetheless, inhospitable and sparsely populated, it complicated inland communications and stifled the growth of industry around Plymouth and Dartmouth.119

Cascading downward from the heights of Dartmoor lies the small but populous area called , which accounted for about a quarter of the county population in

1642.120 It contains an arable stretch of land between the rivers Erme and Teign, which includes some of the fertile “Red Devon” soils that stretch northeastward from towards the Exe; this led the Stuart county antiquary Tristam Risdon to name it “the garden of Devonshire.”121 Hilly in the north, the land flattens as it nears the southern peninsula that hosts the county’s largest deep-water ports at Plymouth and Dartmouth.

Both Plymouth and Dartmouth experienced transitions from fishing villages to major ports for overseas shipping in the fourteenth century, due to investments made in their harbors by the Duke of Cornwall during the Hundred Years War. The Duchy initially favored Plymouth’s harbor of Sutton Pool because of the pliability of its administrators at Priory over “such magistrates-cum-privateers as the mayors of Dartmouth.”122 Easy access to the rest of Plymouth Sound and the Tamar estuary gave the city a more substantial hinterland. These natural advantages meant that Plymouth’s economic reach extended to South Hams, eastern Cornwall, and the wealthy broadcloth town of Tavistock in Mid-Devon. While neither its industrial backcountry nor its

119 Kowaleski, Exeter, 10-12; Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 11-12. Significant rivers that drain from Dartmoor include (clockwise from north to south) the Okement, Taw, Teign, Dart, Plym, and Tavy. 120 Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 12. 121 Risdon, Devonshire, 5. 122 Percy Russell, Dartmouth: A History of the Port and Town (London: B.T. Batsford, 1950), 14. 50 mercantile establishment was as significant as those of Exeter, Plymouth’s deep haven hosted the greatest number of ships and sailors in the county at the turn of the seventeenth century. It maintained a profile in this period as a regional distribution center, benefitting from business in coastal re-exports arriving from southern Cornish ports and Exeter.

During its shipping surge of 1585-1610, its key exports included cloth from Tavistock and Exeter, Cornish tin, roofing slate, and fish.123

Eclipsed in vessels and mariners only by Plymouth, Dartmouth also evolved as an important embarkation point for county overseas trade. The “commodiousness” of its haven described by Risdon undoubtedly derived from its proximity to Exeter, from whose larger industries and coastal trade it benefitted.124 It drew advantage as well from the depth and navigability of the lower Dart, which enhanced connections with the labor pools of nearby parishes like . On the other hand, steep hills blockaded

Dartmouth from much of the surrounding countryside. The preoccupation of the borough with the promotion of its fishing industry, therefore, can be viewed as a strategic response to the weakness of its backcountry. Another asset was its relationship with the wealthy market town of Totnes eight miles upstream. Totnes, whose river access was impeded by gradual silting, established strong family and business interests in Tudor-Stuart

Dartmouth. Its merchants owned most of the goods in the port and maintained an influential presence in county trade with France. Under these conditions, Dartmouth flourished in the first thirty years of the seventeenth century. Percy Russell surmises that half of its 1642 residents had surnames that were unknown a century before; in that

123 Youings and Cornford, 105. 124 Risdon, Devonshire, 168. 51 period, the number of seamen in the city quadrupled, bringing its adult male population to around 700.125

Finally, like the South Hams, the area of North Devon was constrained by topography; in addition to Dartmoor, the high woodlands around Exmoor blocked its eastern border with Somerset. Good plots of cropped and pastureland, however, did surround its main population centers in the Taw-Torridge river valleys that joined in the far north and exited into the Bristol Channel. The interior river towns bred wealthy woolen industries secondary only to those of the Vale of Exeter. They found their outlet in a set of mid-level downstream ports that oversaw exports to Bristol, Wales, Ireland,

Biscay, and France. Barnstaple became the wealthiest of these in the Tudor era. Although it was hampered by a partially silted haven on the Taw, Barnstaple was a large port with a population equivalent to that of Dartmouth in 1642. However, nearby there were a number of towns of similar size and commercial stature: the large body of merchants at

Torrington, as well as burgeoning pools of able mariners and shipbuilders at and

Northam parish. Northam, with its harbor at Appledore, profited from its position near the confluence of Taw and Torridge. Its residents supplied most of the skilled maritime labor for North Devon and made up the vanguard of its presence in the seventeenth- century Newfoundland fishery.126

125 Todd Gray, “Fishing and the Commercial World of Early Stuart Dartmouth,” in Tudor and Stuart Devon: The Common Estate and Government, eds. Todd Gray, Margery Rowe, and Audrey Erskine (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992), 174-5, 177, 184; Russell, Dartmouth, 82, 108. 126 Alison Grant, “Breaking the Mould: North Devon Maritime Enterprise, 1560-1640,” in Tudor and Stuart Devon: The Common Estate and Government, eds. Todd Gray, Margery Rowe, and Audrey Erskine (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992), 119-21, 122-3. For more on the maritime expertise of Northam, see Joyce Youings, “Three Devon-born Tudor Navigators,” in The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 32-4. 52

Within what was the most industrialized county of England127, the city-regions headed by Exeter, Plymouth, Dartmouth, and Barnstaple drew on the ample resources afforded by land and sea in order to secure their economic well-being. While other shires were profitable, claimed the famed Exeter administrator and antiquarian John Hooker

(alias Vowell) in his unpublished county topography, “they cannot compare wth so many as this litel corner yeldeth in sundry respects both for the publyke welth and private proffites and specially for corne and cattell for cloth and woll for tynne and metalls and for fishe and sea all wch out of this have passaged into all naions and be verie beneficiall to the whole common welthe.”128 Of the four county commodities considered by Hooker, fishing and cloth-making require extended attention here because of their unmatched significance in early modern Channel trade.

By any accounting, fishing operations occupied the greatest number of able mariners and vessels in coastal Devon for centuries prior to the Tudor age. In addition to the early cluster of fisheries along the southern coast, sixteen inshore locations along the

Exe, Torridge, Plym, Avon, and Dart rivers appear in the – more than any other shire in the southwest. Devon and Cornwall surpassed southeast England as the primary exporting region for fish in the late middle ages, due to access to a larger variety of species, local control over trade, links to other exports like cloth and tin, and less seasonal variance in catches.129 Most fishing revenue through the early seventeenth century came from coastal shoals, from which ship crews drew “a greate store and

127 Sharpe, 67. 128 Italicized for emphasis. The first eleven pages of the late Tudor manuscript text can be found in William J. Blake, “Hooker’s Synopsis Chorographical of Devonshire,” Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 47 (1915): 334-48. While unpublished, Hooker’s manuscript served as source material for other notable county topographers such as Risdon and Westcote. 129 H.C. Darby and R. Welldon Finn, eds., The Domesday Geography of South-West England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 269-71; Kowaleski, Exeter, 33-5. 53 varietie” of fish: principally herring and pilchard, but also mackerel, sole, rays, and many others.130 The most productive stores of pilchards could be found in the south near

Sidmouth, Hope Cove, and the mouths of the Teign and Exe. Swarms of herring – the

“king of fishes” in the description of Westcote – appeared on the north coast near

Lynmouth each autumn after 1580.131

If Devon’s offshore fisheries have garnered a great amount of scholarly attention, relatively few studies yet engage with their historical development prior to the opening of the Newfoundland trade. From the middle ages, regular fluctuations in fish stocks required southwesterners to simultaneously maintain footholds in a number of fisheries.

Thus, long before the start of annual Grand Banks migrations, Devon fishermen had followed a flexible strategy of stock conservation, constant mobility, and fisheries expansion in the North Atlantic.132 Their oldest offshore operations were in Iceland and

Ireland, though fishing at the former location declined by the .

Southwesterners fished along the coast of Munster beginning in the fifteenth century, finding stocks of herring, cod, hake, and ling there. Starting in the 1550s, North Sea fishing near Scarborough became a viable option.133 Cod catches in the Grand Banks region off Newfoundland and the coast of northern New England – beginning after 1560

130 Hooker, Devonshire, 348. Hooker also mentions whiting, haddock, colefish, cod, ling, hake, gurnard, piper, millet, bass, and plaice. For a scientific perspective on the marine life found in the early modern coastal fisheries, see A.J. Southward and G.T. Boalch, “The Marine Resources of Devon’s Coastal Waters,” The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 54-7. 131 Gray, “Devon’s Fisheries and Early-Stuart Northern New England,” The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 140; Risdon, Devonshire, 352; Westcote, Devonshire, 67-8. The comprehensive account of Devon’s inshore and offshore fisheries remains Todd Gray, “New England Migration,” especially Chapter 3. 132 Gray, “Devon’s Fisheries,” 141; Ibid., “Dartmouth,” 183, 186-7. Also see Maryanne Kowaleski, “The Expansion of the South-Western Fisheries in Late Medieval England,” Economic History Review (2000): 429-54. 133 Gray, “Devon’s Fisheries,” 141; Michael Oppenheim, The Maritime History of Devon (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1968), 27, 35. 54 and peaking in the 1620s – represented the endpoint for the long cycle of fisheries expansion in Devon.

In the traditional fishery process, migratory crews departed for Newfoundland in the spring season, setting up curing stations on the island at which their catches were salted and dried. Most or all of the crews returned in the autumn, taking their hauls either to England or directly to markets in southern Europe for purchase. This industry was a natural complement to the production of “bay salt,” ideal for curing purposes, by county trading partners in the western Channel. A number of factors played into the early arrival of southwest England in the Grand Banks: its strategic westerly location, the timely failure of stocks in its other overseas fisheries, and – perhaps most importantly – its heavy investment in and proximity to salt markets in Atlantic France. Regional merchants were then able to maintain their early lead through their acquisition of capital and managerial expertise, as well as their access to a large and increasingly skilled migratory labor pool along the southern English coast. Devon, and particularly southern ports like

Dartmouth and Plymouth, “played the leading role in both the fishery and commerce of

Newfoundland throughout the migratory era.”134 Indeed, at the height of the early fishery in 1620, Plymouth and Dartmouth accounted for 80 ships each in the 300-vessel English fleet. In the following year, Parliament estimated the worth of Newfoundland catches at

134 David Starkey, “Devonians and the Newfoundland Trade,” The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 163-4. For more on the dominance of southwest England in the Newfoundland fishery, see Gillian T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland, 1577-1660 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 101-5; Peter E. Pope, Fish into Wine: the Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 17, 92-4, 169. 55

£120,000; £10,000 in exports left Plymouth alone in 1617, and £17,000 from Dartmouth in 1624.135

Barnstaple MP John Delbridge placed the annual value of the Newfoundland fishery to the county economy at £100,000 in 1628.136 Though perhaps this exact number was inflated as a rhetorical flourish, nevertheless it was true that the trade quickly became the most essential component of the maritime economy of Devon. In early seventeenth century Plymouth and Dartmouth, fish cargoes outstripped all other export goods with most finding their way to markets in France, Spain, and the Mediterranean. Beyond the direct profits that they afforded merchants and crews, fish were a staple of bilateral trade since “by traffic of them,” Risdon explained, “commodities are transported into this land from foreign nations.”137 Finally, the fishing industry in Devon cumulatively served as a regional “nursery of seamen,” encouraging capital investment in maritime equipment and the acquisition of seafaring skills among an ever larger pool of maritime laborers.138

Woolen textiles production, a byproduct of the pastoral economy of the inland parishes, constituted the other staple of county exports to France. It was part of a cluster of industrial systems in the English southwest that specialized in the manufacture of broadcloth. To the north and east, an area encompassing , , East

Somerset, and South Oxfordshire marketed woolens to Central Europe via the Merchant

Adventurers company of London. A separate area in Southampton and its hinterland,

135 Starkey, “Newfoundland Trade,” 166; Gray, “Devon’s Fisheries,” 139; Cell, English Enterprise, 137. 136 Robert C. Johnson, William B. Bidwell, and Mary F. Keeler, eds., Proceedings in Parliament, 1628 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977-83), ii: 314. 137 Risdon, Devonshire, 8. 138 Oppenheim, 36; Starkey, “Newfoundland Trade,” 164. For elaborations on this idea, also see Kowaleski, “South-Western Fisheries,”; David Starkey, “The West Country-Newfoundland Fishery and the Manning of the ,” in Security and Defense in South-West England before 1800, ed. Robert Higham (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1987), 93-101. 56 covering Hampshire and eastern Dorset, exported the same to Normandy, Flanders, and western France. Devon stood as the third and most productive of these regions. Cloth cargoes regularly departed from all of its outports, even if local shares of the trade were heavily imbalanced: the more minor districts exported through Plymouth (Tavistock) and

Dartmouth (Totnes and Ashburton), while the majority of the trade moved through the market of Exeter.139

Exeter’s cloth hinterland included major bases of rural manufacturing in western

Somerset (), East Devon (Crediton, Honiton, , Ottery), and North

Devon to which its merchants enjoyed easy overland access. The city itself saw some native manufacturing into the sixteenth century, but mainly housed finishing operations for cloth made elsewhere by laborers in rural households. Workers crafted highly localized varieties of woolens, branded and marketed under names like “Taunton cottons”,

“Barnstaple bays”, “Tavistocks” and “Devon dozens.” Nonetheless, all these were types of cheap, lightweight cloth, narrower than traditional broadcloth and made from local wool.140 Exeter’s rapid expansion in the fifteenth century came mostly as the result of

Continental demand for this textile, which proved popular “among the wage earners and artisans whose buying power had increased in the labor-short decades of the late middle ages.”141 Most exports from Exeter in the sixteenth the early seventeenth centuries were in kerseys, an East Devon variety made from long wool staples spun into worsted yarn.

Unlike most worsteds, however, kerseys went through a finishing process that involved

139 Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton, 1567-c.1620 (London: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1997), 31, 71-2; Stephens, Exeter, 3. 140 In contemporary usage, the term broadcloth emphasized the quality of the product rather than a particular width, though most varieties of Devon-exported woolens were thinner and shorter (12x1) than those popular elsewhere in the kingdom (24x2). 141 Kowaleski, Exeter, 94. Exeter’s cloth exports expanded tenfold over the course of the fifteenth century. See figures in Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export Trade, 87-112, 144-5. 57 fulling; the result was a strong, fine, course cloth. Over the course of the , manufacturers increasingly turned to the serge, a style of “new draperies” popular in

Mediterranean markets that spread across southern England. Woven partially with long- combed wool, serges were lighter and smoother than the curly finish of Devon kerseys.142

The way that such textiles were manufactured speaks to the evolving structure of maritime trade and industry within the city-regions of Tudor-Stuart Devon. Hooker and

Westcote – writing during the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles I respectively – suggest the prevalence of a decentered style of small market and independent household production, in which combers, spinners, and weavers purchased their own materials, processed them, then sold them to the next artisan in the supply chain.143

On the contrary, only vestiges of those traditional practices remained by the early seventeenth century. Indications are that East Devon saw a longer transition to capitalized, urban-focused production under the control of Exeter merchant clothiers. A 1615 government report on Devon’s woolen industry describes a vertically integrated process headed by the clothiers, who employed and provided raw wool, yarn, and dyestuffs for proletarianized rural workers, then saw to the more intricate finishing and marketing operations in the city itself.144 Kowaleski finds aspects of the clothier model already in practice in late fourteenth-century Exeter.145 Thus, from the late 1300s, Exeter’s merchants exerted ever-increasing authority over regional textile manufacturing.

Furthermore, the cohort of merchants with cloth interests was virtually synonymous with

142 Stephens, Exeter, 3-5; Sharpe, 80-1. In spite of being twice as long as kerseys (24 yards vs. 12), standard serges weighed only 2 lbs. more (averaging 15 lbs. each). 143 Hooker, Devonshire, 346 and Westcote, Devonshire, 61. A comparison suggests that Westcote probably derived his remarks on this subject from Hooker’s manuscript. 144 “The Organization of the Woolen Industry, 1615,” in English Economic History: Select Documents, eds. A.E. Bland, P.A. Brown, and R.H. Tawney (New York: MacMillan, 1919), 354-55. On this point more generally, see Sharpe, 78-80 and Stephens, Exeter, 5-6. 145 Kowaleski, Exeter, 150-2. 58 the city’s most politically powerful and wealthiest overseas traders. This unified control meant that, even more than with fishing, merchants were able to leverage cloth exports in order to introduce a wide variety of import goods from France and Spain into county markets.146

Commerce and the urban polities of the western Channel

Thus, between the fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, the characteristics of a traditional economy in the western Channel emerged. It consisted of stable bilateral trade among a set of specialized and complementary Anglo-French export regions. These were city-oriented economies, headed by powerful port cities whose merchants increasingly governed industrial production and marketing in their backcountries. The simple nature of western Channel trade – salt for fish, wine for cloth – perhaps might lead us to overlook the fact that those commodities were the pride and focus of city-regions that stood among the most productive of their respective kingdoms. Hence, cross-Channel commerce figured large in the civic identity of cities like Plymouth, Exeter, and La

Rochelle.

The basic acts and sites of commerce were written into the founding corpora of polities in La Rochelle and Devon. Much like elsewhere in the English realm, the exercise of a set of royally bestowed commercial privileges was a core part of the raison d’être of Devon’s boroughs. Exeter, Barnstaple, and other coastal cities derived their status as free boroughs from economic liberties – quittance from certain customs charges, taxation power, and the right to hold fairs – enumerated in medieval royal charters.

Plymouth’s 1439 charter of incorporation, which comprehensively convened its political

146 Kowaleski, Exeter, 234-6; Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Exeter, 1540-1640: The Growth of an English County Town (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 160-73. 59 institutions and officers as a self-governing body, also confirmed its burgesses’ right to hold markets, form a merchants’ guild, and enjoy exemption from tolls.147 The wealthy cloth merchants of Barnstaple, though a seigneurial borough, petitioned Edward III twice in the 1340s under the claim that they held the rights to elect a mayor, collect taxes, and send burgesses to Parliament by a charter of the Saxon king Athelstan that “had got lost.”

Although the subsequent inquisitions ruled against them, the value of the political and commercial liberties afforded to a free borough were such that town officials appear to have ignored those findings, eventually forging a set of charters based on those of Exeter in the fifteenth century.148

In Tudor Devon, merchants’ companies emerged as another important type of chartered commercial institution. These had much in common with medieval European sworn guilds or métiers jurés in French towns, functioning as regulatory and social bodies for member craftsmen of all types.149 Chartered by Elizabeth I in 1560, Exeter’s

Merchant Adventurers emerged as the strongest and most effective of these. Also known as the French Company, it held statutory authority to regulate the Norman, Breton, and

Saintongeais trades out of the city.150 In this sense, the company was the most powerful institution governing the Tudor-Stuart French trade in the English southwest. However, as all city merchants had to belong to the company, it exercised functions far beyond those of a specialized guild. It developed as a conduit for trade brokerage and lobbying, a

147 C.E. Welch, Plymouth City Charters, 1439-1935: A Catalogue (Plymouth: Central Library, 1962), 5-16, 37-9. Plymouth was only second English borough to be incorporated by an Act of Parliament. Exeter received a similar charter in 1497, Totnes in 1510, and Barnstaple in 1557. 148 Susan Reynolds, “The Forged Charters of Barnstaple,” English Historical Review 84, no. 333 (1969), 699-720. 149 Frédéric Mauro, “Merchant Communities, 1350-1750,” in James D. Tracy, ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 255. 150 Its full title in the 1560 charter was the “Governo’ Consulls and Societie of Marchantes Adventurers of the Citie of Excester, trafiquing the realme of Fraunce and dominions of the French kinge.” 60 consulting body for maritime affairs outside the realm, and a channel for regional maritime identity.151

The ascendance of the Merchant Adventurers correlated with the most prosperous period in the early modern history of Exeter. The preface to their charter cited the significance of the city’s mercantile expertise – “the arte scyence and mysterie of merchandise” – which, without proper channeling and regulation, would act “to the greate detriment of the commonwealth of this oure realme of Englande.”152 Altogether, such charters acted as a bulwark to commercial identity in Devon cities. A February

1580/1 arrangement saw the merchants of Totnes and Exeter exchange copies of their charters as preparation to organizing a county parliamentary lobby regarding exports and manufacturing.153 Regional merchants sought various renewals and protections of their charters during the , and the same required continual efforts in the Jacobean era.154

Finally, it would be remiss to neglect the ways that royal institutions reinforced commercial identity in urban Devon. The appointment of merchants to Crown offices – the positions of customer, controller, havener, and aulnager, for instance – integrated these local economic elites into state commercial governance.155 However, none of these was more important than the offices of the county Vice-Admiralty. Originating in the

1530s, the Vice-Admiralties in Devon, Cornwall, and elsewhere were vehicles for local judicial cooperation with central government and the amelioration of community

151 For the early history of the French Company, see William Cotton, An Elizabethan Guild of the City of Exeter. An Account of the Proceedings of the Society of Merchant Adventurers, During the Latter Half of the (Exeter: William Pollard, 1873). 152 DRO, ECA (Exeter City Archives) 58/7/11, f. 4r. 153 Ibid., f. 95r-v. 154 Ibid., f. 213v. For additional commentary, also see David Dean, “Locality and Parliament: The Legislative Activities of Devon’s MPs during the Reign of Elizabeth,” in Todd Gray, Margery Rowe and Audrew Erskine, eds., Tudor and Stuart Devon: The Common Estate and Government (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992), 89-90. 155 Kowaleski, Exeter, 105-06. 61 disputes.156 Vice-Admiralty officers were most often wealthier nobles or , and were assisted by a number of deputies in the task of conducting criminal investigations in local areas. In practice, they offered a discretionary space for their Crown-appointed officers to regulate maritime affairs within their county community. Altogether, Devon city charters, guilds, and officeholders demonstrate how their growing commercial identity and power existed in a dialogic relationship with the Tudor-Stuart state project. These enhanced the local extent and efficaciousness of central government, while at the same offering royal support for local mercantile authority and expertise.

La Rochelle likewise enjoyed significant privileges of political and economic self- governance, though these placed its civic culture in a radically different position in relation to state authority. City inhabitants took great pride in the chartered rights of the city as a commune jurée, first established under Plantagenet governance in 1199.

Subsequent French monarchs were driven to confirm and expand those liberties to the commune in subsequent centuries in exchange for military loyalty, given its wealth and strategic position on the French Atlantic frontier.157 Successive royal concessions guaranteed its institutions virtual sovereignty in political, judicial, and commercial affairs in the city and its Aunisien banlieue. The sixteenth-century political regime of mayor and council (the corps de ville) appointed officers, controlled policing, administered justice, and brandished a well-armed militia within that jurisdiction. Royal governors

(sénéchaux) and lieutenants of Aunis resided in the city beginning in the fourteenth

156 Oppenheim, Maritime Devon, 30-1. 157 Favreau, La Rochelle, 11-13. Benedict notes the rarity of continuous communal regimes in French cities between the middle ages and the early modern period. Most did not hold jurisdiction over their entire city populations, let alone land outside their walls. The “wealth and strategic value” of the exceptions, like La Rochelle, “impelled the crown to grant them a degree of self-government, both to maintain a loyalty which the crown lacked the military force to compel” and to secure their military support in tenuous border regions. Benedict, “Overview,” 19-20. 62 century yet had little power to interfere in communal affairs. Meanwhile, sworn inhabitants of the city held the right to be tried in the mayor’s court according to local customary law rather than the Aunisien royal court; appeals went to the distant

Parliament of Paris rather than falling under the jurisdiction of Bordeaux.158

Villes jurées (towns of sworn trades) like La Rochelle also enjoyed a number of commercial privileges. In contrast to a ville libre, Rochelais artisans and craftsmen belonged to intramural guilds with their own statutes and regulations. Members of the corporation (bourgeois-juré de commune) swore an oath to uphold guild statutes and those of the commune. Disputes over guild provisions were adjudicated in the mayor’s court.159 For communes, craft regulation was a prized piece of municipal autonomy and self-fashioning. In the Calvinist era of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,

Rochelais artisans purposefully used the guild system as a barrier to Catholic economic infiltration. This explains why, when Richelieu’s 1627-8 siege cowed most Rochelais communal privileges, all trades became free by royal decree.160

Merchants, though part of a , gained exemptions from tailles, customs, and aides by becoming sworn bourgeois. Above all other trades, they also profited from the additional liberties of the city as a free port. Under this status, merchants étrangers could claim some of the same rights as a native: they and their goods were protected

158 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 30-3; David Parker, La Rochelle and the French : Conflict and Order in Seventeenth-Century France (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), 34-5. 159 James R. Farr, Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550-1650 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 16-7; Henri Hauser, Ouvriers du temps passé (Paris, 1906), Chapter 7 passim; Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 31-2, 68. Villes libres like , in contrast, had no guild statutes whatsoever and were policed for basic economic practices by their municipal government. However, in practice, many early modern French cities exercised functions that fell between these two labels. 160 Regardless of local Catholic efforts, decades of regulation had rendered the trades so thoroughly Calvinist that town officials were forced to introduce a Catholics-only guild system in the 1640s. Catholic frustration with the continued economic autonomy of Calvinist merchants and craftsmen directly led to the expulsions that began in 1661. Katherine Louise Milton Faust, “A Beleaguered Society: Protestant Families in La Rochelle, 1628-1685,” (Ph.D. diss., , 1980), 101-14. 63 under the stewardship of the corps de ville, they could salvage their own goods after a shipwreck, and they were exempted from paying droits de entrée on certain goods.

Moreover, foreign traders could enjoy the full benefits of native bourgeois by establishing residence in the city for a year and taking the municipal oath. The cornerstone of La Rochelle’s attraction to northern traders throughout the city’s history, the mercantile privileges of the free port linked overseas trade to communal prosperity.161

Neil Kamil has argued that, for early modern French, La Rochelle’s all- encompassing sovereignty associated it strongly with the Atlantic “outre-mer world.” Its cultural alterity – indeed, its “Englishness” – stemmed from its inception and prosperity under Plantagenet rule.162 Subsequent privileges may have been royally bestowed, but far from integrating the commune into the developing power centers of the French state, these ensured that La Rochelle remained insulated from seigneurial, ecclesiastical, and

Crown authority.163 That patrimony enculturated generations of Rochelais merchant leaders, teaching them to seek the preservation of communal independence from outside encroachment, royal or otherwise. Bures characterized that solipsism as the shrewd calculus of historical businessmen – in his words, coquettes (“flirts”) – who “opened their cities to whoever offered them the best [commercial] advantages.”164 These were the building blocks of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century civic society that John Clark has described as being defined by “municipal chauvinism, community paranoia, and entrenched economic elites.”165

161 Favreau, La Rochelle, 60-1, 70. Indeed, when the tax haven of the free port dissipated after Richelieu’s siege, Dutch merchants moved some of their trade northward to Nantes. De Bruyn Kops, 22. 162 Kamil, 32. 163 For a thorough discussion of state power structures (and their gaps) in western France, see Seguin, Temps modernes, Chapter 1 passim. 164 Bures, 65. 165 Clark, La Rochelle, 8. 64

Anglo-French merchants: oligarchy, family, and expertise

It should come as no surprise that, given their wealth, social status, and the vital nature of their work, formal leadership roles in the urban polities of the western Channel fell to their merchant cohorts. Corporate membership was a basic measure of social standing in the urban hierarchies of La Rochelle and the Devon boroughs. It not only entailed entry into the historic commercial privileges of a city, but was a prerequisite to participation in governance via voting and officeholding. In the Channel cities, the labels of bourgeois and freeman amounted to de facto commercial barriers to civic entry. An aspiring Rochelais bourgeois had to prove residency in the city for a year and a day, contribute monetarily to communal government and defense, and serve in the mayor’s militia.166 By their oaths, freemen of Exeter too had to have the ability to make monetary contributions to the city. Membership was further regulated along kinship and economic guidelines; the avenues to entry included family succession, the demonstration of a trade apprenticeship, or payment of a fine.167

In both cases, the requirements were not extremely onerous and included large portions of the cities’ middling populations. Still, because of their demographic preponderance and the commercial tenor of many incentives for membership, the recipients of corporate liberties were overwhelmingly merchants and tradesmen.

Rochelais bourgeois and Exonian freemen held the exclusive rights to intramural retail trade, as well as freedom from certain fines and customs charges.168 Merchants in Exeter,

166 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 31-2. 167 A copy of the freeman oath for Exeter dating from the reign of Henry VII can be found in Margery M. Rowe and Andrew M. Jackson, “Introduction,” in Exeter Freemen, 1266-1967, eds. Margery M. Rowe and Andrew M. Jackson (Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 1973), xviii. 168 Rowe and Jackson, “Introduction,” xx-xxi; Alexander Cowan, Urban Europe, 1500-1700 (London: Arnold, 1998), 85; Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 31-2. Cowan observes the unusually strong link between corporate membership and merchant status in Exeter. 65 regardless of the destination of their trade, faced the additional hurdle of having to be free of the city French Company. The operation of the Merchant Adventurers association nonetheless expanded Exeter’s native commercial network; the average number of merchants seeking freemen status per year jumped from one in the 1550s to five in the

1590s.169

Within the corporate body, a more exclusive subset of elite merchants monopolized the highest municipal offices during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Long-term analyses of officeholding patterns in La Rochelle and Exeter reveal the formation of tight-knit cohorts with oligarchic control over city politics and maritime trade. From the 1560s to 1628, the upper tier of Rochelais bourgeois officials – twelve conseillers, twelve échevins (aldermen), and the office of mayor – derived from a socially homogeneous and interrelated group of Calvinist mercantile families. The Reformed patricianate propagated itself through internal practices of voting and appointment for communal offices. Town councilors and échevins enjoyed seniority-based lifetime positions, regularly rotated through a number of subsidiary communal offices, and elected a mayor from their cohort annually. A practice called “resignation” ensured generational continuity by allowing council members to pass seats to a bourgeois successor, often a family member.170 The exclusivity of the patricians was a common focus of intramural protest and ignited a successful coup by the lesser bourgeoisie in

1614.171

A like pattern appears in Exeter, though its oligarchy dominated an even longer period of the city’s history. In the late fourteenth century, three-quarters of its highest-

169 Youings and Cornford, 104. Also see Rowe and Jackson, Exeter Freemen, 79-108 passim. 170 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 63-9. 171 Ibid., Chapter 5 passim. 66 ranked officials (the mayor, stewards, recorder, and twelve councilors) and about a third of second-tier figures (the thirty-six freemen who elected them) were merchants or involved in another maritime trade.172 Mercantile dominance became even more pronounced after the founding of the French Company, which enabled an institutional fusion of commercial and municipal authority in Exeter. The mayors of the late sixteenth century worked in close contact with the company, being present at most meetings and heavily involved in decision-making. In fact, there was a strong correlation between the officers of these institutions; only fifteen company governors between its founding and

1601 did not serve a term as mayor. Many served multiple terms in both offices, moving fluidly between corporate and commercial work.173 The company steered much of

Exeter’s overseas commercial policy in the Stuart era, pursuing its own affairs with other ports and the Crown in the process.174

Similar fusions of maritime and municipal leadership existed elsewhere in Devon.

Official correspondence between the primary ports usually addressed corporate and commercial authorities in a unified manner, suggesting at the very least an intimate confluence between these interests.175 The politics of Totnes in the 1590s were dominated by controversy over the gradual monopolization of authority by the town’s commercial elite.176 Dartmouth officials such as fourteen-time mayor John Hawley gained infamy as

172 Kowaleski, Exeter, 101-04, 107-14. Also see Maryanne Kowaleski, “The commercial dominance of a medieval provincial oligarchy: Exeter in the late fourteenth century,” Mediaeval Studies 46 (1984): 355-84. 173 ECA 58/7/11, f. 118r; also see Cotton, Elizabethan Guild, 42-3. Company directors serving multiple terms as mayor included John Peter, John Hurst, William Chapell, Nicholas Martyn, Robert Chaffe, Thomas Bruarton, Thomas Martyn, William Martyn, Michael Germyne, John Davye, George Smyth, John Peryam, and Nicholas Spicer. 174 W.B. Stephens, “Merchant Companies and Commercial Policy in Exeter, 1625-88,” Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 86 (1954): 279-92. 175 E.g. DRO 1579A/16/36; 1579A/16/47. 176 Dean, “Locality and Parliament”, 78-81. 67 active pirates in the late middle ages. Later, its Tudor and early Stuart mayors frustrated the Admirals in their failed attempts to extend their jurisdiction into the Dart estuary.177

On either side of the Channel, family structures were a lattice on which urban merchants cultivated their political and business strategies. “So intertwined were social attitudes and goals with economic attitudes and goals,” Clark suggests, “that a study of family in La Rochelle inevitably becomes an investigation of the city’s primary socioeconomic unit.”178 Successive waves of French scholars have remarked on the stable structure of “merchant aristocracies” in western towns like La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and

Saintes. Unlike in other early modern cities, families in these areas did not eventually abandon commerce for the security of landed wealth, but maintained their trading vocations beyond the second and third generations.179 Robbins, too, remarks on the “deep imbrication of family affairs and civic affairs” manifest in the high percentage of interrelationships among the first rank of Rochelais officials. He finds that merchant families carefully managed succession to high offices such as pair and échevin within their kinship networks. Rather than watering down the exercise of office, he argues that family oligarchy bred “unity of purpose” and represented a repository of religious conviction, political skill, and commercial expertise.180

In Devon, family dynasties were a store for maritime experience and business acumen. Bloodlines vouchsafed trustworthiness within the large mercantile community of

177 Joyce Appleby, “Devon Privateering from Early Times to 1688,” in The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 96; Gray, “Dartmouth,” 177-8. 178 Clark, La Rochelle, 42. 179 Bures, 40-1; Seguin, Temps modernes, 126-7. 180 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 224-7. 68

Exeter: by corporate custom, the sons and sons-in-law of merchant councilors and aldermen could enter the freedom of the town by succession.181 Concern for the fortunes of loved ones motivated some merchants like John Adams of Exeter to secure their wealth in land purchases. Adams wished to protect his wife from “the trouble of looking after my estate which lyeth abroad in other men’s hands and beyond the Sea, and God only knows how or when if ever it may be had.”182 As in La Rochelle, Devonian families strategized by forming marriage alliances that enhanced their upward mobility. Their targets were frequently gentry families who, in addition to their landed wealth, sought investments in the maritime enterprises of the ports.183 Anne Duffin has suggested that merchant-gentry marriage patterns fostered a greater “southwestern” kinship web focused on Devon and Cornwall.184 Many families with a strong mercantile profile, such as the

Rashleighs of Devon and Cornwall, were able to attain gentry status. John Rashleigh and his son, John the , built a kin-based commercial enterprise in the county via anti-

Iberian piracy and the Newfoundland fisheries, respectively. In the lifetimes of these two men, the family entered Devonian-Cornish gentry circles through intermarriages with the

Bonython, Bassett, Harris, Sawle, Vyvyan, and Gent families.185 Such alliances ultimately helped to concentrate mercantile capital in the towns of Devon and the greater southwestern region.

181 Rowe and Jackson, “Introduction,” xxi. The Tudor and Early Stuart rolls show that that privilege was commonly extended to sons of basic freemen. 182 NA, PROB 11/483/164. 183 Anne Duffin, Faction and Faith: Politics and Religion of the Cornish Gentry before the Civil War (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 23; A.L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall: Portrait of a Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 85. 184 Duffin, Faction and Faith, 23, 30-1. Duffin holds that 60% of Cornish gentry marriages were within the county, and 29% to Devon families. 185 Ibid, 18-19, 22. 69

Education was another, related structure that supported mercantile wealth and power in Channel cities. Their expertise was not an isolated concern, nor is it an anachronistic category. In a 1560 speech marking the foundation of Exeter’s French

Company, John Hooker reflected on the unique qualities of merchant expertise, stating that it “dothe also require a more exacte knowledge in it selfe then other trades dothe without whch the trade is lyke to be more daungerose then profitable.”186 Maritime work was public in nature; merchants were an outward expression of community identity and its inner political elite. Hooker surmised that faulty education would “not onelie be the decay of him, his wyffe his familie and his freendes but a losse to the comon welthe, he being not able to be so frutfull a member therein as he before was.”187 Thus, English and

French cities were invested in the collective toil of their merchants, whose successful negotiation with distant markets ensured community prosperity. It was a matter of survival to the persecuted Huguenot community of post-1628 La Rochelle. The Catholic royal intendant Pierre Arnoul de Vaucresson identified Reformed mercantile training and

“commissions from and England” as the lynchpin that “sustains their principles, and those sustain the other [inhabitants].”188

In regards to both English and French training, it is necessary to differentiate

“schooling” from “learning.” As members of the upper and middling echelons of their respective urban societies, the young sons of Rochelais and Devonian merchant families partook in some formal schooling between age four and adolescence. In both instances, primary schools – petty and grammar schools in Devon, “little schools” in Saintonge-

186 The speech is printed in Cotton, Elizabethan Guild, 104-5. 187 Ibid. 188 Quoted in Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 122. 70

Aunis – taught basic skills in reading, ciphering, and basic arithmetic.189 However, much early instruction also would have taken place in the home. This is particularly the case among the Reformed in La Rochelle, for whom family stood as a “social and economic unit in which Protestant children learned the Lord’s will and equipped themselves for survival in that commercial station to which God had assigned them.”190

However, the less narrow category of “learning” – the “acquisition of social habits, the appreciation of nature and the mastery of trades,”191 – better defined more advanced mercantile training. Like other trades, apprenticeship served as the traditional mode of learning the commercial craft. English and French students moved from formal schooling to the tutelage of a master merchant by age twelve or thirteen. The conditions of apprenticeships were narrowly governed by municipal and guild statutes in West

Country towns, particularly those with large mercantile associations like Exeter and

Bristol. The apprentice’s family and new master formalized terms and tenure (generally seven years) in an indenture contract. Exeter apprentices were presented to the Merchant

Adventurers guild prior to departing for their residencies. Company bylaws proscribed penalties for apprentices who acted outside of their discretionary role overseas, and frequent presentments attest to the fact that these regulations were enforced.192 Because commerce was a métier libre and therefore not subject to a guild in La Rochelle, governance of the apprenticeship process fell to families. Fathers most often apprenticed

189 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 84, 88-94; M.H. Curtis, “Education and Apprenticeship,” in The Cambridge Shakespeare Library, vol. 1, Shakespeare’s Times, Texts, and Stages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 194-5; Vanes, 4-9. 190 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 101. 191 Nicholas Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973), 1. 192 The full set of Merchant Adventurer bylaws relating to apprentices can be found in ECA 58/7/11, f. 2r-4r. Compare with similar Bristolian regulations in Vanes, 18-21. 71 sons within the home and without contracts.193 Still, it was not uncommon for formal arrangements to be made with extended family or friends for training via notarial pension contracts.

Even within the bounds of an apprenticeship, commercial instruction can sometimes be difficult to render into precise terms and practices. Sources such as indenture, apprentissage, and pension contracts help us to understand maritime instruction as a fundamentally social experience: first built on the interpersonal relationship between master and student, then buttressed by the support networks of guilds and corporations. However, early modern maritime learning was also a practical exercise in language and business, sited at sea or overseas. Thus, set apart from their legal framework, apprenticeships cannot always be distinguished as such in the western

Channel.

Apprentices in western Channel cities would have spent several years honing certain practical skills in the home and ship of their master. This involved perfecting their performance of a set of subsidiary jobs: learning the arithmetic and bookkeeping conventions of the counting-house clerk, acquiring some understanding of navigation and the labor regime of a ship by training as a master mariner, and practicing the rituals of letter-writing required of factors while working abroad.194 The latter skill was of particular importance. Manuals such as the one produced by Bristol writer John Browne provided form letters meant to help inculcate students with a lexicon of business and

193 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 95-7. 194 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 89-94; Alison Grant, “Devon Shipping, Trade, and Ports, 1600- 1689,” in The New Maritime History of Devon, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), i: 135. 72 manners that they could employ in their overseas communications.195 Browne and other popular writers emphasized the common code of ethics that bound international merchants; letter writing aided young merchants in developing their own “rhetoric of honor and sociability.”196

Foreign residencies, commencing after several years of training at home, were the most integral exercise within the apprenticeship process. This would have included accompanying one’s master on a number of voyages or serving as a factor overseas.

Apprentices sailing abroad attained their first direct experience in the markets that would frame their future careers. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the imbricated economy of the western Channel supported a vigorous student exchange between southwest England and western France. La Rochelle’s status as entrepôt and free port meant that it was the main site for face-to-face interaction among Channel merchants, and these qualities also made it an educational marketplace of sorts. Examples of educational arrangements contracted by Rochelais notaries reveal how mercantile experience – while regulated by indigenous institutions – was inculcated through the rituals of cross-Channel commerce.

Language acquisition was an important goal of commercial apprenticeship, and it stands as one of the most telling markers of local expertise in Rochelais notarial records.

Notaries commonly described the linguistic capacities of contractual parties, distinguishing the degree to which a foreign subject spoke and understood the (in the best cases, a subject would be said to “bien parlant et entendant la langage francaise”). Translation was a reciprocal service offered within the city’s

195 Browne, Marchants Avizo, 8-18. 196 Mark R. Valeri, Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 16. 73 commercial community and, given this group’s diversity, was widely available for

English, Flemish, and Dutch merchants. Furthermore, translation formed part of a local safety net for less experienced English merchants and mariners, as these services were offered with more frequency by senior members of the community (long-time residents such as Richard Laskey and George Boyd were among the most frequent translators in contracts).

The overall pattern of language acquisition at La Rochelle suggests the role of the city as a staging ground for a singular Anglo-French student exchange. Compared with other maritime groups, what is striking is that relatively few English required translators to complete contracts – the product of a several-centuries-long habit of sending apprentices to La Rochelle and other French ports. A pension established for Hugh

Newcourt of Falmouth in 1613 represents a typical arrangement. Through his agent John

Penden, father William Newcourt agreed to pay Rochelais merchant Isaac Parrot 45lt to house and feed Hugh for six months, in order for him to learn French. Hugh was thirteen- years-old at the time, a typical age for both Devonian and Rochelais youths to enter into apprenticeships.197

Conversely, from at least the sixteenth century, England was the preferred foreign destination for French west country sons to learn trades and language.198 In August 1641, for example, mariner George Hewgoe (Hugoe) of Falmouth accepted a year’s pension to board and teach English to young Isaac Dulac, son of widow Marie Femroz of La

197 ADCM, Conay, 3E 1232, 147v-8r. 198 Trocmé and Delafosse have made similar observations for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They include Ireland as a popular destination until at least the 1550s, though I find no contractual evidence of such student exchange for the seventeenth century. See Trocmé and Delafosse, Commerce Rochelais, 85. For the seventeenth century, see Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 95-6. 74

Rochelle.199 There is also some evidence of more unorthodox arrangements within this student exchange. Merchant Richard Smart made a 1616 pacte with Jean Rouault, escollier estudiant native to Paimpol, Brittany, to tutor him in French seasonally at

Plymouth for the following four years. The notary identifies Rouault as a resident student of philosophy in the city. For the pre-1627 period, it is probable that he was a pupil of the

Calvinist Académie de La Rochelle, pointing to an interesting collision of confessional and mercantile knowledge in this case.200

Apprenticeships in seafaring and related trades such as coopering, wine-making, and drapering were also not uncommon within this network. Just as was the case with language acquisition, a particularly vigorous exchange linked the ports of the River Fal in

Cornwall with La Rochelle. Given the steady frequency of Falmouth as a port destination and how Cornish mariners developed a specialized carrying trade from La Rochelle in the seventeenth century, this is not surprising. Also like the above examples, mercantile figures familiar to the Anglo-French trade commonly acted as brokers in these arrangements. Jean Potier, a resident merchant at Falmouth and Penryn, placed two local students with Rochelais merchants in the 1610s: Robert Cock went to merchant habitant

Isaac Parrot (a favorite choice for English youths) for a year-long term, and John Haydin submitted to a four-year apprenticeship as a draper with Absalon Aumont. In both instances, Potier provided at least part of the pensions for the students.201

199 ADCM, Moreau, 59/245, 257r-v. The pension was worth 80lt. This arrangement seems to suggest a previous association, perhaps with Isaac’s deceased father Jacques. However, to my knowledge, Hewgoe’s only other appearance in the city’s record is later, in a December 1641 marché. 200 ADCM, Chesneau, 3E 245, 227v. The pacte was arranged for the not-insubstantial sum of 300lt. The Académie was founded by Jeanne d’Albret and was a major late Renaissance teaching center in western France. 201 ADCM, Conay, 3E 1228, 112v-13r; 3E 1235, 11v-12r. 75

Exchange also flourished in the other direction, as evidenced by the apprenticeship of aspiring mariner Jean Mauseron to the famous Whitby captain and Browne Bushell. According to the 1638 pact, Mauseron was to serve for four years on board the Mary Anne of London with Bushell as his master. Mauseron’s contract was supported by the most visible English resident merchants of La Rochelle: George

Boyd translated for Bushell, while the unusually extravagant witness list included southwesterners Gilbert Paige, Edward Eastman, George Hanmer, William Knowles,

James Cooke, and Charles Trefusin.202 Given Bushell’s apparent unfamiliarity with the city, these men likely played a large role in matching Mauseron (the son of a widow) with his new master.

* * * * *

The accumulated evidence thus argues strongly for viewing the Western Channel

Community as an early modern coastal region. It shows it to be a recognizable historical community foregrounded by connecting patterns of human migration and periods of medieval dynastic union. Most of all, it suggests that Channel cities were linked through a common commercial culture. By the mid-sixteenth century, this included a body of shared maritime customs, corporate privileges that encouraged investment in Channel trade, and an interlocking, prosperous trade in industrial goods. It also included a common geography of expertise among its merchants and mariners. Trade and foreign

202 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/242, 55v-6r. The best biographical information places Bushell as an itinerant soldier in the Spanish Netherlands for Philip IV in the 1630s, though he was by his own profession a Protestant. Indeed, his presence at La Rochelle would suggest that he had a more diverse seafaring record than generally recognized. Because of his Continental expertise, he was later called to command a ship for Parliament in 1642, though he later became a captain and was executed in 1651. See Jack Binns, “Browne Bushell: North Sea Adventurer and Pirate,” Northern History 27 (1991), 92-3. 76 exchanges in the region served as extensions of urban training regimes for western

Channel seafarers.

The city-regions at the heart of western Channel trade – La Rochelle, Exeter,

Dartmouth, Plymouth, and Barnstaple – found themselves at the juncture of various permutations of local, state, and overseas economic community. As instruments of civic power and local commercial expertise, their urban merchants connected these different interests. In their roles as industrial managers, city fathers, royal servants, and foreign agents, they molded their polities around specialized regimes of maritime trade. Their civic missions and identity, like Plymouth’s Black Book, looked abroad to northwest

Europe and the western Channel. At the dawn of English and French overseas enterprises in the sixteenth century, western Channel cities had long been habituated to Atlantic- facing trade as a source of expertise and wealth.

77

CHAPTER 2

TWO MARITIME REFORMATIONS

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters: these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." – Psalm 107:23-24, epigram to John Coplestone’s sermon at Bideford, Devon203

“Let none of your sonnes or servants be untimely sent beyond seas,” admonished the Puritan minister William Crompton to the people of Barnstaple. Palpable dangers lay beyond southwestern foreshores, a fact reflected in the ambivalent attitudes toward sea travel within the coastal communities of Devon. Nonetheless, Crompton did not invoke physical threats in his warning, but rather a “manifest danger” of spiritual ones. His concern, elaborated throughout the introduction to his 1636 catechism manual, was for the perpetuation of spiritual knowledge among the youths of the port. He invoked the responsibility of the corporation – his employer – to instruct them “till they bee armed and seasoned with the knowledge and love of sound principles.” This argument extended to business ethics, where overseas merchants should “let the world see, you preferre the publike weale, to your owne private gaine.” Referencing the Confession of Peter in the

Gospels, Crompton urged them to content themselves with “reasonable increase” and make restitution for illicit goods, “for what will it profit a man?”204

Crompton’s projection of Barnstaple’s spiritual life into ocean space provides us an entry point into the continuum of religious influence in the western Channel.

203 John Coplestone, God's Works and Wonders in the Deep, and the Sea-faring Man's Duty in a Sermon Preach'd in Biddeford, on Thursday March 17, 1719-20 (Exeter, 1720). 204 William Crompton, An explication of those principles of Christian religion, exprest or implyed in the catechisme of our , set downe in the Booke of Common Prayer usefull for housholders, that desire heaven in earnest (London, 1633), 23 (in dedicatory; pages unnumbered). 78

Scholarship regarding the emergence of in England and France has long been informed by an understanding of the important ties between local confessional establishments and a more broadly imagined, supranational body of reformed believers.

International Reformed Protestantism emerged as a mosaic of scholars, institutions, refugees, correspondents, and sympathizers joined across thousands of miles. Among the

Atlantic-facing reformed communities of northwest Europe, Calvinism was a centripetal influence from the second half of the sixteenth century. This was to be a broadly conceived community with many capitals: Geneva, Leiden, Heidelberg, Cambridge, and

St. Andrews among them.

The English and French churches – institutionally disparate yet theologically compatible – were distinctive elements in this mix. , on one side, stood as the most substantial national church within the Reformed family, and “a net exporter of theological ideas from the end of the sixteenth century onward.”205 France’s Reformed, or

Huguenot churches, as a persecuted minority group in a Catholic kingdom, constituted a dynamic, connective force in the international community. As successive waves of thousands of Huguenot émigrés and refugees fanned out from France between 1567 and

1685, Francophone Protestants infiltrated existing Reformed societies from the Palatinate to the eastern seaboard of North America.

Many western Channel port communities were profoundly affected by the sweep of religious change in the Confessional Age. But those changes can only be understood by appreciating first the common contexts and shared networks of maritime Calvinism in the region. We need to begin with a local history of the inception and implementation of

205 Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), xxiv, 230-2. 79 religious reform in the western Channel. The influence of godly merchants, resident enclaves of foreign merchants, and heterodox ideas within clerical literature combined to create similar establishments of “civic Calvinism” in western Channel port cities. A discussion of this civic Calvinism’s rise highlights the shared knowledge networks – including the movement of texts and peoples – that served to stimulate coastal industry and spawned hybrid confessional forms in the region. These linkages were most manifest in the proliferation of Anglo-French confessional communities in southern England, including the French rite “stranger churches” that serviced growing congregations of refugee Huguenot merchants and craftsmen. We can then turn to the origins of Anglo-

Huguenot political alliance in the Channel region, which emerged from radical activity of

Marian refugees in Normandy during the 1550s. Anglo-French naval garrison communities at and Le Havre foregrounded western Channel privateering collaboration in the late sixteenth century.

Maritime Calvinism in the western Channel

In the past, students of Tudor and Stuart religion have shown a reluctance to explore, either in comparative or direct terms, the relationship between English

Protestantism and its analogues on the European continent. Their tendency toward exceptionalist interpretations, epitomized in Christopher Haigh’s deliberately titled study of “English Reformations,” is shortsighted not least because contemporary English reformers imagined themselves in fellowship with a grander international community.206

Important correctives to this isolationist view have appeared in works by Diarmaid

206 Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 12-14. Most recently, see the rebuttal to Haigh and others in Peter Marshall, “(Re)defining the ,” Journal of British Studies 48 (2009), 575-9. 80

MacCulloch, Patrick Collinson, and others, who stress the impact of Continental theology

– and particularly that emanating from Zurich – on the sixteenth-century English church.207 Even more recently, “postrevisionist” scholars such as Polly Ha have emphasized that sociability prevailed over doctrinal divisions in the relations of Tudor and early Stuart English with Continental reformers.208 Historians of early modern France have been less hesitant to pair that nation’s Huguenot congregations with external confessional models, including those derived from urban reform in Germany, even if they have found them to be ill-fitting.209 Therefore, even as we recognize the differences inherent in new state frameworks of Calvinism in the sixteenth century, a comparative or

“connected” perspective on Anglo-French Protestantism reveals much as to how reform was received locally.

By the late sixteenth century, most English and French Protestants adhered to doctrines and practices that were broadly Calvinist in nature. Their founding documents – the 1563 Articles of Religion and the 1571 Confession of La Rochelle, respectively – shared with Genevan-oriented churches core teachings concerning faith, salvation, and predestination. Indeed, both establishments were encouraged by the burgeoning international networks forged by Calvin’s Geneva. More than half of Elizabeth’s first set of bishops were Marian exiles recently returned from various continental Calvinist

207 Patrick Collinson and Polly Ha, eds., The Reception of Continental Reformation in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2011); Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (New York: Palgrave, 2001); MacCulloch, “Putting the English Reformation on the Map,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 15 (2005): 75-95. 208 Polly Ha, English Presbyterianism, 1590-1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement, c. 1620-1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 209 Philip Benedict, The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600-85 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), 309-25; Mark Greengrass, “The French Pastorate: Confessional Identity and Confessionalization in the Huguenot Minority: 1559-1685,” in C. Scott Dixon and Luise Schorn-Schutte, eds., The Protestant Clergy of Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 176-95. 81 enclaves; at La Rochelle, the Genevan theologian Théodore de Bèze presided over the synod that produced the 1571 Confession.210 As a growing subset of the Elizabethan

Church, English Puritans were in even stronger accord with the fundamentals of Calvinist faith, with their general emphases on the exclusivity of the godly, intense personal piety, strict moral discipline within communities, and their belief in the necessity of a revised,

Presbyterian church order.211 The cities of the English southwest became a core region for Puritan congregations, and the leaders of these local movements shared educational and intellectual trajectories that carried them among the most powerful Calvinist circles of Continental Europe.

While English and French Calvinism aligned on many core matters of faith, they were also set apart by their respective processes of confessionalization.212 Most of the

Huguenot-controlled cities of France – numbering around 150 in the 1598 Edict of

Nantes213 – passed through a common process of popular religious reform influenced

210 Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 244-5; Théodore de Bèze, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France, 3 vols. (, 1841), 1: xviii-xix; Patrick Collinson, “England, 1558- 1640,” in Menna Prestwich, ed., International Calvinism 1541-1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 213. 211 The classic study of this phenomenon remains Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). For discussion with regards to the English southwest, see Anne Duffin, Faction and Faith: Politics and Religion of the Cornish Gentry Before the Civil War (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 41-2. 212 Here I seek to employ the rubric of confessionalization in a specific way. The term, as articulated in the work of Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, originally described the process by which German of the sixteenth century embraced confessional dictates as a way to socially discipline their subjects and build state power. In contrast to Reinhard and Schilling’s implication of a top- down state process, Gregory Hanlon and Philip Benedict have proposed an alternative “weak confessionalization” theory for Reformation-era France. This defines the process as one by which confessions disciplined followers, fostered group identity, and defined themselves against other churches. Peter Marshall’s proposal of a “popular” confessionalization, proposed in a more recent essay for the British Isles, follows this mold. It is this weak or popular brand of confessionalization that I invoke in this study. See Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in Visions, Programs, Outcomes, vol. 2 of Handbook of European History 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, ed. Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, 641-70; Gregory Hanlon, Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France: Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 193; Benedict, Huguenots, 313; Marshall, “English Reformation,” 575-6, 584. 213 An unofficial English state report filed the previous year is slightly less conservative, placing the number of Huguenot-held towns at 171. See SP 78/40, 196r-7r. 82 strongly by Genevan missionary activity throughout the country. The reformés represented a minority religion in the realm (accounting for no more than six percent of the total population) that faced persistent early persecution from the Valois kings, the , and other local institutions. However, the degradation of crown enforcement networks in the 1550s, along with the sudden deaths of Henry II and Francis II in 1559, curtailed the ability of central government to halt the ever-increasing converts to the new culte.

The first organized Calvinist churches appeared at Paris, Meaux, Angers, and

Poitiers in 1555, with many others following in the early 1560s. These towns adopted liturgies, catechisms, and institutions modeled loosely on those of Geneva. In addition to serving as a disciplinary mechanism for the communities, local consistories oversaw church finances, legal issues, and poor relief. Facing the prospect of continued royal harassment, the French churches came to organize themselves on a presbyterian model to coordinate strategies and doctrine. In an ascending series of regional, provincial, and national assemblies, individual churches met on equal terms. Such an unprecedented network contributed to the ability of the Huguenot churches to withstand the decades of civil war and official persecution that followed in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.214

Bèze’s multivolume chronicle of the French church, his Histoire ecclésiastique, depicts the linear development of individual Huguenot congregations in unison with guidance from Geneva. The early history of La Rochelle’s Calvinist community followed this template, if imperfectly. The earliest reports of Protestant-inspired dissent in the city

214 Benedict, Faith and Fortune, 92-3, 226; Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 134-6; Judith Pugh Meyer, Reformation in La Rochelle: Tradition and Change in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1568 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996), 95. 83 coincided with the visit of Calvin to nearby Angoumois in 1533-4.215 Reports of heresy continued in the city, as well as greater Aunis, Saintonge, and Poitou throughout the

1530s and 1540s. Nonconformism was undoubtedly abetted by a dearth of institutions of religious enforcement; Aunis was conspicuously void of local ecclesiastical oversight and its religious appeals were governed by the of Paris, rather than that of nearby

Bordeaux. The further collapse of crown policing ability in the west during the 1550s coincided with greater missionary efforts by Geneva, and a clandestine Reformed congregation appeared in the city in 1557.216

The progress of the new faith was quite rapid. By 1561, Rochelais historian Amos

Barbot could report that most families in the city, including the “principal of influence and authority,” professed Calvinism openly.217 Nonetheless, Rochelais conversions were not the product of impositions by city patricians, but due to a “dynamic, occasionally troubled alliance” between these leaders and the citizenry.218 Going forward, the town’s religious establishment undoubtedly contributed to the persistence of Huguenot social and cultural networks – one recent author dubbed it the “veritable capital of the Reformed party” in the French west.219 However, the pattern of heterogeny within its church has not been done justice by much older scholarship that stressed the ethno-religious cohesion present among Huguenot congregations. It seems the same traditions of communal

215 Marie Berandelle, a servant girl of Poitou, was burned for espousing heretical opinions learned under her master at La Rochelle. See Barbot, 17: 1; de Bèze, Histoire, 1: 14. 216 Marc Seguin, “Naissance et succès de la Réforme,” in Histoire des protestants charentais (Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois), ed. Francine Ducluzeau (Paris: Le Croît vif, 2001), 17-19; Françoise Giteau, “Charente-Maritime,” in Les Familles Protestantes en France, XVIe siècle – 1792: Guide des Recherches Biographiques et Généalogiques, ed. Bernard (Paris: Archives Nationales, 1987), 131; Kevin Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea. La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 109-12, 118-21. 217 Barbot, 17: 164. Apart from La Rochelle, the French west country between the Loire and Gironde valleys was ascribed fifteen other Huguenot places de sûreté in the . 218 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 151-2. 219 Olga de Saint-Affrique, “La Rochelle protestante au XVIe siècle,” in Histoire des protestants charentais (Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois), ed. Francine Ducluzeau (Paris: Le Croît vif, 2001), 79. 84 independence that colored Rochelais politics and trade also characterized its Reformed community from its foundation. Kevin Robbins has identified a pattern of stubborn nonconformism that prevailed among local congregations. Their discipline evolved autonomously from the Swiss church and the French synodal system in the early seventeenth century, encompassing a wider range of heterodox influences from northern

European churches. The international orientation of Rochelais congregations was grounded in their increasing consumption of apocalyptic clerical literature arriving from

England and Scotland.220

The anomalous process of English reform, on the other hand, has long resisted efforts by scholars intent on historical categorization. What once was regarded as a discrete, straightforward process – the formation of a Protestant Church of England during the reign of Henry VIII, based on an alliance between the Crown and a laity stultified by the failures of late medieval Catholicism – has been deconstructed by several decades of revisionist scholarship. The work of Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy in the 1990s exploded this narrative by challenging the coherence of late Tudor religious policy and the eager popular reception of reforms, respectively.221 More recent accounts by Ethan Shagan and others have refined this vision of Reformation as a long, erratic, and contested process. Shagan, in particular, supplements the revisionist account by stressing the importance of the political engagement of the English laity, who played a part in negotiating the terms of religious reforms that were popularly perceived as acts of the

220 Robbins goes as far as to argue that the “centrifugal culture” of the Rochelais church contributed to the ultimate failure of French Protestantism. See Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, Chapter 3 passim. For more on autonomous practice at La Rochelle, see Greengrass, “French Pastorate,” 181, 183; Meyer, Reformation, 141-52. 221 See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Haigh, English Reformations. 85

Tudor state.222 Reform nominally began in the 1530s as a Henrican “political

Reformation,” which resulted in the creation of an autonomous national church undergirded by the innovative principle of Royal Supremacy. However, initially cautious in its embrace of Protestant innovations and subject to discontinuities in royal policies, statutory and theological reforms did not fully arrive before the reigns of Edward VI and

Elizabeth I.

Thus, Protestant reform in England was distinguished by a fundamental contradiction: the Tudor-Stuart Crown produced a church discipline that it proved unable to impose on its subjects in a unitary fashion. The contradictions of sixteenth-century policy gave space in their own way to the confessional polyphony that characterized future English religious identity. Indeed, popular nonconformity “preceded, accompanied, and sometimes opposed fitful attempts at state confessionalization.”223 This was perhaps no more apparent than in Puritan attempts to enact further “reformations of manners” in various localities. Puritan attempts at furthering local piety were left partly unfulfilled, forced as they were to confront “voluntary Christians whose independence of the ordered, disciplined life of the church Calvin would have found strange and disturbing.”224

Reform arrived first in the English southwest in the 1530s and 1540s through a series of statutory acts that dramatically transformed the religious culture of the region.

The dissolution of the monasteries – begun by Henry VIII in 1536 – severely shrank the number of local clergy and places of worship. It also removed a significant number of

222 Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). For a more localized case study that follows Shagan, see Ben Lowe, Commonwealth and the English Reformation: Protestantism and the Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483-1560 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010). 223 Marshall, “English Reformation,” 584-5. Marshall further elaborates on this idea in Religious Identities in Henry VIII’s England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 224 Patrick Collinson, “Towards a Broader Understanding of the Early Dissenting Tradition,” in Godly People: Essays in English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), 539. 86 traditional institutions of education in Devon and Cornwall. Through the reign of Edward

VI, further acts eliminated the variety of forms of worship that had existed in the parishes: images were removed, saints’ days reduced, and the chantries and religious guilds eliminated altogether. These were incrementally replaced by uniform English- language services based on Bible reading and , established first in 1549.225

Even more so than in other regions, these changes could only be enforced and embraced slowly due to the distance of the southwest from London and early Protestant centers of power.226 Some parishes, like the remote community of Morebath, remained almost overtly recalcitrant. Under vicar Christopher Trychay, parishioners carefully hid

Catholic ornaments that were then resurrected at the accession of Mary I in 1553.227 The most notorious act of religious obstinance in the early Reformation – the Prayer Book

Rebellion of 1549 – proved to be a caesura since it rose on this traditional resistance and was then felled by the actions of the nascent urban bases of Protestant loyalty in the region.228 Indeed, the most powerful corporations of Exeter and Plymouth – which were

“valyently defended [and] kepte from the rebelles” in that year – stood as centers for

Puritanism only decades later.229

225 Nicholas Orme, “The Later Middle Ages and the Reformation,” in Unity and Variety: A History of the Church in Devon and Cornwall, ed. Nicholas Orme (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1991), 70-2, and Education in the West of England: 1066-1548: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1976). 226 Mark Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality: Popular Allegiance in Devon during the English Civil War (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994), 186. 227 Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 149-51. 228 Orme, “Reformation,” 73; Mark Stoyle, “The Dissidence of Despair: Rebellion and Identity in Early Modern Cornwall,” Journal of British Studies 38, no. 4 (1999), 436-8. 229 PWDRO 1/46, 5v. 87

Merchants and “civic Calvinism” in western Channel cities

The popular reception of Calvinist religion in the western Channel differed according to the structures of national reform in France and England. The nucleated establishments of Huguenot communities clearly diverged from the royally mandated, episcopal structure of the Church of England. Nonetheless, when viewed on a regional scale, western Channel communities underwent complementary processes of popular confessionalization. The civic establishments of La Rochelle, Exeter, Plymouth, and

Barnstaple were distinguished by their overlapping of reformist and corporate authority.

Commercial culture had a great deal to do with the rise of Calvinism in La Rochelle and

Devon: their merchants were a conduit for nonconformist religious thought, their local authority made its establishment possible, and their kinship and patronage ties with the local pastorate made their influences inseparable.230 However, the “civic Calvinism” espoused in the western Channel was not merely the product of parallel Anglo-French development.231 Instead, this was a connected community, integrated through the socio- religious networks of northwest Europe.

In western France, Calvinism was first and foremost an urban phenomenon, and all evidence points to this being a product of regional maritime industries. The core zones

230 The sociology of religious choice in maritime communities is not a new problem within early modern historiography. Specifically, the argument that maritime audiences were, by the nature of their labors, more receptive to heterodox ideas has appeared in a number of studies of the Atlantic Reformations of northwest Europe. While not superficially a disagreeable proposition, it has been subject to abuses generated by an overreliance on confessional models from the German tradition. As Schilling has himself asserted, it is difficult to posit an essential relationship between confession and civic behavior, or vice-versa. Rather, historical circumstance often played the decisive role in determining the social impact of a confession. See Heinz Schilling, Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and The Netherlands: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1991), 1-2, 5-6. 231 The term originates with Schilling in his study of German and Dutch urban confessionalization – specifically Calvinism’s “alliance” with “urban traditions in politics, society, and mentality.” Schilling describes a process of “strong” confessionalization, whereby urban polities were shaped and disciplined by their patricianate. However, after Kevin Robbins, I seek to evoke the “civic” part of this equation – the ways in which Calvinist doctrine was received, appropriated, and adapted to fit local identity in western Channel communities. See Schilling, Civic Calvinism, 2; Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 219. 88 for reform movements lay in coastal towns with demographically dominant maritime establishments: La Rochelle and its environs, as well as the Islands region.232 By 1570, reform had won near unanimous adherence among every social group at La Rochelle, though merchants have long been cited as an early catalyst. Exact findings on the social dimensions of early conversion have only been uncovered in the past few decades.

Correlating 1560s church registers with occupational data from notarial contracts, Judith

Meyer establishes that merchants, artisans, and municipal officials were disproportionately represented in the early Reformed community. The fact that the number of mercantile converts tended to be higher than in comparable communities elsewhere lends some credence to the traditional hypothesis that the prominence of trade to northern Europe provided social incentives for conversion.233

Whatever the cause, the effect of mercantile conversion was redoubled by their ongoing involvement in the politics of the commune. Traditional succession to the elite bourgeois offices of pair, échevin, and conseiller, as well as accession to the corps de ville, was carefully managed within middling mercantile and artisanal families. The result, after the 1560s, was the rise of a socially and economically homogeneous Calvinist oligarchy. Pastorate families were rapidly subsumed into these elite kin groups beginning in the 1560s.234 The city’s conversion was not the result of any top-down disciplinary effort by its mercantile elite. Rather, its political architecture – the “deep imbrication of

232 Seguin, “Naissance,” 42. Reform had a more tenuous presence in the interior regions of Aunis, Saintonge, and Poitou, where it impacted different social groups – mostly royal officials and nobles. 233 Alain Cabantous, Le ciel dans la mer: Christianisme et civilisation maritime (XVe-XIX siècles) (Paris: Éditions Fayard, 1990), 250-2; Meyer, Reformation, 104-13. Meyer shows that maritime-related artisanal groups (such as coopers) were also more susceptible to the new faith. 234 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 124-7, 222-8, 233-7. 89 family affairs and civic affairs” there – ensured the stability of its Reformed congregations.235

As with La Rochelle, Devon’s historians have often highlighted the impact of international trading contacts on its religious culture. Mercantile contact with outside systems of thought and, in the later sixteenth century, negative experiences with international Catholicism contributed to high rates of nonconformity among the maritime population.236 The biographies of the second generation of Exeter’s Protestant merchants

– men such as John Bodley, Nicholas Culverwell, and John Peryam – suggest how international contacts were a vehicle for religious activism. Bodley’s career, in particular, spanned some of the most significant early networks of international Protestantism. As a young man, he partially funded the defense of Exeter during the Prayer Book crisis and was one of the few southwestern participants in Wyatt’s aborted rebellion of 1554. Being at that time “so cruelly threatned, and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his

Religion,” according to his son Thomas, he moved his family to join successively with exiled Marian congregations in Wesel, Frankfurt, and Geneva.237

After becoming an elder and citizen of Geneva, he served as the primary financial backer for the Geneva Bible, translated by close friend and exiled Exeter bishop Miles

Coverdale. Upon his return, he held sole license to import and publish that work until

1570. Bodley’s career then continued in London, where he acted as elder and charity

235 Ibid., 222-3. 236 Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 158, 200. 237 , The life of Sir Thomas Bodley (Oxford, 1647; reprint Boston: Merrymount Press, 1906), 33-5. Thomas would himself become an important international Reformed figure. Beginning his education under his family’s care at Geneva, he matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford (a favorite of southwesterners) and married Ann Cary, heiress of the merchant family of Bristol. From there he embarked on a diplomatic career that saw him serve for Elizabeth in France and the United Provinces. The latter part of his life was consumed with the restoration of the university library at Oxford that would later bear his name. 90 organizer for its first Huguenot and Walloon church until the end of his life.238 He was one of the primary contributors for the London church following the St. Bartholomew’s

Day Massacre (of which nearly 3300£ reached La Rochelle), and the “main conduit” for the larger 1582-3 collection in support of Geneva.239 His Devon-born associate Nicholas

Culverwell also used trade as a bridge to activism. Culverwell emigrated to the capital and built a large fortune on wine trade with southwestern France. In 1568, as part of a group acting under the guise of a government contract for wine and salt importation, he covertly traveled as envoy to negotiate Huguenot relief efforts with the Cardinal de

Châtillon, La Rochelle’s mayor, and Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre.240

Merchants, gentry, and the clergy were connected in tightly knit webs of patronage and friendship in Devon’s cities. The support network of Samuel Hieron, who maintained the longest and most influential Puritan ministry in Devon, demonstrates their interrelationships. Patterns within the dedications of the dozens of printed sermons attributed to Hieron tell the story.241 In particular, the minister’s graciousness fell to a related grouping of Plymouth-area gentry families led by the Strodes of

238 Collinson, “England,” 204-05; Charles G. D. Littleton, “Bodley, John (c.1520–1591),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008; Ian Maxted, “A History of the book in Devon, 33: The Reformation in Devon,” Exeter Working Papers in British Book Trade History 12 (Exeter, n.d.). 239 SP 78/40, 323r; Collinson, “England,” 204-05; Littleton, “Bodley.” The 1572-3 collections were of extraordinary importance to La Rochelle, supporting the city’s successful weathering of the 1573 royal siege. The funds prompted a personal letter of thanks to Elizabeth’s government from deputy mayor Nicolas de Coureilles. 240 Brett Usher, “Culverwell family (per. c.1545–c.1640),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008. Nicholas’s brother Richard was also a merchant and influential Huguenot advocate; he was the recipient of pledged jewels from Albret that he held supposedly “for the furtherance and defense of the Ghospell and suche as sincerely professe the same.” See Collinson, “England,” 204. 241 Information on Hieron’s dedications compiled from DRO 269A/PI1 (Modbury parish), “The Workes of Mr Sam Hieron late Pastor of Modbury in Devon” (1635) and S.G. Harris, “Samuel Hieron, A Devonshire Vicar in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I,” Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and the Arts 24 (1892), 81-3. 91

Newnham. The patriarch Sir (1562-1637) – to whom “The Worth of the

Water of Life," "The good Fight," and “The Dignitie of Preaching” were dedicated – emerged as Hieron’s strongest supporter at Modbury and a financier of lectureships elsewhere. William was an advocate for local commercial affairs when he sat as

Plymouth’s recorder in 1614, defending the county’s French trade charter against the

London company’s attempt at a monopoly.242 Mary, his eldest daughter, was Hieron’s spiritual daughter and the muse of “A Helpe unto Devotion.” The Strodes were related to the nearby Chudleighs of Stretchleigh through the marriage of Mary to Sir George, the son of the MP and naval adventurer John.

Though his family had their own maritime Protestant pedigree – they were under the patronage of the earls of Bedford, and John had served with Sir Walter Raleigh and against the – the match with the devout Strodes exposed George to

Puritanism in a deeper way. In conjunction with William he supported the Modbury lectures and in the preface to “The Baptizing of the Eunuch” Hieron referred to him as his

“verie worshipfull good friend.”243 The minister found more support among members of the Hele family, which was connected to Strode through the marriage of another daughter,

Elizabeth, to Sir Walter of Newton Ferrers. Hieron dedicated three sermons to their eldest son Sampson, who as heir was “one of the richest Puritan squires” in the county. Two

242 John Ferris, “Strode, Sir William (1562–1637),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008; Mary Wolffe, Gentry Leaders in Peace and War: the Gentry Governors of Devon in the Early Seventeenth Century (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), 86. For his preaching, Hieron was suspended five times by Bishop Cotton, but found reprieve in each instance through Strode’s influence. Strode was an investor in the Virginia Company and also sat as MP for both Newnham and the county. 243 For more information on the Chudleighs, see Wolffe, chapters 6 and 7 passim (“Sir George : His Rise to Prominence in the County,” “Sir George Chudleigh: Gentry Governor and Reluctant Rebel”). Sir John Chudleigh died in a failed 1589 expedition to circumnavigate the globe. At different times prior to the Civil Wars, Sir George served as JP, deputy lieutenant, commissioner, billeter, and militia sergeant-major-general for the county. During the first years of the war he helped raise the county militia for Parliament and was given royal pardon after the surrender of Exeter. 92 distant relations of Sampson, Margaret and Warwick Hele of Wembury were also named in Hieron’s works.244 Outside of this particular circle of kin, Hieron’s dedications saw him count as his friends members of many other gentry families with connections to

Devon’s recent maritime history: the Champernownes of Modbury, the Rouses of Halton,

Cornwall, the Prideauxs of Honiton, and the Gilberts of .

In Devon’s most prominent cities, ministers, merchants, and officials often emanated from the same family groups. In radical Barnstaple, several children of mayor and merchant John Delbridge married local Puritan ministers. The second husband of eldest daughter Mary was George Hakewill, the son of a merchant family of Exeter and rector of the northern parish of Heanton Punchardon.245 As was typical of the close-knit pastorate of the northern part of the county, Hakewill maintained close relationships with other local Puritan figures, like the Barnstaple lecturer William Crompton and his “neere neighbour and deere friend” Instow rector John Downe.246 His literary output showed a strong interest in international religious affairs, including his 1611 translation of the

Pierre du Coignet work that blamed French Jesuits for the assassination of Henri IV.247

244 Cliffe, 38. Sampson Hele was called an encouraging friend by Hieron in "The Spirituall Tillage," "The Marriage-Blessing," and "The Old-Man and the New-Man." Margaret was a Catholic convert and another spiritual daughter of the preacher. 245 John Frederick Chanter, The Life and Times of Martin Blake, B.D. (1593-1673), Vicar of Barnstaple and Prebendary of (New York: John Lane Company, 1910), 22-5. Hakewill was the product of two Exonian mercantile households. His father John married Thomasin, daughter of John Peryam. John was involved in early Protestant activism in the city and a close associate of John Bodley, his brother-in-law. 246 Crompton had close ties with the Hakewill family, dedicating the sermon A wedding-ring to George’s brother, William. George composed the funeral sermon for his friend John Downe. See William Crompton, A wedding-ring, fitted to the finger of euery paire that haue or shall meete in the feare of God (London, 1632); John Downe, Certaine treatises of the late reverend and learned divine, Mr Iohn Downe, rector of the church of Instow in Devonshire (Oxford, 1633). 247 Pierre du Coignet, Anti-Coton, or A refutation of Cottons letter declaratorie: lately directed to the Queene Regent, for the apologizing of the Iesuites doctrine, touching the killing of kings (London, 1611). While chaplain to prince Charles, Hakewill also wrote an unpublished treatise against the Spanish Match, then in negotiation, which he then gave to the prince without the king’s knowing. Upon discovery, James ordered Hakewill to prison and he never regained his place at court. 93

Another Delbridge daughter, Elizabeth, wed the Puritan John Blake. Having acquired local powers of presentation, John Delbridge appointed Blake as vicar for the town in

1628.248

Elsewhere, the magisterial families of Plymouth reared future ministers as often as merchants. The best example comes from the Sherwills, one of the city’s most godly and influential clans. Merchant brothers Thomas and Nicholas Sherwill played key roles in the city’s radical Puritan administration during the early decades of the seventeenth century, both serving multiple terms as mayor. As merchants they had interests in the

French trade as well as northern America; both were investors in the early Virginia

Company, and Nicholas in the Piscataqua plantation in .249 While the brothers were active as governors between 1618 and 1638, the corporation oversaw the appointment of a series of radical lecturers for the city.250 The Sherwills were able to project their religious influence well outside of the port, as demonstrated by Nicholas’s presentment of his son Abraham to the vicarage of Milton Abbot upon his death.251

248 Chanter, 38-40. 249 R.A. Brock, ed, Abstract of the Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, 1619-1624, Vol. I (Richmond, VA: Virginia Historical Society, 1888), 273-84; John Scribner Jenness, Notes on the First Planting of and on the Piscataqua Patents (Concord: Edward N. Pearson, 1895), 664, 713-39; R.N. Worth, “The Early Commerce of Plymouth,” Annual Reports and Transactions of the Plymouth Institution and Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society 6 (1876-8), 314. Thomas Sherwill, their father, was an active privateer during the Spanish war; he and John Oxenham were the main officers for ’s 1572 attack on Panama. 250 Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 196-7. While Plymouth’s vicars had been Puritans as early as 1603, the corporation established the first lecturer in 1618. This was between the second mayoral tenure of Thomas (1617-18) and the first of Nicholas (1618-19). 251 NA, PROB 11/180; R.N. Worth, “The History of Nonconformity in Plymouth,” Annual Report and Transactions of the Plymouth Institution and the Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society 6 (1876), 57-9, 81. In his will of 1639, Nicholas names the advowson as one “of which I have a grant from the of Bedford.” Abraham’s son, also Nicholas, became the leading Presbyterian pastor in Restoration Plymouth. 94

Print and text in western Channel reform

When Samuel Hieron found himself unable to publish his controversial pamphlet

Refusal of subscription & conformitie to the book of common prayer in 1608, he called in a favor from the local woolen merchants who financed his work. Local ships carried

Hieron’s text to Holland for printing, and the finished copies were returned among the goods of Plymouth merchant Thomas Sherwill. Because no seller would risk furnishing the book to customers, copies were disbursed freely, being “dropped in the streets [and] hung on hedges.”252 Literature, both traded and shared, bonded reformed communities throughout northwest Europe. The developing industries of religious print in the western

Channel suggest some of the complex interdependencies underlying Reformed ministries in England and France. While their print cultures reflect the diversity of local Calvinist sensibilities, important convergences in literary production and audience taste did exist.

In western Channel cities, religious literature of an eclectic sort reached increasingly literate congregations of the faithful. Calvinism’s emphasis on the independent investigation of the written word of God encouraged high rates of literacy among its adherents.253 Accordingly, literacy was strong even among the meanest sorts in southwest England and western France. The practical education in reading and writing intrinsic to maritime or artisanal work in their ports embellished this trend.254

252 John Quick, “Icones Sacrae Anglicanea,” 85, quoted in Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 196. 253 Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 137, 514-15. 254 Among Rochelais Calvinists, 75% of men and 57% of women could sign their names in marriage registers in the later seventeenth century (compare with the national average of 21% for the same period). At Bristol in 1660, 86% of seamen could sign their names. However, evidence for Devon itself is unclear. The 1641 Protestation returns suggest only 30% of adult males could sign, but this reflects only 42 of 468 total parishes in the county. Given the evidence for a comparable urban center such as Bristol, I suspect the true number is much higher in the ports and coastal parishes (though somewhat lower than the Rochelais rate, where even after 1628 religious schooling was more tightly organized). See Katherine Louise Milton Faust, “A Beleaguered Society: Protestant Families in La Rochelle, 1628-1685” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1980), 85-7, 89-94; Ian Maxted, “A History of the Book in Devon, 35: Books and 95

Within the second generation of the Reformed church, there emerged a loosely defined international Calvinist canon. Bibles, Psalters, and printed sermons were a common part of local markets in England and France. A continuum of theological literature also bound the churches together. Continental theologians Bèze and Girolamo

Zanchi exercised the primary influences on Cambridge divine William Perkins, who developed similar emphases on predestination and supralapsarianism. Perkins became the most reprinted Puritan author in early seventeenth-century England. Likewise, influential

Huguenot writer Pierre Du Moulin attended Cambridge in the same period and was strongly affected by Puritan theology thereafter. There were important national differences in reading habits. Calvin’s writings and anti-Catholic “works of controversy” by French theologians predominated in Huguenot cities, while Puritan congregations gravitated toward native-written devotional literature.255 Still, audience divisions were not steadfast. The stoic, devotional guides of Joseph Hall, from 1627-41, were consumed widely in Huguenot cities, going through twenty French editions.

Meanwhile, the Psalters, commentaries, and antipapal literature popular among

Huguenots proliferate in the 1615 inventory of Exonian bookseller Michael Harte.256

Given the web of violent confessional conflicts in the Reformation age, polemical literature also enjoyed a wide circulation. Huguenot France was a target of Privy Council propaganda that sought to justify Elizabethan religious policies, including the execution of Mary Stuart, the fallout from the Throckmorton Plot, and the English expedition to

readers in the 17th century,” Exeter Working Papers in British Book Trade History 12 (Exeter, n.d.). Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 158. 255 Benedict, Faith and Fortune, 211-12, 220-1; Prestwich, “Introduction,” in Menna Prestwich, ed., International Calvinism 1541-1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 3-4. 256 Benedict, Faith and Fortune, 171-2, 221; Ian Maxted, “A Common Culture?: The Inventory of Michael Harte, Bookseller of Exeter, 1615,” in Devon Documents, ed. Todd Gray (Tiverton: Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries, 1996), 122-4. 96

Cadiz.257 Reciprocally, French west country polemics touching the Wars of Religion

(Popelinière) and Huguenot expeditions to the Americas (Laudonnière, de Léry) were quickly brought to an Anglophone audience through the work of Richard Hakluyt in the

1580s.258 A common thread uniting English and French audiences was a fascination with

Scottish apocalyptic literature. One of the foremost of these works, John Napier’s A

Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John, was popular among Puritans and reprinted at La Rochelle in 1602 (with translation work by George Thomson). Foremost a screed against Catholicism, Napier pronounced that Protestant Europe was on the cusp of a final battle with a papal antichrist that would occur in 1639.259 Works like these helped to construct a sense of confessional solidarity in the western Channel, as contemporaries perceived their common struggles against a cadre of international Catholic forces.

These communities proved to be more than mere consumers of religious texts. To varying degrees, La Rochelle and Devon developed native printing industries that served their respective hinterlands. Their output gives some indication of the intellectual links within this particular Anglo-French regional community. Quickly after the inception of its reform movement, La Rochelle developed a reputation as a clearinghouse for printed works in western France. Its status as a hub began with the lone imprimerie of

257 Charles Giry-Deloison, “France and Elizabethan England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004), 236-7. 258 The classic account of this subset of polemics remains Frank Lestringant, Le huguenot et le sauvage: L’Amerique et la controverse colonial, en France, au temps des guerres of religion (1555-1589), 3rd edition (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2004). The works in question include René Goulaine de Laudonnière, L'Histoire notable de la Floride, contenant les trois voyages faits en icelles par des capitaines et pilotes francais (Paris, 1586); Jean de Léry, l’Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre de Brésil (La Rochelle, 1578); Louis de Voysin de la Popelinière, Trois mondes (Paris, 1582) and La vraye et entière histoire des troubles choses memorables, avenues tant en France qu'en Flandres, & pays circonvoisins, depuis l'an 1562 (La Rochelle, 1572). 259 J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry: The Great Puritan Families of Early Stuart England (London: Routledge, 1984), 209-10; Louis Desgraves, Les Haultin, 1571-1623, vol. 2 of L’Imprimerie a La Rochelle (Genève: Librairie E. Droz, 1960), 123, 125; John Napier, A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of Saint John (Edinburgh, 1593); Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 181-2. 97

Barthélemy Berton (1563-1573) and reached its apex under that of the Haultin family

(1571-1623). During the relative civic tranquility of the early seventeenth century, the

Haultins and their héritiers were joined by more than a dozen other houses and their production largely supplanted Swiss imprints in the French west.260 City printers demonstrated an interest in works from the British Isles, especially focusing on Scottish authors with links to the French Reformed community.261 Glaswegian theologian John

Cameron, whose work was printed in several editions, moved to Bordeaux at a young age.

There he married into a Huguenot family and ministered to the Reformed community with fellow Scot Gilbert Primrose. During the rebellion of the Prince of Condé, he agitated against the city’s Catholic establishment. A literary defense of two Huguenot sea captains condemned for piracy – which was condemned by the regional parlement to be burned – was picked up by a Rochelais printer in 1617.262

Other authors had more explicit ties to the English southwest. A printer under the pseudonym of Adam de Monte published Walter Travers’s 1574 masterwork

Ecclesiasticae disciplinae, which lamented the decay of the Church of England and advocated in its place a Presbyterian discipline. Travers’s family was linked strongly to the Puritan establishment in Devon. His brother John was a nonconformist preacher who, through his friendship with the second earl of Bedford, built a career in the county. He

260 Louis Desgraves, Barthélemy Berton, 1563-1573, vol. 1 of L’Imprimerie a La Rochelle (Genève: Librairie E. Droz, 1960), 10-12; Desgraves, Haultin, xiii-xxi; Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 130-2; de Saint-Affrique, “La Rochelle protestante,” 120. 261 For full bibliography of works published in La Rochelle, see Louis Desgraves and Jean Flouret, Répertoire bibliographique des livres imprimés en France au XVIIe siècle, vol. 2, , Clermont- Ferrand, Guéret, , , Moulins, Périgueux, Pons, Le Puy, Riom, Rochefort-sur-Mer, La Rochelle, Saint-Flour, Saint-Jean-d’Angély, Saintes, Sarlat (Baden-Baden: Éditions Valentin Koerner, 1980), 129-92. 262 L.W.B. Brockliss, “Cameron, John (1579/80–1625),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); John Cameron, Constance, foy, et resolution a la mort des capitaines Blanquet et Gaillard (La Rochelle, 1617). 98 married Alice Hooker, sister of the renowned divine Richard, and held livings in

Landrake and Farrington.263 John Gordon, dean of Salisbury’s panegyric celebrating the

Anglo-Scottish union accomplished by the accession of James I entered circulation in

1603. Gordon’s family was connected to the first generation of the Scottish Kirk and his marriage to fervent Breton Huguenot Geneviève Pétau suggests his close association with the French church.264

Devon’s book trade, in contrast, was not nearly as robust. With only 35,000 total families in the county, the potential market for native printing houses was small and the cities were otherwise flooded with imprints from dominant London publishers. By any measure of readership, Exeter was the literary center for the county. It was the entry point for news and correspondence into the southwest from the capital. In fact, by the seventeenth century, several of its wealthier booksellers had begun having books printed in London on their behalf.265 The list of these imprints is scant; through the end of the sixteenth century, almost all of them were Exonian corporate records or editions of John

Hooker’s local histories.266

The exceptions are nonetheless revealing. Published first for William Russell in

1589, The French historie of Anne Dowriche (née Edgcumbe) used a poetic framework

263 Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 107, 441-2; Alan Ford, “Travers, Walter (1548?– 1635),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 264 John Gordon, Panégyrique de congratulation pour la concorde des royaumes de la Grande- Bretagne, en unité de religion et unique royauté. A Jacques, Roy d’Angleterre et d’Ecosse (La Rochelle, 1603); D. M. Quynn, “The career of John Gordon, dean of Salisbury, 1603–1619,” The Historian 6 (1943– 4), 77, 87-8. 265 Ian Maxted, “A History of the Book in Devon, 31: The Earliest Printing in Devon,” and “A History of the Book in Devon, 34: The Establishment of the Exeter book trade,” Exeter Working Papers in British Book Trade History 12 (Exeter, n.d.). 266 A full list of sixteenth and seventeenth century books with Devon imprints can be found in Ian Maxted, “Books with Devon imprints: a handlist to 1800,” Exeter Working Papers in British Book Trade History 6 (Exeter, n.d.). 99 to explore the recent Wars of Religion.267 Based in part on Nîmois pastor Jean de Serres’s polemical history of the period, Dowriche constructs three vignettes related to the conflicts: a 1557 massacre at a Reformed prayer meeting, the execution of converted magistrate Anne du Bourg in 1559, and the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. The allegorical device uniting the three tales – a chance meeting in the forest between an

Englishman and a recently arrived Huguenot refugee – hints at the ways that western

Channel exchange influenced Dowriche’s writing. As a member of the Edgcumbe family and the wife of Honiton minister Hugh Dowriche, her life experiences lay at the junction of the county’s mercantile gentry and Puritan networks. The book was dedicated to her brother Piers, who along with other seagoing members of her family had regular contact with Huguenot mariners and participated in the ongoing privateering campaigns against

Iberian shipping.268 The French historie is a striking representation of the ways that family and maritime networks mediated understandings of confessional conflict in the western Channel.

Finally, the Psalms, in the form of metrical adaptations for popular worship, served as shared texts among seafaring believers in the Channel ports. Originally envisioned by Calvin as a medium for the understanding and memorization of the underlying biblical texts, in their popular usage these hymns became outward signifiers of faith, weapons of shipboard obedience, and mantras to ward off mortal dangers that

267 Anne Dowriche, The French historie, That is, a lamentable discourse of three bloodie broiles in France for the gospell of Jesus Christ (Exeter, 1589). Though long neglected, Dowriche’s work has recently been reappraised as “the first text which can be directly attributed to a Devon woman, as well as possibly being the first poem written in England to dramatise a female character [Catherine de Medici].” See Julie Sampson, “Anne Edgcumbe/Dowriche and The French Historie,” Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, and the Arts 141 (2009), 93-4. 268 As one of the oldest county families, the Edgcumbes were part of a large, interrelated gentry group that included the Courtenays, Tremaynes, Arundells, Champernownes, Prideaux, Carews, and many others. She may have also been distantly related to Protestant author Anne Prowse and connected to a coterie of other female writers in the county. See Sampson, “Dowriche,” 94-9, 122-9. 100 accompanied life at sea. From the inception of their confrontation with the Catholic political and religious order, unison singing served as the primary public signifier of the embattled Reformed minority in France.269 Psalm-singing by urban crowds was a common element of English state communiqués regarding the intensification of religious troubles in Normandy during the early 1560s. Francis Edwards wrote to Cecil from

Rouen that “the people in thousands sing every night between 9 and 10 o’clock the

Psalms of David, and the men at arms dare not touch them.”270 John Foxe’s Actes and

Monuments contains 27 references to metrical psalms; most instances involve songs sung at the pyre by unrepentant French martyrs.271 Rochelais historian Barbot recounted that a group of Breton mariners led by Pierre Brethon and Jean Primenet robbed and killed

Mathurin Leguay, resident priest of Saint-Nicolas parish, in his own home by slitting his throat. Their controversial condemnation incited a demonstration of support by town ministers and others, who “publicly aided and comforted” the accused. The demonstrants repeatedly sang aloud the Miserere in protest of their executions.272

The pragmatic usages of musical prayer in the land and sea campaigns of the ensuing Wars of Religion reflected the conviction among French believers that they

“could legitimately appropriate the psalms to themselves” as “their songs” – merging past texts with present occasions of trial, deliverance, and victory.273 According to Jean de

269 W. Stanford Reid, “The Battle Hymns of the Lord: Calvinist Psalmody in the Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 2 (Jan. 1971), 45-6. 270 SP 70/12, f. 140. A separate report (SP 70/21, f. 15) noted that protesters changed the lines of Theodore de Béze’s Psalm 129 (“Dès ma jeunesse ils m’ont fait mille assaux”) in order to taunt city officials. For other examples in France, see SP 78/3, f. 62; 70/128, f. 11; 70/78, f. 14; 70/37, f. 31, 35. 271 There are more references to French psalm-singing (10) than English (6). John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous dayes (London, 1583). 272 Barbot, 17: 165-6. 273 Reid, “Calvinist Psalmody,” 43-4. has spoken in parallel terms about the preference of La Rochelle’s Calvinist, sea-laboring population for psalmic prayer, which he interprets to be a manifestation 101

Serres’s history of the religious wars, psalms undergirded the discipline of Huguenot military forces. In the camp of the Prince of Condé, one would not find cards, dice, or women, for “at at rising and sitting of the watches, they had publike prayers, and the ayre sounded with their voyces, singing Psalmes. Divers Ministers were distributed among the troupes, that had charge to continue and procure that good order.”274 The troops of the

Huguenot admiral Coligny knelt and sung Psalm 114 (“When went out of Egypt”) when they crossed the Loire.275 Metrical psalms bookended the lifespan of the shortlived

Huguenot colony of Fort Caroline in : the “Psalme of thankesgiuing” offered by the first commander René Goulaine de Laudonnière to inaugurate the plantation and the recitation of Psalm 50 (“Our God shall come and shall not keepe silence”) by prior to the slaughter of its population by Spanish forces.276

Melodic convergences in the psalms provided a basis for a common intelligibility of content among Channel seafarers. The English vernacular tradition, reaching its lasting form in The Whole Booke of Psalmes, became the ne plus ultra of international psalmody, an amalgamation of French, Dutch, and German melodies. The psalms commonly associated with English and French shipboard usage – including 68 (“God will arise, and his enemies shalbe scattered”), 100 (“Sing ye loude vnto the Lord, all the earth”), 104

(“The earth is full of thy riches”), 107 (“They that goe downe to the sea in ships”), and

of “stubbornly utilitarian beliefs about religion’s role in remedying immediate problems.” Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 118. 274 Jean de Serres, An historical collection, of the most memorable accidents, and tragicall massacres of France (London, 1598), 113. Indeed, Bèze served as chaplain for the army of Condé. 275 Claire Éliane Engel, L’Amiral de Coligny (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1967), 226. This was a favorite selection of French Calvinists in times of tribulation. 276 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation, vol. 2 (London, 1599-1600), 325; Antoine François Prévost, Histoire générale des voyages (Paris, 1757), 14: 445. 102

124 (“If the Lord had not been on our side”) – shared melodies drawn from the Genevan psalm repertoire (published definitively as the Huguenot Psalter of 1562).277

Metrical psalms reached English seafarers en masse after 1562. The expansion of mass privateering in the Channel during the 1560s coincided with official attempts to install a stricter system of religious discipline aboard English vessels. The most important aspect of these efforts was more rigid regulations for divine service at sea, including provisions for the use of the psalms at morning and evening prayer.278 The Elizabethan drive for shipboard moral reform was a pedagogic project that drew on the rhetorical design of popular mobilization in Calvinist France. Here, too, English officers and ministers marshaled the metrical psalms in the service of discipline, morale, and solidarity. Beginning in this era, formal shipboard instructions and orders normally contained provisions early in the text for twice-daily divine service. Often, like in the instructive address read to Walter Raleigh’s fleet at Plymouth before their voyage to

Guiana, those orders also called for psalm-singing at the watch.279

As a window onto how these services would have looked, the records of

Inquisition cases against English sailors in the Elizabethan era are unrivalled. Protestant prayer regimens on vessels were a frequent preoccupation of the Inquisitors. John Gold testified in mid-1586 of a scene aboard a voyage from Southampton to the Canaries: “it being the precept of the Queen of England that in observance of the new religion prayers

277 These observations are based on comparisons of Robin A. Leaver, ‘Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes’: English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535-1566 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 316-19 (Appendix IX, “Analysis of the Origins of The Whole Booke of Psalmes”) and the melodic notation found in Pierre Pidoux, Le psautier huguenot du XVIe siècle. Mélodies et documents, vol. 1 (Basel: Édition Baerenreiter, 1962). 278 Vincent V. Patarino, Jr., “The Religious Shipboard Culture of Sixteenth and Seventeenth- Century English Sailors,” The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1485-1649, ed. Cheryl Fury (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2012), 155-8. 279 R.M., Newes of Sir Walter Raleigh with the True Description of Guiana (London, 1618), 19. See other examples in Patarino, “Shipboard Culture,” 156-8. 103 should be offered to God twice a day.... the master of the vessel taking the place of a priest and summoning the men with a whistle” each time.280 A Portuguese pilot held on John Hawkins’s Jesus of Lubeck during his slaving voyage to Sierra Leone testified that each day the master and other officers

brought out a rush basket filled with books which they put down upon the deck of the ship, and everyone took his copy ... and they sat down in two rows and began to sing ... I saw some of the Psalms of David therein, and at the foot of the verses and interlined a musical notation. And so they would sing for half an hour or so ... and the English pilot would shout something which I did not understand, and the others would respond just as when we respond ‘Amen.’”281

On the ships of both John and Richard Hawkins, sailors who missed prayer calls faced punishment at the hands of the officers, including whippings and being placed in irons on deck. Another captured pilot on the circumnavigation voyage of Francis Drake observed that Drake held two separate services each day, one for common mariners and the other for his officers and council. During each he was said to have “knelt down, bareheaded” and read from a “very large book.” Attendees, some also holding books, sat “without their hats, and made responses.”282 Thus, psalm-singing served as a mutually intelligible form of international Calvinist worship in Channel communities. The hymns also came to form part of disciplinary regimes used both by Huguenot forces during the Wars of

Religion and their English allies at sea.

280 L. de Alberti and A.B. Wallis Chapman, eds., English Merchants and the Spanish Inquisition in the Canaries. Extracts from the Archives in Possession of the Most Hon. The of Bute (London: Offices of the Society, 1912), 5. 281 Documents translated and reprinted in P.E.H. Hair, “Protestants as Pirates, Slavers, and Proto- missionaries: Sierra Leone 1568 and 1582,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21, no. 3 (1970), 204. 282 Zelia Nuttall, ed. and trans., New Light on Drake: A Collection of Documents Relating to His Voyage of Circumnavigation, 1577-1580 (Hakluyt Society, 1967), 325-6. The interpretation that Drake and his crew were reciting metrical psalms appears in Helen Wallis, Sir Francis Drake. An Exhibition to Commemorate Francis Drake’s Voyage around the World (London: British Museum Publications, 1977), 43. 104

Channel migrations, confession, and industry in the age of reform

Even more so than shared literatures, the movement of peoples among coastal communities evidenced a common religious culture in the Channel region. Refugeeism was the most consistent and pervasive type of migration connecting England and France.

This phenomenon began in earnest with a set of interrelated cross-Channel diasporas during the 1550s and 1560s. The accession of Mary I in 1553 impelled hundreds of

English Protestants to flee, forming organized exile congregations at Heidelberg,

Frankfurt, Emden, Strasbourg, and Geneva. The expatriate enclaves marked the closest encounter of early English reformers with the evangelical movements of the Continent.283

Their energies are widely seen as having supported an Elizabethan religious settlement that secured a Protestant religious establishment in England. Furthermore, the zeal of the returning Marian congregations from Germany and Switzerland influenced an evangelical wing within the English church – a godly, activist fringe that agitated for a greater communion with the Reformed churches of the Continent during the later sixteenth century.284 Their returns coincided with the mass migration of persecuted

French during the first War of Religion and the reign of the Duke of Alva in the Spanish

Netherlands. Whereas the source regions for the larger post-1685 Huguenot diaspora were located in western and southwestern France, this earlier movement primarily

283 Euan Cameron, “Frankfurt and Geneva: the European Context of John Knox’s Reformation,” in Roger A. Mason, ed., John Knox and the British Reformations (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 1998), 51-73; Dan G. Danner, Pilgrimage to Puritanism: History and Theology of the Marian Exiles at Geneva, 1555 to 1560, vol. 9 of Studies in Church History (New York: Peter Lang, 1999); Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Pettegree, Marian Protestantism: Six Studies (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), chapters 1, 5, and 6 passim (“The English Church at Emden,” “The Latin Polemic of the Marian Exiles,” “The Marian Exiles and the Elizabethan Settlement”). 284 Kenneth Bartlett, “The Role of the Marian Exiles,” in P.W. Hasler, ed., The Commons, 1558- 1603, vol. 1 (London: Boydell & Brewer, 1981), 102-10; D.M. Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England, 1553-1558 (London: Anchor Press, 1979), 339. 105 implicated groups of estranged Walloons and . A resettlement of these endangered communities followed in France and across the Channel.

In England, most refugees were concentrated within a limited number of southern locations – London, Southampton, the Channel Islands, Norwich, Canterbury, Rye, and

Winchelsea – where they were permitted to form congregations under alternative

Calvinist disciplines. Many former Marian refugees became patrons of the early refugee congregations. This included Exeter merchant John Bodley, who was a congregant of the

London church, and Sir Henry Killigrew, Cornish military adventurer and leader of the

Anglo-Huguenot garrison at Le Havre. The mid-sixteenth-century crisis has become a sort of “lost” diaspora, both in the sense that it has suffered from scholarly neglect compared with the Huguenot migrations of the late seventeenth century, and also because the wider implications of the event have been obscured by a lack of surviving evidence.

However, insofar as it catalyzed new religious collaborations, activism, and economic activity among Channel communities, it strongly influenced the future of Protestantism in northwest Europe.

The front lines of the crisis lay in Jersey and Guernsey, where a collaborative grouping of Norman refugees and radical island officials from the English southwest succeeded in planting a novel form of local Presbyterianism during the 1560s and 1570s.

The Channel Islands formed a peculiar Anglo-French “frontier zone” during the tumults of the early Reformation: an English crown dependency with a proximate relationship to the religious culture of northern France. Indeed, both islands saw a steady stream of refugee traffic from that region beginning in the late 1550s, continuing through the third

War of Religion and St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. During this period, the islands 106 became a tactical meeting point for returning Marian exiles, Norman dissidents and

English activist-officials. In their encouragement of “offshore Presbyterianism,” it is likely that island officials anticipated the “fifth-column role” that foreign congregations might play in the drive for further Anglican reforms.285

On Jersey, the southwestern governor and his kinsmen abetted these efforts. Originally of Somerset, Amias and his father Hugh married into Devon gentry families and variously served in governing positions in both counties. During his tenure as governor, Hugh oversaw an initial attempt to enforce religious reform on the fairly conservative island population, ordering a French translation of the Book of Common

Prayer in 1549 and appointing his brother John as dean of Jersey. Though he held reservations about the influx of Huguenot refugees onto the island, his influence waned in favor of the more sympathetic Amias, who effectively took control of island affairs as deputy governor in 1559. In conjunction with leading landowner Helier de Carteret, de St. Ouen, Amias used his discretionary authority to facilitate the establishment of Huguenot ministers to better engage the recalcitrant islanders. Geneva- supported churches followed, first meeting in a joint synod of 1564; Amias attended the first communion service of Jersey’s church.

Full consolidation of the new Presbyterian order of the islands came in the following decades due to further Huguenot migrations and the further radicalization of official policy. Paulet and the likeminded Guernsey governor Thomas Leighton ended the

285 C.S.L. Davies, “International Politics and the Establishment of Presbyterianism in the Channel Islands: The Coutances Connection,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (1999), 511, 513, 519-20. For the prevalence of this strategy among Edwardian and early Elizabethan Protestants, see Patrick Collinson, “Protestant Strangers and the English Reformation,” in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Protestant Communities in Britain, Ireland, and Colonial America, 1550-1750, eds. Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 58-59. 107 island’s deanship once it became vacant in 1574; in the same year, the Huguenot commander comte de Montgomery used Jersey as his base for nearby Norman military operations. Leading English Presbyterian figures Thomas Cartwright and Edmund Snape arrived on the islands as chaplains to governors Leighton and Anthony Paulet (Amias’s son) in 1595, creating a unified Book of Discipline for the islands two years later.286

The Channel Islands serve as a unique example of an integrative religious culture that was facilitated by early Reformed refugeeism. The influence of the islands’ rapid conversion surfaced in the French church at Southampton via ongoing migration to that city, and its Presbyterian discipline became the basis for the conformist church of the

Savoy in Restoration London.287 It also spread to Exeter, whose merchant leaders had close ties to the Paulets. When Exeter’s Merchant Adventurers expressed their interest in a preacher that would “onstruct the youth of this citie aswell their Catechesme, as also their dutie and obedience towardes God and their parentes,” they selected Snape on the recommendation of the governors. 288 Working closely with mayor and city, their “godlie and necessarie mocion” moved forward with the selection of Edmund Snape in 1599.289

While Jèrriais and Guernésiais Presbyterianism represent a somewhat anomalous confessional arrangement, the French church at Southampton was more typical of the

Francophone communities formed in England during the early Elizabethan era. Most

286 Davies, “Channel Islands,” 502, 504-07, 515, 519-21. 287 Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 97-9. 288 ECA 58/7/11, 108r-v, 131r, 171r-v. Hugh and Amias Paulet married into Devon families, holding estates and offices there. Between at least 1583 and 1593, Exeter’s Merchant Adventurers held an ongoing dialogue with Amias Paulet, his son Anthony, and Thomas Leighton on the possibility of routing wartime trade goods through the neutral islands. 289 ECA 58/7/11, 94r, 222r-v, 231v. Snape was provided a £50/year stipend to preach twice on Sundays. He eventually removed to Budleigh and Crediton, though he continued to minister privately in the city. See William Cotton, An Elizabethan Guild of the City of Exeter. An Account of the Proceedings of the Society of Merchant Adventurers, During the Latter Half of the 16th Century (Exeter: William Pollard, 1873), 91-2; W.T. MacCaffrey, Exeter, 1540-1640: The Growth of an English County Town (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 197-8. 108

Alvan refugees, including those at Southampton, were incorporated into the realm through letters patent authorizing the creation of small foreign enclaves in southern cities.

The official ordination of these stranger churches allowed the arriving migrants to form their own congregations, complete with a special Calvinist rite formulated first within the

London community.

Though this policy was certainly not out of line with the Protestant orientation of

Elizabethan foreign policy during the 1560s, the government’s motivations were clearly driven by the economic incentives inherent to sheltering foreign communities. Sir

William Cecil was keen to attract exile communities that could introduce new commerce and industries, thus producing a more favorable national balance of trade. By definition, then, the new settlements had a mercantile orientation. Towns that lobbied for grants of letters patent were conscious of the potential benefit, and therefore merchants and craftsmen were overrepresented among the migrants.290 The main locations of the stranger churches were steered by which cities were willing to shelter these groups.

Nonetheless, from the perspective of migrants who wished to sustain their economic enterprises, geographical proximity and trade links mattered a great deal. The appearance of significant churches at London, Norwich, Canterbury, and Southampton above all reflected the Flemish and Norman origins of the refugees.291

Sanctioned in 1567, Southampton’s French church drew most of its congregants from the cities of the southern Netherlands: most came from Valenciennes, but smaller contingents arrived from Tournai, Armentières, and as well. The close-knit

Valenciennes group was drawn from a small number of its Calvinist mercantile

290 Gwynn, 42-6; Andrew Pettegree, Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 139-42. 291 Gwynn, 28-9. 109 households, including the Sohier, le Clercq, and Beaulieu families. While most of these refugees arrived with the commencement of the Duke of Alva’s regime in the Habsburg

Netherlands, the church also attracted steady migration from northern France and the

Channel Islands. Many of the northern Huguenots sought religious sanctuary in the port after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Channel Islanders, on the other hand, seem to have been motivated by economic incentives of moving to a busy port community, though the presence of a Francophone church in the city undoubtedly would have weighed into their decisions to move.292

Southampton’s French community was one of the earliest bases of international

Reformed trade in the West Country, and its foreign congregants strengthened the trade links of that region with southwestern France. Much like the other southern stranger churches, the inception of Southampton’s congregation was contingent on the introduction of new industries into the community. The initial Flemish refugees brought the “new draperies” industry, in which they were expected to apprentice native inhabitants of the port. The introduction of new draperies expertise in the product of serges complemented the “old” drapers trades in kerseys and says that were practiced throughout the southwest. In Southampton as well as the smaller Flemish settlements of the southwest, the methods added diversity to a traditional market and increased the vitality of this key export trade.293

292 Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton, 1567-c.1620 (London: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1997), chapter 1 passim. 293 Spicer, Southampton, 31, 71-2. The serges created by the new drapers were not fundamentally different than the says produced elsewhere in the English southwest; in fact, the English referred to both as says in the sixteenth century. In spite of what amounted to a few different flourishes on the old trades, they added diversity insofar as they could be marketed as the product of outside, Flemish techniques. Contemporaries referred to the refugees’ production of draps d’Armentiere and sayes de Honscooten. 110

After the , a small number of refugee merchants and their new draperies anchored city trade with La Rochelle and Bordeaux. Cloth-laden ships hired by the refugees became part of a trans-Channel trade system. Perhaps drawing on business ties established prior to their emigrations, the merchants brought return shipments of wine and salt to the Channel Islands, Rouen, Middelburg, and Southampton.294 English traders often relied on resident commissioners to arrange business at La Rochelle, and

Southampton’s refugee merchants were well-suited for these roles. Charles Hesselin became one of the most important commissioners for Southampton and the southwest, permanently establishing a household at La Rochelle by 1599.295 There he served as a common contact for merchants from Devon and the southwest, alternately functioning as a translator, witness, and procurator for business transactions.296

Through at least the 1620s, related members of the Le Clercq, Le Mercier, and

Pryaulx families handled much of this trade. Arnoul le Clercq, one of the original emigrants from Valenciennes, worked in conjunction with Mathieu Sohier as a congregational and mercantile leader. They were joined in their trading enterprises by

Jean le Mercier, emigrant of Tournai, who had family ties to the Sohiers and married le

Clercq’s daughter at Southampton in 1579. Le Mercier established trades with La

Rochelle, the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Middelburg over the subsequent decades.297

He appears to have expanded his purview through the marriages of his daughters into other Channel trading families. Jane Mercier wed merchant Peter Pryaulx, a first-

294 Spicer, Southampton, 40-4. 295 Spicer, Southampton 62-3. 296 E.g. ADCM, Conay, 3E 1231, 128r-v; Conay, 3E 1235, 2v-3r; Masset, 3E 2159 (1609), 227r-8r. 297 E.M. Godfray ed., Registre des baptesmes, marriages et mortz, et jeusnes, de l’église wallonne et des isles de Jersey, Guernesey, Serq, Origny, etc., établie a Southampton par patente du roy Edouard sixe et de la reine Elizabeth (London: Huguenot Society of London, 1890), 86, 126; Spicer, Southampton, 46, 54-9. 111 generation emigrant of Guernsey who had previously established himself as a factor for

Jean.298 Pryaulx became a civic leader in Southampton (he was mayor for 1622) and traded infrequently at La Rochelle, where he formed a joint enterprise with his brother-in- law Paul Mercier. Jane and Peter bore a son who became a resident merchant at La

Rochelle and Bordeaux. At La Rochelle, father and son dealt with merchants of

Saintonge, Bristol, Totnes, Milbrook, Amsterdam, and Schiedam.299 As the only early

French church in the English southwest, Southampton’s refugees were an indispensible link in a Channel trade system that would be vital to West Country prosperity.

Elsewhere in the western Channel, Huguenot refugeeism sparked Reformed activism and presaged future demographic trends. At least in part due to the North Sea source region of many early migrants, Devon did not see the development of distinct

French churches until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Nonetheless, smaller Flemish and Walloon groups did settle in the county without letters patent, though a lack of surviving evidence has rendered the details fragmentary. These groups have been credited as an influence on patterns of religious dissent in the parts of the county where they settled. Weavers from the southern Netherlands are reported to have landed at Dartmouth, Plymouth, Bideford, Honiton, Colyton, and Moreton (as well as

Falmouth in Cornwall) from the 1560s. These migrants probably were small enough in number to have assimilated quickly into local parishes, thus accounting for the missing traces of their settlement.300 Their impact was greatest in the coastal and inland cloth

298 Horrocks, J.W., ed. The Assembly Books of Southampton, vol. 1 (Southampton: Cox & Sharland, 1917), 5n; Spicer, Southampton, 66-7. 299 See, for example, ADCM, Tongrelou, 3E 1780 (1630), 145r-6r; 3E 1780 (1632), 172v. 300 Charles E. Lart, “The Huguenot Churches and Settlements in the West of England,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 8 (1901-4), 286-7; Hugh Peskett, Guide to the Parish and Non-parochial Registers of Devon and Cornwall, 1538-1837 (: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 1979), lxii-lxvii; Inkerman Rogers, The Huguenots of Devonshire (Bideford, 1942), 22, 30. 112 towns of east Devon, where newcomers from Flanders are traditionally thought to have established the lace industry and radicalized local churches. In part, this helps to explain why eastern parishes such as Axmouth, Axmouth, and Colyton were subsequently some of the strongest bastions of Puritanism in the county. Flemish refugeeism also suggests why Moreton, a central cloth town abridging Dartmoor and far removed from major population centers, saw such a fervent drive for godly discipline.301

Devon’s corporate towns exhibited a longer pattern of support for refugees and associated international Reformed causes. In May 1588, Exeter’s council designated city funds to support the “Lattyn Lecture” of exiled preacher Bensirius.302 Plymouth town records note the arrival of a group of “poore ” from St. Martin-de-Ré during Richelieu’s campaigns against the western towns in 1621 and 1622. Eleven parish collections were held for the relief of the refugees in those two years totaling 66£ 3s

2d.303 The MP and diarist reported that a Plymouth and French minister were seen “walking upon the Hoe” in the spring of 1622, and indeed the town set aside

40s for a French “preacher of the word” around that time.304 Such local proofs of religious persecution would have made support for international Reformed causes all the more urgent. Exeter’s conservative bishop William Cotton used similar logic to appeal to

Totnes on the possibility of monetary support for a new Reformed college at Prague in

1612. In doing so, he invoked the “charitable benevolence of people well disposed to the maintenannce and encrease of the gospell as in other countries soe in this realme.”305

301 Rogers, 30; Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 199-200, 202. 302 ECA (Exeter City Archives), “Exeter Act Books,” IV: 565. 303 PWDRO, “Plymouth Accounts Book,” 1/138, 108v. 304 Todd Gray, “Devon’s Coastal and Overseas Fisheries and New England Migration, 1597-1642” (Ph.D. diss., University of Exeter, 1988), 208; Walter Yonge, The Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq. (London: Camden Society, 1848), 48-9. 305 DRO 1579A/22/9B. 113

Totnes subsequently collected 10£ 12s 9d for the relief of Palatinate ministers in 1635.306

Barnstaple’s council also contributed funds for various international causes in the

1590s.307 Diarist Jacques Fontaine commented in 1685 that the charity of the people of

Barnstaple made them “fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, in a strange land.”308

Activism for refugees and their causes, it seems, was part of local experience in Devon long before that time.

* * * * *

Religious belief and maritime industry stood in mutual relation in southwest

England and western France. The international geographies of expertise forged by the region’s merchants and sailors served as local highways for the nonconformist theologies of the Reformation. Their resulting forms of maritime Calvinism were reliant on strong urban networks of patronage and kinship formed between seafaring believers and their ministers. The circulation of texts and peoples internationally further establishes the connectivities of religious reform movements in the western Channel. Two overarching themes emerge. First, nonconformist traditions distinguished western Channel religious culture. From the mid-sixteenth century, Francophone migrations fostered the appearance of hybrid confessions in southern and southwest England. Presbyterian theology, in particular, seems to have been a point of convergence between Channel Puritans and

Huguenots. Its status as a middle ground helps to explain the strong presence of Scottish ministries in the French west and the strength of Presbyterian dissent in Devon. A second theme emerges from the role of migration and literary production in promoting mutual

306 DRO 1579A/22/11. 307 J.R. Chanter and T. Wainwright, Reprint of the Barnstaple Records, vols. 1 and 2 (Barnstaple: A.E. Barnes, 1900), 2: 130-2. 308 Jacques Fontaine, Mémoires d’une famille Huguenote (Toulouse, 1877), 173. 114 understandings of confessional struggle. Ministerial correspondence, popular polemics, and travel disseminated new kinds of information on the threats facing Protestant brethren in other parts of Europe. The broadened meanings of fraternity and conflict would have been even more palpable for refugees and the communities that gave them sanctuary.

Marian refugees in coastal Normandy: the roots of alliance

The religious culture of Channel cities produced political outcomes that were not only of significance to the subsequent history of religious reform in northwest Europe, but also its maritime commercial future. During the final surge of the Habsburg-Valois conflict in the 1550s, western Channel refugees, activists, and entrepreneurs transformed the Huguenot-controlled ports of Haute-Normandie into a staging ground for plunder fleets targeting French and Spanish Catholic shipping. The impetus for these campaigns came from within an English expatriate community that gathered in northern France during the counterreformation accompanying the brief reign of Mary I. Though a small group, they were the starting point for Calvinist political organization along the Channel coasts. Militant enclaves at Rouen in the late 1550s and Le Havre in 1562-3 served as an advance force for Anglo-Huguenot diplomatic and naval collaborations in the later sixteenth century.

Rouen and Haute Normandie, 1554-9

The first wave of English emigrants fled to the Continent following the failed conspiracy of Protestant gentry in early 1554, led by Thomas Wyatt’s forces, against the proposed marriage of Mary to the Habsburg prince Philip II. Devon was an integral 115 component of Wyatt’s plan, due to its strategic position along the Channel and the political influence of county families like the Courtenays and Carews.309 Sir gathered a modest circle of conspirators that included his uncle Gawain, kinsman Arthur

Champernowne, William Gibbes, and John Christopher. Their plan focused on their mobilization of sympathetic Protestant gentry with the object of seizing Exeter, along with a general call to arms fueled by panicked rumors of the imminent landing of Philip and his entourage in one of the county ports.310 Meanwhile, Carew and his supporters sought maritime reinforcements for the Channel coasts at the French court. One of the

Killigrew brothers acted as Carew’s agent to the French court at Fontainebleau, proposing to deliver eight or nine local ships into French service in exchange for royal naval support against Spanish forces.311 In December, the mayor (Lucas Cocke) and aldermen of Plymouth asked for French sea support in a planned civic defense against a

Spanish landing.312 French help, however, arrived too late to aid Carew’s operation, which collapsed due to a lack of active support in late January 1554. Facing the taint of conspiracy, a group including Carew, James Kirkham, John Courtenay, and Andrew and

309 David Loades, Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 21, 45. Indeed, many of Wyatt’s co-conspirators and opponents of the Spanish match at court felt that, in place of Philip, the Queen should be urged to marry Edward Courtenay, 1st . A more extreme Protestant faction envisioned Mary being deposed and Courtenay matched with Elizabeth. Courtenay had contact with Carew, Wyatt, and other conspirators – enough to warrant confinement in 1554 and 1555 – but probably never fully committed to the plan. 310 The threat of a local landing drove up black legend-style fears of Spanish invasion and subjugation in Devon and other southwestern counties. In the midst of an animated discussion on Christmas Eve, 1553 at the home of John Combe of Linkinhorne in Cornwall, Sampson Jackman was reported to have predicted that, after Spanish arrival, “you shall see all howses of rlygyon uppe agayne withe the popes lawes.” Such rumors were not discouraged by the plotters. After an Assize session at Exeter in January 1554, Gibbes reportedly exclaimed to the assembled that “yf any man woold not stande to defende the Kynge of Spayne for his entri ynto thys realme, because they woold ravyshe ther wyves and daughters and robbe and spoile the commons, that then theyr throtte shold be cutte.” See, respectively, SP 11/2, f. 2 and 11/3, f. 34. 311 E.H. Harbison, Rival Ambassadors at the Court of Queen Mary (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1940), 117. 312 “M. de Noailles au Roy, 23 décembre 1553,” in René Aubert de Vertot, ed., Ambassades de Messeurs de Noailles en Angleterre, vol. 2 (Paris, 1763), 342. 116

Nicholas Tremayne departed Weymouth in Peter Killigrew’s ship for Normandy shortly thereafter.313

In sharp contrast to exile communities in the Holy and

Switzerland that formed discrete congregations and left evidence of vigorous theological production, the groups of Englishmen who roamed between Paris and the coastal cities of

Normandy from 1554-9 appear to have been moved by political rather than confessional motives.314 The single-mindedness with which the Norman emigrants organized for violent resistance undoubtedly set them apart from the intellectual labors of English enclaves at Geneva or Emden. Nevertheless, their leadership would have found it difficult to extricate political motives from religious ones in mobilizing around the set of issues raised by the Marian succession. In light of Mary’s faith and her counter-reforms of the

English church, her marriage to Philip conjured popular fears of foreign domination pregnant with religious significance.315

The religious politics of the Norman faction were pragmatic, but no less real.

English expatriates, committed Protestants all, negotiated pensions and naval commissions at the Valois court in order to sabotage an international Catholic alliance across the Channel. They operated at a landing site in coastal Haute-Normandy that had recently become a hotbed for French Calvinist protests. English soldiers and sailors,

313 SP 11/3, f. 54. 314 Kenneth R. Bartlett, “The English Exile Community in Italy and the Political Opposition to Queen Mary I,” Albion 13, no. 3 (1981), 224, 227, 230-1; Loades, Tudor Conspiracies, 17. For Loades and Bartlett, the overlap in personnel between the Norman plotters and earlier domestic conspiracies – the 1553 plan of the Duke of Northumberland to place Jane Grey on the English throne, then Wyatt’s conspiracy of the following year – demonstrated the “secular” essence of their opposition. In those failed plots, the concern of the organizers to protect positions at court from potential Spanish interlopers undergirded their broader program of maintaining English political independence from international Catholic-Habsburg influence – an agenda for which French activism was a satellite site. 315 Malcolm R. Thorp, “Religion and the Wyatt Rebellion of 1554,” Church History 47, no. 4 (1978), 378-9. For similar claims see Anthony Fletcher, Tudor Rebellions (London: Longman, 1968), 87; Whitney R.D. Jones, The Mid-Tudor Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 94-5. 117 particularly figures from the Devon faction, made contacts with Huguenot grandees from the French west country and cultivated connections with Marian congregations elsewhere.

Finally, Marian organizers laid the basis for an Anglo-Huguenot direct-action community in the English Channel during the 1560s and 70s, with links to the Cecil-Throckmorton

French embassy of the early 1560s, the Earl of Leicester, and French Calvinist political leadership under the Bourbons.

Reflecting the modus operandi of the community, one is compelled to conclude that men of means and military experience made up the various waves of emigrants drawn to Normandy. Single males predominated – 150 individuals, including some Scots and French, according to Wotton’s 1554 report316 – rather than the family emigrations that fed other foreign congregations. That number included a handful of core conspirators drawn from the gentry – some living in true exile, others fearful of persecution, and still others recruited for their personal influence or liquidity. In February 1554, a group of emigrants that included Carew and his nephew John Courtenay, as well as William

Pickering, Brian Fitzwilliam, and William Staunton appeared at Caen. There the rebels sought a free hand to prepare for a naval confrontation with Philip’s impending convoy to

England. In this regard, the cities of the Pays de Caux and the Lower Seine Valley served as a convenient base of operations; they were the leading edge of Calvinist conversion in the French realm north of the Loire, with strong links to Geneva.317 At Rouen, Dieppe,

Calaisis, and later at Le Havre, they found enough local sympathy to organize their forces

316 CSP Foreign, Mary I, 107-08 (“Dr. Wotton to Queen Mary,” 29 July 1554). Hallowell Garrett’s census concurs with that number, though she only identifies 44 individuals by name. 317 David Nicholls, “Social Change and Early Protestantism in France: Normandy, 1520-62,” European History Quarterly 10 (1980), 285-8. 118 and finances; by March, Carew had already set up an operation in the haven at Rouen, hiring English crews to go to sea with himself and Peter Killigrew.318

Beyond their own fortunes and the goods they could pillage at sea, rebel leaders sought out material support from the unstable court of Henri II. Their requests came at an embryonic stage in the confessional politics of the Valois court, when Calvinist princes still held key positions and – as evidenced by the commissions given by the king to

Huguenot corsairs in the Caribbean – the Crown still saw fit to put the sea enterprises of

French Calvinists to work in the service of its anti-Imperial foreign policy. Thus, in 1554 the English petitioners held the support of a coalition including the Catholic Guises as well as the Calvinist converts Antoine de Bourbon and François de Vendôme, vidame de

Chartres. Henri countenanced Marian rebel activity in order to weaken Spain’s presence in northern waters as well as the position of the English Crown in Scotland and at Calais, but wasn’t willing to risk outright war. He therefore supported their mobilization with a measure of plausible deniability, granting small pensions to rebel leaders, license to go to sea through the French admiralty, and the use of royal vessels.319 The rebels would remain frustrated at the temerity of the French court beyond these efforts, though Carew clearly envisioned closer relations with France to be an alternative to alliance with Spain, invoking the historical connectedness of the Channel region. A Privy Council report noted that he persuaded his companions by saying “are not we ... aliannced w[i]th

Normandye, yn what anncient house is ether there or in France, but we claym by them,

318 CSP Foreign, Mary I, 61 (“Mary to Wotton,” 22 Feb 1554). 319 Loades, Tudor Conspiracies, 151-2, 170. 119 and they by vs, Why then shuld we not rather embrace their Love, than submit ourselfes to the servitude of Spayne?”320

At the height of their enjoyment of court favor in the spring and summer of 1554,

Carew and other rebel leaders orchestrated an active campaign to disrupt Spanish

Channel shipping and organize a fleet to prevent Philip’s expected landing. In this endeavor, they relied on a grouping of mercenary soldiers and sailors from southwest

England that included Henry, Peter, and Thomas Killigrew, the sons of the Tremayne family, and Henry Strangeways. Some of these men – including Strangeways and the

Killigrew brothers – already had personal experience in anti-Spanish piracy in the

Channel and were well-acquainted from that work. The Killigrews and Tremaynes had together supported Carew’s aborted insurrection in Exeter in 1553. Moreover, what unified most of the men was their common status as clients of expatriate west country gentlemen who either actively or passively supported rebel plots: Carew; Edward

Courtenay, earl of Devon; and Francis Russell, earl of Bedford. Henry Killigrew, for instance, belonged to the household of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland from the

1540s, then that of Carew. Edmund Tremayne and his brothers were Devonian and cousins to the Carews and Drakes; Edmund joined the household of Courtenay in 1553, then Russell’s after his death.321 Above their active hand in Channel violence, both men served as emissaries for the Norman community before Courtenay and Russell, who maintained ties with the rebels from Venice and Zurich, respectively.322 While these

320 SP 69/3, f. 202 (“Edgar Hornyold to Secretary Sir John Bourne,” 28 March 1553/4). 321 Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 1938; reprint Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 309-10. 322 For more on the crossover between Courtenay, Russell, and the rebels, see Bartlett, “English Exile Community,” 227-8, 236. Courtenay’s father had been disgraced and his family expropriated for their Catholic, Aragonese sympathies in the late 1530s, but Edward became the unlikely focal point of Protestant plots in the 1550s, either as a surrogate marriage candidate or monarchical replacement for Mary. He died 120 patrons kept a careful distance from overtly seditious activity, the young Russell’s contacts with continental reformers proliferated after his tutelage under Swiss church leader Heinrich Bullinger in 1556-7. Going forward, his political capital in Devon and his social networks abroad became an important conduit for western Channel activism under

Elizabeth.

Peter and Henry Killigrew led the rebel assault on Catholic vessels in the

Channel in early 1554. An English report from March had Peter Killigrew already at sea leading three vessels, all assembled to “serve the Frenche kyng” with English crews and

French officers.323 An examination of Peter, after his capture off Plymouth in August

1556, details his spoils and interactions with French officials in this space. He claimed to have been loaned the Sacrette, which became the rebel flagship, by the French king in

1554 after his own ships had been ruined at Brest and Dieppe. Another ship, the Falcon, came into Killigrew’s hands at La Rochelle, after he had brought in a prize there in May

1556 – this time in fulfillment of a cross-Channel shipping debt from a Breton merchant.

Amiral de France Gaspard de Coligny and his Vice-Admiral at Brest, the seigneur de La

Meilleraye, facilitated the conveyance of the Sacrette and the necessary commissions to

Killigrew.324 Other active pirates included Henry Strangeways, who begged for the

Queen’s mercy with two armed vessels in tow in spring 1554, and twin brothers Andrew and Nicholas Tremayne, who were both detailed in London on charges of piracy.325

in 1556 at Padua. Russell, who played a relatively minor role in Wyatt’s conspiracy by carrying letters to Elizabeth, nonetheless left for the Continent in 1556 under the auspices of an educational tour. 323 SP 69/3, f. 123 (“Captain Thomas Crayer to Lord Grey,” 24 March 1553/4). 324 SP 11/9, f. 45r-v (“Deposition of Peter Killigrew,” 21 Aug. 1556). La Meilleraye also held an appointment as the governor of Le Havre, out of which English vessels operated. For more background, see Stuart Carroll, Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 150-2. 325 Details on the actions that preceded the appearance of Strangeways are lacking, but in 1557 he settled in court on 4,000li in Spanish claims related to piracy. On Strangeways, see John Nichols, ed., 121

Carew had several French royal ships at Brittany under the guard of his kinsman John

Courtenay, while he and some of his followers consorted with French officials at

Abbeville about an attack on the English garrison at Calais, in conjunction with French

Calvinists living in the towns of the Pale.326

Plans for a larger mobilization of naval force in the Channel never materialized, however, and court support waned for the rebels in the meantime. Frustrated and lacking in funds, the group drifted toward other pursuits. Aided by French consorts, Peter

Killigrew continued in the plunder circuits between Normandy and southwest England for the next two years. He later admitted to assaulting Flemish, French, Irish, and Spanish ships (a total of 26 for the period) and selling the proceeds at La Rochelle, Dartmouth,

Guernsey, and Le Havre.327 Henry Killigrew joined the household of the Huguenot vidame de later in 1554, gaining military experience fighting in Italy. After a number of failed extradition attempts, Carew was finally arrested in Flanders and returned to England in 1556.328

English activity in Normandy resurged for a brief time in 1556 in conjunction with the arrival of a new wave of emigrant gentry soldiers committed to the short-lived conspiracy of Henry Sutton (Dudley). Dudley, a rogue debtor who held captaincies of

English garrisons in Normandy and other positions related to Channel defenses under

Edward, envisioned a West Country rising that would “send the queen over to the king

Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary (London: Camden Society, 1849), 68. On the Tremaynes, see John Roche Dasent, ed., Acts of the 1554-1556, vol. 5 (London, 1892), 99. 326 CSP, Spain, 12: 176 (27 March 1554). John Courtenay belonged to the family branch resident at Powderham Castle near , Devon. 327 SP 11/9, 48v-9r (“Deposition of Peter Killigrew,” 21 Aug. 1556). See also the July 1556 complaint of Wotton to the French constable in SP 69/9, 18r, 23r-v. 328 Owing to the petitions of his wife, Carew had already been pardoned by the time of his return. 122

[of Spain] and make the Lady Elizabeth queen and marry the earl of Devon.”329 Hatched in collaboration with John Throckmorton, Christopher Ashton, Richard Uvedale, and Sir

Anthony Kingston, and reliant on a number of other military organizers and unnamed agents, his plan aimed at the creation of a 3,000-strong part-exile, part-mercenary invasion force in Normandy that would land at Portsmouth in the summer of 1556. The mercenary manpower and arms would be financed by 50,000li that Dudley and others conspired to steal from the Teller of the Exchequer, and ready money from a mint created by the rebels at Dieppe. Dudley’s ambitious plot barely made headway in France before being thwarted: his reception at the French court was lukewarm in February, and twenty leading conspirators in England were sent to the Tower after the Council learned of their enterprise in March.330

The fortunes of Dudley’s plot aside, the influx of new men across the Channel facilitated the establishment of a rebel camp at Rouen and another wave of sea plunder.

The gentry followers of Dudley that came across the Channel at Southampton in late

February and early March, though all certainly of Protestant faith, were recruited mainly for their military experience.331 Many had backgrounds as soldiers and sailors of fortune.

Depositions taken from the captured conspirators give the impression, albeit anecdotal, that they were at least partly motivated by the personal opportunities promised by service

329 SP 11/8, f. 87 (“Deposition of Henry Peckham,” 18 Mar/7 May 1556). Elsewhere (SP 11/7, 59v, “Deposition of Richard Uvedale,” 24-5 March 1556), Dudley’s conspirators reported that he exclaimed before departing for Normandy that he would “eyther banysshe this vile nacion of the Spaniardes, or by gods bloud I will die for it.” 330 An excellent synopsis of the Dudley plot can be found in Loades, Tudor Conspiracies, 186-217. 331 The list of men resident in Normandy and Paris at this time includes Christopher Ashton (the elder and younger), Ralph Bagnold, John Calton, Christopher Chudleigh, Robert Cornwall, John Dalton, Edward and Francis Horsey, Andrew Pomeroy, Roger Reynolds, Richard Ryth, the Tremaynes (Andrew, Nicholas, Richard), and Oliver Wroth. Reports from February had Dudley accompanied by sixteen men out of Southampton. There were almost certainly more in total, and that number would not have included previous emigrants who consorted with Dudley’s men: Brian Fitzwilliam, the Killigrews, and William Staunton. 123 in France. Edward Horsey, hailing from Exton in Devon, told Killigrew that he had been recruited in England by Dudley, Jean Ribault, and another French agent on the assurance that “the Frenche kynge had sent for them and that they shoulde lacke nothynge and that the Frenche kynge wolde do mouch for them.”332 Uvedale’s deposition leaves much the same impression.333 Christopher Ashton sought to escape debt; others, like the

Tremaynes, to avoid arrest.334 Some men did receive pensions in exchange for Crown service: Asheton and the Horseys 400 crowns each, while others in the company received payments of 200 crowns.335 The remnants of Carew’s circle acted in concert with the

Rouen rebels at times. Henry Killigrew and Nicholas Tremayne were both dispatched to

Italy in an unsuccessful ploy to win Courtenay to their latest endeavor. Tremayne spoke on behalf of Dudley and the vidame de Chartres, who offered Devon 3,000 crowns to join them in France.336

Increasingly distrusting of Dudley and wanting for opportunity, the Normandy men fell to organizing independent sea ventures in conjunction with the Killigrews. Their adventures are detailed in the confession of Martin Dare, a Southampton merchant who fell in with the rebels after a business trip to Normandy.337 He relates his meeting with

Ashton, Francis Horsey, and Peter Killigrew at Le Havre in mid-April. Already impatient,

332 SP 11/9, f. 45v (“Deposition of Peter Killigrew,” 21 Aug. 1556). It is unclear if this is the same Jean Ribault, captain in the , associated with the Huguenot colony of Spanish Florida in the following decade. 333 SP 11/7, f. 60r (“Deposition of Richard Uvedale,” 24-5 March 1556). Uvedale was told that “he wolde have a greate band of men, and the moste parte of theym shulde be Englisshmen; and there he woulde serve the Frenche Kinge” until the force was assembled and put into motion. 334 SP 11/9, f. 45v, 47v (“Deposition of Peter Killigrew,” 21 Aug. 1556). 335 SP 11/7, f. 106v-7r (“Interrogatories to and deposition of Martin Dare,” July 1556). Dudley received 1,000 crowns, but as was much his style, Peter Killigrew stated that Dudley later begged him for more money. 336 Ibid., f. 109r. Also see Bartlett, “English Exile Community,” 235-6. 337 Ibid., f. 106r-9v. Upon being stayed in Dieppe on his return voyage, Dare claimed that he bided his time by acting as a voluntary intelligence agent and saboteur among Dudley’s men in order to “serfe the queynse heyghenyse.” His account of himself strains credulity, but much of his description of rebel movements from April until the end of June can be corroborated by Killigrew’s deposition. 124 they insinuated to Dare that they might be forced to sail under their own enterprise in order to sustain themselves should they not receive instructions from Henri as to “what order he will take with us” at sea. Dare proceeded to Paris shortly after, where he found

Dudley in the company of Nicholas Tremayne and Henry Killigrew. Returning to

Normandy, he followed members of the group as they roved from Le Havre to Caen awaiting instructions from Paris. He found the entire ensemble of the Tremaynes,

Horseys, Killigrews, and Ashton at La Hogue on the Cotentin peninsula in July.338 They had already brought in a Spanish prize and iron from another ship there in the weeks prior, split into two crews aboard the Sacrette and Falcon. The sale of stolen wools amounted to around 6,400 crowns, which was used to pay down debt; they killed six men and wounded dozens of others aboard a Flemish ship that they had assaulted.339

Killigrew’s testimony fills out the details of their voyage, which consisted of two

100-man crews of “all nations” led by French officers: Jacques Messier, Philip Tromolet, and John Cuvy. Curiously, they had recruited their multinational forces toward a scheme of more ambitious design, for which their Channel plunder was but a prelude. The plan, which originated with Thomas Killigrew, would have taken the two crews to “Ginney and Pirrow” to “get some prize, they cared not of whom.”340 It seems unlikely that they had a more specific target in mind than the regions of Tierra Firme and Guiana, broadly speaking. Had it come to fruition, it would have represented one of the earliest English

338 Ibid. 339 SP 11/9, f. 51r-v (“Deposition of Peter Killigrew,” 21 Aug. 1556). 340 Ibid., f. 52v. 125 raids on Spanish America.341 As it was, their unfulfilled plan suggests the ambitious extent of English collaboration with Norman seafarers in the 1550s.

Nonetheless, as their hopes for Dudley’s plot unraveled during the summer, the group became despondent. Killigrew’s disillusion is palpable in the conclusion of the abandoned Peru venture, after which he hoped that the remaining rebels could sell their ships and “goe to Italie, and ther to ... lyve and ridd themselves out of this mysrie wherein they have long lyved.”342 Adding to their insecurity, their plundering had raised eyebrows in England and Spain, with Henri coming under increasing diplomatic pressure to act.343

A proclamation in August expelled all English who remained in Normandy; Peter

Killigrew was arrested in the Sacrette off of Plymouth in the same month.344 The remnants of the group integrated themselves into other streams of military and religious enterprise on the Continent. Henry Killigrew rejoined the vidame de Chartres, fighting alongside him and Gaspard de Coligny in the unsuccessful French defense of St. Quentin against Imperial and English forces in August 1557. Later in the year, he moved to

Strasbourg, returning to England after the accession of Elizabeth.

The links of the rebels to international Calvinism are best exemplified by the subsequent careers of Richard Tremayne and Edward Horsey. A clergyman, Tremayne fled to Louvain in 1554, then returned two years later in order to act as an agent for the

341 Indeed, I am unaware of any organized English raids in Tierra Firme before the 1560s. It is quite possible, given the volume of Norman vessels that traveled the greater Caribbean region from the 1540s, that the French masters and pilots of the Sacrett or Falcon were recruited by the Killigrews because they served on a previous voyage to the New World (John Hawkins regularly used French and Portuguese pilots in his voyages to the same region). On this question, the use of the toponym “Peru” by Killigrew is thought-provoking, since it would have been far more common in French usage than English in the mid- 1550s. It may be, in other words, that the use of the term as a target denotes the Norman contribution to the planning of the English expats. 342 SP 11/9, f. 52v (“Deposition of Peter Killigrew,” 21 Aug. 1556). 343 SP 69/9, f. 18r-v (“Dr. Wotton to Sir ,” 13 July 1556). 344 SP 11/7, f. 109r-v (“Interrogatories to and deposition of Martin Dare,” July 1556). 126

Dudley plot in concert with his brother, Nicholas. After the two Tremaynes were declared traitors for their role in the conspiracy, Richard fled to Heidelberg, where he and the resident exiled clergyman Arthur Saul attempted to bribe a government agent (John Brett) not to further pursue English radicals on the Continent.345 Saul and Tremayne continued on together to Geneva until mid-1559, when Tremayne and Henry Killigrew helped to smuggle the third earl of Arran back to England, serving in the employ of the ambassador

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton.346 Upon his return, Tremayne was presented to Robert

Dudley, future earl of Leicester as one of twenty-eight “godly preachers who had utterly forsaken Antichrist and all his Romish rags.”347 Tremayne subsequently became a client of the Earl of Bedford, holding three livings in Devon and Cornwall as well as the treasurership of Exeter Cathedral.348 Horsey – a named outlaw like the Tremaynes – remained in France after the plot dissolved, marrying a Huguenot woman and settling in

Basse Normandy.349 He remained for nearly a decade, and in that time, entered the service of two men who would guide his subsequent career. On the recommendation of

Throckmorton, Horsey came to serve as a French contact for William Cecil, to whom he

345 John Brett, “Narrative of the Pursuit of the English under Mary,” ed. I.S. Leadam, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 11 (1897), 128-9; Henry Machyn, Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1848), 103; Sarah Covington, “Heretic Hunting Beyond the Seas: John Brett and His Encounter with the Marian Exiles,” Albion 36, no. 3 (2004), 407-29. 346 See Throckmorton’s letter to Elizabeth (CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 1: 387), where he vetted Tremayne as a man “fit for a guide through Germany ... he having the High Dutch tongue very well.” Arran had been a presence at the court of Henri II during the 1550s but, because of his Protestant faith and proximity to the throne of Scotland, feared that the Guise relations of Mary Stuart would have him executed. 347 Antoinina Bevan Zlatar, Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in Elizabethan England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 139. The other men under the heading were a who’s who of the Marian exile congregations, including Saul, John Foxe, Miles Coverdale, William Whittingham, Anthony Gilby, William Cole, Laurence Humphrey, and Thomas Sampson. 348 Garrett, 311-12. 349 SP 69/10, f. 12 (“Dr. Wotton to Sir William Petre,” 13 Jan. 1556/7). 127 regularly reported “sea matters” from the Normandy coast.350 In 1562, while still suing for pardon, Horsey became Cecil’s agent in Calvinist-controlled Dieppe, reporting on the escalating tensions that preceded the First War of Religion.351 At some point in his

French service, he made the acquaintance of Robert Dudley, who would become a friend and patron once he returned to England in the mid-1560s.

The Norman rebel community did not meet with success in their endeavors.

Nonetheless, the expertise and international networks of rebel leaders – many from southwest England – were redeployed in France by English state officials in the early

1560s, as they sought to maneuver the government into an official alliance with the emerging Calvinist faction in France. Council support for the Huguenot party in northern

France from 1562-3, though short-lived, was its first intervention on behalf of a foreign

Protestant community in the Elizabethan era. In broader terms, it also helped to define the means of Huguenot mobilization during the first three Wars of Religion, and set a precedent for the much more successful system of regional naval collaboration in the western Channel from the late 1560s to the 1580s.

Anglo-Huguenot alliance at Le Havre, 1562-3

The Anglo-Huguenot alliance was indicative of greater realignments among

European states after 1559. That year marked the end of the Habsburg-Valois wars, a long-running conflict indicative of the dynastic issues that guided international politics during the first half of the sixteenth century. Confessional stratification followed in its wake. The end of conflict between the two foremost Catholic realms in France and Spain,

350 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 1: 379. 351 E.g. SP 70/38, f. 95, 103 (“Edward Horsey to Cecil,” 9 June 1562); 70/39, f. 132, 167 (“Throckmorton to the of the Council,” 23 July 1562; “Occurrences to the Advantage of the Prince of Condé,” 27 July 1562); 70/47, f. 113 (“Edward Horsey to Cecil,” 22 Dec. 1562); 70/50, f. 115 (“The Queen to Denys,” 7 Feb. 1563). 128 combined with the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1562 helped to consolidate international Catholic interests. Likewise, the spread of Calvinism in France, Scotland, and the Netherlands brought a new level of militancy and international coordination to

Protestantism in northwest Europe.352

English foreign policy, normatively premised on alliance with the rulers of

Burgundy (the Habsburg states) and animosity toward France, fell into disequilibrium after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. When combined, the death of Mary I, the accession of Elizabeth, and her rejection of the marriage proposal of Philip II chilled relations with

Spain. Meanwhile, at the end of the 1550s, the ascent of France’s leading Catholic family, the Guises, threatened to derail the Protestant succession in England. French influence in

Scotland, already strong under the regency of Mary de Guise after 1554, was further augmented by the marriage of her daughter Mary Stuart to the Valois dauphin François in

1558. When the young king ascended to the French throne a year later, the marriage cleared the way for Mary’s Guise uncles to exercise the Royal Authority.353 It also gave force to her rival claim to the English throne; from a striking point in Scotland, the new

Gallo-Stuart regime sought to quell the rebellion of Scottish Protestants and then to marshal French forces to see to Mary's English claim.354

English isolation, in reaction, provoked an alliance of Privy Council members who favored stronger ties between England and the embattled Calvinist interests under

Guise control in Scotland and France. In the first five years of her reign, Elizabeth swiftly established her preference for a defensive, conservative foreign policy that would avoid

352 Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 1558-1603 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 8-9. 353 The key figures in the Guise power grab after the accession of François II in 1559 were François, duc de Guise and Charles, cardinal de Lorraine. 354 N.M. Sutherland, Princes, Politics, and Religion, 1547-1589 (London: Hambledon Press, 1984), 73-5. 129 unduly antagonizing either France or Spain. A group of her advisors headed by secretary of state William Cecil and the French ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton – later joined by Robert Dudley after his admission to the Council in 1562 – interpreted Guise and

Habsburg maneuvers in the context of what they viewed as a larger international Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth’s government. Therefore, they advocated that the government ought to offer material support for Protestant causes most in line with the defensive interests of the realm, a strategy that first yielded results in the promise of arms offered to the Scottish in the February 1560 .355

Events in France in the run-up to the First War of Religion would lend further credence to their geopolitical worldview. At the accession of François II, the duc de

Guise and his brother had usurped the Royal Authority from the absent prince du sang

Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre. Navarre’s household was the most powerful clan associated with the Calvinist movement in France, which could count his wife Jeanne d’Albret and brother the prince de Condé as converts.356 Though the Guise position faltered with the sudden death of François in 1560, competition between the two families continued to deepen under the weak regency of Charles IX that followed. With the other noble households choosing sides, the court split into two confessional-familial factions that were “both distinct from the interest of the Crown.”357 The Bourbons gained the support of the Châtillon-sur-Loing clan, which included future Huguenot commanders

355 Adams credits Throckmorton for being “the first major political figure to state publicly that religion had made a decisive change in the relationship between England and the continent.” S.L. Adams, “The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the West European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585-1630” (Ph.D. diss., Balliol College, 1973), 27. 356 Navarre’s personal faith was pragmatic; English agents in France at the time painted him as a man whose “religion varied with his prospects” (quoted in Sutherland, Princes, 82). He reconverted to Catholicism toward the end of his life, threatening to send Albret to a convent when she permitted Huguenot in Vendôme in 1562. 357 Sutherland, Princes, 88. 130

(and brothers) Gaspard de Coligny, François de Andelot, and the cardinal de Châtillon.358

On the other side, the duc de Guise courted international support – and again menaced

Elizabeth’s government – by attempting to match Mary Stuart with a Habsburg suitor

(the Spanish prince Carlos).

The sudden possibility of a new Habsburg-Guise axis encouraged Cecil,

Throckmorton, and their Council allies to view the northern French crisis of the early

1560s as key to the religious fate of the entirety of Western Europe. Something akin to a confessional “domino theory” prevailed within the Council alliance, which held that the

Crown must invest in the Huguenot cause in order to maintain political balance in France and avoid the total triumph of the Catholic faction. “This papistical complot,”

Throckmorton assured the Queen, “did begin here [in France] first to break forth, yet the plot thereof was laid and intended to be executed and practised as well in your realm,

Scotland, and elsewhere.”359 The victory of the Guise interest would embolden Spain, compromise English defenses, and potentially encourage future offensives against

Protestantism beyond France.360 Embedded in their logic were also very practical concerns for English defenses in the Channel region. Both monarch and councilors were

358 Kristen B. Neuchel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), chapter 2 passim. Neuchel’s extended breakdown of the constituent interests of Condé faction affirms the view that, particularly in their first phase, the Wars of Religion are best considered as a noble conflict over familial precedence at Court that was intensified by the religious politics of the combatants. Ideology overlaid and eventually overshadowed the rather traditional origins of the wars. 359 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 1: 608. 360 Doran, Foreign Policy, 21-4. Throckmorton’s reasoning surfaces in a strongly worded letter from France in April 1561 (CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 1: 82-8). He ensures her that pursuing an alliance with Spain would embolden France, which would then lead to an endless string of wars elsewhere. If the King of Spain “by countenancing the Papists in his own and other countries, greatly advances his particular greatness; so it will be her most advantage to sustain the Protestants in her own realm and other countries.” In the same letter, Coligny evinces the same logic in connecting the vitality of French Calvinism to England’s example under Elizabeth: “For so long as the Queen stands fast in the Protestant religion, so long will many States of Christendom decline from the Catholic religion, and especially her countenance will be the occasion that France shall embrace the same; and France being won thereto, the rest of Christendom shall follow.” 131 keen to recover Calais, which had been lost to the forces of the duc de Guise in 1558.

English control of the city would check Guise machinations in Scotland and, with the looming possibility of rebellion in the Netherlands, provide a new location for the Dutch trade, replacing Antwerp. Moreover, coastal Normandy was the embarkation point for the main cross-Channel transit route leading through the Channel Islands to the Isle of Wight and the Solent ports; if nothing else, the rebel plots of the 1550s had proven the value of the coastal cities to state officials as listening posts.361

Plans for an Anglo-Huguenot alliance had, in fact, been set in motion by Council members long before the French reached the cusp of civil war in early 1562. In order to initiate negotiations, Throckmorton employed allies and clients who had developed

Calvinist contacts in France during the Marian years. Henry Killigrew, now under the patronage of Dudley and already having carried out diplomatic missions for Elizabeth to the Palatinate and Calais362, joined Throckmorton as his secretary at the start of his

Parisian embassy in May 1559. Killigrew’s prior service with the vidame de Chartres, who was a kinsman of Condé and Navarre, provided a starting point for covert discussions about a league with the French west country grandees, which began in the summer of 1560.363

By the following spring, the proposed marriage of Mary Stuart and Don Carlos and impending anxiety over the visit of a Papal Nuncio to England brought immediacy to the negotiations. Throckmorton was tasked with quickly establishing a dialogue with

Navarre and Montmorenci representatives. He was aided by the earl of Bedford, friend of

361 For more on this aspect of government interest in the Channel Islands and Normandy, see Davies, “Channel Islands,” 513, 522. 362 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 1: 186. 363 Sutherland, Princes, 81-3. 132 both Cecil and Dudley, who traveled to Paris as an additional emissary to the and Mary Stuart. In addition to his official instructions, Bedford was to have further discussions with Navarre and Coligny, the latter of whom may have been a prior correspondent and received him warmly.364 Bedford’s client Nicholas Tremayne, who had been in the Queen’s service as a letter carrier to Huguenot leaders in Brittany and

Normandy in the previous year, became a part of Navarre’s household in early 1561.365 In this time frame, Throckmorton made contact with Jeanne d’Albret and furthered his dialogue with Coligny.366 At a face-to-face meeting near Fontainebleau in late April, he assured the Admiral of Elizabeth’s commitment to both the Protestant faith and the

Huguenot cause.367

The massacre of Huguenot worshipers at Wassy at the beginning of March 1562, which compromised the last-ditch edict of toleration promulgated by the regent Catherine de’ Medici, pushed Catholic and Calvinist partisans into open conflict in the French provinces. Elizabeth remained opaque in her correspondence with Throckmorton regarding a possible commitment in France, giving him leave to offer only vague promises of “amytye and assistance.”368 Nevertheless, by April it appears that the Crown

364 For Bedford’s instructions and a report of negotiations, see SP 70/22, f. 88r-98r (“Instructions for the Earl of Bedford,” 20 Jan. 1561) and 70/23, f. 132r-55r (“Bedford and Throckmorton to the Privy Council, 26 Feb. 1561). Bedford’s mission exemplifies how Cecil and Throckmorton hedged their bets in a time when Elizabeth remained non-committal to overt support for the Huguenot cause. Bedford was to engage Mary Stuart on the subject of her marriage intentions and gain her signature on the Treaty of Edinburgh; to establish a rapport with the Guises in order to discourage their marriage negotiations with Don Carlos; to dissuade the French from sending representatives to the Council of Trent; and to restart negotiations with the queen mother for the return of Calais. He made little progress in those tasks. 365 SP 70/22, f. 125 (“The Queen to Throckmorton,” 23 Jan. 1561). 366 SP 70/22, f. 112 (“[Throckmorton] to the Queen of Navarre,” 20 Jan. 1561). 367 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 1: 82-8. 368 SP 70/35, f. 159v (“The Queen to Throckmorton,” 31 Mar. 1562). 133 was funneling money to France via the Netherlands.369 The Treaty of Hampton Court, signed in September with Condé, furthered that support. In addition to 100,000 crowns in additional support, the Queen made a military commitment in the form of a 6,000-man garrison that would occupy Le Havre and Dieppe, ostensibly in order to aid the besieged

Huguenot city of Rouen. The treaty was concluded with the understanding that those cities would be held in hostage until the Condé faction was in a position to return Calais to the English. Indeed, Calais was the main driving force behind Elizabeth’s acquiescence to the Anglo-Huguenot league, which she accepted not in principle but as a means to diminish Guise influence by maintaining their rival faction.370

A vanguard of approximately 1,500 men arrived at Le Havre from Portsmouth on

October 4. The launch of the company coincided with Robert Dudley’s admission to the

Council, and its composition reflected his guiding hand. Besides his brother the earl of

Warwick, who held command over the expedition, many of its leading officers were drawn from among his clientage in the southwestern counties: Adrian Poynings, Thomas

Leighton, Humphrey Gilbert, Henry Killigrew, and Edward Horsey.371 In addition to the official expedition, Dudley’s faction encouraged the emigration of gentry volunteers – perhaps numbering 500 men in total – to aid Huguenot forces already occupying the

Norman ports. In the fashion of the French plots of the previous decade, Throckmorton’s

369 Spain’s ambassador de la Quadra claimed that the government sent the funds through English merchants trading at Antwerp. Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed., Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le règne de Philippe I, vol. 3 (, 1884), 12-13. 370 A well-documented synopsis of treaty negotiations can be found in Walllace T. MacCaffrey, “The Newhaven Expedition, 1562-3,” Historical Journal 40 (1997), 8-10. 371 Discussions of the overlap between Dudley’s clientage and the Le Havre garrison can be found in Simon Adams, Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 151-75 (“The Dudley Clientele, 1553-63”); Wallace T. MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), 96-7, 129-30; Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (London: Knopf, 1962), 260. A list made by Cecil of Leicester’s prominent clients in 1565 has been reprinted in Simon Adams, ed., Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558-61, 1584-6 (London: Camden Society, 1995), 432-8. Leighton, Horsey, and Killigrew appear on the list. 134 suggestion to Cecil at the start of the war that “some suche as desyre to adventure and see the world were lett slippe ... to passe ... to Diepe or to Havre de Grace or to both either to serve as fotmen or light horsemen” reflected the desire of the Council to repurpose private zeal – whether godly or acquisitive – in the service of their internationalist policy objectives.372

More directly, however, the involvement of Horsey and Killigrew indicates how the Le Havre operation drew upon the military expertise of the Norman rebels of the

1550s. Horsey, already resident in Dieppe at the time, led a company into battle alongside

Warwick at Harfleur.373 Andrew and Nicholas Tremayne joined the garrison in December, having been conveyed across the Channel from Portsmouth with the Norman Huguenot grandee the comte de Montgomery and , the governor of Jersey who came to serve as Warwick’s advisor. The Tremayne twins perished at Le Havre in the following year.374 The Dorset-born pirate Henry Strangeways was also a victim of the campaign.

After imprisonment for an infamous campaign of anti-Spanish piracy in the Channel in

1559, he entered the Queen’s service as a captain in the garrison, where he died leading ships in relief of Rouen. Strangeways infiltrated popular consciousness as the hero of a short ballad by William Birch in which his Le Havre service formed the capstone of a biographical narrative of Christian redemption. “Borne bace/Although of worshipful kyn,” Strangeways turned to piracy, and “by legall lawes he was condemd.” However, pledging himself both to “God” and “his righteous queene,” he “spred his sayles at

372 Quoted in D.J.B. Trim, “The ‘Foundation-Stone of the British Army’? The Normandy Campaign of 1562,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 77 (1999), 74. 373 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 6: 371. 374 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 5: 559. In between his years in Rouen and Le Havre, Andrew fought against the French in Scotland in 1559, remaining in the Berwick garrison for the next two years. See G.H. Radford, “Andrew and Nicholas Tremayne,” Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Art, and Literature 30 (1898): 147-57. 135 large/To seke a porte in Fraunce” and gave his life in his “queens quarell.”375 Perhaps no other story so succinctly illustrates how outlaw activity during the Marian period informed the Anglo-Huguenot league of 1562-3.

The zealousness of Dudley’s officer corps and the religious solidarity between the garrison and the larger community, set Le Havre apart as a unique, if impermanent, interstate regime in the Channel region. Tensions between the limited mission prescribed to Warwick’s forces by the Queen and the more ambitious commitment that the league implied to many of the officers and residents of Le Havre were clear from the outset.

Forces under the command of Poynings and Cuthbert Vaughan were received with joy and relief by the bourgeois and local governor de Beauvois, who informed the officers of the dire condition of the Calvinists besieged by Catholic forces at Rouen.376 De Beauvois proposed that the newly arrived English send 200 soldiers and ships, in addition to 500

Havrais townsmen, in their relief. The scenario was telling, insofar as it revealed that the

Queen had no intention of using force to support Huguenot aims – royal instructions explicitly prohibited the Le Havre troops from becoming involved in battles between the warring factions. Vaughan convinced Poynings to disregard the order and send some of his men in ships, under the command of Leighton and Killigrew, down the Seine to

Rouen. Vaughan subsequently defended his decision as an act of solidarity consummate with the Anglo-Huguenot treaty. To refuse, he boldly warned the Queen, may lead the

French to ““despayr ... that the Quenes Ma[jest]ie shold not p[er]forme her p[ro]messe

375 William Birch, “A New Balade of the Worthy Service of Late Doen by Maister Strangwige in Fraunce, and of his Death,” in Old Ballads, from Early Printed Copies of the Utmost Rarity (The Percy Society, 1845), 41-5. 376 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 5: 342, 347. De Beauvois was the brother-in-law of the vidame de Chartres. 136 lykwyse to helpe theym.”377 When asking for further English support in November 1562,

Condé and Chartres invoked the same “promesse,” and insinuated that the Queen was only interested in Calais.378

The religious resonance of the league was not lost on the garrison leadership and the Calvinist community of Le Havre, both of whom exploited the situation in order to advance their internationalist program. After the English took command of the city,

Norman pirates de Sores, Le Clerc, and Bontemps launched indiscriminate attacks on

Catholic shipping in the Channel.379 At Le Havre, English-appointed chaplains coordinated Calvinist worship services attended by soldiers as well as the Havrais bourgeoisie. The selection of chaplains bore the mark of the Marian Protestant community. William Whittingham, William Kethe, and Augustine Bradbridge all were members of the English congregation at Geneva.380 The group also included Jean Véron, an early Huguenot refugee who had become a clergyman in London during the 1550s.381

Together they created a hybrid municipal confession – with an order of worship adapted from the French rite for both English and French speakers – which they employed throughout the year-long residency of the garrison. When word of their practices reached the Bishop of London, he demanded that the chaplains conform their

377 SP 70/42, f. 90r (“Vaughan to Cecil,” 5 Oct. 1562). 378 SP 70/44, f. 81 (“Warwick to Cecil,” 9 Nov. 1562); MacCaffrey, “Newhaven,” 13. 379 Mickaël Augeron, “Coligny et les Espagnols à travers la course (c.1560-1572): une politique maritime au service de la Cause protestante,” in Martine Acerra and Guy Martinière, eds., Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer. Actes du colloque organisé à Rochefort et La Rochelle les 3 et 4 cotobre 1996 (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997), 163. It is unclear whether this activity received official sanction via congés or other encouragement from Coligny. 380 Another Genevan elder (and Whittingham’s brother-in-law), Thomas Wood, served at Le Havre as a military captain and clerk of Warwick’s council. 381 Philippe Denis, “Jean Veron: the First Known French Protestant in England,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 22 (1970-6): 257-63. 137 services to the order of worship designated in the Book of Common Prayer.382 Echoing the rationalizations for the Rouen expedition offered by Vaughan, Whittingham argued to

Cecil that a French-influenced rite proved the sincerity of the English mission to

Huguenots at Le Havre. While the Havrais found English worship “cold,” their rite came out of “the example of the best Reformed Churches” and “wrought here a marvellous conjunction of minds between the French and us.”383 Vaughan and other sympathetic officers also refused to intervene in the work of the chaplains. Vaughan wrote to Cecil that he found their style of worship “so godly that no man of God can find fault with it” and could not restrain himself from adding that he hoped for a fuller purge of

“ceremonies and superstitions” within the English church by the current Parliament.384

Together, the chaplaincy and officers of the garrison viewed their Havrais experiment as the beachhead for a future, fully reformed English church.385

The Le Havre garrison failed to achieve its immediate objectives. Rouen fell in spite of the English expedition, which resulted in the capture of Leighton, Vaughan, and many men. The crews led into battle by Strangeways were executed as pirates by their

Catholic captors. Meanwhile, with the capture of Condé at Dreux, distrust set in between

Elizabeth and the remaining leadership, as the possibility of a peace without the cession of Calais became more likely. A truce arrived in March 1563 (the Edict of Amboise) after the assassination of the duc de Guise. The Queen, however, initially refused to withdraw from Le Havre unless Calais was handed over. Under threat of royal siege and having

382 Provisions for mandatory prayer and religious service were among the first entries in the set of laws created for the garrison in November 1562. See Patrick Forbes, A Full View of the Public Transactions in the Reign of Q. Elizabeth, vol. 2 (London, 1741), 181-3. 383 William Whittingham, A Brief Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort, 1554-1558 A.D., ed. Edward Arber (London, 1908), 6-8. 384 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 5: 575. 385 Davies, “Channel Islands,” 508. 138 already lost many hundreds of soldiers to an outbreak of plague, the garrison finally surrendered in July. The English left without their prize, receiving only repayment for the funds that the Queen had lent Condé.386

Le Havre, in the judgment of some, represented the only example of open assistance by the Elizabethan government to foreign Protestants before 1585.387 However, in the context of the historical continuum of English and French relations in the Channel region, the garrison holds broader significance. This section has placed the origins of

Anglo-Huguenot maritime collaboration in the 1550s, emerging out of the networks formed by Marian conspirators in their residency on the Norman coast. That loose community marked the first combination of opportunistic reprisal, intrinsic to the traditional maritime economies of the Channel, with the impetus to international activism created by religious reform in northwest Europe. The impact of their failed plots might have remained limited, had their energies and experience in France not been harnessed to the ideological commitment to international Reformedism found among Dudley,

Throckmorton, and their allies in the early 1560s. As it was, the use of the mercantile and mercenary traffic of the western Channel region as an instrument of Protestant aid became a staple of Elizabethan diplomacy.

386 MacCaffrey, “Newhaven,” 18. The English had spent an additional 50,000li to maintain their forces, for which they received no recompense. 387 Adams, “Protestant Cause,” 26-7; MacCaffrey, Elizabethan Regime, 126-7. While categorically true in military terms, this argument is an adjunct of a historiography that emphasizes Elizabeth’s indifference to religious considerations in her foreign policy. Compare with Doran and Trim, who rightfully suggests that this is an obtuse argument, insofar as it ignores the plethora of semi-official expeditions and economic aid, as well as domestic support (granting asylum to refugees) offered to foreign Protestants. Doran, Foreign Policy, 63-5; D.J.B. Trim, “The ‘Secret War’ of Elizabeth I: England and the Huguenots during the Early Wars of Religion, 1562-77,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland 27, no. 2 (1999), 189-99. Support for the traditional argument in favor of Elizabeth’s pragmatism and security-minded policy can be found in E.I. Kouri, England and the Attempts to form a Protestant Alliance in the Late 1560s: A Case Study in European Diplomacy (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981); Read, Mr. Secretary Cecil; R.B. Wernham, Before the Armada: The Emergence of the English Nation, 1485-1588 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972) and After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe, 1588-1595 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1984). 139

The steering influence of Dudley and his clients on the first English engagements with Huguenot leaders is clear. Looking forward, their alliance in the run-up the Le

Havre enterprise appears to be the starting point for a stable faction under the earl of

Leicester and Walsingham that would advocate for confessional priorities in English foreign policy beginning in the early 1570s. A number of Leicester’s clients who were veterans of Rouen or Le Havre later took up offices of strategic importance in the

Channel corridor: Horsey became captain of Wight, Leighton governor of Guernsey, and

Hugh Paulet’s son Amias as governor at Jersey. The earl of Bedford, whose daughter married Ambrose Dudley in 1565, became Leicester’s man in the West Country. As Lord

Lieutenant for the southwest counties, Bedford would play a key role in organizing

Devon’s defenses from his headquarters in Exeter in the 1570s and 80s. These were significant stations in a western Channel maritime corridor reaching from Normandy and the Channel Islands to Wight, the Solent ports, and westward as far as Cornwall.

Communication and coordination in this region would be key to the success of Anglo-

Huguenot privateering and other activism in the ensuing decades.388

For the leaders of the Calvinist faction in France, the Anglo-French governance of

Le Havre was an ad-hoc and truncated attempt at wartime mobilization. Still, like the brief periods of Huguenot administration in other Norman cities such as Rouen, it was an

388 The idea that Le Havre provided an organizing point for Leicester’s faction comes from a larger argument, originating with Simon Adams, concerning the sources of Protestant foreign policy under Elizabeth. In an unpublished but influential dissertation, Adams posited the rise of a “political puritanist” faction beginning under Leicester in the 1570s. He argues that, by successfully placing pressure on the Crown, versions of this faction made international Reformed alliances a “positive force” and “central problem” of English foreign policy from the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish war to the failed expedition to La Rochelle in 1628. Simon Adams, “Protestant Cause.” Smaller arguments on the continuities in Leicester’s faction can be found in Adams, Leicester and the Court, 176-95 (“A Puritan Crusade? The Composition of the Earl of Leicester’s expedition to the Netherlands, 1585-86”); Nicholas Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established 1565-72 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), 42- 3; Patrick Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), 45-82. 140 experiment that yielded lessons about fundraising for future conflicts. Leaders in both cities attempted to fund their defenses by plundering the enemy. Rouen was demonstrative in this respect, raising 57,934lt – a significant sum – for the cause through the sale of spoils from its Cathedral, confraternities, and churches in the summer of

1562.389 Similarly, under the garrison, the Havrais governor Beauvois proposed to pay for the renovation of town defenses by pillaging Catholic ships in the town’s haven and selling them in England.390 Warwick and Vaughan tabled the suggestion as unfeasible, yet similar modes of fundraising in La Rochelle and other Huguenot cities of the Midi would prove far more lucrative. Further afield and simultaneous to the Norman action,

Jean Ribault founded the first New World beachhead of Huguenot fundraising at

Charlesfort in Spanish Florida. In its mix of Protestant organization, military staffing, and naval objectives, the Le Havre project holds striking parallels with Ribault’s garrison plantation.

* * * * *

In sum, Reformed traditions in Devon and La Rochelle were the product of a cluster of national, local, and overseas affinities. Each of these exerted separate, and sometimes conflicting, pulls on the constituent communities of the western Channel.

Devon and La Rochelle were participants in a regional religious culture, encompassing the coastal communities of the Channel and Biscayan Basin. Though their Calvinisms were individually distinctive traditions, local conditions encouraged their concerted

389 In Rouen, the accounting and sale of pillaged Catholic goods was handled by the town maître de la monnaie under the order of the elders of the Reformed Church. However, the exact modes of early Huguenot fundraising have only been thinly researched to this point. Mark Greengrass, “Financing the Cause: Protestant Mobilization and Accountability in France (1562-1589),” in Philip Benedict, Guido Marnef, Henk van Nierop, Marc Venard, eds., Reformation, Revolt, and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555-1585 (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999), 235-6. 390 Forbes, 2: 179-80. 141 development from the mid-sixteenth century forward. Members of their maritime communities participated in the broadly based networks of international Reformed travel and intellectual exchange. Each developed civic Calvinist traditions that were backed by urban mercantile clout.

Moreover, religious and maritime experience within English and Huguenot port cities cannot be understood in isolation from each other. These experiences helped to create forms of knowledge that were acquired through common practices – in some instances through career paths abroad, other times through patronage or the rhetoric of seaside pastors. Just as a seaman gained practical skill through experience, interconfessional exchange – and the broadened sense of Christian fellowship that came with it – had to be learned as well. These twinned types of expertise form the background of international community in the western Channel.

Finally, refugee traffic and other migrations played a formative role in the creation of western Channel maritime networks. French émigré communities in the

Channel Islands and southern English ports adopted Geneva-influenced rites for their churches that represented unique meetings of English and French confessional forms in the mid-sixteenth century. Merchants in these communities also developed their own trading paths and produced industrial innovations in the southern English textile industries. However, the English gentry and mercenary faction that fled to coastal

Normandy in the 1550s proves most significant in the context of the current study. Their collaboration with Norman Huguenots in a failed attempt to oust the Marian regime marked the beginning of joint maritime organization in the Channel. Their expertise in activism informed the first Anglo-Huguenot political alliance at Le Havre during the First 142

War of Religion, which laid the basis for further diplomatic contact and maritime collaboration in the French west.

143

CHAPTER 3

THE TRADE, MILITANT: CHANNEL PRIVATEERING IN THE LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

“Gods bloudd did not the Englishe merchants latelye pytie.” – Christopher Heynes, witness to piracy, 1569391

Following a failed assault against Spanish forces guarding a silver train at Cruces in early 1573, Francis Drake and his men encountered a cohort of 70 French men under the command of Guillaume Le Testu, the Huguenot sea captain and cosmographer of Le

Havre. Their narrative meeting in the text of Drake Revived is an instance of historical context suddenly manifesting itself into terrestrial event. On one hand, the episode gestures backward to a recent history of association among Protestant seafarers in the

Channel home region of the two men: Le Testu expressed familiarity with Drake’s recent

New World enterprises and woefully reported the recent St. Bartholomew’s Day

Massacre, betraying that “he thought those Frenchmen the happiest that were farthest from France” in that time of crisis.392 But in another way, it looked forward to an Anglo-

Huguenot partnership in predatory commerce aimed at diminishing Spanish maritime hegemony in the Atlantic. Their allied assault, in which Drake gained renown and Le

Testu gave his life, established their meeting place of Tierra Firme as the beachhead of that project.

This chapter aims to provide the missing context for their meeting. Literature ranging from contemporary accounts to present scholarship notes the decisive role played by maritime mobilization in the outcomes of the French Wars of Religion, the first phase of the Dutch Revolt, and the Anglo-Spanish war. Breton Huguenot François de la Noue,

391 HCA 1/39, 16r-17v. 392 Philip Nichols, Sir Francis Drake Revived (London, 1628), 73. 144 military governor of La Rochelle in the late 1560s, calculated in his famed chronicle of the civil wars that Rochelais privateers brought 300,000lt to the Reformed cause during the Third War of Religion.393 Modern historians have since reinforced that claim, stressing the pivotal place of the sea war in Huguenot military victories in western France during the defining third and fourth civil wars.394 In conjunction with sympathetic

English and French crews, the enterprises of the Watergeuzen (“Sea Beggars”) under the command of William the Silent, Prince of Orange ensured the early survival of the Dutch rebellion.395

Attacks on Iberian shipping by Elizabethan adventurers have been identified with far-reaching transformations in transoceanic trade and colonization. Against earlier imperial historians, Kenneth Andrews championed a constructive interpretation of predatory ventures as virtually inseparable from other, semi-official projects in the

Americas after 1585 or the broader objectives of Elizabethan transoceanic trade. Indeed, he drew direct connections between the maritime expertise and capital generated by wartime campaigns and subsequent Jacobean activities in the Indian Ocean and

393 François de la Noue, Discours politiques et militaires (Basel, 1588), 695. 394 See, among other works, Jean de Pablo, “L’armée de mer huguenote pendant la troisiême guerre de religion,” Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 47 (1956), 74; Marcel Delafosse, “Les Corsaires Protestants à la Rochelle (1570-1577),” Bibliothéque de l’école des chartes 121 (1963), 187-217; Mickaël Augeron, “Coligny et les Espagnols à travers la course (c.1560-1572): une politique maritime au service de la Cause protestante,” in Martine Acerra and Guy Martinière, eds., Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer. Actes du colloque organisé à Rochefort et La Rochelle les 3 et 4 cotobre 1996 (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997), 168-70; Mark Greengrass, “Financing the Cause: Protestant Mobilization and Accountability in France (1562-1589),” in Philip Benedict, Guido Marnef, Henk van Nierop, Marc Venard, eds., Reformation, Revolt, and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555-1585 (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999), 239-40. 395 Yvo van Loo, “Pour la liberté et la fortune. La course néerlandaise pendant la guerre de religion aux Pays-Bas 1568-1609,” in Martine Acerra and Guy Martinière, eds., Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer. Actes du colloque organisé à Rochefort et La Rochelle les 3 et 4 cotobre 1996 (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997), 91-107; George D. Ramsay, The Queen’s Merchants and the Revolt of the Netherlands, vol. 2 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 174-85. 145

Virginia.396 At the same time, he adroitly identified the need for more specialized studies drawing on a broadened range of archives. Future directions, he surmised, should include research on sociability among individual venturers; particularly, a more thorough understanding of piracy as an international phenomenon in northwest Europe and the collective attitudes that underpinned “the radicalism of the sea-beggars” as well as

“protestantism and the iconoclasm exhibited by those English crews ... who made a point of ransacking churches in the West Indies.”397

That advice has remained unheeded in subsequent scholarship. The tendency to limit research questions to a single state archive is astounding given the token acknowledgment in most studies of the international scope of the sea wars after 1560 – in addition to the well-documented phenomenon of wartime mobilization on land among both international Catholic and Reformed cohorts, particularly in France. With a few

396 On the social and economic aspects of piracy, the work of Andrews remains unrivalled in Anglophone literature. Kenneth R. Andrews, “The Economic Aspects of Elizabethan Privateering” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1951). His postgraduate thesis was later expanded as Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585-1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964) and related sources also published as Kenneth R. Andrews, ed., English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, 1588-1595 (Cambridge: University Press/Hakluyt Society, 1959). Andrews elaborated on these themes in more focused studies of Elizabethan transatlantic voyages in Drake’s Voyages: A Re- Assessment of their Place in Elizabethan Maritime Expansion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530-1630 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), and Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Postwar colonial historian David Beers Quinn wrote meticulously on the multivalent activity of Elizabethans in North America for 60 years. A selection of Quinn’s work relating to piracy would have to begin with David Beers Quinn, ed., The Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (London: Hakluyt Society, 1940); Raleigh and the British Empire (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947); England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974); The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1974); David Beers Quinn and Alison O. Quinn, eds., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, 5 vols. (London: MacMillan, 1979); Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 397 Kenneth R. Andrews, “The Expansion of English Privateering and Piracy in the Atlantic, c. 1540-1625,” in Course et piraterie: Etudes présentées à la Commission Internationale d’Histoire Maritime à la occasion de son XVe colloque international pendant le XIVe Congrés International des Sciences historiques, ed. Michel Mollat (Paris: Editions due Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975), 198-200, 222. 146 exceptions, concern for the international and confessional contexts of maritime activity remains marginal to the mainline historiography of sixteenth-century privateering.398

In response, this chapter reinterprets English, French, and Dutch privateering as extensions of a system of international commercial and confessional activism centered on the ports of the western English Channel. From at least the fourteenth century, piracy had surfaced intermittently as a by-employment in which seafarers of the channel ports of southern England, Normandy, and Brittany participated and interacted. The piratical endeavors of the confessional wars (at least through the end of the 1580s) relied on the institutions, economic resources, laboring populations, and physical haven spaces of western Channel cities. Furthermore, the local merchants and officials who organized some of the most grandiose transoceanic plunder voyages – especially in the English case

– used them to further their advocacy of long-distance trade.

Channel privateering also drew upon the more recent networks of international religious fellowship that accompanied Protestant reform movements. In this aspect, the violent entrepreneurship practiced by English, French, and Dutch seafarers doubled as a

398 This is not to say that no precedent exists for an internationalist perspective on northwest European privateering and piracy. The works of the late-nineteenth-century Belgian Catholic apologist Kervyn de Lettenhove, though highly partisan, first drew focus to the collaborations among English, Orangist, and Huguenot officials in the sea campaigns during the Wars of Religion. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Les Huguenots et les Gueux. Etude historique sur vingt-cinq années du XVIe siècle (1560-1585), 6 vols. (Bruges, 1882-5) and the exceptional international collection of sources found in Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le règne de Philippe II, 11 vols. (Brussels, 1882-92). The next significant work is Brian Dietz’s unpublished 1959 dissertation; drawing on French admiralty records and English state records, it stands as the only focused treatment of the international Reformed sea war during the Third and Fourth Wars of Religion. Brian Dietz, “Privateering in North West European Waters, 1568-1572” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1959). Also see arguments in “The Huguenot and English Corsairs during the Third Civil War in France, 1568 to 1570,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 19 (1952-8): 278-94. In Francophone literature, the essays collected in several conference volumes on geopolitical issues during the career of Gaspard de Coligny, Amiral de France embody aspects of an international or transnational approach to late Valois piracy. See Michel Reulos, ed., Actes du colloque “L’Amiral de Coligny et son temps” (Paris, 24-28 octobre 1972) (Paris: Société de l’histore du protestantisme français, 1974) and Acerra and Martinière, eds., Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer.

147 variant of the confessional mobilization seen on shore in France and the Low Countries.

This chapter, therefore, seeks to bring the sixteenth-century history of maritime trade expansion in England and France into greater conversation with existing literature regarding activist and charity networks in Calvinist Europe.399 In doing so, it aims to affirm the place of the Anglo-French sea campaigns as a significant milestone in the consolidation of Protestant reform in northwest Europe.

Finally, building on earlier predatory experiments, the private wars waged by the

French and Dutch from Europe trigged a mass privateering phenomenon in the Americas extending to the end of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1603. The reprisals of northern

Protestants, particularly in the eastern Atlantic and Central America during the 1570s, coalesced into a focused project driven by direct collaboration and overlapping political- commercial goals. English West Country organizers assimilated the design of Protestant

New World enterprises into the expansive English nationalist ventures that accompanied the start of war with Spain in the 1580s. Western Channel privateering marks the initial chapter in a truly transatlantic history of English maritime expansion, one rooted in the traditional commercial networks and confessional struggles of the Old World.

Sixteenth-century institutions and industries of reprisal

Private warfare, or reprisals between vessels of different kingdoms, had been a feature of maritime economies along the English Channel for centuries prior to the accession of Elizabeth. By the later middle ages, the mounting order of maritime governance in England and France meant that such violence was regulated via naval institutions. State admiralties gave form to the private exercise of sea reprisal – and

399 See Chapter 2 for a discussion of this literature. 148 provide much of the historical archive for it – during northwest Europe’s confessional wars. Thus, a short history of the admiralties serves as essential background for understanding the organization and local practice of reprisal in the western Channel.

After 1400, authority over English naval affairs was invested in the royally appointed office of Lord High Admiral, who held undivided legal jurisdiction over matters relating to wreck, spoil, prizes, and piracy at sea. The ability to commission or impress private vessels into royal service during times of war represented the single most important area of authority for the Lord Admiral, as well as for the admirals of France.

Letters of reprisal, or marque, granted by the admiralty permitted the seizure of enemy ships and goods at sea.400 An admiralty court, or officials working on its behalf, legitimated prizes taken by commission, with the proviso that a certain percentage of the proceeds would be reserved for the admiral (in England and France, normatively a tenth) and the Crown (via customs charges).

In the sixteenth-century court, vice-admirals appointed to provincial coastal jurisdictions made arrests, bound individuals to appear before the judges, enforced embargos, interviewed witnesses, and oversaw local impressment. However, their most pressing duties related to the collection of revenues for the Lord Admiral, which required the painstaking work of inventorying prize cargoes and collecting perquisites from those who brought them to port based on a tenth of their value. The vice-admirals were creatures of the Lord Admiral’s estate; thus, they tended to be county gentlemen and

400 Jon Latimer, of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 13-14; René de Mas Latrie, “Du droit de marque ou droit des représailles au moyen âge,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole Chartres 27 (1866), 529-77, and 29 (1868), 294-347, 612-35. As a legal mechanism, letters of marque evolved out of medieval marcher law, which allowed individuals robbed by subjects of a foreign prince to seek compensation by seizing an equivalent amount of property from others of the same kingdom. 149 wealthy civic leaders bonded with that officeholder through blood relation or political clientage. The county admirals, in turn, fashioned their own local administrative estates by farming out their official duties to appointed deputies.401

Because of the profit motives that pervaded its business, notably in the realm of piracy, much naval scholarship speaks of the Tudor admiralty in terms of its corruption.

Andrews has observed its problematic construction as both a state office and a “private estate” of the Lord Admiral – a fiscally self-contained entity in which funds from regulation and enforcement fell to the Lord Admiral and his network of unsalaried clients in the counties. The financial interests of local officials in admiralty business encouraged significant grift. Vice-admirals and their deputies underreported the monies they collected, discouraged private salvors from helping vessels in distress, and colluded with pirates and smugglers on the coasts.402

However, pre-Tudor piratical enterprise in Devon and Cornwall is suggestive of a historically functional relationship between central government, pirates, and abetting county officials – one that more constructively contextualizes the local order of privateering during the confessional wars. Short-range piracy voyages emerged as a common source of profit in port communities bordering the Channel during the late medieval period, balanced in cycles of “mutual reprisal” among vessels of various states.403 On the English side, piracy came to be practiced most prolifically in Devon and

Cornwall, where intermittent wars with France provided “a focus and incentive for

401 R.G. Marsden, “The Vice-admirals of the Coast,” English Historical Review 22 (1907), 473-4. 402 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 27-8, 30; Marsden, “Vice-admirals,” 473-4. More recently, Cathryn J. Pearce, Cornish Wrecking, 1700-1860: Reality and Popular Myth (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2010). 403 C.L. Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth-Century England (London: Frank Cass, 1962), 78, 82. 150 maritime activity,” including the appearance of a particular pattern of “organized, businesslike plunder” at sea. The latter was set apart by wide social patterns of participation, whereby the manpower for crews provided by ordinary seafarers, farmers, craftsmen, and even clergy met the “wider resources of capital” mobilized by landed families, merchants, and shipowners.404

Along with Fowey and Plymouth, the community of Dartmouth and its harbor flourished as a hub for piracy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The involvement of its elites in reprisals and their links to London are a useful case study in the business of plunder in the West Country. Dartmouth’s leadership in this sector derived in part from jurisdictional confusion over water rights along its estuary, which fell along an administrative faultline between town leaders, the Duke of Cornwall (who claimed its haven), and the Lord Admiral. The corporation first leased its river rights from the Duchy in 1333; this act carried a connotation of autonomy in maritime affairs that fueled battles between its mayors and the Lord Admirals for the next three centuries.405

City magistrates – as an adjunct of their prosperous dealings in fishing and overseas trade – actively pioneered the local interest in Channel piracy. John Hawley and his son have been called the first privateering magnates in the county, hearkening to later

Elizabethan venturers in their combination of plunder with mercantile enterprise and

404 Joyce Appleby, “Devon Privateering from Early Times to 1688,” in The New Maritime History of Devon, vol. 1, eds. Michael Duffy, Stephen Fisher, et al. (London: Conway Maritime Press and the University of Exeter, 1992), 90, 92. 405 Todd Gray, “Fishing and the Commercial World of Early Stuart Dartmouth,” in Tudor and Stuart Devon: The Common Estate and Government, eds. Todd Gray, Margery Rowe, and Audrey Erskine (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992), 177-8; Marsden, “Vice-Admirals,” 473-4. Local statutory claims to authority over right of wreck and other types of cases hampered the work of the High Court well into the seventeenth century. The corporations of Bristol, Dartmouth, Lyme, Poole, Southampton, and Weymouth in the southwestern counties could claim some exemption from judicial intervention by the London court. Exemptions extended to royal interests as well. As late as 1560, the Duke of Cornwall at times claimed “liberty of the admiralty” for his coastal possessions. 151 royal service.406 A many-time mayor and trader with stakes in nearby tinworks at , the senior Hawley augmented his personal fortune through Channel predation against merchant ships of Flanders, , Navarre, and Castile at the turn of the fifteenth century. Yet, in spite of the notoriety of his reprisals, under Henry IV he held positions of trust in local maritime administration, including stints as a customs collector, deputy of the admiralty, and (ironically) special commissioner for piracy. The Crown recognized his service in a three-year tin export monopoly granted to the town in 1390, in return for its having “wrought great havoc on the King’s enemies in time of war.”407 In 1404,

Hawley organized the defenses of Dartmouth against Breton forces; he was appointed two years later as a commissioner to oversee the fortification of the town’s haven. His son, also John, likewise distinguished himself in coastal piracy during the 1410s and 20s.

Meanwhile, he served in royal fleets, stood on local piracy commissions, and was feodary and escheator for Devon and Cornwall.408

Elsewhere in the southwest, piracy and naval expertise also lay in close proximity.

Contemporaries and collaborators of the Hawleys such as Richard Spicer of Plymouth,

William de Meer of Truro, and Mark Mixtow of Fowey (as well as his son, John Mixtow) were recruited into the service of the king based on their violent acumen at sea. Kinship, too, appears as an organizing principle of piracy in the region. Syndicates of landed families launched ships out of the southern Cornish ports in the mid-fifteenth century, in a second wave of Channel activity that coincided with the breakdown of political order during the War of the Roses. Members of the Courtenay, Trevelyan, and Arundel families

406 Appleby, “Devon Privateering,” 91. 407 Appleby, “Devon Privateering,” 90; Percy Russell, Dartmouth: a History of the Port and Town (London: Batsford, 1950), 15. Tradition posits that the elder Hawley was an inspiration for Chaucer’s shipman character in Canterbury Tales. See Gray, “Dartmouth,” 173. 408 Kingsford, 84-7. 152 played organizing roles in these ventures as shipowners, victualizers, and occasionally as crewmembers.409

Tudor naval innovations, with the renewed defensive and regulatory onus they placed on provincial ports via new coastal fortifications and the introduction of the vice- admiralties, did not halt the business of private warfare in the southwest. Rather, they streamlined local avenues for profit-seeking and patronage in that mode of employment.

To this end, the enterprises of the Killigrews of west Cornwall not only offer a final example but also presage the activist style of privateering that prevailed in the Channel region during the confessional wars. This was a gentry family that cultivated military expertise of various forms. That its patriarch, John, held the strategically vital captaincy of Pendennis Castle at Falmouth suggests the trust placed in him and his family’s sturdy

Protestantism by Henry VIII. The Killigrews had also, by John’s time, developed interests in piracy along the Channel and the Irish Sea. John’s wife, Lady Mary, and his sons Peter, Thomas, and Henry offered overt hospitality to Channel rovers in the castle, using bribery to persuade other local officials to look the other way.410 The Killigrew sons parlayed their involvement with the campaigns of continental Reformed activists in the 1550s into successful naval and diplomatic careers.

The argument that southwestern maritime industries such as fishing begot a

“nursery” of seafarers for the English navy, discussed at length in Chapter 1, is an old one.

After review, the close connections between the “magistrates-cum-privateers”411 of pirate

409 Kingsford, 84-5, 87-9, 94-104. Other gentry active in Cornwall include members of the Tregarthen, Carmynowe, Pennarth, Penpons, and Bodulgate families. 410 David Mathew, “The Cornish and Welsh Pirates in the Age of Elizabeth,” English Historical Review 39 (Jul. 1924), 339-41; Amos C. Miller, Sir Henry Killigrew, Elizabethan Soldier and Diplomat (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1963). 411Russell, Dartmouth, 14. 153 havens like Dartmouth, the admiralty, and other organs of central government suggests that, similarly, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century kings viewed the business of plunder in the southwestern counties as a cultivar for leadership in local naval affairs. Deeply embedded in the fortunes of port cities and powerful county families, West Country piracy became a resource that, if unpredictable, could be channeled into a productive source of royal revenue and maritime expertise.

In contrast to England’s innovative vice-admiralties, a lingering medieval structure, scattered authority, and intramural rivalries characterized the French admiralty of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The limited reach of the amiral de France, one of the grand offices de la couronne since 1270, mirrored the jurisdictional limitations of the

Valois monarchy. The amiral could claim certain perquisites (a tenth on prizes taken under commission, right of wreck), authority to assemble naval fleets by private commission, and judicial power over maritime cases, but only in the coastal regions represented by the Parlement of Paris (Normandy, Picardy, and Pas de Calais, with vice- admiralties at Rouen and ). Provincial kingdoms that became possessions of the

French Crown after the Hundred Years War – Brittany, Guyenne, – retained separate admiralties with their own coastal purviews.412

The amiral de Guyenne, who held responsibility for Saintonge-Aunis and La

Rochelle, stood at a formidable political distance from the Paris admiralty’s northern power center. His office governed the Atlantic coast south of the Loire, an extensive personal estate on the western frontier of the realm. In spite of efforts by the Amiral de

412 Michel Vergé-Franceschi, “L’amirauté de France dans la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle: un enjeu entre catholiques et protestants,” in Acerra and Martinière, eds., Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer, 35-6. The office for Provence became known as l’amiral de , which in the sixteenth century controlled France’s only permanent royal fleet. The admiralties at Brittany, Guyenne, and Provence maintained their own vice-admiralties at Brest and , Brouage, and , respectively. 154

France to consolidate his maritime authority over the French west country, successive royal promulgations in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries confirmed its separate administrative privileges.413 French kings retained the right to appoint the

Guyennois admirals until the accession of Henri de Navarre unified that office with the

Parisian admiralty. Otherwise, the regional admirals enjoyed wide authority to convene their own courts, commission and direct fleets, and collect dues from wreck, passports, and prizes.414

Corsair enterprises on the Channel and Atlantic coasts demonstrate the cooperative elements of the relationship between central government and the provincial admiralties before the turmoil of the 1560s. With only a small Mediterranean galley fleet at its disposal at the start of the sixteenth century, the Crown relied heavily on commissions of private shipping for its naval force. That dependence was most apparent in a long series of wars against Habsburg forces (1494-1559), a period that marked the emergence of French privateering in organized campaigns ranging from the Spanish coasts to Africa, Brazil, and the West Indies. Norman and Guyennois ports, active as

Anglo-French privateering havens from the Hundred Years’ War, led the charge. Channel communities such as Honfleur, Dieppe, and Le Havre – former seats of the medieval royal fighting fleet – harbored the leading plunder syndicates. Jean le Frère,

413 The earliest roots of the sixteenth century manifestation of the Guyennois admiralty lay in the brief maritime administration of Charles de Berry, the estranged brother of Charles VII, who held the Duchy of Guyenne between 1469-72. When the duc de Berry died, his lands reverted to the Crown, but the king maintained the claims of his appointed admirals (Odet d’Aydie and Guillaume de Soupplainville) to their offices. The key documents are “Lettres du roy Charles VIII sur les privilèges de l’amirauté en Guienne, 1490,” in J.M. Pardessus, ed., Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisième race (Paris: l’Imprimerie nationale, 1849), 21: 370n; “Lettres patentes sur les droits et le juridiction de l’amirauté de Guienne, 1508,” in Ordonnances, 21: 370-3; “Lettres relative de l’amirauté de Guienne en ce qui concerne les naufrages, 1511,” in Ordonnances, 21: 456-7. 414 In spite of their age, works by de la Roncière and Gouron remain the most comprehensive on the French navy and the Guyennois admiralty, respectively. Charles de la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française (Paris, 1899-1920), 2: 441-3; Marcel Gouron, L’Amirauté de Guyenne: depuis le premier amiral anglais jusqu’à la révolution (Paris, Librairie du Recueil Sirey, 1938), 188-200. 155 contemporary historian of the civil wars, attributed northern expertise in the naval arts to their “long practice and continual usage of the maritime arts,” in which they “were veterans from the times of our forefathers.”415 After 1533, Norman adventurers like

Guillaume d’Agincourt, Simon Huet, and Jean Bellanger sailed to West Africa and South

America under royal letters of marque. The Guyennois admiralty, first under Philippe

Chabot then Henri II, king of Navarre, also issued commissions and otherwise facilitated the voyages of the Norman privateers. In the midst of a civic celebration at La Rochelle in January 1543, François personally received Spanish prize ships and goods brought in by the corsairs.416 Native enterprises soon followed in the French west. After serving as cadets of the Norman adventurers, a group of Gascon sailors including Menjouyn de La

Cabanne of Capbreton and Captain La Salle of Bordeaux loomed large in campaigns against Spain in the later 1540s and 1550s.417

Norman and Guyennois plunder again flourished between 1552 and 1559, in a series of transatlantic campaigns that first established the Caribbean as “a significant theater of international warfare.”418 While the voyages demonstrated the potency of corsair organization under state sanction, they also exposed social fissures within the provincial admiralties that foreshadowed the breakdown of intra-naval order during the ensuing Wars of Religion. The rapid turn of Norman and Saintongeais port populations to

Calvinism accounts for the novel character of 1550s privateering. Though difficult to trace precisely, Spanish colonial records attest to the appearance of confessionally mixed

415 Jean le Frère, La vraye et entière histoire des troubles et guerres civiles, vol. 2 (Paris, 1584), 662v. 416 Georges Guiffrey, ed., Cronique du roy Françoys, premier de ce nom (Paris: Renouard, 1860), 421-2. 417 Roncière, Histoire, 3: 570-3. 418 Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, 82. 156 or predominantly Calvinist French crews in Caribbean waters in this era. The Inquisition testimonies of sailors aboard a large Norman-Gascon fleet active off Tierra Firme in

1558-9, for example, attest that the majority of crewmembers took part in psalmic prayer on deck, denigrated Catholic fasting, and zealously participated in attacks on visible

Catholic symbols on shore.419 The leadership of the well-chronicled Norman fleet that harassed Cuban ports between 1552-5 contained both Catholics – François Le Clerc, known as “Jambe de Bois” and “the first corsair of renown in France” – and Protestants – his lieutenants Jacques de Sores (“l’Ange Exterminateur”) and Robert Blondel. Referred to collectively as “Lutherans” in Spanish correspondence, their enterprises culminated in the seizure of by de Sores in 1555.420

Although admittedly nascent, the appearance of Huguenot privateering syndicates, with their own leadership expertise and modes of plunder, connects these Caribbean voyages to the western Channel campaigns of the confessional wars. De Sores served in, then became vice-admiral of, the Navarrese sea army at La Rochelle in the late 1560s.

Sea captain Guillaume Mesmin, perhaps the earliest Rochelais corsair of repute, translated the skills that he honed in the Caribbean into a lucrative commission in the service of the city during the Third War of Religion.421 Finally, Jean Bland (alias Plan) of

Navarre, the figurehead of a Basque offensive against Puerto des Caballos, Honduras in

1558, joined with John Hawkins’s fateful “forcible” slaving expedition to the Spanish

419 The Inquisition documents are summarized and partially transcribed in Eleanor Adams, “The Franciscan Inquisition in Yucatán: French Seamen, 1560,” The Americas 25 (1969), 331-59. 420 Paul Butel, Les Caraïbes au temps des flibustiers (Paris: Editions Aubier,1982), 34; Roncière, Histoire, 3: 574-84. Le Clerc, who lost his leg in a battle against English forces at Guernsey in 1549, was the first known pirate with a “peg leg” prosthesis. 421 Roncière, Histoire, 3: 584-7. 157

Main a decade later.422 Moreover, their attacks on Catholic civilians, clergy, property, and religious symbols – discussed at greater length below – have been credited with introducing a new level of “fundamentalist” violence into transatlantic privateering.423 It would not be until the early 1560s that confessional conflict produced a formal and unified Calvinist party in France. Yet, in their regional construction, virulently anti-

Iberian outlook, and employment of symbolic violence, the Norman and Guyennois corsairs have to be considered the vanguard of a Huguenot maritime interest. At the tipping point of old dynastic conflicts and future religious ones, their 1550s enterprises are evocative of new types of commercial and confessional organization within the divided French admiralty.

Anglo-Huguenot alliance at La Rochelle, 1567-9

Mobilization and the birth of the Huguenot admiralty at La Rochelle

Huguenot political mobilization, which accelerated between the end of the First and Third Wars of Religion, came to rely on the local, private means of maritime war offered by the Admiralty of Guyenne. Approximately half of the major towns of the Midi were controlled by Calvinist believers, most falling within a southwestern “crescent” starting at Dauphiné, reaching across and Guyenne, and continuing up the

Atlantic coast to Saintonge-Aunis.424 By 1569, this region fielded a land army of about

422 Adams identifies Plan as the Basque captain named “Juan Blanco” in Spanish correspondence. See Adams, “Franciscan Inquisition,” 335. 423 Kris Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 25-6. Also see Augeron, “Coligny,” 157-8. 424 By 1660, 83% of French Calvinists lived south of the Loire. Philip Benedict, The Huguenot Population of France, 1600-1685: The Demographic Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991), 7-10; Benedict, “Settlements: France,” in Handbook of European History 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, vol. 2, Visions, 158

30,000, along with perhaps 40 ships in the Atlantic and English Channel, against royal forces. The strength of the Midi derived from a mobilizing apparatus that demonstrated impressive unity into the 1570s. Regional Calvinist nobles, in collaboration with church assemblies, successfully amalgamated resources from the towns into a well-coordinated force. This flexible and localized resistance was well-suited to the “small-scale engagements, sieges and quasi-‘guerilla’ manoeuvres” that characterized the petite guerre in the French west during the Third and Fourth Wars of Religion.425

The Huguenot political faction in the Midi came to be coordinated by the scions of the Bourbon-Vendôme family, who were its richest and most powerful noble benefactors. In the 1560s, the eldest of these was Louis, prince de Condé, the movement’s foremost military commander. Besides the status of the Bourbon heirs among the French as princes of the royal blood426, the family’s authority derived from its official zone of influence in the French southwest. After the death of Antoine de

Bourbon at Rouen in 1563, Condé’s young nephew Henri held the crown of Navarre and

Béarn, a small independent kingdom that nonetheless could wield a large army and had strategic command over the whole of Guyenne. Because of its defensive significance, the

Valois kings of the early sixteenth century fashioned a close clientage relationship with

Navarre. François I married his daughter Marguerite to Henri II of Navarre in 1527; two years later, he granted the Navarrese monarchs the admiralty of Guyenne, which brought

Programs, Outcomes, ed. Thomas A. Brady Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 442. 425 Greengrass, “Financing the Cause,” 234. 426 Henri de Navarre’s claim to the French throne was based on the fact that the Vendôme branch of the Bourbon family was the senior line of descent from the Capetian monarch Louis IX. Given its distance, the prestige of the claim outweighed its merit. Only the death of all four sons of Henri II made Navarre’s ascension to the French throne in 1589 possible. 159 judicial control over much of the French Atlantic coast south of Brittany.427 Before the prince de Navarre reached his majority, working authority over the kingdom and admiralty fell to his mother Jeanne d’Albret. The patrimony of the Bourbon household in

Navarre outweighed every other fiscal asset of the Huguenots. At the Calvinist assembly of La Rochelle, it was claimed that Navarre spent 3 million livres on the cause in the

1570s, much of it either borrowed from creditors at Geneva and Paris, or gained from the sale of privileges and the alienation of his royal estates.428

Still, the personal estates of the Bourbons were insufficient to mount long and expensive campaigns against the Crown. The grandees thus forged political collaborations with regional and local church bodies in the Huguenot south. Condé, as

Protector-General of the French church after 1562, was poised to oversee the paramilitary restructuring of the synodal system. The synod of Clairac charged the Calvinist congregations of Guyenne with raising men and money; at the same time, the southwestern synods set up political assemblies in order to manage war finances and facilitate local cooperation with the cause. The army was to carry the structure of the southern synods: each church would provide an enseigne, which would be sorted into regiments according to their colloquies.429 Two regional councils subsequently regimented the wartime administration of individual churches, calling for restrictions on ministerial salaries, charity for the poor and war victims, inventories of church property

427 Gouron, Guyenne, 149-53. Valois interest in the Navarrese kingdom predated the , however. The Albret family was long under their fealty via land grants, and had arranged a defensive alliance against the Holy League in 1512. 428 Greengrass, “Financing the Cause,” 247. 429 D.J.B. Trim, “The Huguenots and the European Wars of Religion, c. 1560-1697: Soldiering in National and Transnational Context,” in The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context. Essays in Memory of Walter C. Utt, ed. D.J.B. Trim (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 157. Also see Condé’s command to the regional churches in “Lettre de monsieur le prince de Condé, aux églises réformées de France,” 7 April 1562, in Memoires de Condé, servant d’éclaircissement et de preuves à l’histoire de M. de Thou, vol. 3 (London, 1743), 221. 160 and plate, forced loans on nobles and the wealthy, and a pay scale for troops. Guyennois municipalities, meanwhile, had to be militarized as places de sûreté that could provide men and arms. Local parties of believers allied with Condé obliged, coordinating takeovers of municipal institutions and setting up consistory-led defensive councils in

Nîmes, Millau, and elsewhere during the early 1560s.430

Condé’s party looked to La Rochelle above all. Navarrese control of the western admiralty gave the Bourbons command over the largest French seafaring “clans,” which were situated along the Saintonge-Aunis coast at La Rochelle, Ré, Oléron, and La

Tremblade.431 La Rochelle, at the head of that region, already had notoriety as a leading port for launching and provisioning corsairs; the Breton grandee la Noue, who became military governor of the western coast during the third religious war, assessed it as a

“bonne boutique,” well furnished with maritime commodities.432 Given the hand-to- mouth nature of Huguenot financing, the city held added attraction as a wealthy trading center. Its merchants were a potentially potent source of war contributions, via the types of excise charges, forced loans, and other levies that the grandees had arranged elsewhere in the Midi.

In the mid-1560s, the city seemingly was primed to become a Calvinist arsenal. A mercantile oligarchy dominated its political institutions, and its most powerful merchants already belonged to Reformed congregations.433 However, the politics surrounding a

430 Menna Prestwich, “France 1555-1629,” in International Calvinism 1541-1715, ed. Menna Prestwich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 89-90; Lucien Romier, Le royaume de Catherine de Medicis: La France à la veille des guerres de religion, vol. 2 (Paris: Perrin, 1922), 264-6. For the distribution of Calvinist strongholds in the Midi, see SP 70/109, f. 101r-v (“Distribution des gouvernements d’aucunes Prouinces en France dernierement faict par les Protestants,” late 1569). 431 Vergé-Franceschi, 36-7. 432 La Noue, Discours politiques, 635-6. 433 Pascal Rambeaud, “L’Amiral à La Rochelle, l’union du ciel et de la mer,” in Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer, eds. Martine Acerra and Guy Martinière, 136-7. 161 potential affiliation with the Huguenot party remained divisive. The moderate politiques that dominated high municipal positions during the 1562-3 war desired to maintain neutrality, both to safeguard royally bestowed communal privileges and for fear of outside control – either by the Crown, or the Bourbons. Two attempted coups by the

Condé-backed zelés party likely increased their hesitance. After Charles IX reached his majority in 1563, however, anxieties about royal intrusion into city institutions and persecution of Reformed believers came to trump those concerns. The election of

Calvinist, zelé-backed François Pontard to the office of mayor in 1567 signaled the rapprochement of the politiques and zelés.434

Working in conjunction with his cousin, the Poitevin grandee and Condé’s acting lieutenant Sainte-Hermine, Pontard became the figurehead of a high bourgeois faction in support of the Bourbons. At the beginning of January 1568, members of the zelés joined

Pontard in a violent sweep of the city. Their mob arrested members of the moderate opposition, seized defenses, sacked the remaining Catholic churches, and slaughtered their clergy.435 In the aftermath, Pontard appointed a private group of eleven zelé councilmen, many with ties to the local Reformed church and holding high civic positions, who became the core of the pro-Condé faction in the city. Members of this group, under the sponsorship of the Bourbons, controlled the mayorate during the space of the Third War of Religion.436

434 Kevin C. Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea. La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 200-01. 435 Léopold Delayant, Histoire des Rochelais racontée à Julien Méneau par son grand-père L. Delayant (La Rochelle: A. Siret, 1870), 1: 222-4. 436 Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 203. The members of the Pontard faction were Jean Pierres, Guillaume Choisy, Jean Morrison, Jean Salbert, Pierre Salbert, Pierre Bouchet, Jacques Cochon, Pierre Gentils, Jean de la Haize, and Claude Huet. Cochon and la Haize’s brother were Reformed elders; the Salberts and Pierres were early converts within the city. Jean Salbert was elected mayor in 1568-9 and Choisy in 1570 under the influence of Navarre. Albret was seen by at least one contemporary historian 162

The movement of war to the western provinces in 1568 meant that La Rochelle – geographically isolated, fortified, and therefore defensible – became the capital and principal stronghold of the Bourbon faction. Although the peace that ended the brief second religious war in March confirmed privileges of public worship for Calvinists, the threat of violence persisted from the Catholic confraternities that emerged in its wake and the fear of a new offensive from Charles IX and international Catholic forces massed in the Rhineland. Condé and the cardinal de Châtillon fled to La Rochelle after being driven from Poitiers in September; Albret and the young prince De Navarre joined them by the end of the month.437 Upon his entrance into the city, the corps de ville established a treaty with Condé in which he promised that only Calvinists would be appointed as military governors of the city and that the grandees would respect Rochelais customs and privileges.438

During the Third and Fourth Wars (1568-73), Albret and Navarre presided over a resident government in the city that was joined at times by fellow grandees Coligny, la

Noue, and Sainte-Hermine. The vehicle for their government was the Albret’s royal council as Queen of Navarre, which took its seat in the city. Although power over the admiralty was formally invested in Navarre, Albret and her council held almost total command over naval affairs.439 Their regime came with a significant amount of

(Barbot) as having arranged the election of town échevin Jean Blandin in 1571. For the influence of the Bourbons on the mayorate altogether, see Louis-Étienne Arcère, Histoire de la ville de La Rochelle et du pays d’Aulnis (La Rochelle, 1756), 1: 377-8; Barbot, 18: 1; Delayant, Histoire des Rochelais, 1: 228. 437 For a summary of the civil war in the French west country during the 1560s and 70s, see Nicole Vray, La Guerre des Religions dans la France de l’Ouest (Paris: Geste Éditions, 1997), chapter 3 passim. 438 The events surrounding the entrance of the grandees into La Rochelle are narrated in the second part of Barbot’s history of the city. Barbot, 17: 310-23. Arcère, 1: 368-9 contains the text of the capitulation to Condé. 439 See the predominance of naval affairs in the records of the council found in M.J. de Gaulle, ed., “Le conseil de la reine de Navarre à La Rochelle, ordonnances et déliberations inédites 1569-1570,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français 3 (1854), 125-37. 163 interference in Rochelais legal custom, political institutions, and maritime trade. Like in other parts of Guyenne, the financial implements of the grandees – sorely needed to put armies in the field – were a point of contest. Sainte-Hermine seized proceeds from royal domains, imposed a levy on Rochelais Catholics, and ordered the inventory and sale of ecclesiastical goods. Albret sought an advance of 80,000lt from wealthy citizens (“leurs habitans les plus aisés”), in exchange for promissory notes or bonds that would be fulfilled through proceeds from the sale of Catholic plate. The latter measure was protested and appealed by Rochelais leaders, with shortfalls in collection partially offset through the seizure of the property of absentee Catholics.440 Still, at least through 1573,

Albret’s council was able to court and maintain a segment of bourgeois support, including those within the Pontard faction that they sponsored for high office and groups within the port that benefitted from the grandee-commissioned fleet (those who held victualling contracts, corsair crews, and prize purchasers).

Rebranded as a Huguenot paramilitary institution, the Rochelais admiralty stood as the most meaningful collaboration between the affinative authority of the Bourbons and Calvinist municipal power in the Midi during the civil wars. Their relationship was uneasy and occasionally combative, but a significant faction within the Rochelais bourgeois elite submitted to extramural governance because they viewed the Bourbon alliance as a tool of municipal emancipation. At its peak between 1568-72, the admiralty served as an expression of La Rochelle’s “independence from the maritime authority of

440 Barbot, 17: 327-35. Members of Pontard’s faction on the corps de ville made an assessment of the citizens responsible for fronting the money, with individual contributions ranging from 100 to 400 écus. These financial arrangements were common in Guyenne at the start of the Third War. Conflicts over the levies sometimes required the mediation of the regional assemblies or associations. Community indebtedness became a pervasive problem in the Midi due to the severe costs of the Huguenot war effort. See Greengrass, “Financing the Cause,” 241-2. 164 the French crown.”441 The establishment of the Guyennois admiralty seat at La Rochelle formally divided the French navy, making it another contested site in the confessional conflict between noble families. Furthermore, by extending the war effort beyond the

French realm, it became the mechanism for international Reformed organization in the

Atlantic region.

Huguenot fleet under official English alliance, 1568-9

Rochelais privateering never entirely ceased after the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, but it resurged violently in early 1568 during the faux peace that separated the second and third religious wars. Under the direction of Albret and her council, privateering served multiple purposes in the Huguenot movement. The Poitevin noble and corsair La

Popelinière characterized it as both a money-making mechanism (“par ce moyen faire argent pour survenir aux frais de la guerre”) and a means to strengthen alliances with the northern Protestant states that served as the city’s main trading partners (“pour favoiser leur trafic & intelligence qu’ilz avoient és pais estrangés: Mesmemet en Angleterre,

Écosse, Dannemarch, hautes & basses Allemaignes”).442 Barbot largely corroborates that interpretation in describing how Albret used the corsair fleet as a liason with England, all in order to make up for shortfalls in military fundraising in the early stages of the war.443

Finally, the armée de mer was a relatively cheap supplement to Calvinist military forces

441 Alan James, The Navy and Government in Early Modern France, 1572-1661 (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2004), 15. 442 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire des troubles et choses mémorables avenues tant en France qu’en Flandres, et pays circonvoisins depuis l’an 1562 (La Rochelle, 1572), 163r. The Laval historian Jean Le Frère subsequently reprinted la Popelinière’s history, with some embellishment, in a Paris edition. A young convert to Calvinism in inland Poitou, La Popelinière was a corsair officer and investor at La Rochelle and would have been an eyewitness to many of the events that he chronicled surrounding the fleet. He was one of those arrested at Sandwich when Elizabeth temporarily shut English ports to French corsairs in February 1570. On his privateering investments and debts, see Delafosse, “Corsaires,” 208-09. 443 Barbot, 17: 340. 165 that turned the tide of a faltering land campaign in the pivotal conflict of the Wars of

Religion.

Although officially outside Coligny’s purview as Amiral de France, the organization of the Rochelais fleet in August and September 1568 fell to him due to his experience in recruiting Norman Huguenot officers and crews. Coligny and Albret promoted Honorat Prévost, sieur de la Tour to the office of Vice-Admiral at La Rochelle and made him commander of the fleet, with the Norman captain de Sores supporting him as lieutenant. The fleet that launched out of the city on October 15 was composed of nine

“grands vaisseaux” – the largest being the Prince at 300 tons – accompanied by around twenty smaller barques and chaloppes, carrying 900 men altogether.444 At the beginning, the largest ships belonged to the grandees and were funded almost entirely by their households and the loans extracted from Rochelais citizens.445 The fleet raised alarms on the coast of Brittany, where they took a number of Breton, Norman, and Flemish vessels sailing with Catholic goods. In late October, they carried their first prizes into Plymouth

Sound and sold them.446

The landing at Plymouth was a prelude to the fleet’s diplomatic mission. La Tour and twelve Huguenot nobles traveled overland to Hampton Court, where they organized their petition to the Queen with the cardinal de Châtillon.447 Having fled to England earlier in September, Châtillon had already established himself as the main Huguenot liason with the English government. In this capacity, he advocated for the corsairs at

444 Delayant, Histoire des Rochelais, i: 234; Roncière, 4: 102. La Tour, seigneur de Châtelier- Portaut, hailed from Poitou. 445 Dietz, “Corsairs,” 280. 446 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 163r-v. A Zealand crewman who escaped from one of the spoiled vessels reported to the Spanish ambassador that the fleet had taken 11 ships in the Channel. CSP, Spain (Simancas), 2: 82. 447 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 163v. 166 court, distributed congés to English adventurers in the name of Navarre, and collected prize revenues for the cause from successful privateers. Elizabeth, though hesitant for fear of provoking a response from the French Crown, agreed to provide a small loan

(20,000li), munitions, and fleet support to La Rochelle.448

Plymouth’s harbor, under the authority of the county vice-admiral Arthur

Champernowne, became the primary English base of operation for the Rochelais fleet.

There, the request of la Tour and de Sores for English ships and crews met with some favor: Hugh Suedall of lent the Jesus under captain Henry Kirkham, John

Guilford of provided the Bark Cecilia, and Thomas Bowes sent the Bark Bowes from London.449 John and William Hawkins, who with the vice-admiral were leaders of the county maritime interest, became the foremost English patrons for the Huguenot corsairs. Champernowne arranged for a Hawkins ship, the Paul, to be commanded by de

Sores. The New Bark, another ship that William Hawkins shared with the vice-admiral and Philip Budocushyde (Buddockshide) of Cornwall, sailed under Rochelais commission in late 1568 and early 1569.450 Under the command of the vice-admiral’s son

Gawine and “certain French pirates,” Spanish reports had the New Bark taking prizes out of Spanish ships in the Channel amounting to 500,000 ducats. They also took four “very richly laden merchantmen” into La Rochelle itself, where Gawain and other English volunteers joined Condé’s troops.451 William Hawkins and Budocushyde maintained a financial interest in Rochelais privateering until at least 1570, being named in

448 E.J. Atkinson, “The Cardinal of Châtillon in England, 1568-1571,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 3 (1888-91), 172, 208-09. 449 Dietz, “Corsairs,” 286. 450 Letters from Champernowne to Lord Clynton in SP 12/48, f. 69, 89; J.A. Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth: A New History of Sir John Hawkins and of the Other Members of His Family Prominent in Tudor England, 2nd ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969), 165. 451 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 9: 46. 167 commissions and litigation produced in the city admiralty court that involved a total of eleven ships in the fleet.452 By January 1569, with English contributions and additional

French recruitment, at least forty-five Protestant-affiliated men-of-war were roving the

Channel and Bay of Biscay.453

Plymouth, together with nearby deep-harbor ports at Dartmouth and Falmouth, mobilized rapidly in support of the Anglo-Huguenot fleet’s offensive against Spanish traffic to Flanders. Spanish ambassador de Spes complained that as many as twenty-three hulks in transit to Flanders had been taken into Plymouth and Dartmouth in the first three months of 1579. Two of them were plundered by a Condé ship at Plymouth “in the harbor and in the sight of the whole town.”454 It is clear that such overt actions occurred with the knowledge and occasional support of southwestern admiralty officials. Besides

Champernowne, vice-admiral for Cornwall William Lower became a notorious supporter and profiteer of western Channel privateering.455 Several merchants of Brielle accused

Lower of abetting the capture of their ship and goods by the corsair captain “grand

Jehan” and several hundred well-armed men in the Boot (which was itself a former prize of Rotterdam). In February, the plaintiffs met the corsair and the vice-admiral at a stop in

Falmouth, with the latter having commented on the quality of their vessel. After their capture a few days later, they were put in an English fishing boat and taken back to

452 Auguste Bardonnet, ed., “Registre de l’amirauté de Guyenne au siége de La Rochelle (1569- 70),” Archives historiques du Poitou 7 (1878), 207-08, 236, 239, 244-5. Budocushyde adopted the nomme de guerre of “Capitaine Bourset” in La Rochelle. 453 CSP, Spain (Simanaca), 2: 97. English volunteers accounted for at least twenty-three of these ships. Dietz claims a total of 40 English ships joined the de Sores fleet by March. 454 CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 9: 40. 455 See Michael Oppenheim, “Maritime History,” in The Victoria History of the County of Cornwall, vol. 1, ed. William Page (London, 1906), 487. Huguenot fleet captains took to bribes in order to sway admiralty officers in the southwestern counties. Before launching an assault on Spanish ships anchored at Saltash in November 1568, La Tour and other French nobles offered the Vice-Admiral of England William Winter ten chests of money “that he wolde not hynder nor let their purpose but to winke therat.” SP 70/103, f. 139v-40r (“Services done to the Spaniards by William Winter,” Nov. 1568). 168

Plymouth; their goods were sold at Helford. While prisoners of the Boot crew, they overheard some of its seamen say that their vessel would be “a good ship for the

Admiral” and that they had support from certain “gentlemen or lords.”456

Supported by the barely concealed complicity of coastal officials, the fleet’s harrying of Catholic shipping in the Channel produced a major diplomatic crisis with

Spain. In December 1568, French and Dutch privateers drove vessels of a Spanish fleet in at Fowey, Plymouth, and Southampton. The fleet had been carrying a large amount of bullion, loaned from Italian merchants, which was to be used to pay the troops of the

Duke of Alva. By the orders of Champernowne and Edward Horsey – the latter of whom held the captaincy of the Isle of Wight – English officials held the on shore for several weeks. Both officials advocated for the Queen’s seizure of the money, with

Champernowne transparently admonishing Cecil that “so great a commodity should redound to her Grace.”457 Huguenot corsairs meanwhile sought the release of the money for the cause, subjecting the Spanish ships at Plymouth and Southampton to harassment.458 Elizabeth eventually decided to hold the treasure – most likely to protect it from theft, though some authors still maintain that her intent was to seize it for the use of the government.459 Either way, the reaction from Spain and France was severe, bringing

456 SP 70/106, f.44r-6r (“Deposition of certain Flemings,” 18 March 1569). 457 “Sir Arthur Champernowne to Cecil,” 19 Dec. 1568, quoted in James Antony Froude, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, vol. 8, Elizabeth (London: Longmans, 1875), 485. 458 Summary in CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 9: 8-9 (“Manifesto of Don Guerau D’Espes,” 10 Jan. 1569); assorted documents on the controversy found in CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 8: 583-6 (including, on Horsey’s role, “Edward Horsey to Cecil,” 24 Dec. 1568) and SP 12/49, f.17r (“Champernowne, Hawkyns, and others, to Council,” 4 Jan. 1569). Champernowne grossly overvalued the value of the bullion at 400,000li; Horsey pegged Southampton’s share at 31,000li. Dietz placed the overall total at 85,000li. Dietz, “Corsairs,” 287. 459 Upon learning that the money belonged to Italians, Elizabeth took over the loan and eventually repaid the Spanish. Nonetheless, Elizabeth’s opaque responses to de Spes petitions for the release of the treasure in December leave open the possibility that she strongly considered keeping some of it. At the very least, her reticence and the noncooperation of Champernowne and Horsey contributed to the severity of the 169 the arrest of English shipping in Habsburg ports. A trade embargo between England,

Spain, and the Low Countries followed. Regardless of intent, as Brian Dietz has pointed out, the treasure seizure and its diplomatic aftermath emboldened the Anglo-French fleet.

The arrest of ten Spanish merchant ships in Plymouth by the New Bark in February 1569 can be seen as an escalation of intent. Budocushyde, flying an English flag to indicate he was in the Queen’s service, arrested the Spanish under the orders of the embargo. Only afterwards did he reveal that his ship was, in fact, operating under a Navarrese congé.

Four of the ships and their spoils went to La Rochelle, while the others remained in

Plymouth.460

English collaboration with the Huguenot fleet also extended to military trafficking to La Rochelle. Such aid missions were disguised as, and overlapped with, the routines of commercial trade in the western Channel. In December 1568, as part of the southwestern

English wine flotilla to Saintonge-Aunis, a group of ships under Vice-Admiral William

Winter brought cannons, powder, ball, and 100,000 angelots (50,000 pounds) to the city.

The provisions were paid for with a return cargo of salt, cloth, and church bells (“metal de cloches”) – bronze sourced from the ecclesiastical plunder of Condé’s forces that could be used to fashion additional ordinance.461 An even larger 60-sail fleet led by de

Sores arrived in May 1569, which included at least eleven ships (eight owned by the

Spanish response. Doran, Foreign Policy, 27; Ramsay, Queen’s Merchants, 92-7; Conyers Read, “Queen Elizabeth’s Seizure of the Duke of Alva’s Pay-Ships,” Journal of Modern History 5 (1933), 443-64; Spicer, Southampton, 131-2. 460 Dietz, “Corsairs,” 287-8. In the following year, a group of Huguenot captains offered their ten ships for the Queen’s service in the event of a war. CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 9: 385 (“Certain French Captains to Edward Horsey, Governor of the Isle of Wight,” 1570). 461 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 147r. Winter’s mission is corroborated in SP 70/105, f. 178r (“Sir Henry Norris to the Queen,” 10 Feb. 1569) and SP 70/105, f. 256r (“Complaint of the French King,” Feb. 1569). 170

Hawkins family) from the West Country.462 The fleet carried munitions, money, 50

English volunteers (“pionniers” to construct fortifications and buttress town defenses), and 200 English soldiers bound for the army of Condé. Again, the return fleet in July carried regional commodities of salt and wine, as well as Huguenot booty (church bells, cloth, and Caribbean goods).463

That the English used the Saintongeais wine fleet and mercantile traffic to La

Rochelle for munitions deliveries to the Huguenot cause was a common remonstrance from the court of Charles IX in 1569. The inability of French royal officials to distinguish and therefore prevent those missions brought repeated threats of a general embargo on

English trade in the realm.464 As has been noted by others, considering the Queen’s hesitance towards overt intervention in the French conflict, this avenue for aid offered plausible deniability.465 Yet the aid arrangements – particularly the loans furnished to La

Rochelle by the Queen and, later, a consortium of London city merchants – are best viewed in the context of the interaction between Calvinist commerce and war financing in the French west country. From the start of war in the autumn of 1568, a lack of ready

462 There is a historiographical tradition that has John Hawkins leading this mission alongside de Sores. It is entirely possible: Hawkins had returned to England from his disastrous voyage to San Juan de Ulúa in January and was involved in a number of semi-official and mercenary enterprises at sea during the rest of the year. To my knowledge, neither English state papers nor Rochelais histories explicitly mention his involvement. See Basil Morgan, “Hawkins, Sir John, 1532-1595,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, October 2007; N.A.M. Rodger, “Queen Elizabeth and the Myth of Sea-Power in English History,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (2004), 154; Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth, 169-70. 463 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 192v; Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth, 169-70. Williamson’s assertion that the fleet employed Cornish miners as part of this force of “pionniers” seems fantastic at first glance. Yet Popelinière does note that the volunteers included those who could work “à la mine” or otherwise help in the digging of trenches and the construction of earthworks. 464 E.g. SP 70/105, f. 256v-7r (“Complaint of the French King,” Feb. 70); also various requests and remonstrances filed by the French ambassador found in CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 9: 68, 80, 98, 127, 139. 465 See the official responses to French pressure in CSP Foreign, Elizabeth, 9: 190 (“she has not directed or licensed any of her subjects to carry arms or munitions to Rochelle, but that generally she must permit the merchants to resort to all places indifferently in France”) and 284 (“English merchants resort to Rochelle for the commodity of salt, but if on the King's part any other commodious place may be found where they may be well used, and have salt at an easier or the same price, no doubt they will then, of themselves, repair thither”). 171 money led the Navarrese admiralty to begin appropriating salt harvests on the Saintonge-

Aunis coast as an alternative mode of payment for munitions shipments from northern

Protestant allies, including England. Besides the aid voyages of Winter and de Sores above, there are a few, but telling examples from Albret’s surviving council records in

1569-70 of licenses for merchants to lade salt in exchange for cash made “in payment to the cause.” Commissaires at Ré, Oléron, Marennes, Brouage, and other minor salt entrepôts regulated these arrangements on behalf of the council.466 When the Calvinists were forced from Brouage by the royal galley fleet in late 1569, La Popelinière lamented the loss of the ability to trade its salt for munitions and money from the Dutch and

English merchants who normally resorted there.467

Thus, the practice of salt bartering was an extension of mercantile trade in the western Channel, redirected by the Condé party to themselves, La Rochelle, and the

Calvinist churches of Guyenne. The terms of the loan contracted between Elizabeth and

Navarre – in which the Queen would provide 20,000li cash in exchange for an equivalent shipment of salt, wine, and other regional commodities – was the most lucrative example of that funding arrangement. Under the auspices of a commission to import a bulk quantity of salt in order to protect the supplies of the outports during the French war, the license to transact the loan was given to a company of City merchants that included

Nicholas Culverwell, Thomas Allen, and John Barne.468 Culverwell, from a family of

Devon and Somerset, was a well-known wine merchant and headed the group. His ties to

466 De Gaulle, ed., “Conseil,” 126, 134. The merchant furnished with a passport in order to lade 20 cens of salt in exchange for a donation of 500lt to the council on 126 is listed as Jehan Dorgnios (elsewhere Dorgueil) – probably a phonetic spelling of an English surname, but a nationality does not appear in the text. 467 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 329v. 468 Cal. Salisbury MS, 13: 89 (“Sale of French Salt and Wine,” 6 Nov. 1568); Cotton Titus MS, B/IV, f. 168r-9v (“A commission of Q. Elizabeth, for Nic. Culverwell, Th. Allen, and John Barnes,” 1568). Other parties to the merchant group include Peter Osborne, William Witeman, and Thomas Smyth. 172 the West Country undoubtedly factored into his involvement, considering that most of the ports ordered to produce crews and stowage for the salt were in the southwest.469 In

January 1569, Culverwell was in Plymouth with a passport, accompanied by Châtillon’s man (Lawrence Hollingshead), preparing to venture to La Rochelle with a fleet in order to arrange the purchase. He remained involved in coordinating munitions shipments to the city with Châtillon until his sudden death in October.470

That such arrangements persisted after the departure of the grandees is evidenced by the 3,100li loan provided to Rochelais agents by City merchants during the siege of

1572-3, which was on much the same terms as the earlier salt loans.471 Indeed, through the Third and Fourth Wars of Religion, aid to the Calvinist cities remained couched in the terms of past cross-Channel economic relations. At times, the rhetoric surrounding

Huguenot aid implicated the long history of political reciprocity between England and western France. In a letter to Elizabeth in the wake of the St. Bartholomew’s Day

Massacre, the civic leadership of La Rochelle wrote that the continuance of munitions trade with their city would be proof of the Queen’s favor for “your people of Guienne, who forever belong to you and are subject to you.” In return, the Rochelais “will give

469 Ibid. The southwestern ports given “writs of aid” for the merchant contractors were Plymouth, Exeter, Topsham, Dartmouth, Poole, Milford, Southampton, Ipswich, Lynn, Harwich, Yarmouth, and Hull. John Barne, cousin to Culverwell, too had connections to the West Country. Culverwell apprenticed with his father George, who served as Lord Mayor of London and was an early leader of the Muscovy Company in the 1550s. 470 Cal. Salisbury MS, 1: 388 (“Nicholas Culverwelles to Thomas Allen, John Barne and Company,” 4 Jan. 1569); Atkinson, “Châtillon in England,” 228. As discussed in Chapter 2, the Culverwells had ties to the London godly community and continental Calvinists. Richard, Nicholas’s brother, possessed jewels given to him by Albret. John Bodley, the Genevan exile and protector of the French church in London, oversaw Nicholas’s will. This, along with his familiarity with the Guyennois wine trade, may have had something to do with his selection as negotiator in the salt deal. 471 Cal. Salisbury MS, 7: 505 (1597); SP 12/266, f. 6r (“Killigrew to Cecil,” Jan. 1598). However, the salt from this loan, which was to have been repaid “within the year,” never arrived. In 1597, Henry Killigrew and were compelled to mediate between the merchants and the town in the matter of the debt. 173

[consacreront] and freely risk their lives and goods to acknowledge you as their sovereign queen and natural princess.”472

Advocacy and aid networks among Channel gentry

Munitions trade and the loan arrangements added to the Guyennois war chest greatly, but mercenary traffic from northern Protestant states was even more significant.

Huguenot strategy during the Third War of Religion hinged on recruiting military force internationally in order to supplement the armies raised by Condé in the south. At the cusp of war in 1568, Albret and Coligny first negotiated an alliance with the Prince of

Orange for military support. Orange was dissuaded from intervening in the French conflict by Charles IX that year, though Dutch mercenary support later came to La

Rochelle in the form of the gueux de mer under the admiral Louis of Nassau, who resided in the city and issued naval commissions in 1570-2. Elizabeth did not make such a promise of men and ships, but those came nonetheless in the form of the voluntary, private expeditions negotiated with sympathetic English gentry. Huguenot leaders and their armies predominately came from the ranks of the . David Trim has noted that their leaders adopted a strategy of mercenary “recruitment via affinities,” relying on aristocratic “kinship and friendship networks” within France and extending to

England, the Netherlands, and Scotland.473 These networks were one of the main mediums for collaborations among international Reformed mercenary forces at sea in the late sixteenth century.

In England, gentry mercenaries, officials, and traders from the Channel ports of

Devon formed the support base for the Calvinist cause in western France. Indeed, as was

472 Charles Claude Marie Hector La Ferrière-Percy, ed., Lettres de Catherine de Médicis (Paris, 1891), 4: 124n. 473 Trim, “Soldiering,” 185. 174 true in Guyenne, Devon also had a strong affinative network that bound together its foremost maritime families. The leading affiliates of the Condé party belonged to a gentry cohort, bound by kinship and patronage, that developed a strong interest in port politics and overseas trade over the course of the sixteenth century. An older, nationalist order of naval and imperial historians dubbed this faction the “westcountrymen” or

Elizabeth’s “” – mythic monikers that connoted their depictions as mere instruments of Elizabethan naval and commercial expansion.474 Yet without downplaying the role of official or semi-official support in the enterprises of the Hawkins brothers,

Francis Drake, and Walter Raleigh, it is a central assertion of this project that the origins of their maritime experience can be located within the Calvinist political and social networks developing across the western Channel during the French wars.475

The ascension of two Devon families in the first half of the sixteenth century – both of whom came to ally themselves with the regime of Condé – brought to the fore a

474 A basic list of individuals associated with the “westcountrymen” would include Francis Drake, Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert, , John and William Hawkins, and Walter Raleigh. Drake and Raleigh, in particular, have been objects of nationalist myth-making since their lifetimes. Biographical depictions of Drake by Corbett and Eliott-Drake at the turn of the twentieth century strongly shaped the high modern view of Drake and other southwestern adventurers as naval pioneers. Writing several decades later, Williamson’s study perpetuated their cast of Drake. Andrews’s revisionist study of 1967, Drake’s Voyages, sought to distance Drake and his peers from a naval teleology. Nonetheless, stereotypical portrayals persist in a glut of contemporary literature. Julian Stafford Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, with a History of the Rise of England as a Maritime Power (London: Longmans, 1899); Elizabeth Fuller Eliott-Drake, The Family and Heirs of Sir Francis Drake, 2 vols. (London: Smith, 1911); J.A. Williamson, The Age of Drake (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1938); Andrews, Drake’s Voyages. Other works that have informed the image of Devon’s “sea dogs” include James Anthony Froude, English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century (London: Longmans, 1905); Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959); Clements Markham, ed., The Hawkins’ Voyages During the Reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I (London: Hakluyt Society, 1878); A.L. Rowse, Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge: An Elizabethan Hero (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937) and The Expansion of Elizabethan England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1955). A pair of recent, balanced biographies of Drake and John Hawkins include surveys of the historiographical traditions relating to the westcountrymen. See Nick Hazelwood, The Queen’s Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 314-18; Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), chapter 14 passim. 475 It remains a great irony that, for all of the historiographical focus on the endeavors of Drake and the Hawkins brothers during the Spanish war, nearly the entirety of their careers as privateering “promoters” transpired prior to 1585 – including activities undertaken by commission of Huguenot or Dutch officials in the 1560s and 70s. See Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 89-90. 175 new maritime interest in Devon, marked by its aggressive advocacy of overseas trade and evangelical religious politics. Already a strong mercantile family established in Tavistock in the fifteenth century, William Hawkins (c.1490-1555) became one of the wealthiest inhabitants of Plymouth by the 1520s. He dealt mostly in the traditional export market of the Bay of Biscay, sending cloth and tin from Plymouth’s hinterland in exchange for salt and wine, though he also made some of the earliest English trade voyages to Guinea and

Brazil. Hawkins, who served as receiver, mayor, and MP for Plymouth, was the leading figure in the port’s mercantile and naval ascendance under the Tudors. In a series of disputes among the havens of Plymouth Sound that rose to Council and Star Chamber in the 1530s, he leveraged his favor with the Henrican government in order to secure rulings that cemented Plymouth’s position as a head port. Furthermore, Hawkins himself invested heavily in Sutton Pool, purchased the nearby manor of Sutton Vautort, and as a naval agent for the Crown helped to build up port defenses.476 The maritime regime of

Hawkins and his allies made Plymouth a storehouse of marine resources and expertise – a social environment in which his sons, John and William, along with their cousin Francis

Drake began their training.

Whereas the Hawkins family had long been engaged in maritime trade, the

Champernowne family exemplifies how Devon gentry families – particularly those of the

Protestant cohort associated with Peter Carew’s 1554 rebellion – gradually moved into the business circles of the southern county ports. The family of future vice-admiral

Arthur Champernowne (c.1524-1578) had been landowners in the South Hams region with strong ties to the Henrican court. Arthur’s kin included early Protestant nobles in the

476 John William Blake, ed., Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1942; reprint, Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967), 2: 299-301; Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth, 18-37. 176

Carew and Denny families; his marriage to the daughter of the courtier Henry Norris in

1547 furthered his fortune and landholdings. He moved into royal service early in his career, through which he held a number of county offices prior to his rise to the admiralty.

Champernowne’s role in the suppression of the of 1549 and association with Wyatt’s plot five years later connoted his Protestant affiliation. The marriage of Arthur’s sister, Katherine, into the Gilbert, then the Raleigh families furthered the Champernownes’ maritime interests in south Devon. Arthur’s son and nephews – half-brothers Humphrey Gilbert, Adrian Gilbert, and Walter Raleigh – would chase careers together in naval and mercenary service, as well as New World enterprises.477 Indeed, as early as the first year of his appointment to the vice-admiralty,

Arthur himself was suspected of complicity in reprisals against Flemish shippers at

Dartmouth.478

Beginning with Arthur’s involvement in the Plymouth operations of the La Tour fleet, the Champernownes became a magnet for Huguenot volunteer recruiting in the

English southwest. Henry Champernowne, veteran of the Second War of Religion and nephew to Arthur, set off to join the western French campaign in early November 1568, reporting to Cecil the movements of the army of the comte de Montgomery in Poitou.479

Champernowne headed a group of 200 English cavalry in Huguenot losses at Jazeneuil and Jarnac in early 1569, witnessing the death of Condé in the latter battle. Henry’s countrymen and relations were among the leading volunteers: Gawine Champernowne,

477 Raleigh’s father, also Walter, served as deputy vice-admiral for the county under Mary I. The Gilberts were based near Dartmouth. 478 See the belated testimony of Flemish merchants in SP 70/98, f.19r (“The Duke of Alva to the Spanish Ambassador in England,” 8 May 1568). 479 SP 70/103, f. 131r-v (“Henry Champernowne to Cecil,” 28 Nov. 1568). 177

Walter and Carew Raleigh, Philip Budocushyde, Edward Barkley, and others.480 Many in that group remained until 1570, and in the case of the Raleigh brothers gained their first military experience in those campaigns. Champernowne expressed a strong sense of shared religious commitment with his French allies in his reports to Cecil. After the

Calvinist loss at Moncontour, he recited a list of “5 hoopes” that included “that god will not so geve us over in to the hand of owre enymis,” that the Queen would send more reinforcements, and a hope that after a brave death “we shall enjoye perpetuall fellicytye.”481 Intertwined with intelligence on military movements in another letter, he prays that “god send us his peace to the to the utter confusion of his foes.”482

Henry and cousin Gawine cultivated close relationships with Condé, Navarre,

Albret, and other Huguenot leaders. When Henry returned to La Rochelle with reinforcements from Devon in September 1569, he spoke of his party being entertained by the city governors to a degree that “mygtse verry well content greater parsonages than owrs.”483 Navarre conveyed a personal letter of thanks for a “good troop of gentlemen” and orders to report to Coligny’s camp.484 Contemporary Calvinist writer La Popelinière painted the arrival of the Champernownes and other southwesterners in heroic strokes, noting that they marched under a banner that read “Det Mihi Virtus Finem” (“my death is virtuous”); de Serres adds that the English cavalry were honorably received by the

480 Thomas Churchyard, A generall rehearsall of warres (London, 1579), 79 (unpaginated). Other participants include: Richard Kirkham, Hugh Udall, Thomas Courtenay, William Fonte, Richard Keyes, and Thomas Atkins. 481 SP 70/108, f. 127v-8r (“Henry Champernowne to Cecil,” 15 Oct. 1569). See also his praise of the Queen’s “earnest zeale to maintain [God’s] quarrell” in SP 70/108, f. 96r-v (“Henry Champernoun to the Queen,” 28 Sept. 1569). 482 SP 70/105, f. 171r (“Henry Champernoun to Cecil,” 6 Feb. 1569). It should be noted that Champernowne’s invocation follows the motif of prayers against the enemy found in the Psalms (e.g. 35, 55, 69, 83, and 109). Many of these were known to be sung among French Calvinist soldiers, as well as English sailors, during this period. 483 SP 70/108, f. 99r (“Henry Champernoun to Cecil,” 28 Sept. 1569). 484 SP 70/108, f. 103r (“The Princes of Navarre and Condé to [Henry] Champernoun,” 28 Sept. 1569). 178 grandees.485 When Henry died in battle in May 1570, condolences flowed from the grandees back to England. The sieur de Saint-Simon professed to Cecil on the occasion that there was “until the day of his death, to my knowledge, never a more honored or esteemed in the army.”486 Albret wrote to Elizabeth to express her grief and ask for special considerations for his widow and children.487

Still, relations between the Champernownes and Huguenot aristocrats continued after the death of Henry. Gawine stayed in western France and remained in the employ of the Calvinist party during the 1570s. His ties with the cause deepened to the point that he married Roberda, the daughter of Montgomery, in 1572. The match marked the commensuration of what seems to have been a long relationship with the Montgomerys.

When Sir Arthur traveled to Normandy in order to complete the arrangements in April

1571, he wrote to Burghley that the marriage “hath beene so longe in talke of.” Meeting the comte for the first time, he gushed that “I fynd my L. the comte synce my comming hyther to be such a one in deede, as I allwayes estimed him to be.”488 Soon after, Arthur recommended and helped to convey Montgomery into the service of the Queen, who the

Frenchman was said to “so honoureth as yf he were hyr naturall subiect.”489

Arthur’s outpouring of grief in a letter to the Queen following the Huguenot massacre at Paris in 1572 is difficult to comprehend without bearing in mind his familial

485 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 363r; Jean de Serres, Memoires de la troisième guerre civile, et des derniers troubles de France (Lyon, 1571), 429. 486 SP 70/112, f. 130r (“M. de St. Simon to Cecil,” 24 June 1570). 487 SP 70/113, f. 8r (“The Queen of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth,” 6 July 1570). 488 SP 70/117, f. 136r (“Sir Arthur Champernoun to Lord Burghley,” 19 Apr. 1571). As late as 1575, Gawine was still in western France, helping La Noue to seize further funding for the Cause from monies collected for the King’s soldiers at Perrigues (Cal. Salisbury MS, 2: 112 (“Sir Arthur Champernoun to Lord Burghley,” 27 Sept. 1575). It appears that Gawine and Lady Robarda later divorced amidst accusations of adultery. See SP 12/154, f. 113-16 (“Notarial instrument of the sentence of divorce between Gawin Champernowne and his wife Lady Robarda Champernowne, alias Montgumbrie, for adultery with Christopher Melhuishe and John Gatchell, domestic servants,” 27 Jul. 1582). 489 SP 70/117, f. 136r. 179 ties to the French cause, which added a deeply personal element to the bloody religious politics across the Channel. Champernowne portrayed the deaths as a bellwether of an encroaching international Catholic conspiracy, which he foresaw would soon turn to western France “to beate that poore remaynder from Rochell, and other places of ther lyves defens.”490 On the other side, he made the case for English involvement in a greater

Calvinist league to defend the city in what was a common cause:

We be embarked all in one ship, shall we lye still, whyle they stayve against the stormes of this common tempest? or if they the whiles make a wrack, may we be safe? ... Of one side, your highnes may see flushing, the flemmyngs, and germans, in good labour, on the other side, Rochell and the persequnted frenchemen, at hard point, the tale of the husband mans faggot is common, we be made up with them in one band togethers. Much easier is it with them to stand in strength then without them, to holde from being broken.491

His suggested course of action that follows is perhaps the quintessential expression of the concerted role, then just coming into focus, for private activism in government policy towards Protestant causes in France and elsewhere abroad:

your highnes might permitt some rashe willfull fello, lyke my sellf, against your majesties will, to adventure the supplieing of Rochell ... and even as my sellf, may be in the eyes of frenche papistes, lykely to attempt suche a part, considering my freendship and match with ther adversaries ... so woold I most willingly, hazard lyfe, goods, & credyt I have, in passing the enterpris redy to digest, with settled mynd the infamy, the exile, the shewes of offens, that shuld be published against me, so that, I wer the meane whyles sure, they shuld be but shewes, and my sellf sure of your majesties favour.492

These are the words of the Vice-Admiral of England’s most important provincial maritime county to his Queen. Champernowne was one of the foremost in a coalition of gentry whose activities in the western Channel reconciled their official duties and private interests, which in some cases included commercial, familial, or confessional advocacy.

490 Lansdowne MS 15, 199r (“A. Champernown [to the Queen],” 8 Oct. 1572). 491 Ibid., 199v-200r. 492 Ibid., 200v. 180

The sea war then erupting in the Channel provided an avenue for maritime enterprises that cut across all of those interests.

The western Channel privateering system, 1569-76

In 1569, Anglo-Huguenot collaboration expanded beyond the elite-constructed fleet and arms trade to the formation of a more ambitious armée de mer: a dragnet of

French, English, and Dutch corsairs targeting Catholic shipping in the Biscayan basin,

English Channel, and North Sea. The initial impetus behind the campaign was the catastrophic failure of the Huguenot land army at Jarnac and Moncontour; in the former battle, the Calvinists lost their senior army and navy commanders (Condé and La

Tour).493 Faced with narrowing options on land, the grandees perceived control over the

Saintonge-Aunis coast and enhanced international support as the remaining pillars of the

Huguenot cause.

The task of reorganizing the Huguenot military effort towards a sea war fell to

Jacques de Sores, who succeeded La Tour as Vice-Admiral of the Rochelais fleet. De

Sores’s personal expertise in long-distance plunder, knowledge of Norman corsair networks, and previous collaborations with the English allies of the Huguenot party recommended him to the task. By the late summer of 1569, he had rebuilt the fleet to nearly 30 “bons navires” and resumed assaults on French and Flemish shipping; twelve

Flemish and four Basque vessels taken by the Huguenots in September were fitted out as corsairs at La Rochelle and added to their ranks.494 The following month, de Sores sailed to Wight and petitioned Elizabeth to again open English ports to the Huguenot fleet. In

493 Barbot, 18: 343-4. 494 Le Frère, 1: 301r. 181 spite of continuing diplomatic tensions with Charles IX regarding English aid to the

Huguenots, the promise of French naval support amidst the threat of the Northern

Rebellion tipped the scales in favor of a continued alliance.495

The Navarrese admiralty, in close connection with Albret’s council, expanded its issuance of congés to supplement the de Sores fleet in the summer of 1569. The terms of the commissions were tied to the immediate military needs of the Huguenot party in the ongoing war; most ships were victualed and launched, and their prizes adjudicated at La

Rochelle. Yet increasingly the admiralty’s work involved mobilizing and coordinating a multinational Calvinist naval force. La Rochelle thus represented one node in a plunder network that encompassed launching and victualing ports in Devon, Cornwall, and

Dorset; the prize markets of Wales and southern Ireland; and the roving commission system operated by the Prince of Orange throughout the Channel region.

From the beginning, this system was broad in scope, targeting Catholic shipping unrelated to the French conflict, as well as in scale, reaching from the shipping lanes of the Channel to Africa and the Caribbean. Knowingly and under pressure from Seville,

Charles IX took measures to choke off the sea lanes to La Rochelle on the western coast.

The main royal galley fleet under the command of Antonin Escalin de La Garde, l’Amiral du Levant and the escadrille de la Gironde of Louis Lur-Saluce d’Uza anchored late in the year at Brouage and Olonne, respectively. Their mission (to “brider les courses des

Rochelois...et leur interdire tout les trafic marin”) reflected a cognizance of the

495 Dietz, “Corsairs,” 289. 182 importance of Rochelais privateering – along with the commune’s foreign allies – to the

Huguenot war effort.496

Therefore, at the beginning of 1570, the French war became redefined as a naval struggle for control of the pertuis d’Antioche and pertuis Breton – La Rochelle’s main sea lanes and the “turntable” of Atlantic navigation for western France.497 With international support, the de Sores fleet used an amphibious assault to successfully seize key royal positions at Brouage, Oléron, and Olonne.498 At sea, La Noue reported that Rochelais- licensed corsairs garnered 300,000lt for the Huguenot war effort; prizes taken from Spain during the Third War of Religion amounted to 100,000 ducats.499 Success at sea laid the groundwork for La Noue’s successful counterattack on land, in which Calvinist forces regained control of most of Saintonge, Aunis, and Poitou. In large part, privateering secured favorable peace terms for the Huguenot party; the August edict that ended the

Third War specifically prohibited privateering attacks on domestic vessels as well as voyages or treaties made with foreign communities.500 The war ended with the Rochelais fleet commanding the Atlantic coast from Mont-Saint-Michel south to .

This turned out to be a fleeting détente, however. Rochelais-launched corsairs remained active in northern European and Atlantic waters during the interwar of summer

496 La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 366r; Roncière, 4: 105-07. Together, the royal fleets numbered 52 ships, thus representing most of the permanent French navy fleet outside of Guyenne. However, Huguenot privateering drew attention from international Catholicism from the beginning of the Third War of Religion: Philip II and the Guise Cardinal of Lorraine had discussed the assassinations of Coligny and Condé as early as the summer of 1568. 497 De Pablo, “L’armée de mer,” 69. 498 Le Frère, 1: 444r; Roncière, 4: 108-15. 499 La Noue, Discours Politiques, 695; Barbot, 18: 368. 500 See Article 19 of the Édit de Saint-Germain, which prohibits Calvinist “voyages, intelligences, traittez, négociations et contrats faits avec tous princes et communautez estrangères, introduction desdits estrangers ès villes et autres endroits de nostre royaume.” “Edit de St-Germain, sur la pacification des troubles de royaume,” 91-9 in “Pièces justificatives” of La France protestante, ou Vies des protestantes français qui se sont fait un nom dans l’histoire depuis les premiers temps de la reformation, ed. Eugène and Émile Haag (Paris, 1858). 183

1570-2, perhaps amounting to a fleet of 60 sail plus additional Elizabethan support ships.

Their activity further surged at the start of the Fourth War in later 1572, then reached its peak in numbers and organization during the Fifth and Sixth Wars between 1574-7. In those latter years, Mervault reports that the sea army brought in nearly 2 million livres in prizes; Barbot adds that the total fleet of 70 ships yielded enough plunder to fund the war by itself.501

The archives of the Calvinist sea army

A total reconstruction of Calvinist privateering traffic in the 1560s and 1570s is not possible. The most direct surviving evidence attesting to the privateering campaigns are the registers of the Rochelais admiralty and the royal council of Jeanne d'Albret in

1569 and 1570. The register of the admiralty contains summary notes on the daily proceedings of the court: proclamations by the prince of Navarre, the texts of congés signed by de Sores or Navarre, and decisions rendered by the judges on prize cases and civil disputes. Council transcripts, which run in chronological and topical parallel with the admiralty record, touch on that body's sale of ecclesiastical plunder and its regulation of local marine traffic during the Third War of Religion; as such, it places naval business in the broader context of the Huguenot party's fiscal mobilization.502 Unfortunately, a total register of commissions granted and prizes taken under the Rochelais admiralty during the middle Wars of Religion does not exist. Supplementary evidence from English

501 Pierre Mervault, “Recueil de la naissance, progrez, accroissement et décadence de la ville de la Rochelle, avec le catalogue de tous les maires et de ce qui s’est passé de plus mémorable pendant leur mairie depuis Robert de Montmiral jusques à Jean Guiton, dernier maire," Médiathèque Michel-Crépeau (La Rochelle), Fonds ancien, MS 58, f. 113. Barbot, 18: 230. From the notarial record of 1574-5, Delafosse finds that the number of ships cited in privateering-related contracts (61) outnumbered those involved in conventional trade. Delafosse, “Corsaires,” 190. 502 The admiralty register (running September 1569-June 1570) is contained in ADCM, B 174 ("Amirauté de La Rochelle, 1569-70"). Abstracts for many of the documents have been printed in Bardonnet, ed., “Registre,” 191-270. The register of the council (running June 1569-August 1570) is fully transcribed in De Gaulle, ed., "Conseil," 125-37. 184

HCA cases testifies to the uses of Navarrese commissions outside of the narrow period of

1569-70, and in international waters. These same cases also give some indication of the extents of the Huguenot support network in the maritime counties of England.

Nonetheless, this evidence is anecdotal. The predominance of HCA cases initiated against receivers of stolen goods demonstrates the likelihood that many prizes taken by

English ships were not redeemed in France (and thus not recorded by any legal authority).

While the patchwork record obscures a full view of the privateering campaigns, comparisons of the existing registers and analysis of the illustrative case evidence found in the English admiralty archive reveal a great deal about their legal organization, geographical extents, and material consequences. The registers of the Rochelais admiralty and council coincide with the launching of the international sea army under de Sores and the ensuing wave of corsair activity that brought an end to the Third War of Religion.

While far from comprehensive, together they provide a detailed record of the maritime regime operated by Albret and her councilors in cooperation with an allied faction within the commune. English admiralty archives provide the most evidence for the Rochelais privateering regime outside of France. Cases with defendants who held foreign commissions (typically French, Dutch, or Portuguese), or received the resulting prize goods in English ports and havens, dominated High Court business after 1568. The case record is particularly sensitive to the influence of the French civil wars, reflected in the fact that executions for piracy in England mirrored the escalation of the naval dimension of that conflict.503

503 Total executions are provided in Lansdowne MS 142, f. 83. 1561: 13 1567: 11 1570: 20 185

English High Court material provides a narrative complement to the available

French legal evidence. Full depositions of crewmembers, their abettors, victims, and eyewitnesses were recorded for each case before the court's judges in London, though distance sometimes required that local officials question witnesses in vice-admiralty jurisdictions such as Devon. Interrogatories prepared by court proctors and solicitors in each case determined the line of questioning; notaries summarized the answers of deponents, which are collected in the archive's Examination Books.504 Readers should approach the depositions with an awareness of the tendency of defendants to provide self- serving, deceiving responses to questioning. Careful discernment is key. Many details in

1573: 28 1575: 4 1577: 16 1579: 14 1580: 6 504 Examination Books were compiled separately for the criminal and civil sessions of the High Court. The books containing the most relevant material on French and Dutch-commissioned privateering are those of the criminal court, which can be found within HCA 1. The enlargement of the criminal jurisdiction of the Lord Admiral’s court – accomplished by the 1535 “Act concerning Pirates and Robbers of the Sea” and the 1537 “Act for Punishment of Pirates and Robbers of the Sea” – were the key to the reorganization and expansion of the admiralty during the sixteenth century. These measures strengthened the king’s juridical command over English mariners by extending common law procedure to offenses committed super altum mare or in foreign havens. Whereas the civil or maritime law typically applied in overseas cases (considered “foreign” law in England) did not allow for the application of the death sentence, the Henrican acts allowed the Lord Admiral’s court to try maritime crime as if it had occurred within the realm. Convening under commissions of oyer and terminer, the High Court’s criminal session used common law and jury procedure, though the law administered remained civil and maritime. The offenses covered in the oyer and terminer sessions included those most commonly generated by subjects under foreign service: piracy, robbery and theft, murder, and abetting on land. The Examination Books produced during the court’s civil sessions, which dealt with instance and prize matters, can be found in HCA 13. These are less relevant volumes, given that most prizes originating in the French and Dutch wars had to be legally redeemed abroad; those that were brought into English harbors were mostly considered illegitimate and therefore fell to the criminal court. Still, the HCA 1 Examination Books also contain depositions for many civil cases, suggesting that the distinction between the criminal and civil functions of the court are more apparent in archival organization than in contemporary practice. The pertinent volumes include HCA 1/37 (1565-9, London), 1/38 (1565-70, country), 1/39 (1569-77, London), and 1/40 (1572-82); and HCA 13/16 (1566-9), 13/17 (1569-70), 13/18 (1570-1), 13/19 (1572-3), 13/20 (1573-4), 13/21 (1574-5), and 13/22 (1575-7). Many thanks to Colin Greenstreet and Richard Blakemore for their helpful insights in contextualizing the production of depositions by the High Court. The activities of the Vice-Admiralty courts were mostly confined to carrying out oyer and terminer commissions directed to them by the Crown, which directed their officials to assist the Lord Admiral in criminal matters. Devon’s records can be found in HCA 101/50, in the various “country” Examination Books available for the 1560s in HCA 1, and otherwise disbursed throughout the general Examination Books for the 1570s. 186 testimonies cannot be absolutely confirmed using outside sources, but information corroborated internally by a number of witnesses can be treated more reliably.

The depositions evidence English, French, and Dutch uses of Huguenot commissions outside of the Third War of Religion. Deponents often recount the details of their voyages and, in seeking to justify their actions, the logic involved in identifying ships as targets for reprisal. By detailing how crews were assembled, ventures funded, ships victualed, and prizes distributed, the testimonies reveal the full extents of the

Huguenot support network abroad. Moreover, these narratives offer a unique perspective on how privateering crews interpreted their commissions – a particularly important aspect of the Calvinist sea war given the confessional particularity of the congés issued at La

Rochelle. Finally, they reveal the social networks that connected privateers in the

Channel over the course of many voyages. Court interrogatories typically required that deponents recount their personal histories – sometimes for many years – prior to the cases themselves. Their stories make it possible to create a prosopography of participants that includes their paths into Calvinist service, their social pools, and (in conjunction with lists of defendants in indictments issued by the Court) the composition of the crews on which they served.

Maritime legalism and the transformation of Rochelais commerce

During the Third War of Religion, as the surviving registers make clear, the western admiralty, Navarrese royal council, and Rochelais communal government virtually embodied a single institution. Rochelais civic officials, drawn from the Pontard faction loyal to Albret and the Huguenot party, held key positions in the regime. Jean

Salbert sat on the Queen’s council during his tenure as maire of the commune. Moreover, 187 the judges of the admiralty during the sea war, Pierre du Bouchet and Joseph Guillaudeau, belonged to the Pontard faction. Guillaudeau was the member of a leading Calvinist patrician family. While acting as both judge and lawyer in the admiralty, he also served as avocat for the city’s Presidial court.505 A number of Huguenot military figures, grandees, and members of Albret’s court joined these local leaders on the council.506 Like other mobilizing bodies in the Huguenot-held areas of the Midi, the council worked toward organizing the wealth of Huguenot towns and churches in La Rochelle’s banlieue.

With the assent of the young prince of Navarre, it also began to exercise the authority given to admiralty on the western coast, taking up local maritime regulation, the adjudication and sale of prizes, and the financing of the Calvinist fleet. Indeed, many of the court’s verdicts make reference to accompanying decisions made in council under

Albret’s direction.507

Close working relationships among the officials of admiralty and council invited situations that might have been considered conflicts of interest in another context. Yet both bodies, in a sense, dealt in the liquidation of Catholic assets; accounts of the sale of bells and other plundered church goods appear alongside those of prize cargoes taken at sea in the council record. Admiralty judge du Bouchet simultaneously served on council

505 Joseph’s acquisition of the civic title of pair in 1574 signified his family’s entry into the ranks of the Rochelais bourgeois elite. His brother Pierre, who also held legal stations in the Presidial and admiralty, attained the rank of pair and, in 1620, échevin. Joseph’s son, also Joseph, was a lawyer, member of the consistoire, and a city diarist. See the family history recounted in “Diaire de Joseph Guillaudeau, Sieur de Beaupréau,” Archives Historiques de la Saintonge et d’Aunis 38 (1908), 9-12. 506 Other identified members include admiral Jacques de Sores; the military lieutenant Charles de Téligny (son-in-law to admiral Coligny); Charles Pousard de Fors; Nicolas Compaing, sieur de Villette et de Fresnay, chancellier de Navarre; Jean d’Escodéca, de Boisse en Perigold; François de Fou, baron du Vigean; captain Quincerot de Navarre; Picard noble de Regny; Charles de Quellenec, dit de Soubise; and Jean Coras. 507 E.g. ADCM, B 174 f. 3v, 88r-v. The legitimating authorities named in commissions, verdicts, and other acts of the admiralty in 1569-70 varied. Other acts invoked the “princes de Navarre et de Condé” in tandem (or “messeigneurs les princes”), others plainly derive authority from decisions of Albret and particular councilors. The irregularity supports the notion that the institution came to represent the collective government of the grandees, rather than the bare authority of the admiral. 188 as a commissioner for the sale of ecclesiastical goods. In September 1569, he adjudicated a case in favor of a Bordeaux corsair whose ship, once a Catholic-owned gallion of

Candale, du Bouchet had previously seized and sold for the use of the cause.508 The council employed specialized officers to deal with the proceeds of the sea war. An avocat and procureur within the admiralty collected the portions of prize money belonging to the Calvinist cause, compiled summary reports, and delivered the proceeds to the council each week.509 The council’s treasurer and superintendent managed revenues and outlays related to the corsair fleet.510 Under council oversight, the admiralty became the main arm of the Huguenot fiscal state, funneling the proceeds of the sea army into the ongoing

Huguenot military effort, regional churches, and poor relief. Together, the institutions practiced a more ambitious form of the hand-to-mouth ecclesiastical plundering that drove Huguenot financing during the early Wars of Religion.

While nominally adhering to the civil law procedure common within mariners’ courts in northwest Europe, the Rochelais admiralty adopted novel legal standards that served the grandees’ objectives of fundraising and mobilizing their allies abroad. This began with the congés provided to prospective corsairs, which created a class of subjects on the basis of a political and ideological mission. Though many invoked the statutory authority of the prince of Navarre as admiral of Guyenne, the commissions frame the service of the holder broadly in terms of serving the Calvinist cause (“l’advencement de la vraye religion et deffense de la cause généralle contre les ennemis et adversaires d’icelle”).511 The passports included in the commissions also indirectly constituted an

508 See De Gaulle, ed., “Conseil,” 126 and ADCM, B 174 f. 2v-4r. 509 Their commission appears in De Gaulle, ed., “Conseil,” 129. 510 Dietz, “Corsairs,” 284. 511 ADCM, B 174 f. 7v. 189 international support network for the sea army, by requesting governors of Protestant ports and havens to “lend them favor, aid, and comfort.”512 Nor was the theater for reprisal limited to French waters. The commissions exhorted the corsairs and their coastal network of coreligionists to “make war, drive against, and harm the enemies and adversaries of the Reformed religion and the greater cause, against all vessels and nations indifferently” or elsewhere “Spaniards, Portuguese, Flemings, and others following the

Romish party.”513 The language of the congés advanced a framework for political organization that was disruptive to state sovereignty and international customs of the sea

– a fleet whose constituents could be legally organized and deployed on the basis of religious conscience rather than strict subjecthood.

It is tempting to dismiss the religious politics of the commissions as a wanton expedient for rebel fundraising. The grandees certainly came to rely on the tenth-shares of prize money (dixièmes) owed to the admiral and the “cause générale” from each corsair; escalation of the sea war through a general call-to-arms against international

Catholic shipping amplified potential Huguenot profits. Still, because the congés also granted Protestant-helmed vessels immunity from plunder, victims made frequent and successful appeals to court prize judgments by claiming adherence to a Protestant confession. The religious identity of petitioners became the subject of lengthy deliberations in which the judges called claimants from both sides to furnish evidence.

Noel Bretault, master of a victim ship of Olonne, claimed in a March 1570 appeal that, while he had taken to shipping Catholic goods out of sheer poverty, he had been a

512 Ibid. The full clause reads "priant tous chefz, cappitaynes, maistres des portz et havres, de le laisser passer en toutte seuretté avecq sondit navire, équippage et prinses qu'il aura faictes, et en tout luy prester faveur, ayde et confort, si mestier est." 513 ADCM, B 174 f. 4r, 41v-2r. 190 member of a Reformed congregation for the past five years. Though the specific proof offered by Bretault was not recorded, the subsequent decision shows that the court was evidently satisfied: it ordered the return of his ship, although the cargo was deemed

“bonne prise.”514

Both corsairs and their victims often struggled to provide direct confirmations of religious identity, relying instead on pragmatic or circumstantial evidence. Documents like charter parties, congés, or letters that established the geographic origins of crews or their shipments held the most weight. In several cases, the discovery of a sauf-conduit from a royal admiralty official or a Catholic noble sufficed to identify a ship as legitimate prize.515 François de Sauray gave an impassioned defense of his faith at court in May

1570, citing his residence in La Rochelle during the recent “troubles” and his desire to

“help those of his religion and not its enemies, with his traffic.” He and his fellow merchants of Bordeaux had been plundered simply because they stopped at Olonne, a garrisoned port nearby whose resident nobles were staunch Catholics. The corsair Jehan

Moynet played the part of a prosecutor in the case, arguing that being of the Reformed religion “didn’t give [de Sauray] the right to trade with the enemies of that religion nor to carry goods to them,” and adding that the merchants ought not to have even stopped in the port when they had a good wind to continue to La Rochelle.516 The confessional language of the commissions and the court standards for religious evidence that backed it, however imperfect, were a concerted attempt of the grandees to bring Rochelais commerce into alignment with the greater goals of the Huguenot movement. They sought

514 ADCM, B 174 f. 52r, 57r-8v. 515 ADCM, B 174 f. 43v-4r, 55v-7v, 61r-2r. Passports and congés supplied by La Milleraye, the Vice- served as decisive evidence in several cases. 516 ADCM, B 174 f. 82r-v, 85r-92r. 191 to discipline maritime activity in the western French trading region by moralizing and militarizing interactions among vessels, as well as between La Rochelle and its trading ports. In this sense, the admiralty functioned much like the salt loans and other regulatory measures enacted by the council over commerce. All reflected the grandees’ view of trade as a wartime resource to be allocated for the benefit of a network of Huguenot cities in the Midi and their allies abroad.

Court commissions created a new, regulated prize market at La Rochelle. A small contingent of corsair ships, financed and launched by the grandees themselves, cruised the eastern Atlantic and Channel regions on a permanent basis. Yet most of the voyages making up the Calvinist “fleet” during the sea war were private profit ventures, organized individually. In terms of their legal documentation, it is difficult to distinguish corsair voyages from other local streams of maritime business. Like in ordinary trading ventures,

French corsair investors arranged their finances and itineraries in notarial contracts

(charte-parties, accords, or covenances). The admiralty court registered such agreements in the process of issuing declarations of bonne prise to prize-holders. They typically reiterate the language of the congés, stating the ship’s orders to “conduct the ship … to sea and there to make war and drive against the enemies of the Reformed religion” and to return all prizes to the city for adjudication.

By naming investors, the contracts also reveal a great deal about the business networks that supported the sea war locally. Marcel Delafosse has comprehensively examined the corsair-related contracts in the notarial registers for La Rochelle between the Third and Sixth Wars of Religion. Matching patterns of privateer financing in late sixteenth-century England, syndicates of officers, merchants, and shipowners 192 predominated at La Rochelle.517 Delafosse identifies an inner circle of about twelve merchant members of the Rochelais bourgeoisie that formed a stable interest in city contracts. Calvinist nobles from Poitou and merchants from Anjou and Normandy frequently joined them; not coincidentally, these were two of the strongest source regions for refugees to the city during the post-1568 troubles.518

In addition to the planning role played by the Pontard faction, admiralty and notarial evidence attests to the organizational roles played by prominent members of the port community in the corsair syndicates. Of the nine Rochelais men, seafarers by occupation, who received commissions or commanded corsair ships in 1569-70, two held the civic rank of echevin and three were pairs. Nor was this group new to the business of plunder. Among them was the famed adventurer Guillaume Mesmin, who had learned his craft in the French crews active in the Caribbean during the early 1550s.519 The admiralty allocated the largest prize taken by the corsairs – a 900-ton Venetian carrack called the

Vergi, captured by de Sores off the Isle of Wight – for the exclusive use of the commune.

La Rochelle’s mayor, echevins, and pairs collectively invested in the ventures of the ship, subsequently renamed the Grand Huguenote, which sailed in the spring of 1570 under the command of Mesmin and Hélies Howe.520

Contemporary declamations of the corsairs by a segment of high Rochelais merchants have led some scholars to conclude that the sea war had a detrimental effect on local trade.521 Quantitative testing of that judgment has been limited, owing to the

517 See Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, chapter 7, and particularly 135-6. 518 Delafosse, “Corsaires,” 196-98, 203-06. See also Pascal Rambeaud, “The Refugees in La Rochelle during the Third War of Religion, 1568-1570,” French History 14, no.1 (2000), 9. 519 Note that I have considered only men whose residences were named in the admiralty record. 520 ADCM, B 174 f. 67v. A Déclaration de bonne prise of April 10, 1570 states that Mesmin and Howe arranged a venture via notarial contract with the mayor, echevins, and pairs as a body. 521 Examples of contemporary denunciations of corsairing can be found in Barbot, 18: 22. 193 difficult task of compiling aggregate economic data for the commune from notarial registers. Rochelais chroniclers noted declines in sea traffic owing to the conditions of the wars, particularly when royal blockades closed La Rochelle’s sea lanes in 1569 and late

1572.522 Delafosse attributed local economic reversals to poor salt and wine harvests in the early 1570s. Based on his examinations of local notarial volumes, he contends that wartime trade was buoyant overall, and that corsair business compensated for lost trade during periods of downturn.523

Clearly, caution is necessary when extending any of these generalizations to the entire port population. The sea war benefitted groups within the commune unequally.

Unskilled seamen, whose livelihoods were most imperiled at times of trade contraction, had strong incentive to join the crews of corsair vessels. Because such enterprises required large crews, demand, and therefore pay, was high; crews customarily received one-half of the profits from prizes.524 Investors found themselves in a more precarious position, with the remaining half-share of profits being split between the proprietor and victualer of the commissioned ship. The most successful promoters, such as local seigneur Pierre des Villates, ensured themselves superprofits by contracting and victualing their own ships. Investors who did not own a viable homme de guerre struggled to make profitable (or “saving”) voyages. Indeed, this goes some way toward explaining the outspokenness of many grands marchands toward the commission system:

522 Barbot, 17: 368-70; La Popelinière, La vraye et entière histoire, 329v-30r. 523 Delafosse, “Corsaires,” 209-13. 524 To put this in perspective, English privateering crews collectively received 1/3 of captured prizes in the same period. In England and France, crewmembers received “shares” (or “payes”) according to their place within the shipboard hierarchy. Even for a common English seaman who received just one or two shares, a successful privateering voyage yielded excellent pay, amounting to four or five pounds per man for a month of work. See the discussions of English privateering wages in Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 39-45; Cheryl Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men: The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1580-1603 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 102-08; and Alwyn A. Ruddock, “The Trinity House at Deptford in the Sixteenth Century,” English Historical Review 65 (1950), 469. 194 few Rochelais merchants of this stature had their own ships.525 Furthermore, they relied on the availability of mariners and vessels to carry off trade – shipping resources that the commissions threatened to divert. In fact, in 1569, the “preud’hommes mariniers”

(mariners’ labor court) for Marennes and other Saintongeais ports appealed to Albret’s council in the midst of a conflict with Rochelais merchants, who had registered a complaint that the service of mariners in the Huguenot fleet was detrimental to the

“traffic of merchandise.”526

Such complaints appear to be more reflective of the intramural social conflicts caused by the sea war than the catastrophic failure of city trade. Yet the patterns of

Rochelais commerce shifted significantly between the Third and Sixth Wars of Religion.

A consequence, perhaps expected, of the corsairs and the grandees’ wartime regulation of trade was the contraction of the city’s traditional Catholic markets. French Catholic and

Iberian merchants arriving at the city, formerly protected by its “free port” privileges, faced harassment and the seizure of their goods.527 Commercial ties dissolved rapidly with western Catholic ports that used sea routes along the Biscay basin, most notably those in Brittany, which saw the greatest rates of attack at the hands of Huguenot- sponsored corsairs.528 While a small number of Rochelais merchants maintained trade with northern Spain, its goods and ships became the primary target of corsairs after 1571.

525 Robert Favreau, Histoire de la Rochelle, ed. Marcel Delafosse (Toulouse: Editions Privat, 1985), 20, 61. Rambeaud notes that, of the grands marchands who appear in notarial volumes between 1568-71, only six owned ships. See Rambeaud, “L’Amiral à La Rochelle,” 136-7. 526 De Gaulle, ed., “Conseil,” 131. The council thwarted the merchants’ complaints by making a proclamation prohibiting mariners from leaving port without permission from de Sores or Albret. 527 Barbot, 17: 269-70. 528 In 1569-70, Breton ships were taken as prizes at twice the rate of other French provinces. Ships from Poitou, Normandy, and Saintonge followed them. 195

At the same time, trade to La Rochelle’s northern, Calvinist markets (England, Scotland, and the Netherlands) remained steady throughout the 1570s.529

Labor markets and international Reformed integration

Huguenot commissions energized the international market for marine labor, bringing together French, English, and Dutch seafarers in port spaces as well as shipboard environments. Mobilization was a diverse social phenomenon in the Channel region. The majority of French seafarers who sailed on corsair ships in the 1560s and 70s originated in coastal Saintonge, particularly Château-d’Oléron, Marennes, or the various small havens of the Arvert peninsula (e.g. , Meschers). Huguenot maritime organization began early in these ports. In October 1562, the Parliament of Bordeaux issued a mass arrêt for 89 Saintongeais crewmen, part of an enclave of Calvinists in the coastal towns of Arvert and Royannais, that had blockaded supply lines to Catholic troops and pillaged ships along the upper Gironde.530 By the start of the Third War of

Religion, Saintongeais Calvinists were well incorporated into the Huguenot war effort being coordinated to their north in Aunis. Another arrêt issued by the Bordelais

Parlement in 1569, which sentenced 579 Saintongeais to death for a wide list of land and sea crimes, confirms the extent of mass mobilization in the province for Huguenot plunder and military operations.531

529 Rambeaud, “L’Amiral à La Rochelle,” 140-2. 530 “Arrêt de la Cour du Parlement de Bordeaux déclarant contumaces et défaillants un grande nombre de Saintongeais et de Bordelais (October 5, 1562),” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français 50 (1901), 190-3. 531 “Arrét du Parlement de Bordeaux condamnant à mort 579 Protestants (April 6, 1569),” Archives historiques du department de la Gironde 13 (1871-2), 400-20. The long list of crimes for the accused (including thefts, sacks of towns, sacrileges against churches and religious houses, carrying of arms, murder, and sexual crimes) makes this one of the most useful lists for identifying participants in the Huguenot land and sea campaigns in the late 1560s. Unfortunately, because of a lack of identifying titles or occupations, it is impossible to distinguish those engaged in the sea war from the land war (and because of the demand for hand-to-hand fighters on fleet vessels, there was a of overlap between these groups). 196

Mobilization for the religious wars occurred alongside a rapid expansion in the number of sailors and shipping resources in coastal Saintonge, which owed to a surge in regional investment in Newfoundland fishing operations.532 Mathurin Thouyn of

Château-d’Oléron exemplifies the entanglement of confessional and commercial activities in the careers of Saintongeais seafarers. Thouyn began his career in local export trade to northern Europe, including England (as early as 1556, he acted as an agent for

London merchants seeking wines). By the 1560s, he had become an experienced pilot and shipowner, “l’un des meilleurs marins du moment” in Atlantic France. Thouyn launched a fishing enterprise, mastering a 200-ton Terreneuvier for Étienne Guillet of the nearby salt depot of Brouage (he was “receveur des tailles” for Saintonge).533 At the same time, the Parlement de Bordeaux identified Thouyn as “admiral de la armée de mer des ysles de Xaintonge” for the Huguenot privateers that appeared along Arvert.534 The

Parlement sentenced him to death in 1562, though his continued involvement in the sea war is apparent from his appearance in the court’s 1569 mass arrêt.535 Thouyn is a prominent example, being a shipowner, but even common Saintongeais mariners would have entered Calvinist service with years of experience on board shipping and fishing vessels. Conversely, war also generated seafaring expertise in the French west, lowering

Where identifiers are present, the list skews heavily toward lower nobles (mostly écuyers) and merchants in coastal cities, the social groups most likely to have supplied skilled labor on board corsairs. 532 Marc Seguin, “Les débuts de la pêche saintongeais à Terre-Neuve (1546-1570),” Les societies littorals du Centre-Ouest Atlantique, ed. Dominique Guillemet and Jacques Peret (Poitiers: Mémoires de la Société des antiquaries de l’Ouest: 1996), 187-202. 533 Champlain ou les portes du nouveau-monde: cinq siècles d’échanges entre le centre-ouest français et l’Amérique du , XVIe-XXe siècles, ed. Michaël Augeron and Dominique Guillemet (La Crèche: Geste éditions, 2004), 62. 534 “Minutes des arrêts (October 16, 1562),” Histoire de la Rèformation à Bordeaux et dans le resort du Parlement de Guyenne, ed. Ernest Gaullieur, volume 1 (Paris, 1884), 553-4. 535 “Arrêt (1569),” 412. 197 the bar for hundreds of landed volunteers to gain shipboard experience on a commissioned vessel.

English mariners from the Channel ports comprise the second major source region for Calvinist privateering labor. The mobilization of mariners from Devon, Cornwall, and

Dorset occurred against the background of Anglo-French cooperation in the grandee war effort in 1568-9. These collaborations, already discussed in this chapter, included the establishment of southwest English ports as havens for corsair traffic, covert arms trade, and volunteer recruitment for the French wars among the Devon gentry.

However, the patterns of English HCA prosecutions in this era suggest that

English entrants into Rochelais service emerged from a 1560s Channel environment in which plunder was already a viable, seasonal avenue for employment. The Anglo-

Norman garrison at Le Havre in 1562, which fostered connected waves of reprisal in the

Channel and the Caribbean, set this precedent. English vessels continued to launch in the

Channel during the middle years of the decade, under commissions that the Lord Admiral issued during another period of war with the Valois.536 The Huguenot Cardinal de

Châtillon, who resided in London during 1566, granted peacetime commissions to

English captains who would bring in French Catholic ships. These backed the privateering voyages – perhaps better described as aggressive trade adventures – undertaken by Martin Frobisher in conjunction with southwestern-helmed vessels in

1566-7.537 Other, state-sponsored opportunities for overseas service emerged after 1568.

536 In 1564, after his installation as Vice-Admiral of Devon, Champernowne was also alleged to be issuing commissions for local ships to take to sea against the French. See HCA 1/35 f. 208v-12r. 537 James McDermott, Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 64, 67. Châtillon commissioned the predations of the Robert in 1566-7, in which Frobisher consorted with ships captained by John Chichester, Ralph Hazelby, and Joseph Harrys. McDermott hypothesizes that the aborted voyage of the Mary Flower to Guinea, underwritten by George Claxton and other Cornish gentlemen in 1565, may have been backed by a Huguenot commission. 198

Overlapping with the wars in the French west, these included deployment in Ireland during the (1569-73) and the Anglo-Dutch expedition against

Spanish-controlled Flushing (1572).

Foreign service socialized English mariners into broader, unconventional networks of entrepreneurship. A statistically significant number of HCA investigations related to Huguenot commissions involved multiple defendants who had previously served together in France, the Low Countries, or in Ireland. By itself, Le Havre seems to have birthed a network of veterans, who afterwards moved fluidly into the piratical

“trade.” When questioned about his involvement in the spoiling of two Spanish ships in

1564, Dartmouth mariner John Tirrell (alias Grigges) related his personal history of involvement in trade to La Rochelle. After his experience at Le Havre, he turned to piracy entirely, joining up with two of the most active pirates of the early 1560s in

Thomas Cobham and Martin Frobisher.538 Through his service in Normandy, John

Hooper, merchant and owner of the Pelican of Topsham, met Augustine Turner of

London, who held commission to spoil Breton vessels. The two joined forces at Dieppe afterwards, taking a vessel off the coast of Brittany.539 Irish soldiering had a similar effect in steering volunteers into Rochelais service.540 Dartmouth-born Humphrey Gilbert, the soldier and early explorer of the Northwest Passage, began his military career at Le

Havre. Subsequently, Gilbert was appointed for a long and notorious tenure as military

538 HCA 1/35, f. 231v-4r. 539 HCA 1/35, f. 177v-80v. See also the 1560s adventures of Andrew White of , who served under Adrian Poynings at Le Havre (HCA 1/38, f. 124r-57r). 540 For example, the case of Richard Hamond, owner of the Elizabeth of Saltash (HCA 1/39, f. 88r-94r). 199 commander of Munster during the Desmond Rebellions. In 1572, he led an expeditionary force of over a thousand volunteers to Flushing in support of the Dutch.541

When Rochelais congés began to be circulated en masse in 1568-9, therefore, networks of English mariners with experience in the organization of plunder business already existed. Whether by ordinary trade voyages, military service, or word of mouth, knowledge of the nature and availability of Huguenot commissions spread quickly in the

Channel ports. The 35-man crew of the Barck Bones organized out of Southampton and

Plymouth in late 1568 with the intention, stated by the master, to “serve the prince of

Condee” at La Rochelle. Knowledge of the recent stream of traffic to La Rochelle and the demand for crew created a new class of mariners, particularly in the Devon and Cornish ports, who sought passage to western France for work. Thus, the Barck Bones, like most other privateering vessels in Southern England, planned a requisite stop in Plymouth for men and victuals.542

The personal narratives of English mariners found in HCA examinations began to transform around the start of the Huguenot war in the west. Even common mariners, seemingly disconnected from the high politics of the Anglo-Huguenot alliance, moved through chains of voyages and enterprises that were now linked in a Calvinist plunder network. Mariner Thomas Hodges arrived at Plymouth in 1568 on board the Black Lion, a vessel in the service of the King of Sweden. William Hawkins may have had a stake in the venture, helping Hodges and the rest of the crew to break bulk and sell the spoils of

541 David Beers Quinn, “Introduction,” The Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, volume 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1940), 3-28. 542 HCA 1/37, f. 179r-80r. Crew lists can be compiled for privateers from HCA indictments and examinations. Even the crews for France-bound privateers outside of Southern England tended to include mariners who joined the voyage at common outbound stops like Portland, Dartmouth, Plymouth, or Falmouth. Other examples abound. Common mariner William Manning travelled to Penryn in 1577 expressly to “take passage to goe to Rochell.” There he joined the crew of John Callice and Robert Hicks, the organizers of the James of Scotland, because they shared that destination. See HCA 1/40, f. 33v-4v. 200 several German vessels that they brought in as prizes. From there, he joined the expedition of Henry Champernowne to campaign under Condé. Hodges transitioned back to sea service afterward, taking French Catholic ships into La Rochelle under license granted by the Guyenne court. Finally, under the same commission, he brought additional

French ships in at Plymouth and Helford.543

Communities of Calvinist refugees in western France and southern England, displaced by persecution and war, facilitated the expansion of Guyennois privateering into a cross-Channel network. Refugee incorporation into privateering commenced in La

Rochelle itself. Barbot estimated that 7,600 Huguenot refugees fled to La Rochelle during the Third War and generally noted their engagement in urban mobilization, in spite of their marginal social status.544 Contemporary studies using notarial data confirm that employment as corsairs offered vast economic opportunity to refugees in an overcrowded city. Arriving from coastal Poitou, Saintonge, Guyenne, and Normandy, the refugee migration marked the physical convergence of French corsair expertise. The male refugee population arrived with a great deal of accumulated maritime and military experience;

38% were merchants or sailors, while another 28% held lower noble titles (such as

écuyer) and were recruited in large numbers to captaincies in the Huguenot army).545

Huguenots who sought refuge in England worked toward the recruitment of mariners for the French wars. Châtillon, besides advocating for Huguenot cause at court, was empowered to license English captains and collect prize revenues remotely on behalf of the western grandees. He used various French and English agents in the southern ports

543 HCA 1/37, f. 191r-4r. 544 Barbot, 17: 266, 18: 358-9. 545 Rambeaud, “Refugees,” 5, 7-9. Rambeaud estimates a slightly smaller influx of refugees (6,600). The émigré enclave had its origins in the cities of Dieppe, Sables d’Olonne, Marennes, Oléron, and the area of the Seudre. 201 in order to communicate with the privateers. Lawrence Coxson, merchant and owner of the Black Lion, claimed to townspeople at Malden that he was the “Cardinall Chascillions man.”546 The Cardinal’s agents purportedly operated in Devon and Cornish ports as well.547

Southampton, with its Francophone refugee community, had a particularly strong connection with Châtillon. Jean Ferey, a merchant of Le Havre and member of the Lord’s

Supper in Southampton’s stranger church, collected his prize money there.548 Its magistrates granted Châtillon the freedom of the city during a brief visit in October 1570.

After the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, French emigrants surged across the

Channel, with the refugee community itself petitioning for English support of the embattled Huguenot cause.549 Failing royal support, the comte de Montgomery – himself an emigrant to the Channel Islands – organized an Anglo-French fleet out of

Southampton and Plymouth for the relief of La Rochelle.550

Prior to their establishment of a military foothold at Brill in 1572, the fleet of the rebel Prince of Orange organized Dutch naval resistance to Seville as émigré residents of

La Rochelle. Admiral Louis of Nassau patterned the enterprises of the Sea Beggars on the

Huguenot precedent, licensing an international volunteer fleet to supplement Dutch force and raise funds for their cause. His tactics encouraged Channel privateering to diversify,

546 Examination of Christopher Cox, HCA 1/39, f. 32r-5r. 547 Charles E. Lart, “The Huguenot Churches and Settlements in the West of England,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 8 (1901-4), 287; HCA 1/38, f. 240v-6v. A Huguenot agent appears in Plymouth in the late 1560s, and a shipowner in Truro (merchant George Byston) claimed to have a license from Châtillon in February 1569. Nicolas de Valée, sieur du Douhet and the sieur de Lamathassière, specifically indicted as “middlemen (entremetteurs), in England, for the [Huguenot] rebels” by the Bordeaux Parlement in 1569, might also have served in a similar capacity. See “Arrêt (1569),” 404. 548 Atkinson, “Châtillon in England,” 172, 244-5. 549 Barbot, 18: 24-5. 550 Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton, 1567-c.1620 (London: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1997), 132-3. 202 linking it to a broader politics of international Calvinism beyond the French wars.

Specifically, Huguenot collaboration with the Dutch commissioners at La Rochelle during the French détente of August 1570 to July 1571 influenced Coligny and Navarre to refocus Huguenot privateering on Spanish shipping.551 The Sea Beggars extended their strategy by establishing a second sea base in the English Solent. Dutch admirals de

Lumbres and van der Marck consorted with French refugee merchant Jean de Beaulieu to finance and launch privateers from Portsmouth.552 Reprisal related to the Dutch revolt peaked in the same year with Humphrey Gilbert’s volunteer expedition to Flushing, which overlapped with a number of private reprisal voyages in the North Sea region.

Captain La Brune of the Rowbarge of La Rochelle, when questioned about leading a convoy of French, English, and Dutch ships in a series of attacks on Channel shipping as they headed toward Flushing, stated that he “came further to make war uppon and agaynst the papists.”553

Crews such as that of the Rowbarge reflected the amalgamated labor force that came to characterize Channel privateering after 1568. The licensing of private ships for mass reprisal began as a contingency of war fundraising exploited by western Huguenot leaders. Yet the commercial market that it created linked the French cause with that of other Calvinist communities of the Channel region. Active international recruitment by the French, then their Dutch emulators, positioned confessional privateering as a viral form of sea enterprise involving thousands of northwest European sailors.

551 Augeron, “Coligny,” 172-6. 552 See Andrew Spicer, “Southampton, Sea Beggars and the Dutch Revolt, 1567-1573,” in From Revolt to Riches: Culture and History of the Low Countries 1500-1700, eds. Theo Hermans and Reinier Salverda (London: UCL Centre for Low Countries Studies, 1993), 74-82. 553 HCA 1/39, f. 137v-8v, 155r-6v. He directed the expedition of two Rochelais ships – the Rowbarge (or Ramberge) and the Post – with Dutch and English support. Also see the examination of Lewis Larder of London, a traveller with Gilbert, who describes his desertion to pillage ships with a group of “western men.” HCA 1/39, f. 130v-1v. 203

Shipboard confessional identity

Seafarers accused of piracy frequently sought to legitimate their ventures before

HCA examiners through defenses cast in what they deemed to be lawful. High officers as well as common mariners understood the source of the commission under which they served and the governing authority that it represented. Simon Labeley of West Lulworth,

Dorset responded to a question regarding his knowledge of an acquaintance suspected of piracy by saying that he “did not understand him to be a piratt but a servitor under

Rochell.”554 He and other examinants understood that Rochalais commissions and the prizes resulting from them – if captured and redeemed properly – were legally legitimate.

But fulfilling a commission in this period required additional commercial and religious subtexts. Experienced crews developed pragmatic methods for “reading” confessional solidarity and difference at sea.

This might be dubbed a shipboard geography of religious politics. Crews understood the network of Protestant ports where they might victual, find refuge, or redeem prize. On the other side, they developed a connected view of international

Catholicism, one that emphasized the organization of Catholic political and commercial networks under Guise and Sevillan power. Sailing from La Rochelle to Scilly under commission from Navarre in early 1571, Cornish gentleman Richard Hamond and the adventurer William Hawkins consorted to spoil the Flying Dragon of Antwerp.

Questioned on the incident, Hamond explained that the Flying Dragon, which was returning from Cadiz, was “of the Lowe Contrey, and soe subiect to the Kinge of

Spayne.”555

554 HCA 1/40, f. 31v-2r. 555 HCA 1/39, f. 88r-94r. 204

While this justification relied on Hamond’s understanding of imperial networks along the façade of Atlantic Europe, other examinants relied on religious readings of their environment. When crew members of the southwestern man-of-war Black Lion were interrogated on their spoiling of a ship of Le Havre in late 1569, the response of Dutch crewman John Johnson was self-evident: they assumed the goods belonged to Catholics

“because they came from Newe Havon.” Within a shifting geography of confession, the

Black Lion used the new possibilities of community and identity to their advantage.

Individual sailors came on board bearing commissions given by the king of Sweden, the

Huguenot Cardinal de Châtillon, Navarre, and Condé. When their victims anxiously produced a passport from the English Privy Council, the crew branded them papists and ignored their documentation. In fact, the crew denied the authority of the Privy document, stating that they were not presently Englishmen but “servants to a foraigne Prince.”556

While readers should assume that the language found in HCA documents was at least partially mediated by the proctors who transcribed the testimonies, some phrasings are so anomalous as to leave little doubt of their source. John Bevill, a former High Sheriff of

Cornwall who was active in French privateering circles in the early 1570s, justified his crew’s capture of a Norman and German ship through the direct statement that they were the goods of “ther enemies.”557

* * * * *

With the conclusion of the Sixth War of Religion in 1577, Rochelais sponsorship of privateering dwindled. Navarre’s enlistment of communal resources for the Huguenot

556 HCA 1/37, f. 83r-5v, 191r-4r; 1/39, f. 30r-5r, 46r-7r, 55v-8v. 557 HCA 1/39, f. 155r-6v. See the similar characterization of Catholic “enimies” given by the various mariners aboard a Rochelais ship that landed at Weymouth in 1575, under license of the comtesse de Montgomery in HCA 1/39, f. 214v-15v, 216r-20r. 205 war effort had been tolerated because it offered civic emancipation from a royalist military threat. That moment passed with the failure of the royal siege in 1573; the treaty that followed confirmed existing communal privileges. City patricians were always aggravated by Navarre’s abrogation of political customs and the disruptive effect of corsairing on intramural social order. Now those costs were compounded by the possibility that further war might endanger the city’s hard-won political independence.558

The Rochelais impulse toward political self-preservation – apparent in Champernowne’s observation to Cecil that they “live in suspicion among themselves, mistrusting all gentlemen which they account not of” – brought the political alliance of the commune with the grandees to a close.559

Still, this had less bearing of privateering patterns than it would seem. French corsair organization and Anglo-Huguenot political collaboration continued beyond 1577.

Navarre issued commissions to English ships until at least 1585. Calvinist vessels also continued to arm and venture under license of the Prince of Orange and Portuguese pretender Antonio I. Beginning with the start of war in 1585, English sailors began licensed reprisal against Spanish shipping under the Lord Admiral, marking the start of an era of large-scale, transoceanic privateering projects that doubled as nationalist naval actions.560

The sea war was instrumental to the sustenance of the French and Dutch Calvinist struggles. Calvinist collaboration at sea directly contributed to the breaking of the royal

558 James, Navy, 21; Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 220-1. The city consistory refused the prince of Condé the right to take communion after he violated his promise to allow the Admiralty alone to control the distribution of congés during 1577. 559 Cal. Salisbury MS 2: 112 (“Sir Arthur Champernoun to Lord Burghley,” 27 Sept. 1575). 560 The last English defendant who held a congé from Navarre in my searches was Diggery Piper, gentleman of Launceston, Cornwall, who also had an English commission to strike at Iberian vessels. He sailed under that commission until at least 1587. HCA 1/42, f. 88v-9r. 206 siege at La Rochelle in 1573. With Elizabeth reticent to pledge direct support, the comte de Montgomery organized an Anglo-French fleet of 60 ships out of Southampton and

Plymouth in March 1573. Gawine Champernowne, Montgomery’s son-in-law, shared command. Their relief voyage contributed to the withdrawal of royal forces in the summer.561 Incursions by the Sea Beggars and foreign privateers in the North Sea came to a head during 1572. Rebel victories at Brill and Flushing were major turning points in the early history of the Dutch revolt, giving Orange control over the governments of

Holland and Zeeland.562 The preservation of La Rochelle and Brill largely ensured official recognition of Calvinist subjecthood in France and the Netherlands, which was accomplished through concords at Beaulieu and in 1576. Elizabethan support for both marked an important milestone in the formation of a Protestant party in Western

European diplomacy.563 Thus, the Navarrese regime at La Rochelle – working through the instrument of its admiralty – may be rightly considered as the early vehicle for

Reformed political organization in Western Europe.

The “social phenomenon” embodied in the sea war looms even larger than those immediate political gains. Andrews used that phrase to describe the integrative effect of privateering in England during the Spanish War, which brought together London merchants, enterprising gentry in the provincial ports, and common mariners in a wave of

561 Mervault, “Receuil,” f. 71-3. The role of the fleet in helping to lift the siege is celebrated in the contemporary polemical tract Brief discours de ce qui aduenu sur la Mer entre l’armée du Roy, et les Anglois venuz pour secourir ceux de la Rochelle (Lyon, 1573). 562 Spicer suggests that Southampton occupied a central organizational role in the Dutch capture of Brill in April 1572, through the partnership of the Dutch admirals with French and English merchants there. Spicer, “Sea Beggars.” 563 See Adams, “Protestant Cause,” 37. The Edict of Beaulieu guaranteed Huguenot rights to public worship, military defense, and political investiture. The Pacification of Ghent committed the provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands to a defensive union with Holland and Zeeland against Spanish forces. In doing so, the Catholic provinces suspended heresy laws, inaugurating de facto freedom of worship. Adams characterizes Elizabethan support for both as the Queen’s “first public commitment to the protection of a continental protestant movement since the early 1560s.” 207 mutually beneficial business ventures. But as we have begun to see, the economic and social stimuli of privateering described by Andrews must be traced back to the mass privateering drive of the French and Dutch wars. Those campaigns established privateering as a form of sea enterprise throughout the Channel region, anchored in a common sense of confessional identity among its participants. Furthermore, as the final section will demonstrate, the campaigns marked a key early impetus to English transatlantic commercial industry.

The Anglo-Huguenot Atlantic project, 1562-1603

Predatory, or “armed” commerce was the primary form of long-range venture for

England and France prior to their foundation of settler colonies at Jamestown (1607) and

Quebec City (1608), respectively.564 Yet the writers of their national histories have long struggled to define the relationship between this first, protracted phase of Atlantic maritime expansion and subsequent successes in long-distance trade and plantation.

English and French imperial historians tended to view sixteenth-century predation in light of the later typologies of their respective American empires. From their teleological perspective, it was easy to conclude that Atlantic piracy was a dead end: a gentlemanly,

564 In English historiography, the foundation of Jamestown under the Virginia Company demarcates the end of the era of individuated experiments undertaken by the gentry “sea dogs” of the Elizabethan court and the start of the large-scale plantation ventures of the seventeenth century. In French Atlantic history, the line is not so clean. The foundation of has been tied to the habitations founded by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons and at (1605) and Quebec, by virtue of being the first successful French plantations in North America. More conservative interpretations push the line of significance to the political rise of Richelieu in the mid-1620s, which marked the start of sustained royal support for American trade and settlement. Richelieu reorganized transatlantic activities under new, chartered companies. The Compagnie des Îles de l’Amérique (1626) launched the French tobacco plantations that followed at St. Christophe, , and . The Compagnie des Cent-Associés (1627) held a royal monopoly over the Canadian in exchange for organizing New French colonial settlements. A maritime counter-reformation accompanied Richelieu’s reshaping of the political economy of the French Atlantic. He shut the door on early Huguenot influence in French Atlantic affairs by razing their primary commercial depot at La Rochelle in 1627. A proclamation of the following year limited New French migration to Catholic subjects. 208 un-commercial deviation from the route toward English mercantile empire or, alternatively, a series of fledgling private ventures absent of the characteristics of later

New French society (e.g. sedentary agriculture, trade with native societies, consolidation under the Bourbon state).565 That the Calvinist sector of the French maritime community was effectively severed from the post-1620s empire by decree has served to further distance that minority’s sixteenth-century ventures within French Atlantic studies.

Subsequent studies have adopted a more nuanced and integrated view. Andrews has established the importance of Elizabethan privateering for building the capital and mercantile networks behind the new long-distance trades of the early Stuart period.566 In the last decade, essays by Boucher, Augeron, and Vidal challenge the myth of a state- centered French Atlantic, emphasizing instead the importance of the interplay between the Crown, court, and private entrepreneurs prior to the political entry of Richelieu.567

Still, problems remain, not least of which is the lingering tendency of scholars to craft overly isolated national narratives for the sixteenth-century Atlantic.568 Another is the all too common view of predation in the early Atlantic as synonymous with piracy.

This stock image of piracy, influenced by the “golden age” buccaneers of the

565 A lingering symptom of this disease is the tendency to read sixteenth-century predation in the same terms as the “golden age” buccaneers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century Caribbean – particularly, the treatment of pirates as antagonists to “civilized” commerce and the statist order behind it. Transatlantic commerce in the sixteenth century was neither pacifistic nor particularly attuned to the control of distant European monarchs. 566 Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement. 567 Mickaël Augeron and Laurent Vidal, “Du comptoir à la ville coloniale: La France et ses Nouveaux mondes américains. Bilan historiographique et perspectives de recherche,” Debate y perspectivas 2 (Sept. 2002), 141-72; Philip P. Boucher, “Revisioning the ‘French Atlantic’ or, How to Think About the French Presence in the Atlantic, 1550-1625,” in The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550- 1624, ed. Peter Mancall (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 274-306. 568 The present study examines the overlapping enterprises of an international coalition opposed to Seville, but the case has been made for an “entangled” view of the Spanish Atlantic on one side, and English, French, and Dutch seaborne enterprise on the other. One would think that the irony would not be lost on Francophone historians who rely increasingly on Spanish records to write national maritime histories of the sixteenth century. See Eliga Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English- Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” The American Historical Review 112 (June 2007), 764-86. 209 seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Caribbean, conceives of predatory commerce as antagonistic both to “civilized” trade and the presumed state order supporting it.569

However, predatory commerce encompassed a range of maritime activities undertaken in defiance of Iberian controls on colonial sea traffic: contraband trade, commodities extraction via coastal factories, coastal garrisons, and government-sanctioned reprisal, as well as outright piracy. Other ventures, like the privateering stations at Fort Caroline and

Roanoke, were experiments that exhibited proto-colonial characteristics.

If a narrative for Northern European enterprise in the late-sixteenth-century

Atlantic continues to elude twenty-first century historians, early modern Spanish observers were more attuned to a common pattern among hostile sea traffic. Beginning in the 1560s, colonial officials began to refer to all northern interlopers as corsarios. This term, as P.E.H. Hair has noted, came to denote a common mode of anti-Iberian maritime activity whose characteristics were expressed most succinctly in the warnings given to colonials prior to the arrival of John Hawkins’s contraband expedition: “their intentions were hostile … they were ‘Lutheranos,’ and … they had come without his majesty’s manifesto or licence.”570

The reports and observations of Spanish colonials were prescient. The fifteen years between the foundation of Charlesfort by Jean Ribault (1562) and Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage (1577) proved pivotal to the consolidation of Northern

European experiments with “armed” commercial-colonial strategies in the New World. It

569 Again imbedded in this fallacy is an assumed typology of Atlantic maritime empires: predation was neither commercial enough for the purveyors of merchant empire nor naval enough to serve as an effective agent of the state. 570 P.E.H. Hair, “Protestants as Pirates, Slavers, and Proto-missionaries: Sierra Leone 1568 and 1582,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 21, no. 3 (1970), 205. Quote taken from I.A. Wright, ed., Spanish Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Caribbean, 1527-1568 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1929), 8- 9n. 210 has become unfashionable to ascribe religious motivations to the organizers of early New

World expeditions, particularly among English historians. However, the mass expansion of transatlantic predation coincided with the intensification of confessional struggles in the Channel region. Short-range predations within the shipping lanes of the English

Channel, Bay of Biscay, and North Sea formed the fiscal backbone of the Huguenot-led sea war. Yet the allure of high-value prizes passing along Iberian sea routes from Central and South America drew privateering traffic westward as well. Channel ships sailing under Calvinist commissions established a parallel theater for predatory commerce on the edges of the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic empires, reaching West Africa, Brazil, the

Spanish Main, the West Indies, and the American southeastern seaboard.

This was a collaborative enterprise. In parallel to Channel naval organization, long-range English and French ventures converged in inspiration and design, producing a shared ideological schematic for Atlantic commerce. During the Third and Fourth Wars of Religion, English and Huguenot leaders honed a consciously transatlantic military strategy focused on disrupting Iberian colonial shipping. This martial context lent focus to the geography and profit strategies within their early New World enterprises.

Collaboration also produced a shared experiential geography among Channel organizers: the development of common navigational, strategic, and disciplinary skill sets suitable for predatory commercial organization on the edges of Spanish America.

The roots of armed commercial collaboration

Several early enterprises can be viewed as the immediate and essential background for Anglo-French New World predation. The first is the string of short-lived coastal plantations established by French organizers, with the support of the Valois crown, 211 in Brazil and Florida. The projects aimed to directly challenge Iberian commercial sovereignty by establishing garrisoned footholds for commodity extraction and maritime predation – landed extensions of the Caribbean privateering sanctioned by Henri II during the 1550s. The settlement at Rio de Janeiro under Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon

(1555-60) aimed to extract local dyewood and seek out precious metals with the support of nearby indigenous groups. Commencing just a few years after the destruction of

Villegagnon’s “France antartique” by Portuguese forces, the Florida expeditions marked a further refinement of early French strategies in the Atlantic. The settlement at Parris

Island commanded by the Norman Calvinist privateer Jean Ribault (Charlesfort, 1562-3) and that of his lieutenant René Goulaine de Laudonnière on the St. Charles River (Fort

Caroline, 1563-5) were a fulfillment of previous attempts by French corsairs to establish a base for predation in the nearby Florida Straits, a highly vulnerable point in colonial return traffic to Europe.571 The early population of Charlesfort, mostly Huguenot men, harassed Spanish ships leaving the Straits and sought to engage in contraband trade with colonials. The mission of Laudonnière’s Fort Caroline, which included Calvinist soldiers, artisans, farmers, women, and children, drifted toward the establishment of a permanent colonial plantation, though annihilation at the hands of the Spanish cut its evolution short.572

571 In the late 1550s, Spanish officials observed the proliferation of French corsair landings on the American southeastern seaboard near 33N latitude, for such purposes. Corsair activity motivated the institution of a dual fleet system by Seville in the mid 1560s, which left Havana and crossed the Florida Straits in tandem each spring. D.B. Quinn, “Privateering: The North American Dimension (to 1625),” Course et piraterie: Etudes présentées à la Commission Internationale d’Histoire Maritime à la occasion de son XVe colloque international pendant le XIVe Congrés International des Sciences historiques, ed. Michel Mollat (Paris: Editions due Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975), 360-1. For a map demonstrating the environmental importance – and vulnerability – of the Florida Straits for the Indies Fleet and other Spanish colonial shipping, see Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 109-10. 572 Boucher, “French Atlantic,” 288. 212

The Brazil and Florida settlements, totemic in their legacy among French

Calvinist writers, have often been misunderstood. The theory that their creators envisioned them as “refuges” for persecuted Huguenot believers has had a long life, though this idea has recently – and rightfully – been interrogated more carefully.573 The

French religious controversy was still in its nascence at the time of the Brazil expedition and there is little indication that the organizers – including Catholics Henri II,

Villegagnon, and Coligny574 – had motivations that extended beyond commercial and geopolitical ones.

More complex motivations drove Ribault and Laudonnière in Florida. The case has been made that their primary concerns were also commercial, and that any interest in planting a colony, let alone a Huguenot refuge, remained at least secondary.575 Yet it is hard to deny that the Florida settlements had a more apparent ideological dimension, given their construction during the opening salvos of the French civil wars. It was a

Huguenot-driven project, whose participants had links to the iconoclastic violence of the

Caribbean corsairs in the previous decade. While Coligny saw Florida as an opportunity to use maritime war on Spain to reconcile confessional factions in France, Ribault quickly attempted to attach the project to the Anglo-Huguenot alliance in his native

Normandy following the Hampton Court agreement. After participating in the English- supported campaign to relieve Dieppe in 1563, he made a failed attempt to gain material

573 The body of work produced by the French New World historian Frank Lestringant provides the strongest support for the refuge thesis in modern scholarship. This includes Le huguenot et le sauvage: L’Amerique et la controverse colonial, en France, au temps des guerres of religion (1555-1589), 3rd edition (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2004) and L’Experience huguenote au nouveau monde (XVIe siècle) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996), particularly chapter 2. For an extensive critique of this view, see Mickaël Augeron and Laurent Vidal, “Refuges ou réseaux? Les dynamiques atlantiques protestantes au XVIe siècle,” in D’un ravage à l’autre: Villes et Protestantisme dans l’aire atlantique, XVIe-XVIIe siècles, ed. Guy Martinière et al. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1999), 32-61. 574 Coligny had yet to convert to Calvinism at this time. 575 Boucher, “French Atlantic,” 285-8. 213 support for Charlesfort from Elizabeth in London. The composition of Ribault’s final expedition to Fort Caroline in 1565, which included Huguenot soldiers and civilian

émigrés, is a compelling piece of evidence for the evolution of the Florida site into a settlement plantation for those seeking escape from the devastation of the French wars.576

Regardless of whether one accepts this interpretation, the Huguenot Florida enterprise at the very least demonstrated the close integration of French religious politics into that nation’s early transatlantic commercial ventures.

The second precedent was the expansion of long-distance predatory commerce out of the English southwest in the late 1550s. These activities occurred in tandem with attempts by London merchants to establish direct trade with West African ports for goods such as ivory and gold.577 Though these traders enjoyed less official support than their

French counterparts, their activities – the use of a combination of illegal trade and reprisal to circumvent restrictions on non-Iberian trade traffic – were the same. West

Country pirates, many already active in the plunder of Catholic ships in the Channel, embraced the opportunity for collusion with the Iberian and Guinea trading syndicates. In one of the most well known schemes, Henry Strangeways colluded with a group of

London merchants in a failed attempt to capture the Portuguese factory of Elmina on the

Gold Coast in 1559.578 The career of Martin Frobisher, an associate of Strangeways and

576 An account written by one of the passengers, the carpenter Nicolas Le Challeux, describes the desire of recruits to escape religious violence and the efficaciousness of the promoters’ promises of a pristine environment and potential riches in Florida. Nicolas Le Challeux, Discours et histoire de ce qui est advenu en Floride, en l’an mille cinq cents soixante cinq (Dieppe, 1566), 12-14. 577 See the 1555 answer of London merchants to the Portuguese ambassador in “The claim of the English merchants to pursue free trade with Guinea,” Europeans in West Africa, vol. 2, 355-8. 578 HCA 1/35, 2r-43v, 75v-6v, 132v-3r. The plan collapsed en route after departing Plymouth, devolving into a campaign of western Channel piracy with Iberian targets. The spoils of Strangeways’s Salamander included a Portuguese caravel and three Spanish shallops. 214

Peter Killigrew, began in Guinea adventures based out of Devon and Cornwall in the mid-1560s.579

Considering their transoceanic itineraries and scale, the three contraband slaving voyages undertaken by John Hawkins in West Africa (1562, 1564, and 1568) represented the most ambitious English commercial ventures within the Iberian Atlantic to date.

Hawkins followed in the several-decades-old footsteps of his father William, who had made three voyages, and financed a fourth, from Plymouth to Guinea and Brazil in the

Paul between 1530 and 1540.580 The schematic for the younger Hawkins’s adventure was established on the first trading voyage: the theft of 300 Africans in Portuguese custody at

Sierra Leone, their transport across the south Atlantic, and illicit sale in Hispaniola.

Hawkins utilized foreign allies for navigational and commercial intelligence on these voyages. A Spanish pilot and renegade factor (Pedro de Ponte) accompanied the 1562 contraband fleet. Norman Huguenot acquaintances of Hawkins with knowledge of

Caribbean routes and markets served on other voyages. Dieppois pilot Martin Atinas assisted Hawkins in 1564, which likely explains their use of Burburata as a captive slave market (the Venezuelan port had been frequented by French corsairs in the 1550s).

Captain Jean Bontemps, another Norman, consorted with Hawkins’s proxy John Lovell

579 McDermott, Frobisher, 56-67 passim. For instance, during the aborted 1566 plunder voyage of the Mary Flower, hatched in conjunction with a number of Cornish gentlemen, Frobisher even adopted a classic West Country alibi – he claimed his crew had planned to carry Devon kerseys to trade in Africa. See also the trading alibi adopted by the Mary Fortune of London and its north Devon consorts in 1563, when the convoy plundered a Portuguese ship in a supposed return voyage from Cadiz. HCA 1/35, 175r-7r. 580 William traded in Spain and western France, including La Rochelle, and J.A. Williamson has surmised that the elder Hawkins may have employed French pilots on his voyages to Brazil due to their familiarity with the route and dyewood market there (John Landye, the master of the 1540 voyage on which Hawkins was not present, may also have been of French origin). Information on these voyages comes almost entirely from John’s narration of his father’s account to Richard Hakluyt. J.A. Williamson confirmed the existence of the fourth voyage of the Paul in Plymouth customs records, which are reproduced in his biography of John. Richard Hakluyt, The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation (London, 1599-1600), 3: 700-01; PWDRO E122 116/11, printed in Williamson, John Hawkins, 13. 215 on a smaller 1566 trip to Venezuela. Official support, in various capacities, also distinguished these ventures: in 1564 and 1568, Hawkins was permitted use of one of the

Queen’s ships (the 700-ton Jesus of Lubeck) and received funding from Burghley.581

Through a series of experiments in contraband trade and predation prior to 1568,

French and English maritime organizers refined a template for commercial entry into

Iberian Atlantic markets. In particular, the idea of targeting the Indies fleet and Spanish return shipping lanes in summer campaigns – which crystallized in the expeditions of

Ribault and Laudonnière – persisted among Huguenot admiralty leaders and their West

Country allies. Though the Spanish establishment of settlements at San Augustin and

Santa Elena nullified the possibility of another plantation in Florida, northern privateers successfully exploited other vulnerabilities in Indies shipping routes in the 1570s, creating havens in the Atlantic islands and the Panamanian isthmus.582 Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Raleigh’s plantation at Roanoke (1585-90), as a further attempt at a hybridized privateering station and settlement colony on the North American coast, demonstrated the continuing influence of the French Florida model.583

Although these early French and English ventures were authored separately, the few convergences among them set the tone for future collaboration. Ribault’s attempt to connect the Anglo-Huguenot league of 1562-3 to the Charlesfort project, though it failed,

581 Accounts of the voyages by Hawkins are collected in Hakluyt, Principal navigations, 3: 501-25. 582 Quinn, “Privateering,” 365. Quinn asserts that the new Spanish settlements in Florida, sited near the footprints of the Huguenot plantations, were not so much an assertion of sovereignty as a “phase in the war against the privateers.” 583 David Stick, Roanoke Island, the Beginnings of English America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 24-6; Lestringant, Le huguenot et le sauvage, 397. In a July 1582 letter, Bernardino de Mendoza reported to Philip II Gilbert’s nascent plans to create a settlement on the North American coast. Connecting Gilbert’s activities to the establishment of Charlesfort and Fort Caroline twenty years prior, Mendoza reportedly threatened English Catholics who might join Gilbert that “they would immediately have their throats cut as happened to the French who went with Juan Ribao [Jean Ribault].” “11 July 1582. Don Bernardino de Mondoza to Philip II,” reproduced in The Voyages and Colonizing Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, ed. David Beers Quinn (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint/Hakluyt Society, 1967), 2: 278-9. 216 presaged the multinational maritime alliance that roved New Spanish waters during the

Third War of Religion. Huguenot expertise in the Caribbean region informed the

Hawkins Guinea enterprise, and literally facilitated the first Anglo-Huguenot meeting in the New World, when Atinas (who accompanied Ribault in his original expedition to

Florida) guided the Jesus to Fort Caroline on its way back to England in 1565. Meeting

Laudonnière, Hawkins “promised on his faith” to transport him and the members of his struggling outpost back to France, then, when the French captain declined the offer, to leave them with a ship. After the greater part of his company urged him not to refuse the means of deliverance that “God had sent us,” he agreed to trade arms for one of the

English ships and needed supplies. Laudonnière reported their exchange and lauded the

“good and charitable” Hawkins in his 1586 account of the Florida colony, which was rendered into English the following year by Hakluyt.584

Finally, these early projects collectively set the foundations for a Protestant maritime ideology, rooted in a common antipathy toward Iberian political and commercial hegemony. Ironically, the human tragedies that accompanied the failure of

French Florida and Hawkins’s final voyage made their symbolic power all the greater. In response to Ribault’s attempted expansion of Fort Caroline in 1565, Spanish forces under the command of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sacked the settlement, killing most of its inhabitants in the process.585 Hawkins’s eight-sail squadron, which included a young

584 René Goulaine de Laudonnière, L’Histoire notable de la Floride (Paris, 1586), f. 95r. The history was published in England as A notable historie containing foure voyages made by certayne French captaynes unto Florida (1587). Hakluyt acquired the Laudonnière manuscript from the cosmographer (and Brazil writer) André Thevet on a sojourn in France. See Lestringant, Le huguenot et le sauvage, chapter 7 passim. 585 Something of a revisionist view of the Menéndez action has arisen in recent scholarship. The fate of male colonists, most of who were killed in savage fashion, is not in contention. However, some challenge the traditional claim of Protestant authors that French women and children were also killed in the raid. The Spanish sources cite 130 casualties, mostly male soldiers, and claim that the civilians were spared. 217

Francis Drake, was attacked off of San Juan d’Uloa by troops under the Spanish .

He returned to Mounts Bay in Cornwall with one ship and fifteen survivors; the remainder of the original 400-man crew either perished or were captured and tried by the

Inquisition.586

Polemics circulated knowledge of these violent endings internationally among

European Protestants, amplifying their meaning in the process.587 The Le Challeux account cast the Menéndez assault as an attack on Reformed religion; he attributed the

“fury of their enterprise” to the knowledge that “we are of those that would return to the preaching of the Gospel.” In the moment of the battle, he juxtaposes the godliness of the

Fort Caroline martyrs and their mission with Spanish “cruauté et barbarie.” 588 Fort

Caroline and San Juan de Ulúa advanced an emerging strand of the Black Legend that testified to Spanish “indolence, superstition, backwardness, and tyranny” as experienced through New World maritime encounters.589 Appearing in the late 1560s, this discourse was inextricable from the emergence of an international Refomed political syndicate in

Europe: Catholic tyranny in its New World seat provided evidence for the potentiality of

See Boucher, “French Atlantic,” 289-90; John T. McGrath, The French in Early Florida: In the Eye of the Hurricane (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000), 145-6, 149-54. 586 Hakluyt, Principal navigations, 3: 523-5. 587 William S. Maltby, The Black Legend in England (Durham: Duke University Press, 1971), 65- 7 discusses the battle of San Juan de Ulúa as a major source of anti-Spanish propaganda after 1568. This includes an elaborate literature on the experiences of the prisoners taken from the Hawkins expedition, and other Elizabethan seamen, before the Inquisition. 588 Le Challeux, Discours, 28, 46. Because of its grotesque depictions of the Menéndez assault, Le Challeux is the most well known of these polemical accounts, along with Laudonnière’s Histoire. These served as the source material for further commemorations of Fort Caroline in La Popelinière, Les trois mondes and Theodore de Bry, Grands voyages. Accounts of the Menendez assault appeared in English editions as early as 1566, including Thomas Hacket’s translation of Le Challeux (published as A true and perfect description, of the last voyage or navigation attempted by Capitaine John Rybaut, deputie and general for the French men, into Terra Florida). Hakluyt gathered the Florida accounts of Ribault, Laudonnière, and others in Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America (1582), with an eye towards providing a compendium of information useful to the pending project of Gilbert in North America. 589 Gould, “Entangled Histories,” 770. Also see Boucher, “French Atlantic,” 292. 218 political crises in France and the Netherlands.590 The onset of maritime war necessitated common league in both spheres.

The education of Drake: Coligny and the armée de mer to Tierra Firme

Against this backdrop, the Rochelais sea war produced “a larger-scale, longer- range and more ambitious type of venture.”591 Condé sought to extend Huguenot privateering to Spanish America from the beginning of the Third War of Religion. The grandees sought to employ the Caribbean expertise of Jacques de Sores in several early plots, including an aborted 1569 plan that would have put the vice-admiral in command of an Anglo-Huguenot squadron to the West Indies.592 De Sores led a half-dozen

Rochelais ships in a triumphal sweep of Madeira and the Canaries at the end of the Third

War in mid-1570, returning with large Portuguese prize ships and “un butin très- considérable.”593

Coligny, who took up residence at La Rochelle in 1570-1, principally engineered the “Iberian turn” in Rochelais privateering. In this, the Admiral hedged his political bets: he hoped that a naval campaign against a historical French enemy would open a path toward the political reconciliation of the Guise and Bourbon factions, yet he also had the object of maintaining the integrity of the Huguenot fleet during a fragile peace. It has been said that a desire for “gentlemanly revenge” for the Menéndez assault drove the extension of the corsair war. However, Coligny and the grandees believed that a

590 As Schmidt has said of Le Challeux, “the drama could have just as easily taken place in La Rochelle as La Floride.” Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 45. 591 Andrews, “Expansion,” 204. 592 Augeron, “Coligny,” 160. The death of Condé at Jarnac halted the operation. 593 Barbot, 17: 376-7; Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Histoire universelle de Jacque-Auguste de Thou, Depuis 1543. jusqu’en 1607 (London, 1734), vi: 59. 219 transatlantic naval strategy would further their European political goals, by straining

Seville’s ability to project naval strength in the space of the Channel and North Sea.594

Their design, following on that of the Florida plantations, targeted the vulnerabilities of the sea lanes used by the Indies fleet and other Spanish colonial vessels;

Coligny gathered intelligence on these matters from an Andalucian pilot and cartographer captured in June 1571. The grandees adopted larger fleet groups from this point – often more than 60 sail, and accompanied by other ships supplied by Elizabeth. Dutch support attached itself to the extended field of the corsairs. In summer 1571, a joint expedition saw 24 ships under the French captain de Piles launch for Peru, while Nassau’s forces planned to prey on ships off of the Spanish Main (though the Dutch ships were drawn off to the Channel by the French royal fleet before they could carry out their mission).

Coligny became particularly focused on establishing a permanent base for privateers in the Canaries or another eastern Atlantic island. Though this was never fully realized, prize yields spiked in La Rochelle: corsairs brought in 29 Spanish or Flemish ships in

1570, and added an additional 34 to that total by October 1571.595

The Iberian turn in the sea war contributed to the formation of a Reformed maritime syndicate in northwest Europe, redirecting enterprise towards multilateral, rather than merely localized, political aims. Hence, as the scale of predation expanded, interrelationships within the western Channel network became more pronounced. The voyage record of the Castle of Comfort, a 240-ton English vessel active throughout the period, is illustrative. The Castle engaged in predation as early as 1566-7, when George

594 Augeron, “Coligny,” 158-60; Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 40. A similar thirst for vengeance has been attributed to Drake, Hawkins, and other English figures in their 1570s actions. This explanation, speculative and simplistic, underestimates the sophistication of Anglo-Huguenot maritime strategy as the sea war progressed. 595 Augeron, “Coligny,” 169-70. 220

Fenner employed it to harass Portuguese ships off the Guinea coast and Terceira.596 In autumn 1569, it launched out of Plymouth under a Navarrese commission and its crew took a sugar cargo bound for Antwerp.597 By direction of Plymouth captain John Garrett two years later, the vessel conspired with the Printemps of La Rochelle to take a

Portuguese ship in the Canaries and slaughter its crew.598 William Hawkins and Richard

Grenville purchased the Castle in 1574 for an Indies voyage; after Elizabeth revoked the patent for their expedition, they granted use of the ship to the French captain Henri Joliffe, who again put it into the service of Condé. In 1575, its crew took Catholic ships on separate licenses into La Rochelle and Flushing.599

Apart from Coligny’s assault on the eastern Atlantic, Central America hosted the densest concentration of privateering activity in the era. The 1570s saw a flurry of connected English expeditions to the region: 14 voyages between 1570-77, at least 10 of which originated from the West Country. Two attacks on the Panamanian isthmus by

Francis Drake and his consorts between 1571-3 represent the high point of the collective campaign, which altogether engineered the deepest rupture of Spanish colonial defenses to date. Drake targeted the Panamanian coast near the Chagre River, a sensitive point at which annual Peruvian silver shipments crossed the isthmus and were transferred to the

Tierra Firme fleet for transport across the Atlantic. William Winter and John Hawkins, both of whom were personally familiar with the region from previous voyages, funded the Drake expeditions, which otherwise used Devonian crews and captains (these included Exeter merchant Richard Dennys and the sea captains John Oxenham and

596 Hakluyt, Principal navigations, 2 (pt. 2): 57-64. 597 HCA 1/39, 69v-71r; 1/37, 167v-8v. 598 CSP, Spain (Simancas), 2: 351-2 (“Antonio Fogaza to Prince Ruy Gomez de Silva”). 599 NA, PC (Privy Council) 2/11, f. 7 (“[Meeting] At Grenewiche, the xxixth of Aprill, 1576”); SP 70/136, f. 174 (“Piracy”); SP 78/2, f. 9 (“The French King to the Queen”); CSP, Spain (Simancas), 2: 514. 221

Thomas Sherwill). In 1571, Drake’s party robbed barks off the coast, gaining 40,000 ducats in goods and additional gold and silver.600 The following year, Drake sacked the city of Nombre de Dios at the Chagre. Then, using African cimmaron allies, Drake’s party crossed the isthmus and captured the silver train while in transit.601 The raid was immediately legendized as an act of personal and national daring – the enduring image being the young Drake’s sighting of the South Sea, which foreshadowed both his circumnavigation voyage and English maritime ascendance.602

However, the fully formed precision of Drake’s assault led Ilene Wright to conclude that his knowledge of Spanish defenses and subsequent focus on the Chagre region originated in earlier collaborations with French corsairs. A total view of northern activity in the region better contextualizes the Tierra Firme enterprise as an American front in the Anglo-Huguenot sea war.603 French corsair fleets cruised the Panamanian and

Columbian coasts between 1569-72. The early voyages betrayed a unified design. In

1569, using intelligence gathered from a captured African (Pedro Mandinga), a squadron under the Norman captain Nepeville twice sacked Tolu and took 100,000 ducats in prizes off of the Chagre. In the process they seized a large ship in the Indies fleet, drowning all

265 souls on board.604 Two years later, colonial reports identified the return of the same

600 The sole account of the 1571 voyage is a Spanish document translated as A Summary Relation of the Harms and Robberies Done by Fr. Drake an Englishman, with the Assistance and Help of Other Englishmen, printed in part in Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, vol. 1, 149n. 601 Nichols, Drake Revived. 602 Nichols, Drake Revived, 53-4. 603 I.A. Wright, ed., Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569-1580 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1932), 1: xxii-xxiv. Wright’s collection of manuscript sources on English activity in after 1569, drawn from Spanish colonial archives, doubles as an exposition of her thesis. Andrews largely concurs, dismissing the idea that Tierra Firme can be explained as a series of personal revenge missions for the San Juan de Ulúa debacle. Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, 29-31. 604 “Cristóbal de Salinas to the Crown, Nombre de Dios, June 30, 1569” and “Cristóbal de Salinas to the Crown, Nombre de Dios, March 14, 1571,” printed in Wright, ed., English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1: 7-8, 16-17. This is probably the same captain “Neufville” identified in English state reports as one of the heads of a Huguenot fleet in the Channel in 1586 (2200 tons, 2000 soldiers), which was suspected to 222

Norman crew, again carrying Mandinga, that carried out further robberies and employed characteristic violence.605

Drake’s initial voyages to the region in 1570 and 1571 overlapped chronologically with the predations of the French corsairs. Wright has argued that the

English captain most likely collaborated with this crew in these years and, furthermore, may have been present during their 1569 campaign. Drake purportedly held a Huguenot congé during his 1571 assault on Nombre de Dios, which occurred simultaneous to

French attacks in the same area.606 Wright’s case rests on several colonial reports that noted English cooperation with the corsairs and identified them as the same cohort that visited the Chagre in 1569.607 This evidence is narrow, considering the high potential for mistaken identity. However, there is a significant case to be made for collaboration at some point in the 1571 campaign; at the very least, Drake and the corsairs were engaged in complementary activities and with knowledge of one another.

The encounter of Drake and Guillaume Le Testu in 1572 was not an isolated episode, therefore, but part of a linear progression in Anglo-Huguenot enterprise in

Central America. The emphasis on intelligence-gathering among the corsairs in 1571

be seeking Drake on its way to Scotland or La Rochelle. SP 78/16, f. 196 (“Frenchman that have ships of War,” 29 Dec. 1586). 605 “Cristóbal de Salinas to the Crown, Nombre de Dios, March 14, 1571,” “Diego Flores de Valdés to the Crown, Nombre de Dios, March 16, 1571,” “Interrogatory, presented at Nombre de Dios, May 15, 1571,” and “The City of Panama to the Crown, May 25, 1571,” printed in Wright, ed., English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1: 16, 18, 24, 31. Eyewitnesses identified the fleet as belonging to French “Lutherans.” It was reported that, in the process of robbing a frigate, they “maltreated and stripped a friar... insulting and affronting him.” 606 Andrews, Drake’s Voyages, 33-4. 607 “Doña Juana de Estrada and Luis de Soto, depositions, Nombre de Dios, March 1, 1571,” “Cristóbal de Salinas to the Crown, Nombre de Dios, March 14, 1571,” “Interrogatory, presented at Nombre de Dios, May 15, 1571,” “The Audiencia of Panama to the Crown, Panama, May 21, 1571,” “Licentiate Gonzalo Nuñez de la Cerda to the Crown, Nombre de Dios, May 24, 1571,” and “The City of Panama to the Crown, May 25, 1571,” printed in Wright, ed., English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1: 12- 13, 16, 20, 27, 29, 31. English evidence for Drake’s whereabouts in 1569 is blank, which leaves open the possibility of a “lost” Drake voyage. 223 made clear that their presence served as a means within a larger enterprise. A Spanish eyewitness related that the French spoke of their intent to “reconnoitre” and gain

“knowledge and experience of the country”; Drake has been said to have arrived in 1571 with the objective of gathering “such intelligences as might further him to get some amends for his losse.”608 Though not as successful, the characteristics of the raid by

Oxenham on Panama and the Pearl Islands in 1575 – another attempt on the silver train, using native allies and exemplary, religiously motivated violence – maintained continuity with the past.609 Drake’s aim of an official expedition to conquer Panama using English and cimmaron force never came to fruition, though individuated plunder voyages continued after 1575. These included Gilbert Horsley and the French captain Sylvester,

Andrew Barker of Bristol, and William Hawkins.610

The “western designs” of English nationalist enterprise in the 1580s

The early 1570s saw the establishment of an expansive theater for predatory activity, stretching from the North Sea to Peru. Calvinist targeting of Iberian shipping in the Channel region provided the impetus for a sustained assault on Tierra Firme, the longest and most successful predatory campaign led by English adventurers in the New

World to date. Though Huguenot commissions dwindled after the Edict of Beaulieu, the chilling of Anglo-Spanish relations in the early 1580s provided the context for the resumption of mass privateering in the Atlantic. The death of the Valois heir presumptive in 1584, which virtually ensured the Calvinist succession of the House of Bourbon,

608 “Relacion que diô en Madrid Vizente Steves natural de Xerez de la frontera à 11 de Octubre de 1511, sobre robos que hacían los Cosarios franceses en las costas de ,” printed in Gabriel Marcel, Les corsaires français au XVIe siècle dans les (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1902), 30; Nichols, Drake Revived, 2. 609 The Voyage of John Oxnam of Plimmouth to the west , and over the straight of Dariene into the South Sea, printed in Hakluyt, Principal navigations, 3: 526-30. 610 Wright, ed., English Voyages to the Spanish Main, xlvi-lxiv. 224 triggered the formation of a Guise-Habsburg treaty alliance. Elizabeth’s league with the

United Provinces, formed in reaction, provoked war with Spain in 1585. Spain’s seizure of English shipping at the start of the war triggered a wave of reprisals. The Crown moved to license privateers under the commissions of the Lord Admiral; their activity was supplemented by government sponsorship of larger, semi-official naval campaigns.

Their experience and resources gave English West Country organizers a disproportionate influence in the design of new predatory ventures. John Hawkins, who advanced to the position of treasurer of the admiralty, advised Burghley on ship designs and naval strategy. On the eve of conflict, Hawkins submitted a draft plan to Burghley outlining his vision for a mass assault on Spanish shipping. He advocated allowing the

Portuguese pretender Dom Antonio, a popular source of commissions taken by English,

French, and Dutch ships during the later Wars of Religion, to license vessels out of a

West Country port. He envisioned this as a mutually beneficial model for a public-private sea enterprise. The Crown would receive a tenth of prizes adjudicated by a special authority in the port, while English seafarers would be employed and “inioy that w[hi]ch they lawfully take in this service.” The result would be an enterprise of “great proffytt to her heighnes and subiectes,” in which “the best owners and merchant adventurers in the

Ryver wyll put in fotte and attempt great thinges.” He added that the scheme would serve as an engine for English sea expertise: “our own people, as gunners (of which we have but few) would be made expert, and grow in number ... our idle people would growe to be goode men of war, bothe by land and sea.”611

611 Lansdowne MS 43, f. 21r-v (“Mr. John Hawkins, Treasurer of the Admiralty, to Lord Burghley; with a project for distressing the Spaniard”, 20 July 1584). 225

Nonetheless, the likely participants in such an enterprise would not just include

West Country seafarers (who will “enter deeply into this p[ar]tye”), Hawkins suggested, but Dutch and French Calvinists as well. He hoped that their added force would hasten the collapse of Spain’s empire.612 The Hawkins plan incorporated the model for predatory commerce provided by the Rochelais sea war into a national project aimed at diminishing

Spanish maritime empire. Hawkins’s was one of a number of “western designs” produced by Channel organizers in the period, including works by Humphrey Gilbert and Francis

Drake. Produced in conjunction with Hawkins, the Drake document took the form of an encyclopedic tour of Spanish American targets based on knowledge gleaned from previous voyages.613 At the same time, the Huguenot courtier Duplessis-Mornay envisioned the revival of Reformed sea war as a way to diminish Spanish influence. A

1584 letter written for Navarre suggested that a new Anglo-French alliance could purge

Spanish shipping from the Channel, end Habsburg influence in the Low Countries, and conquer Tierra Firme.614 None of these “designs” left the page, but they make a compelling argument for the incorporation of western Channel expertise into new concepts for long-distance national enterprises.

Ships from Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, and Bristol represented the largest privateering conglomeration at the start of the war. In the first two years, nearly half of

Devon’s shipping resources were invested in privateering enterprises.615 Between 1589-

612 Ibid., 21v. 613 CSP, Spain (Simancas), 4: 20-3 (“Translation of a statement furnished to the Queen of England by Francis Drake and John Hawkins as to undertaking a voyage entirely to ruin the Spaniards,” 7 Feb. 1587); SP 12/118, f. 30r-2r (“A discourse how Hir Majestie may annoy the King of Spayne; proposing to fit out a fleet of ships of war,” 6 Nov. 1577). The Hawkins plan appeared in the same year as Richard Hakluyt’s “Discourse of western planting” (1584). 614 Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, “Discours au roy Henry III, Sur les moyens de dininuer l’Espaignol,” printed in Mèmoires et correspondence de Duplessis-Mornay (Paris, 1824), 2: 580-93. 615 Appleby, “Devon Privateering,” 93. 226

91, the Lord Admiral licensed at least 101 West Country ships, while the total from

London and the Thames stood at 70.616 Though short-range reprisal predominated, official support encouraged the expansion of long-distance enterprise out of the southwest. The Roanoke Island enterprise of Raleigh and Francis Drake’s strike on San

Augustin in 1585-6 revived French attempts to plant a privateering station north of

Spanish settlement. Still, the aspirations and strategic capacity of their organizers exceeded that previous era. The first Roanoke supply voyages of Raleigh, Bernard Drake,

Richard Grenville, Amyas Preston, and George Raymond doubled as an expansive hybrid operation against Spanish commercial targets. Upon news of the Spanish embargo in

1585, the directors executed a mass sweep of Iberian vessels in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the .617 The Newfoundland assault, resulting in the seizure of upwards of 20 ships in the Iberian and Basque fleets, almost single-handedly shifted the balance in the fishing industry there toward northern supremacy.618 Official naval actions also counted a disproportionate number of West Country participants. Of the 23 ships, mainly former privateers, that assaulted Cadiz in 1587, Plymouth supplied four.619 Almost all of the 43 ships in Drake’s Armada fleet were privately-owned merchantmen from Devon; 75% of the Queen’s ships were constructed under Hawkins’s tenure with the Navy Board.620

616 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 32-4. This total, of course, does not represent the total number of plunder voyages. The West Country also generated the greatest number of cases of unlicensed piracy, and Andrews’s total does not include the many ships that made multiple trips on the same commission. 617 David Beers Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590. Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to North America Under the Patent Granted to Walter Raleigh in 1584 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955), 1: 158-73. 618 Cell, Newfoundland. 619 SP 12/200, f. 1r-v (“Capt. Thos. Fenner to Walsyngham,” 1 April 1587), printed and annotated in Papers Relating to the Navy During the Spanish War: 1585-1587, ed. Julian Stafford Corbett (London: Navy Records Society, 1898), 98-100. 620 Ronald Pollitt, “Devon and the French and Spanish Wars,” NMHD, 111-12. 227

Over time, London merchant capital assumed the leading role in anti-Spanish privateering; letters of marque issued by the admiralty to outport ships, including those of

Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset, had decreased significantly by the late 1590s. Still, it was the organizational structure, rather than the level, of privateering activity that had changed. A differentiated national privateering network developed – London syndicates became the primary investors in local victualing and labor supply services based in

Plymouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth, and other outports with standing privateering industries.

Southwestern officers led at least seventeen major Atlantic expeditions between 1590-

1602, not including countless hundreds of coastal or short-range journeys that launched into the Channel and the North Sea.621

In essence, what was once a native West Country employment became fully integrated into national commercial enterprise during the course of the war. A new cohort of southwestern sea officers, protégés of Hawkins, Drake, and other older “sea dogs,” drove Atlantic activity in the latter stages of the war in partnership with investors and companies in the capital. Richard Doddridge of Barnstaple, a member of the Senegal and

Gambia Company, took in 26,000l in prizes during predatory commercial missions to

West Africa between 1590-2.622 Other key transitional figures like and

George Somers were the epitome of Hawkins’s argument for privateering as a nursery for

English sea expertise. Privateering trained them for commercial futures. Parker undertook seven privately funded reprisal and contraband trade missions in the West Indies during

621 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 33; Pollitt, “French and Spanish Wars,” 112. 622 Joseph Besly Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple; Being an attempt to supply the want of a history of that ancient borough, (Barnstaple, 1830), 431-9. 228 the war, afterwards becoming a patentee of the Virginia Company.623 They were the leading edge of what Andrews dubbed a new “managerial element” in Atlantic trade, whose navigational and shipboard expertise leveraged flourishing joint-stock ventures in the first years of the Stuart era.624

* * * * *

The Rochelais model for international sea war during the French Wars of Religion functioned as a catalyst for early English commercial strategies in the Atlantic World.

The strategy developed by the House of Bourbon in its residence at La Rochelle was initially an outgrowth of a quasi-diplomatic alliance formed with England at the start of the Third War of Religion, which used West Country elites and commercial channels in western France as a means to deliver covert military aid to the Huguenot movement. The renovation of the western French admiralty as an expedient for fundraising led to the inception of an international armée de mer in 1569. Rochelais commissions invented an ideological premise for reprisal, which had the effect of creating an opportunistic market for plunder in the Channel region. It also had major social outcomes. The discipline imposed by the commission system encouraged the confessionalization of commercial networks and, especially after its adoption by Nassau’s sea beggars, furthered the idea of a common international Reformed cause in northwest Europe.

The Rochelais confessional system also provided a focus to English and French

Atlantic enterprises. In 1570-1, Coligny incorporated the lessons learned from American predatory experiments into an expanded, Iberian-focused transatlantic strategy. The

623 For the Parker voyages, see accounts in Kenneth R. Andrews, ed., West Indies, 184-208, 219- 24, 236-83, 298-325; HCA 1/46, f. 215r-v. Somers, too, became a Virginia Company patentee; he was admiral of the infamous Sea Venture supply voyage of 1609. 624 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 88. 229 expansion of opportunistic attacks on Spanish colonial shipping, profitable in and of itself, was also envisioned as a means to achieve European political goals, by weakening

Iberian capabilities in the Channel and North Sea. The Panamanian expeditions associated most closely with Drake and other Westcountrymen, in actuality an Anglo-

Huguenot project, represented the most willful application of the Admiral’s tactics.

English privateering, encouraged by HCA commissions during the Spanish War, continued in the Channel and greater Atlantic through the end of the sixteenth century.

Aided by state support and London mercantile investment, West Country organizers sought to incorporate – or in some cases revive – western Channel schemas for reprisal.

This is particular evident in the case of John Hawkins, who assumed a maritime planning role in the Elizabethan state during the war. His thesis concerning how a market for reprisal could be designed to successfully wage a naval war, while driving private commercial profits and serving as an engine for national sea power – though rejected on paper – seems to have been borne out in the social phenomenon of Elizabethan privateering.

230

CHAPTER 4

ENGLISH MERCHANTS AND PROTESTANT COMMERCIAL KINSHIP AT LA ROCHELLE, 1628-61

“Who wants to go to Florida? Let him go where I have been, Returning gaunt and empty, Collapsing from weakness, The only benefit I have brought back, Is one good white stick in my hand, But I am safe and sound, not disheartened, Let’s eat: I’m starving.” – Nicolas Le Challeux, “Octet” (1565)625

On the afternoon of June 13, 1652, a group of family and friends gathered at the residence of Marie Chintrier in La Rochelle to witness the marriage of Marie, her daughter, to escuyer Pierre David. Chintrier, the wife of Devon-born merchant Richard

Laskey, was the current acting matriarch of a notable Anglo-Huguenot mercantile family.

Notaire Pierre Moreau both witnessed and confirmed the nuptials in a formal contract.626

Such notarial marriage contracts held peculiar significance in a densely interrelated mercantile community such as La Rochelle, where they guarded important legal and familial relations and privileges. To contemporaries as well as modern readers, these contracts also resemble social maps, revealing genealogical architectures, biographies of human movement, and unrecorded histories of association. In the case of the David-

Laskey wedding, as well as in dozens of other international Reformed marriages like it, the contracts bring into focus the complex layering of familial, commercial, and spiritual ties that bound together urban merchants in northwest Europe during the seventeenth century. These remarkable social constellations are immediately evident among the

625 Nicolas Le Challeux, “Octet,” in Laudonniere & Fort Caroline: History and Documents, ed. Charles Bennett, 2nd ed. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 164. 626 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/257, 65r-6v. 231 intersecting signatures of French, English, and Dutch witnesses. In the case of Richard and Marie Laskey, this social immersion went as far as to obscure nationality; when signing, both Gallicized their surname as “Lasqué.”627

La Rochelle provided an essential space within the commercial geography of seventeenth-century Atlantic Europe. Its flourishing civic identity as a Reformed intellectual bastion and place de sûreté rested upon the consolidation of a resident population of merchants drawn from Protestant communities of northern Europe. Among these, a subset of English merchants – with concentrated numbers arriving from the southwestern counties of Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, and Hampshire – flourished in Rochelais record volumes. These English travelers and their western French hosts were members of a prosperous trading community within the sea space of the western Channel. Channel networks served as an early nursery for English and French maritime expertise that harbored interdependent industries in textile manufacturing, salt production, and fishing. It further developed in the Confessional Age as an important seat for early transoceanic trade and international Reformed activism. By the seventeenth century, these attributes placed the region at the center of networks of maritime expertise, colonial knowledge, migration, and kinship that stretched from northwest Europe to the

Americas.

However, historians seeking to understand Reformed prosperity at La Rochelle confront a dramatic rupture: the successful siege of the city in 1627-8 by royalist forces under the command of . Richelieu’s blockade marked the culmination of a systematic Bourbon campaign against the political independence of Huguenot communities in the French west. Royal victory not only cowed the commune’s bourgeois

627 ADCM, 3E 59/257, f. 66v. 232 leadership and traditional privileges, but also precipitated the loss of two-thirds of its

Calvinist population (approximately 12,000 souls). A 1628 settlement with the Crown set the bounds for a corporate counter-reformation, which had as its goal the Catholicization of La Rochelle’s political and economic establishments.628 Contemporary observers in

England and Northern America expressed grief at the passing of one of the great symbols of international Reformed solidarity. Cornish MP Sir John Eliot – whose home region supplied most of the force behind the failed English expedition in defense of the beleaguered Huguenot capital – spoke in Parliament of the Calvinist “treble cord” that had been severed between England, Huguenot France, and the Dutch United Provinces.629

Nonetheless, in the decades following the 1627-8 crisis, Rochelais Huguenot families successfully strategized to safeguard their hold on mercantile power in the city.630 In doing so, they continued to defiantly consolidate a resident community of Calvinist merchants and mariners in the city – a sturdy “cord” of commercial kinship that ensured the survival of Rochelais families and their fortunes.

* * * * *

Very recently, the manner and function of systems of law has reemerged as a promising stratum within the history of European Atlantic empires. Modifying older readings of early modern law as straightforward evidence of expanding administrative

628 David Parker, La Rochelle and the French Monarchy: Conflict and Order in Seventeenth- Century France (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), 9-14, 21; Kevin C. Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea. La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 348, 351, 355-8. 629 Mary Frear Keeler, Maija Jansson Cole, and William B. Bidwell, eds., Commons Debates, 1628. Volume IV: 28 May-26 June 1628 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 62. For other reactions to the fall of La Rochelle, see Neil Kamil, Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots’ New World, 1517-1751 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 410, 508-10. 630 Katherine Louise Milton Faust, “A Beleaguered Society: Protestant Families in La Rochelle, 1628-1685” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1980), 104, 110-13. 233 empires, the authors of this “new legal” approach attend especially to its social and cultural dimensions. A rigorous focus on legal practice, in both local and comparative contexts, leads these scholars to emphasize the irregular, contingent influence of law on imperial development.631 One of the most exciting elements of this recent legal turn is its potential to puncture the disciplinary bulkheads that currently serve to divide domestic subjects from maritime or imperial ones within early modern social history. Lauren

Benton reminds us that the polities that we distinguish as “empires” and “nations” were

“iterations of a single political-legal formation,” suggesting the need for a fluid understanding of the relationship between legal-commercial practices perceived to be

“interior” to states and “external,” normatively imperial developments.632 Furthermore, a holistic view of the legal cultures of “empire-states” sheds light on alternative forms of international legitimacy and external relations cultivated by political communities within states.633

A legal-contractual case study of seventeenth-century La Rochelle can tell us much about the Old World precedents for commercial, religious, and family life in northern America, and how those forms of community were transmitted across the

Atlantic World. Early modern French Calvinist communities have served as steady

631 Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Ibid., A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Paul Halliday, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Daniel J. Hulsebosch, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 632 Lauren Benton, “Introduction, AHR Forum: Law and Empire in Global Perspective,” American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (2012), 1098. Benton and others refer to this as the “inside/outside” problem in global law. See R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Annabel S. Brett, Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). 633 Benton, “Introduction,” 1098; Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 8. 234 subjects of study for successive generations of religious, colonial American, and Atlantic historians.634 Persecutions of Huguenot communities by the French state precipitated a migration event of enormous economic and political significance between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. This diaspora of artisan and merchant families – first from northern France, later from among the Rochelais and their hinterland in the west – formed the basis for a multinational cluster of refugee communities in northern and central Europe. Studies of Huguenot refugee enclaves have focused on their membership in exogamous Protestant commercial and family networks, subjects that lend themselves to integration into broader discussions of political rights, social assimilation, and cultural identity among European alien communities.635 The extension of Huguenot kin networks to English America after 1685 marked the sociogenesis of an inter-imperial community that confounds the current compartmentalization of state histories of the Atlantic

World.636

As the seat of French Calvinism, La Rochelle represented the demographic and cultural seed of that transoceanic diaspora. Yet in the aftermath of the siege of 1627-8,

634 For a good survey of recent issues in French-language literature, see Philip P. Boucher, “Revisioning the ‘French Atlantic’; or, How to Think About the French Presence in the Atlantic, 1550- 1625,” in The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624, ed. Peter C. Mancall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 274-306. Also see Gildas Bernard, ed., Les Familles Protestantes en France, XVIe siècle – 1792: Guide des Recherches Biographiques et Généalogiques (Paris: Archives Nationales, 1987). 635 Philip Benedict, The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600-85 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001); Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: the History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001); Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer, eds., Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton, 1567-c.1620 (London: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1997). 636 Paula Wheeler Carlo, Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York: Becoming American in the Hudson Valley (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Kamil, Fortress of the Soul; Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden: the Huguenots and their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, 2006); Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, eds., Memory and Identity: the Huguenots of France and the Atlantic Diaspora (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003). 235 the newly counter-reformed city was doubly envisioned by the Bourbon crown to be the commercial conduit for its nascent Catholic empire in New France.637 That a local statutory dispute concerning immigration and mercantile practice became, in essence, a greater confessional struggle for the soul of French maritime commerce suggests the unexpected turns within the history of law and European empire. In spite of Crown efforts to Catholicize the Rochelais mercantile establishment, city commerce remained out of step with the advance of the official state – a Huguenot-occupied legal enclave supported by its intransigent relationships with networks of northern Calvinist merchants.

The persistence of international Reformed residence, trade, and social integration at La Rochelle lay at the very heart of this legal confrontation, serving as the foundation for a Huguenot strategy of “commercial kinship” in the face of official persecution after

1628. We can appreciate the centrality of that community by examining first the commercial operation of La Rochelle at the peak of its influence in the early seventeenth century. In this period, Rochelais free port privileges and Calvinist culture nurtured the growth of a multi-national community of merchants within the city. The resident merchants of Devon and the English southwest contributed significantly to this atmosphere through their engagement with city institutions of politics, finance, and maritime labor. Second, an examination of the contractual evidence illuminates our legal understanding of mercantile relationships at La Rochelle and the importance of international exchange to the preservation of the city’s Calvinist civic culture. Notarial contracts became an unlikely battleground for confessional and commercial politics in seventeenth-century La Rochelle. Notaries served as local gatekeepers for civic values

637 J.F. Bosher, “The Political and Religious Origins of La Rochelle’s Primacy in Trade with New France, 1627-1685,” French History 7, no. 3 (1993), 286-312. 236 and mercantile practice; along with their professional networks, the semantics and construction of notarial documents themselves reflected the roles of family and religion in city commerce.638 Finally, these contracts reveal to us the crucial dimensions and implications of commercial kinship at La Rochelle. In this context, commercial kinship means both the fictive immersion of English residents in local mercantile networks and the formation of international households in the city. In order to illustrate this phenomenon, the chapter concludes by exploring the construction of three leading Anglo-

French mercantile families and what their genealogies reveal about the ironic persistence of the Reformed community during the upheavals of the city’s post-1628 counter- reformation.

English merchants at La Rochelle, seventeenth century

In the seventeenth century, La Rochelle’s bourgeois merchants enjoyed an international business profile among the Reformed, driven by a northern branch of trade that included England, Scotland, and the Low Countries.639 The southwestern counties served as the primary destinations for English shipping out of La Rochelle. Bristol’s growing singularity as a port destination had also become clear by this time, as it was the final stop for nearly 25% of all southwestern trade goods in the first half of the

638 The arguments in this essay are based on my study of notarial register volumes (registres) created between 1560-1665, located at the ADCM, La Rochelle. Within this field, my sample included producible volumes of city notaires and were governed by considerations of availability and date coverage. The most dense section of the sample spans 1601-46; during those years, between 8 and 19 notaries were active in the city. In the service of gaining a comprehensive understanding of individual notarial clienteles, I have privileged the longer-running registres of the most prominent notaires. 639 Estimates for the early seventeenth century suggest a total Calvinist population of 18,000, one quarter of which were involved in port-related labor. Kevin Robbins has estimated at least 250 native bourgeois merchants were active in the period, though the smaller enterprises of habitants would add many more to this number. At any given time, more than a hundred foreign merchants and mariners may have been present in the city, concentrated in the port-side parishes. See Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea, 46-8, 56, 58-9. 237 seventeenth century. Otherwise, Devon’s ports predominated; activity in the county was distributed among the ports of the four main estuaries: Plymouth Sound and the Tamar

(12%), as well as ports of the Rivers Exe (10%), Dart (8%), and Taw (6%). The remaining counties formed the periphery of Rochelais trade for the English southwest:

Dorset (8%), Cornwall (4%), and Hampshire (4%). The southwestern carrying trade also extended to locations outside of this core region. London (6%) led as a destination for the rest of England. Other contracts by Rochelais merchants secured voyages for Brittany,

Normandy, northern Spain, Ireland, and Newfoundland.

La Rochelle in the early seventeenth century represented the pinnacle of Anglo-

French commercial culture in the western Channel region. This is not merely a quantitative assessment: the two decades following 1604 saw the convergence of several narratives essential to this project. That period marked an extended respite from the confessional wars – the French Wars of Religion (1598), the Anglo-Spanish war (1604), and the Dutch Revolt (with a Twelve Years’ Truce beginning in 1609) – that stifled later sixteenth-century trade. Historians of Stuart England have long noted the surge of investment in English overseas trade that accompanied the accession of James I, a combination of the end of war with Spain, the proliferation of successful joint-stock ventures, and an increase in the number of transatlantic voyages.640 Devon’s trade with

La Rochelle undoubtedly benefited from this improved commercial environment. In addition, Rochelais political stability and the city’s triumphal stature as a Calvinist

640 Nicholas Canny, “The Origins of Empire: an Introduction,” in The Oxford History of Empire, vol. 1, The Origins of Empire, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4; June Palmer, “Introduction,” in June Palmer, ed., The Letter Book of Thomas Hill, 1660-1661: Westcountry mercantile affairs and the wider world (Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 2008), xv; Theodore K. Rabb, “Investment in English Overseas Enterprise, 1575-1630,” The Economic History Review 19, no. 1 (1966), 77-80. 238 cultural center following the 1598 Edict of Nantes enhanced its relationship with traditional trading partners in England and the Netherlands. Finally, a 1606 Anglo-French commercial treaty encouraged an expanded trade, as it ameliorated long-standing issues regarding the rights of foreign merchants in disputes.641

Patterns of English arrival, residence, and departure at La Rochelle depended especially upon the productive rhythms of the French West Country – the late summer and autumn salt harvest of the nearby islands of Ré and Oléron, as well as the production of white wines and eau-de-vie in Aunis, Saintonge, and Angoumois. English business traditionally concentrated in late spring and autumn, when large, armed fleets of ships from the southern outports made the several day journey to the city’s ocean-sited landing port of Chef-de-Baie. Like other clients of northern Europe, English fleets customarily organized their business in the city through resident commissioners. Fleet investors transferred their legal power of attorney to resident merchants through procuracion agreements established in the étude of a city notary. Increasing English investment in western French products during the first thirty years of the seventeenth century encouraged the growth of a semi-permanent national community in La Rochelle. Whether transient, resident, or habitant, visiting English had long been a familiar presence in the port-side parishes of St. Jean de Perrot and St. Nicolas. English visitors occupied seven dedicated auberges in 1596 and their presence likely expanded even further in the

641 Étienne Trocmé, “La Rochelle protestante,” in Marcel Delafosse, ed., Histoire de la Rochelle (Toulouse: Editions Privat, 1985), 125; Étienne Trocmé and Marcel Delafosse, Le Commerce Rochelais de la fin du XVe siècle au début du XVIIe (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1952), 148-9. 239 seventeenth century. One of the longest tenured of these was “The City of Plymouth”, its title a marker of the local commercial clout of Devon and the southwest region.642

Visiting English merchants also had recourse to specialized corporate institutions in the process of conducting sales, shipping, and assorted financial affairs. As a long-held, royally bestowed privilege, foreigners were safeguarded from the arrests and seizures that frequently plagued commercial endeavors in other ports. For redress of the grievances that inevitably occurred in the course of business, they could seek outside judgments by several town bodies. In the seventeenth century, petty disputes fell to the cour consulaire

– a tribunal composed of a judge and two consuls elected annually by an assembly of fifty merchants – before which merchants directly argued their cases.643

The cases initiated by Devonian merchants were many and wide-ranging; in the case of established resident figures, disputes could be protracted. The court awarded

3,289lt 12s to Henry Head of Totnes in February 1631, relating to a rente and property sale in St. Barthelemy parish, negotiated four years previous with merchant Daniel Gilles and his wife Louise Perreau.644 Some small matters were mediated directly by town notaries; Pierre Moreau did so in a 1636 shipping dispute between master Thomas Dunn of St. Germans, Cornwall and Jean Chintrier.645 Via an arbitrage (as opposed to the accords that reflected court decisions), two parties could appoint merchants to adjudicate

642 Other seventeenth-century auberges included “The Crown of England” and “The City of Bristol.” P.B. Coutant, La Rochelle: essais sur la naissance d’un quartier, 1628-1689 (La Rochelle: Père Coutant, n.d.), section “II: la rue du perrot” (non-paginated); Bibliothèque Municipale de La Rochelle, MS 90, f. 54; Trocmé and Delafosse, Commerce Rochelais, 84, 150. 643 Trocmé and Delafosse, Commerce Rochelais, 193-5. While similar institutions existed in other French communes, after its founding in 1565 the authority of the cour consulaire overlapped with a number of other Rochelais bodies, including the Présidial, the Corps de ville, and especially the ill-defined tribunal d’Amirauté rochelaise. For amounts over 500lt, cases went to the Parlement de Paris. While the consular court’s records have been lost for the seventeenth century, notaries often recorded summaries of court disputes and awards (in the form of accords). 644 ADCM, Tongrelou, 3E 1780 (1631), f. 63r-4v. 645 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/209, f. 29r-v. In other cases, notaries facilitated arbitrations (arbitrages) between the parties. 240 their disagreement. These particular cases demonstrate a between international commercial activity and La Rochelle’s civic Calvinist institutions. In arbitrations involving two Calvinist parties, it seems to have been customary to set aside funds for the poor of the city congregation. A 1632 settlement between master Cornelius van Laaene of

Flushing and Peter Pryaulx of Southampton, for instance, designated that half of the award should be given over to the poor.646

Given the reputation of La Rochelle as a significant Atlantic-facing financial center, engagement with the local credit market was another important facet of English activity. While credit was already an essential part of everyday transactions in early modern France, there remained Christian anxieties regarding lending and the general transition to a market economy. Notaries became the main conduits for credit in communes such as La Rochelle, compensating for a lack of local institutions providing short-term capital. Their main instruments for this service were rentes, a new type of lending practice that emerged in the sixteenth century as the vanguard of the French commercial credit system. As formulated in most rente contracts, one party transferred the proprietorship of real estate or a lump sum of money in exchange for the payment of an annuity. This practice sidestepped existing lending limits based on the Catholic prohibition of usury. Rente debts could be transferred at a later date by the creditor to another party through secondary credit arrangements called transports. While notaries provided the legal legitimation crucial to the stability of rente and transport agreements, they also employed local knowledge to broker new loans. Evidence from western communes like Nantes shows that notaries actively matched lenders and borrowers, often

646 ADCM, Tongrelou, 3E 1777 (arbitrage et accord, February 9, 1632). 241 acting as bankers by holding loan money until solvent debtors could be found.647 Rentes and transports made up the majority of Rochelais notary registers in this period. Foreign merchants – including a large number from southwest England – readily engaged in these as both lenders and debtors, illustrating their significance in the process of international trade.

Transports were easily the most popular credit arrangements among seventeenth- century Devonian merchants. These contracts bear a superficial resemblance to rentes, also appearing to confirm the sale of lump sums of money. However, legally speaking, the transactor ceded the right to a previous rente in exchange for immediate capital.

These were complex transactions, insofar as they placed three parties in economic relationship – the original creditor (the rente holder), the debtor, and the new creditor (via the transport).648 Because of their embedded references to the previous business histories of the transactors, they provide a valuable measure of English commercial activity in the

French west country. The debtors in English transport agreements were predominantly native Rochelais merchants, nearly half of which were of bourgeois standing; in the sample, the monetary value of city debts outnumbered external ones by more than a 2:1 margin. The financial obligations of the debtors within the commune mainly derived from credit on previous purchases of English merchandise. In a number of cases, however, the notary only referenced a previous debt contract (cédule) between the parties.

647 On the importance of rentes in the French local credit system, see Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 34-7. The most exhaustive analysis of rentes and transports is Bernard Schnapper, Les Rentes au XVIe siècle: Histoire d’un instrument de crédit (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957). For the particulars of the lending arrangements in Rochelais practice, see Judith Pugh Meyer, Reformation in La Rochelle: Tradition and Change in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1568 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996), 38-9, 155-6. 648 Meyer, Reformation, 38-9, 155-6. 242

Beyond the commune, the transports suggest English entrenchment in the wider credit networks of western France. There was a significant amount of credit exchange between English residents and the merchants of the Charente river region, including those of Cognac, Brouage, and Limoges. However, their strongest ties were with merchants of southwestern Gascon cities such as Bordeaux and Bayonne. This perhaps reflected the long-running imbrication of English and French merchants along the broader Biscayan seaboard. When divesting rentes or other debt contracts in exchange for capital, a majority (57%) of English merchants made agreements with partners in Bordeaux.

Likewise, groups of English became creditors to Gascon traders active in La Rochelle.

Via his factor Guillaume Barrault of Surgères, merchant and pair Samuel Tartas ceded the titles of a number of rentes totaling 18,983lt 15s 2d to a group of Devon merchants in

April 1621, including Jonas Baker, Thomas Tapson, Michael Herring, Richard Laskey,

Nicholas Turberville, and Leonard Carswell. Tartas’s rentes originated in transactions with merchants of Bayonne (15), St. Jean-de-Luz (6), Limoges (3), and Hasquin (1). In a separate contract, the merchants also designated city merchant Pierre Claneau as their legal procurateur regarding the transported rentes.649 English participation in these sprawling networks of financial obligation – using such precarious credit arrangements – suggests the stability of their trades to Atlantic France.650

Business – and especially shipping – had long transcended linguistic and political uniformity in La Rochelle. Although we know less about the social standing of the crews

649 ADCM, Chesneau, 3E 250 (1621), f. 104v-10r. The individual sums in these cases ranged from 1730lt 1s 4d (Tapson) to 5039lt 6s 5d (Baker). 650 Because of the complexity and potential pitfalls of transports – their reliance on multiple, older contracts and the potential for default or subsequent litigation – Schnapper’s study suggests that they can be seen as a barometer of local credit confidence. The use of transports declined in relation to the constitution of new rentes throughout the sixteenth century, but slowly began to climb again after 1605. Schnapper, Rentes, 215-21. 243 of shipping fleets, no other activity provides a clearer picture of the geographical extents and integration of the city’s seventeenth-century commercial system. Since the native fleet was traditionally small, the Rochelais carrying trade to northern Europe (its so- called petit cabotage) was dominated by a coalition of regional Calvinist shippers.651 In their shipping charters, English merchants looked most frequently to Dutch (35.7%/total) or French (32.6%) mariners to master voyages in the Western Channel, followed by smaller proportions of English (22.2%) and Scottish (9.6%) sailors. Participants in this

Dutch carrying trade originated overwhelmingly from the Randstad cities of Holland and areas along the historical Zuiderzee, including Zaandam, Horn, and Amsterdam. The

French crews hired by English merchants came from Brittany or closer ports to the south along the Gulf of Saintonge that specialized in shipbuilding and external shipping, including Marennes and Chateau-d’Oléron. In a notable number of voyages, these French mariners gained employment by mastering English ships. For instance, in August 1635,

Jean Pineau was contracted by John Head to carry salt to Plymouth in the Suzanne.652

Particular merchants maintained connections with mariners from specific regions, as

Walter Ruby of Saltash did with several sailors of the Gulf of Morbihan and the river of

Pénerf in southern Brittany.653

651 On this issue, see John Clark, La Rochelle and the Atlantic Economy during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 26, 34; Favreau, Histoire, 60-1; Marc Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, vol. 3, Le début des temps modernes, 1480-1610 (Poitiers: Geste éditions, 2005), 115-17, 126-7. 652 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/239, f. 37r-v. 653 Ruby completed a number of contracts with masters Allain Trenen and Guillaume Sallavy of this region. See ADCM, Conay, 3E 1228, f. 118v-19r, f. 140r; 3E 1229, f. 72r-v, f. 112r-13r. 244

Notarial evidence and Calvinist commercial practice

Thus, once behind the three towers that formed La Rochelle’s Atlantic facade, arriving English merchants and mariners found a distinct set of corporate resources at their disposal. None of these were more important than local notaries, whose written work provides a window onto the problems of commerce and culture in early modern

France. Notaries were nominal legal bureaucrats who, by officially legitimizing an array of financial and property transactions, served as the primary connection between French subjects and the judicial state. Notarial contracts provide a day-to-day chronicle of

Rochelais commerce. They also serve as cultural texts that, by formalizing local relationships and social norms, reveal “sometimes directly and more often indirectly the divisions and conflicting interests of the townspeople where they practiced.”654 As a body of evidence, notarial contracts form a microhistory of Anglo-Huguenot commercial practice and family life.

Notarial work constituted an important layer in the commercial labor systems of

French cities. Notaries’ official endorsement of contracts was, of course, necessary for the performance of a wide range of public activities by merchants and artisans. Notaries safeguarded the key sites of mercantile association and integration, including kinship

(through patrimonial organization), learning (via pension and apprenticeship arrangements), and household formation (through property transactions and marital

654 Daniel Hickey, “Through the Eyes of Rural Notaries: Business, Community, and Confessional Divisions in Seventeenth-Century Poitou,” French History 21, no. 1 (2007), 3; Claire Dolan, Le notaire, la famille et la ville: Aix-en-Provence à la fin du XVIe siècle (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1998); Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, 42-5. 245 contracts). Although reliant in these contracts on a trained “technology of the hand,” they engaged in a variety of work steeped in local, experiential knowledge.655

Indeed, notaries played an increasingly dynamic role in governing local economic activities and networks. As Julie Hardwick has demonstrated for early modern Nantes, notaries frequently positioned themselves as intermediaries in loan arrangements. By matching solvent borrowers to willing lenders, they took on roles as brokers and bankers.

In other contracts such as testaments and marriage compacts, notaries were entrusted with the legal arrangement of the household property and extended kinship networks essential to the success of many family mercantile firms.656 At La Rochelle, notaries actively mediated the relationship between indigenous firms and the foreign resident community.

In the early decades of the seventeenth century, notaires Bounyn, Conay, Cousseau, and

Masset specialized in contracts between local traders and visiting Devonian merchant- commissioners. The registers of the Bounyn family indicate a fruitful, multi-generational relationship. Jean Bounyn regularly created contracts for merchants from Falmouth,

Plymouth, Exeter, Dartmouth, Bristol, and Southampton for at least seventeen years starting in 1578. When his son, also Jean, inherited his practice in 1603, this pattern expanded, continuing with consistency until 1627.657 Altogether, notaries were active participants in shaping local commercial and patrimonial practices.

The pious and direct Protestant prayer inscribed on the title page of the register volumes of Jean Bounyn fils (“Dieu conduite mon oeuvre. Amen.”658) conveyed sentiments neither superficial, nor isolated; notaries also negotiated matters of faith in

655 Dolan, 159-65; James R. Farr, The Work of France: Labor and Culture in Early Modern Times, 1350-1800 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 153, 166; Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, 28-9. 656 Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, 35-7; chapter 3 passim. 657 ADCM, Bounyn, 3E 2033-41; ADCM, Bounyn [fils], 3E 2045-52. 658 See intermittently first folios of ADCM, Bounyn [fils], 3E 2045-52. 246 various aspects of their professional world, from their selection of clientele to the phrasings employed in marriage contracts and testaments. Confessional conflict was an unavoidable social and cultural context for their labor in La Rochelle, as it was for mercantile work in general. On the other hand, the degree to which notarial production was itself confessional – either in textual or social practice – is an open question.659

Daniel Hickey’s examination of the confessional divisions among the notaries of Chef-

Boutonne in rural Poitou stands as one of the very few studies that has engaged this matter explicitly. Hickey finds that the town notariat was predominantly Reformed, and that these figures tended to marry, socialize, and develop their professional clientele within this group. Still, the intense competition for business within this very small community worked against the development of strict confessional solidarity. Driven by pragmatic concerns, Huguenot-Catholic relations remained somewhat porous within these circles.660

Hickey and other students of seventeenth-century confessionalism emphasize the importance of local contexts and difference. Indeed, though no comparable studies of the

Rochelais notariat have been completed, its social topography and commercial clout point to a contrast with Poitou. Pascal Rambeaud has observed that, during the 1560s, Calvinist conversion within the local notariat occurred in tandem with the spread of religious reform among the Rochelais mercantile elite. Indeed, the names of all eight city notaries for whom records survive appear in Calvinist church registers; by this method, Rambeaud

659 It should be noted that this is a subset of larger and continuing research questions about the nature of corporate confessional divisions in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. See Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 1-16; Philip Benedict, Faith and Fortune, 279-325. 660 Hickey, “Rural Notaries,” 17-21. On religious influence in the production of financial texts more generally, see James Aho, Confession and Bookkeeping: The Religious, Moral, and Rhetorical Roots of Modern Accounting (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005). 247 extrapolates that at least 24 of 30 total practicing notaries had converted by 1568.

Standing at the forefront of their clienteles, the group of grands marchands who monopolized communal political power embraced the new faith at a similar rate.

Together, the two professional cohorts formed a confessionally and socially homogeneous complex of legal-commercial power in the city.661

For the early seventeenth century, existing evidence regarding notary households suggests continued patterns of Calvinist socialization. During a fifty-two year career that bridged the city’s late Calvinist and counter-reformation histories, Jacques Cousseau developed a relatively large mercantile clientage. Cousseau oversaw the marriages of three of his daughters to members of the Guyot, Pajot, and Duthair families – all middling, mercantile households.662 Marrying for the second time in 1640, his daughter

Catherine became the spouse of Pierre Faneuil, city merchant and the eventual patriarch of a successful Huguenot mercantile house in English colonial Boston.663 Each of these contracts listed English witnesses from the southwestern counties. Some of these, like

Richard Laskey, shared extended family groups, while others such as John Head and

Josué Lloyd were likely part of common business circles.664

661 Pascal Rambeaud, “L’Amiral à La Rochelle, l’union du ciel et de la mer,” in Coligny, les Protestants et la Mer, eds. Acerra and Martinière, 132-7. The notaries for whom record volumes survive for the era include Pierre Balouet, Pierre Boutet, Vincent Naudin, Étienne Paillu, Antoine Pancereau, Arnaud Salleau, Pierre Tharazon, and Pierre Verdelet. Rambeaud observes that, of 17 grands marchands who completed contracts with local notaries, only 3 remained Catholic in 1568 (and these, too, converted to Calvinism subsequently). 662 ADCM, Chesneau, 3E 256a, f. 125v-6v; Chesneau, 3E 258c, f. 80v-1r; Chesneau, 3E 259c, f. 65r-6r. 663 ADCM, Chesneau, 3E 258c, f. 80v-1r. For genealogical information and the business networks of the Faneuil family, see J.F. Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century,” The William and Mary Quarterly 52, vol. 1 (1995), 90-92. 664 The Guyot family was a common relation via marriage for Laskey and Cousseau. Among the other witnesses, John Head of Totnes, George Hanmer of Barnstaple, and Josué Lloyd of Bristol each attended the Cousseau-Pajot and Cousseau-Faneuil nuptuals. All of these men were semi-permanent residents of the city during the 1630s and 1640s. 248

Indeed, some unique aspects of Rochelais business patterns indicate a comparatively larger balance of confessional solidarity. Both before and long after the crisis of 1627-8, the city’s bourgeois merchants and its international business profile remained predominantly Reformed. By all measures, notaries could expect to do a relatively large amount of business in the city; Cousseau, for instance, completed between 500-700 acts per year, and this volume was not at all unusual.665 These factors seem to have mitigated a competitive drive for Catholic business among the local notariat, as there was enough demand within Reformed circles to allow discrimination along confessional lines. In fact, the perceived confessional exclusivity of notaries and merchants became subjects of numerous legal briefs filed by Rochelais Catholics in the

1640s; these followed failed attempts to purge the largely Reformed notariat. Catholic anxieties concerning their continued economic inferiority and exclusion led artisans to close the guild system to Calvinists entirely in the early 1660s. The notarial and mercantile professions, as venial offices and métiers libres respectively, were a different matter. Post-siege Calvinist sons flooded commercial occupations, which proved to be an effective strategy for survival in an otherwise hostile corporate environment.666

The surviving evidence demonstrates that notarial clienteles were Calvinist- dominated prior to 1661, when a purge of godly inhabitants led by the city’s Catholicized police courts initiated a twenty-five-year cycle of official persecution and Huguenot emigration.667 Conversely, at least one early seventeenth-century notary, Jehan Combaud,

665 Hickey, “Rural Notaries,” 12. 666 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 104, 110-13. Faust’s dissertation is the only study to treat the subject of the post-siege mercantile and notarial community systematically. 667 While it is beyond the scope of this project to ascertain the confessional membership of the notarial customer base in total, I have used several different methods to make some reasonable estimates. Marriage contracts and testaments usually contain clauses that explicitly reference the confession of the parties involved, which are most useful in categorizing indigenous merchants and maritime laborers. For 249 specialized in Catholic marriage and probate contracts. Spanning the period 1612-1640,

Combaud registered a tiny number of acts each year, suggesting that Catholic customers remained a small subculture in the city.668 Still, it is worth noting that Huguenot business networks were not totally insulated from Catholic activities, especially after the events of

1627-8. The city drew some of its most valuable commodities from interior regions of

Poitou and Aunis within its banlieue that remained only partially Reformed. It also maintained a modicum of trade with Iberia, Italy, and (to a lesser extent) Ireland.669

Notaries and their contractual records illustrate that communal, family, and religious affinities shaped the maritime networks emanating from La Rochelle. Historical portrayals of the French west country have been colored by references to the insularity of its civic traditions and kinship structures. However, it seems that Rochelais “civic

Calvinism also stood in mutual relation to its international population. The city’s peripheral position relative to centers of power in Paris and Geneva undoubtedly gave patricians an autonomous space to exercise economic and institutional privileges.

Calvinist cosmopolitanism, as an alternative topography of power, supported these objectives. It secured capital, built family fortunes, and bolstered civic independence.

After the devastating siege of 1627-8, it buttressed the Huguenot minority’s survival strategies. In this regard, English merchants – as business associates, habitants, and sometimes kin – were vital participants in Rochelais civic life.

international parties to contracts, confession can be inferred with a degree of confidence from their listed nationalities and/or cities of origin. 668 ADCM, Combaud, 3E 1251-1283. 669 Marc Seguin, “Les Guerres de Religion (1562-98),” in Francine Ducluzeau, ed., Histoire des protestants charentais (Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois) (Paris: Le Croît vif, 2001), 89-92, 95; Trocmé and Delafosse, Commerce Rochelais, 150-1, 155-61. 250

Commercial Kinship and Calvinist Survival at La Rochelle

In August 1643, Devon-born couple Thomas Cornelius and Marie Blatchford were married at La Rochelle, supported by their legal agents and various English, French, and Dutch witnesses. Aside from the standard clauses, notaire Cherbonnier took the unusual step of translating and internally recopying notarial contracts from Dartmouth

(with the help of a local Latin professor) that confirmed parental consent for each partner.

This extended narrative encompasses some of the important social mechanics of Calvinist migration in the western Channel region. The couple originated in nearby villages of south Devon: Thomas was the son of husbandman Richard Cornelius and Margaret

(Marguerite) Philpe of Bishopsteignton; Marie the daughter of parson Hugh Blatchford and Joanne Crosse of Ashton. However, both partners were listed as demeurant in La

Rochelle, indicating they were living in the city for a time prior to the marriage.670

The legal guardianship of the marriage under local figures Paul Bron and Jean

Mouchard was integral here. Bron was a member of an international trading family and the most established Dutch merchant resident of the mid-seventeenth century at La

Rochelle. He facilitated the migration and marriage of the English couple in a number of ways. First, Cornelius was present in La Rochelle as his apprentice or associate, as he was named as a merchant “en la maison” of Bron. Appropriate to this kind of close business relationship, Bron was also named by Thomas’s parents as their legal representative, hosted the wedding, and his home served as the first residence of the newly married couple. Mouchard, the Blatchfords’ representative, was a local

“instructeur de la jeunesse,” but it is unclear as to whether he had some prior tutorial relationship with either Thomas or twenty-seven-year-old Marie. The integrated

670 ADCM, Cherbonnier, 3E 268, f. 154v-6r. 251 environment of international Reformed commerce at La Rochelle therefore played a strong role in the marriage of a couple that was nearly 1,500 miles removed from their closest relatives.

Like many other foreign Protestants who migrated to the city during its tense post-1628 counter-reformation, the Cornelius-Blatchford household intentionally defied the new religious and social order. Given the extreme restrictions placed on Protestant settlement by royal edict in 1628, the arrival of these Calvinist worthies was suffused with political and confessional significance. In spite of the catastrophic loss of more than two-thirds of the Reformed population during Richelieu’s siege, the newly Catholicized body of town officials were preoccupied for decades with an influx of new Calvinist migrants concentrated within the mercantile class. Notary records demonstrate that their concerns were not illusory. French, English, and Dutch immigrants were placed regularly in the legal category of demeurant, a restricted status after the siege that denoted permanent residency and the intent to start a new household. The trend suggests the success of local Reformed in subverting immigration restrictions, redirecting family strategies, and consolidating their professional profile.671 Unlike residents, marchands demeurants were commonly linked with rentals, property acquisitions, and kinship contracts. This confirms what many officials feared: a strong correspondence existed between permanent immigration status672, Calvinist social integration, and the resilience of La Rochelle’s elite mercantile families.

671 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 100-10. On demeurant status, also see Trocmé and Delafosse, Commerce Rochelais, 84. 672 Note that demeurant status was not synonymous with official naturalization (which was a form of “special permission” conferred by the French Crown after the siege), but still clearly implied permanent household establishment. A few post-siege English merchants, such as Josué Lloyd and Richard Laskey, were recognized as naturalized habitants. 252

English social integration at La Rochelle can be discerned in the number of higher measures of business practice and community involvement that emerge in local contracts.

At their deepest level, these could indicate friendships that both fortified business relationships and – as “fictitious kin” – were part of a merchant’s private support network.673 A distinct correlation existed between mercantile residency or household formation and these categories of activity, including translation, lodging, involvement in local apprenticeships, property transactions, and the witnessing of kinship contracts.

The profile of early seventeenth-century merchant John Raynshaw (Ranche) epitomizes the proliferation of these involvements among city immigrants. Raynshaw, once a resident of London, established residency in the city sometime around his 1610 marriage to Marie Thoullouze, daughter of merchant bourgeois Jean.674 There, his business associations and activities were concentrated within the western Channel sphere, and especially with agents of Exeter and Tiverton such as the Amy family. Unlike other

English, John made his household along Rue du Temple in the privileged quartier St.

Sauveur, a fact perhaps abetted by the patrician status of Marie’s family. In the heart of the old city, he hosted a slew of Devonian contract signings and lodged many young visiting merchants such as future residents Leonard Carswell and Richard Laskey of

Totnes.675 A review of the local witnesses to his wedding – still relatively early in his career – illustrates that Raynshaw was already well initiated into higher circles of the mercantile community. The attendees included pair André Macaing, who was a common commercial contact for other resident English; and Jacques Mignot and Jean Pinault, also

673 The dimensions of this kind of mercantile friendship unfortunately have remained unexplored for early modern France. See Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, 179-80; Sharon Kettering, “Patronage and Kinship in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies 16, no. 2 (1989), 428. 674 ADCM, Cousseau, 3E 216, f. 168v-9v. 675 ADCM, Masset, 3E 2161 (1614), f. 132r; Chesneau, 3E 250 (1621), f. 111r. 253 bourgeois figures. In later years, Raynshaw was named in witness lists for the marriages of several other English (George Boyd and Edward Wilby), as well as for the wedding of a mason of nearby Poitou (Clemens Pineteau, in 1618).676

Indeed, as Raynshaw’s career in the 1610s showed, the act of witnessing certain types of contracts typified social obligation suggestive of close bonds between merchants.

For ordinary commercial dealings – charte-parties, marchés, procuracions, ventes – the link between the contract party and witness was potentially tenuous. For one, a reader could not always be sure which party was represented by the witness. Secondly and above all, signing such contracts seems to have been, more often than not, a courtesy or reciprocal service between merchants. When, for instance, Londoner John Barnabe and

Richard Purchard completed unrelated contracts in the study of notaire Bounyn fils on the same day in October 1603, it had proven convenient for each man to sign as witness for the other.677

However, for contracts relating to kin and property, a supportive signature signified a meaningful gesture of friendship and overall integration within the community.

This is doubly true for the signing of a contrat du mariage or fiançailles, which was both an exclusive event and the most important step in the marriage process. The contract signing was a family milestone of enormous importance, not only because it marked the creation of a new household within the community, but also because it legally organized the patrimonial succession of two families. As a temporal event, it signaled the social unification of two heretofore-separate networks of family and close friends. Marriage, although not a sacrament within Reformed theology, was nevertheless a godly estate and

676 ADCM, Cousseau, 3E 217, f. 191v-2r; Bounyn fils, 3E 2049 (1619), f. 15r-16r; Masset, 3E 2162 (June 1, 1618). 677 ADCM, Bounyn fils, 3E 2045 (1603), f. 131r-2v. 254 the “vital cell” of worldly order.678 The signing usually took place in the home of the bride’s parents, with invitations extended to kin and a few friends. Great care was taken to represent the new social order inherent in the celebration. The witness signatures were arranged according to proximity, beginning with immediate and extended family, proceeding to spiritual kin, and then friends.679 This order was especially crucial in the first decades of the post-siege era, when the integrity of Reformed marriage shielded rebuilding commercial families from the hostile policies of the Catholic city fathers.

Therefore, English participation in Reformed marriage at La Rochelle – as partners, family, or even as friends – held a powerful confessional meaning. It is all the more interesting, then, that English attendance at Rochelais mercantile weddings was most concentrated in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. Between 1631 and

1646, a consistent group of resident English merchants participated as witnesses in at least ten local marriages.680 Of these, nearly 40% could be identified as merchants demeurants. The most frequent attendees including John Head of Totnes (6), Josué Lloyd of Bristol (4), George Hanmer of Barnstaple (4), and James Cooke (4; likely also of the southwestern counties). These men enjoyed close friendships themselves, as they attended the same marriages and signed the notary’s pages together.681 The social profile of the local families involved in these marriages demonstrates diversity: four had bourgeois status and five others were labeled habitants; three resided on Île de Ré; and five were ennobled.

678 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 151-2. 679 Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, 60-2. 680 I have only included weddings where both families were French. If I were to include post-siege English weddings, the number rises to thirteen between 1629-46. 681 Some combination of Lloyd, Hanmer, and Head attended six ceremonies; the group of Cooke, Hanmer, and Head went to three. At least eight of the men were originally from Devon and three others were from Bristol. 255

In not all of these cases was it possible to identify explicit connections between the attendees and the families. However, some patterns seem clear. The best attended of these ceremonies (with seven guests) was that of two Rétais maritime families, Graton and Taillourdeau.682 Given the ongoing involvement of the attendees (especially Head and Hanmer) with the salt trade from the Islands region, this is sensible. Among the city families, the strong English clientele of notaire Cousseau has already been discussed, and his family accounts for three of these occasions. Another ceremony attended by the core group of Lloyd, Hanmer, and Head (along with Edward Eastman of Totnes) was between lawyer David Blancher and Marie Hesselin, daughter of merchant Henri.683 The Hesselin family enjoyed a long relationship with the maritime English of the city. In particular,

Charles Hesselin was a merchant draper with early seventeenth-century links to

Southampton and London. His daughter Elizabeth married Edward Wilby of London in

1611.684 After Wilby’s death, there is some evidence that the family maintained these familiar ties. In spring 1621, the now-widowed Elizabeth lodged Devonian merchants

Thomas Tapson and Nicholas Turberville at her home in quartier Perrot.685 While

English merchants regularly acted as marriage witnesses throughout the seventeenth century, this post-siege grouping proved to be both distinctive and particularly immersed in city life.

682 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/243, f. 16v-17r. 683 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/240, f. 170r-1v. 684 Trocmé and Delafosse, Commerce Rochelais, 132-3; ADCM, Cousseau, 3E 217, f. 191v-2r. 685 ADCM, Chesneau, 3E 250 (1621), f. 110v-11r. 256

The geneology of an Anglo-Huguenot elite

More can be said for western Channel merchants who completed marriage contracts. Twenty-three years prior to the marriage of his daughter, Richard Laskey married Marie Chintrier, the daughter of honorable homme Jean. He originated in Totnes, which contained a particularly large and cohesive body of merchants trading to La

Rochelle and western France. Laskey was already a well-established resident figure by the time of his wedding. He was present as early as 1618, appearing alongside the powerful John Shapleigh of Totnes, who himself was wed to the daughter of a Huguenot emigrant.686 By 1623, he was practiced enough in French to act as interpreter in contracts.687 As a shipper, his network touched the extents of the western Channel region, including Exeter, Fowey, Southampton, Bordeaux, Morbihan, London, and Ipswich. At this early date, Laskey appears to have enjoyed close ties with several patrician families.

He stood as the sole English witness to the wedding of Magdelaine Papin, daughter of pair Jean. Jonas Baker and other close associates of Laskey contracted credit arrangements (transports) with Papin several years prior to this event. Returning the gesture, Papin was present at the signing of Laskey’s marriage contract in 1629.688

The incomplete nature of the record prevents us from restoring a full picture of how exogamous matches such as these were arranged. However, the marriage contract

686 ADCM, Masset, 3E 2162 (procuracion; June 26, 1618); Frederic Thomas Colby, The Visitation of the County of Devon in the Year 1620 (London: Harleian Society, 1872), 258; NA, PROB 11/174. Shapleigh wed Joane Anglois, daughter of Richard, who was “borne in Fraunce” but came to reside in Totnes. He was a wealthy merchant who owned several large ships docked at Dartmouth. His son, also John, traded La Rochelle during this period. 687 ADCM, Conay, 3E 1241, f. 130r-v. 688 ADCM, Chesneau, 3E 250 (1621), f. 131r-v; 3E 251, f. 66r-7r. Papin was a key member of the post-1614 radical bourgeois government. He was named to the corporate position of procureur des bourgeois for 1616, pair in 1619, and stood as the captain of the harbor-facing Tour de la Chaine during Richelieu’s fatal blockade in 1628. See Pierre Guillaudeau, “Diaire de Joseph Guillaudeau, Sieur de Beaupréau,” Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis 38 (1908), 121, 160; Pierre Mervault, Le Siège de La Rochelle: Journal Contemporain, 20 Juillet 1627 – 4 Juillet 1630 (La Rochelle, A&T Éditions, 2006), 65, 69. 257 does provide social clues. Family and friends who facilitated the match were often distinguished as one of the official witnesses furnished by bride and groom.689 For

Laskey, these were Henry Head and Leonard Carswell; for Chintrier, her siblings

Estienne, Jean, Jacques, and Isaac gave consent. Since the residencies of Head and

Carswell were coterminous with that of Laskey, it is possible that they played a role in negotiating with Marie’s brothers.

The kin relationships between Laskey and the merchant siblings of Marie benefitted both parties in the ensuing decades. As other studies of early modern French clientage illustrate, brother-in-law ties were perhaps the most important ones created by new marriages.690 As a new habitant settled in Perrot parish, Laskey worked most closely with Jean Chintrier [le jeune]. By the twilight of his career, Laskey was noted as both sieur and honorable homme in local contracts, indicating he had obtained substantial notoriety and wealth.691 Indeed, the 1652 marriage of Laskey’s daughter Marie to escuyer

Pierre David suggests the family’s deep entrenchment among the Reformed elite. The

Davids were an important surviving link to the pre-siege Reformed establishment in La

Rochelle. Pierre’s father Jacques was twice mayor (1625) as well as a member of the town council and judiciary during the siege, and his wife Marie Demirande was a member of an ennobled patrician family. Pierre’s older brother Jean was a pair, military captain, and Huguenot envoy to the English court in 1627-8.692

689 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 230. 690 Kettering, “Patronage and Kinship,” 426. 691 For details on French west country honorifics, see Meyer, Reformation, 43 and Paul Raveau, L’agriculture et les classes paysannes, la transformation de la propriété dans la Haut Poitou au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1926), 218-19. 692 ADCM, Moreau, 3E 59/257, f. 65r-6v; Guillaudeau, “Diaire,” 274, 363; Mervault, Journal, 65- 8. The Demirande men were titled sieurs de Treuil. 258

Along with Laskey, English-born Josué Lloyd was the most powerful and influential English merchant in post-1628 La Rochelle.693 His family too built a multi- generational business enterprise there, establishing trade and kin connections with elite city families. Lloyd established himself in La Rochelle as a merchant of Bristol during the early 1630s. In frequent partnership with a group of Barnstaple merchants, his early activities focused on the Bristol Channel and the New French fur trade. His marriage in

1646 to Anne Legoux marked his inauguration into a prosperous and ennobled kin group who history bracketed the era of official Reformed oligarchy in the city. The Legoux family, headed by the escuyer Jean and his wife Marie Degerandy, were sieurs de

Beauséjour.694 They formed a larger family group with the noble Salberts via the marriages of Jean’s brother Pierre and that of his eldest daughter Marie. Gabriel Salbert,

Marie’s spouse and brother-in-law to Josué, was the Reformed minister of the town between 1648 and his apparent death just two years later. The Salberts had an intimate connection with Reformed and corporate power in the city: his father Jean-Pierre Salbert was an eschevin and town minister, and Jean-Pierre’s uncle, Jean Salbert, was the first

Calvinist mayor of the city in the 1560s.695

From the family home in St. Sauveur, Josué (now also titled sieur de Beauséjour) reoriented his activities to focus on business with his new kin. Lloyd managed several family-held properties located on the adjoining Rue Gargoulleau and Rue du Minage in

693 The international activities of the Lloyd family (especially Josué’s son, also Josué) are detailed in part by Bosher, “Protestant International,” 83-4. 694 ADCM, 3E 269, f. 130r-1r. Their stature was represented in the dowry gift of 3,000lt, a substantial sum. 695 Louis Delmas, L’Église réformée de La Rochelle (Toulouse, 1870), 49, 438, 440. The Salberts maintained close ties with the Legoux children. Louise Salbert, wife of Pierre Legoux, was Anne’s godmother. After the sudden death of Gabriel Salbert in 1651, Marie Legoux remarried chevallier Moise Pynyot, and among the many witnesses were members of the Salbert clan. See ADCM, Cherbonnier, 3E 275, 153r-4r. 259 the later 1640s. Again, in the second generation, the Lloyd-Legoux genealogy suggests that exogamous marriage remained a vital strategy for family survival. Anne Legoux bore at least five children with Josué, and after his death (sometime before 1655) oversaw the marriage of at least one daughter, Anne, to Saintongeais escuyer Philipe Delabarre in

1666.696 Afterwards, in 1674, their son Josué Lloyd married Elizabeth D’Harriette, who was the daughter of an internationally integrated Anglo-Dutch family.697

While Laskey and Lloyd sought entry into relatively self-contained confessional circles at La Rochelle, the trajectory of other exogamous Anglo-French family groups could be far more sprawling. There is the story of the Mercier (Coquel) family, which came to encompass Walloon, French, Guernésiais, English, and Dutch members on its way to settling in the city in the early seventeenth century. The family group had its origins in a French emigrant couple, Jean Mercier and Joanne Leclerc, who settled at

Southampton in the later sixteenth century. Mercier was of Norman ancestry, while

Leclerc’s family was a casualty of confessional warfare along the English Channel. They were most likely driven from the Spanish Netherlands during the Duke of Alba’s persecutions of the 1560s. Their marriage, confirmed at the French church of

Southampton, produced thirteen children.698

In the first decades of the seventeenth century, two of the Mercier daughters

(Anne and Mary) migrated with their merchant husbands to La Rochelle and a third

696 ADCM, Cherbonnier 3E 280, f. 90r-1r. The Delabarre-Channet family group was members of the seigneurie settled in St. Laurent-de-la-Prée, near to the garrison town of Rochefort. 697 Bosher, “Protestant International,” 83. 698 E.M. Godfray ed., Registre des baptesmes, marriages et mortz, et jeusnes, de l’église wallonne et des isles de Jersey, Guernesey, Serq, Origny, etc., établie a Southampton par patente du roy Edouard sixe et de la reine Elizabeth (London: Huguenot Society of London, 1890), 86, 126. 260

(Jane) wed a Southampton merchant specializing in the Rochelais trade.699 Anne was wed in 1624 to John Stroud (Strode), merchant demeurant in the city.700 Stroud originated in

Ryme Intrinseca, an interior village of Dorset, though the family had related branches in nearby Devon.701 Early in his career, Stroud was identified in contracts as a merchant of

Southampton, though his shipping patterns more frequently leaned toward Poole,

Weymouth, and Guernsey (along with frequent trips to Bristol). Prior to his marriage, he also facilitated the careers of his extended kin, supporting the town activities of his nephew (also John).702 Stroud was a key figure of early seventeenth-century English commerce in the port; by the time of his wedding, he began Gallicizing his signature as

“Jean” or “Jehan.”703

Mary Mercier and her Dutch husband Martin Vanderbist migrated to La Rochelle around the same time as Stroud, arriving about or before 1608. Vanderbist appears far less often in the notaries’ volumes than his brother-in-law, but his wife’s testament suggests he was quite successful. In addition to an extravagant amount of jewelry, Mary bequeathed a total of 18,560lt to the Reformed church, charity, and kin.704 Drafted at La

Rochelle, Mary’s will is unusually personal and expressive on the twinned subjects of religion and family. She makes a long, nonformulaic profession of Reformed faith, praying for the “grace to live and die in his fear” and shrugging off the personal “vanity”

699 Jane Mercier wed merchant Peter Pryaulx, member of a Guernsey family that migrated to Southampton. Pryaulx was a notable corporate figure there (he was mayor for 1622) and traded at La Rochelle, where he actively collaborated with his brother-in-law Paul Mercier. The couple’s son became a resident merchant at La Rochelle and Bordeaux. See Spicer, Southampton, 66-7; ADCM, Tongrelou, 3E 1780 (1630), f. 145r-6r; 3E 1780 (1632), f. 172v. 700 ADCM, Bounyn fils, 3E 2051 (1624), f. 29r-30r. 701 Colby, Visitation of Devon, 278; John Paul Rylands, The Visitation of the County of Dorset, Taken in the Year 1623 (London: Harleian Society, 1885), 88-9. Members of the Stroud family were trading in La Rochelle as early as 1582. See ADCM, Bounyn, 3E 2035 (1582), f. 112v-13r. 702 ADCM, Masset, 3E 2162 (charte-partie; April 28, 1617). 703 See ADCM, Conay, 3E 1242, f. 15r-v, 20v-1r. 704 Vanderbist’s other appearance in the notarial record is as a witness for the marriage of Stroud and his sister-in-law. 261 that lay behind her bequests to kin and friends. Her belief also drove her donations (200lt) to Rochelais religious institutions and charities, including the poor, the local church and ministry, the hospital, and the “box of the Dutch poor.” She then turns to her family, giving generously to her nieces and nephews and to her Dutch godchildren, and ending by urging her siblings to raise their children in “the fear of God.”705 Mary Mercier’s earnestness before the notary is an excellent way to take account of the holism of the mercantile community at La Rochelle. Her wishes reveal a unified vision of Calvinist faith, international community, and family life – a view requisite to someone born into such a vast genealogy.

* * * * *

In sum, mercantile activity at La Rochelle crossed many categories and encompassed a diverse grouping of international actors. Across all of these practices – commercial, educational, and communal – cut organizing principles of faith and family.

Family gave structure to the immense networks of trust that made business practice possible and profitable, both inside and outside the city. Carrying over from the well- rehearsed habits of regional trade along the western Channel and Bay of Biscay, maritime sociability there was northern-oriented and confessionally focused. These patterns remained even as Reformed corporate power fell away after the brutal siege, sustained by the collective persistence of city families and their northern commercial networks.

Exogamous families made up the lesser part of marriages in the city and the practice itself (especially after 1628) entailed a degree of trust on the part of locals.

Therefore, such marriages and their attached family histories reveal much about how

705 Henry F. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England: Abstracts of Wills Relating to Early American Families. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1969), 2: 985-8. 262 families strategized to extend their commercial reach beyond the city. English merchants who sought local brides undoubtedly did the same, but for the distinction that nearly all established permanent households within the city afterwards. As immigrants this reflected a desire “to be permanently grafted onto the deeply rooted trunk of the

Reformed community native to the city.”706 In a sense, as they entered the inner sanctum of family life at La Rochelle, their social worlds became smaller and more fundamental.

Their genealogies in this final section have something precise to tell us about the convergence of communities – national, religious, and familial – on the edge of the

Atlantic World.

These “small” matters of urban politics and legal practice reflected the structures of transoceanic commerce. Catholic officials who endeavored to regulate commercial practice – through devices such as the naval blockade of 1570, the siege of 1572, and

Richelieu’s more recent siege – continued an established tradition of attempts to cut off

Reformed families from the networks perceived to support their mercantile expertise. In the 1630s and 1640s, they were part and parcel with Richelieu’s design for a counterreformed New French empire – which entailed an erasure of Calvinist dominance of French Atlantic enterprise to that point. Like Bristol, La Rochelle’s towers formed their own “widening gate,”707 whereby its Calvinist families sustained their lives and fortunes through international commercial kinship.

706 Faust, “Beleaguered Society,” 226. 707 David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 4. 263

CONCLUSION

NEW WORLDS, NEW MEN

The legacy of western Channel commercial kinship for Rochelais Calvinists in the later seventeenth century was powerful and immediate. In 1661, royal avocat Pierre

Bomier used the police courts to instigate a violent purge of new Reformed families in the city on the basis of the 1628 declaration. Perhaps 300 families fled at this time, and those that remained were subjected to further persecutions. The notorious dragonnades initiated by the Bourbon regime after 1681, followed four years later by the formal

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, forced most other Reformed merchants and their families to seek refuge abroad. La Rochelle again served as an entrepôt – this time providing the main haven for religious refugee traffic out of the French realm.708

The Rochelais diarist Jacques Fontaine gives a dramatic rendition of the rescues of Calvinist families from the Saintongeais coast by English trading ships. Fontaine’s family, like many others after the Revocation, continued onto England. Settling in

Barnstaple initially, he remarked at the “Christian charity” of its residents, who “took us into their houses and treated us with tho greatest kindness; thus God raised up for us fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters in a strange land.”709 The estimates of Robin

Gwynn suggest that between 40-50,000 Huguenot refugees settled in England during the late seventeenth century. Of that group, the largest community was in London and its suburbs (approximately 21,000). The refugee community of between 7-10,000 that subsequently formed congregations at Plymouth (1681), Exeter (1682, 1686), Barnstaple

(1685), Bideford (1685), Dartmouth (1689), and other Devon boroughs was among the

708 Louis Étienne Arcère, Histoire de la ville de la Rochelle et du pays d’Aulnis (La Rochelle, 1757), 2: 348-56. Louis Delmas, L’église réformée de La Rochelle (Toulouse, 1870), 216-25. 709 Jacques Fontaine, Mémoires d’une famille Huguenote (Toulouse, 1877), 173. 264 largest of its kind outside of London.710 An agent to the French ambassador reported in

1686 that “Plymouth is the place where there are the most French,” with dozens of ships having arrived carrying passengers from La Rochelle.711 Indeed, Plymouth and nearby

Stonehouse contained one of the largest assemblages of refugees in the country, amounting to three congregations; its nonconformist congregation had 500 members in

1715. As in other Huguenot Atlantic settlements, refugees in the West Country assimilated into their new communities quickly, with most French churches dissolving within two generations.712 Western Channel relationships also mediated French migration routes to North America; reports suggested that some refugees embarked for

Pennsylvania and the Carolinas from their Plymouth landing site.713

* * * * *

The Anglo-French community of the western Channel was a prosperous trading system, part of the international Reformed network, and the product of a shared maritime culture. In the sixteenth century, urban classes of overseas merchants, strong pools for marine labor, and shipping resources positioned Channel port cities at the vanguard of maritime enterprise in their respective states. Protestant reform laid the basis for political

710 Devon’s refugee community is matched only by the in that regard. Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: the History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 44-51. Charles E. Lart, “The Huguenot Churches and Settlements in the West of England,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 8 (1901-04), 286-98; Inkerman Rogers, The Huguenots of Devonshire (Bideford, 1942). 711 “Memoire sur ce qui concerne le Francois de la Religion Pretendue Reformée (6 Jan. 1686),” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 7 (1901-04), 160-2. The agent also names Bristol, Falmouth, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and London as sites of recent Huguenot landings. 712 The last French congregation dissolved at Plymouth in 1815. Hugh Peskett, Guide to the Parish and Non-parochial Registers of Devon and Cornwall, 1538-1837 (Torquay: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 1979), lxii-lxvii. Only fragments of French baptismal records survive for the West Country congregations; see PWDRO 358/6/4 (“French baptisms at St. Andrews Parish Church, Plymouth, 1689- 1728”) and DRO QS17/3/1-2 (“Oath roll naturalization at Devon Quarter Sessions, 1709-17”). 713 “Memoire,” 161. Also see Alison Grant, “Huguenot Maritime Links with Seventeenth-Century Devon,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland 25 (1993): 51-63 and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden: the Huguenots and their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 45, 66, 93. 265 and naval cooperation among regional elites, which peaked during the civil wars in the

French west during the 1560s and 1570s. Their integration in the Rochelais armée de mer facilitated the maritime triumph of the Navarre faction over western France and, when collaboration extended to the Sea-Beggars of Nassau in 1570, the preservation of the

Dutch Calvinist cause in the early stages of the Eighty Years War. The expansion of

Channel Calvinist ambitions to Spain and the Atlantic marked the first mass influx of northern privateers into the Americas. There, they honed early English and French long- range commercial experiments into a successful template for predatory commerce, which would prove essential to later English maritime expansion to North America.

In locating an English “geography of expertise” within western Channel relationships, we have de-coupled the concept of region from the history of administrative nation-states. Classroom histories conventionally cite inter-cultural borrowings from the seaways of the Mediterranean or southern Andalucía as a stimulant for late medieval Iberian maritime expansion. Yet Anglophone historians persist in essentializing English seaborne experience, constructing it as a subject situated within a national island history. Instead, the evidence substitutes the Atlantic archipelago of the western Channel, asserting that English expertise was a contingency of late sixteenth- century collaboration in that region. Many historians have cited “hybrid,” or predatory commerce as an aspect of early English models for Atlantic commercial insurgency, but few have actually parsed the term as a historical development. A legal expediency for reprisal created under the Guyennois admiralty produced a template – and a market – for such enterprise in western Channel cities. Thus, the “innovation” of Elizabethan ‘private 266 war for public gain’ was an import, like other sixteenth-century goods, smuggled into the

English state through West Country ports.

Early English and French Atlantic organization emerged as a social outcome of

European Calvinist reform. Western Channel activism must be viewed as the leading edge in the confessionalization of maritime space in the sixteenth-century Atlantic. The transatlantic strategy of the Rochelais admiralty demonstrated an integrated view of commerce, faith, and empire – formulated in conflict with Spain – that provided the ideological content of the English long-range privateering drive after 1585. The image of

Spanish “fury” and intolerance, a commercial face of the Black Legend forged in Anglo-

French catastrophes at San Juan de Ulua and Fort Caroline, continued to dictate confessional boundaries within early modern Protestant communities in Europe and

North America. Too often, maritime histories have sought religious evidence in the wrong places, privileging doctrine and overt profession in the archives. The result has been an undervaluation of everyday faith in the worlds of early modern seafarers.714

Western Channel activism argues for further readings of the influence of reform as associative, experiential, and biographical – a “new way of thinking and acting” and “a form of life” for seafaring believers.715

The transoceanic Protestant community has a long lineage in the scholarship of the Atlantic World. Apart from the settlement-dotted coast of New England, New Paltz and other Hudson communities have been examined as unique Protestant refuges for the

714 Vincent V. Patarino, Jr., “The Religious Shipboard Culture of English Sailors,” in The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649, ed. Cheryl A. Fury (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2012), 141- 92. 715 David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 14. 267 seventeenth century, notable for their national and confessional heterogeny.716 As the social base of emerging European empires, merchants played a significant role in the constitution of such communities. Merchants have often been viewed as the authors of these transformations, but less so as objects of innovation themselves. However, the process of ethnogenesis no longer should be considered exclusive to the “new men” of the New World.717 The western Channel community demonstrates the Old World precedents and origins for the later history of commercial, religious, and family life in the northern reaches of Atlantic America.

716 Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550-1653 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1983). For New York and the Hudson Valley, see Joyce D. Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial , 1664-1730 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Richard W. Pointer, Protestant Pluralism and the New York Experience: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Religious Diversity (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988). 717 James Sidbury and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Mapping Ethnogenesis in the Early Modern Atlantic,” The William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (April 2011), 181-208. 268

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Philip J Hnatkovich ______

Education

2014 Pennsylvania State University Ph. D., History

2008 Université Sainte-Anne Language certificate, French

2005 West Virginia University M.A., History

2002 California University of Pennsylvania B.A., History & Political Science

Fellowships and Honors

2010 North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) Dissertation-Year Fellowship (National research fellowship)

2009 Edwin Earle Sparks Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities (Penn State; College research fellowship)

Conference Presentations

2013 “‘Each according to his office’: Risk, rank, and labour in English whaling enterprise at Spitsbergen, 1656-7,” joint-authored paper with Colin Greenstreet, University of Exeter Centre for Maritime Historical Studies and European Research Council conference Working Lives Between the Deck and the Dock: comparative perspectives on sailors as international labourers (Exeter, UK)

2013 “The Whip and the Word: Psalms, Shipboard Songs, and Religious Translation in the Early English Atlantic World,” Annual Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies (New York, NY)

2012 “‘Seeing like a Sailor’: Violence, Commerce, and the Confessional Seascape of the English Channel in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Annual Meeting of the Mid- Atlantic Conference on British Studies (Philadelphia, PA)

2011 “The Trade, Militant: Maritime Violence and Confession in the English Channel, 1568-1603,” Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (Fort Worth, TX)

2011 “The Atlantic Gate: Anglo-Huguenot Comity at La Rochelle during the Seventeenth Century,” 17th Annual Omohundro Institute for Early American History Conference (New Paltz, NY)