A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



other commissioners to avoid any misgiving of connivance ' of which complaints have been made.' l 

 As the vice-admirals were selected from the titled or untitled county families, this plain speaking 

 implies a great deal. In November, 1565, commissioners were nominated for each county, with 

 large powers, and they were to appoint deputies at every creek and landing place.* _ In Hastings alone 

 did the owners of fishing boats and other vessels give bonds for good behaviour, from which it may 

 be inferred that their character was either much better or much worse than that of their neighbours. 



Her action in 1565 was the first real effort Elizabeth made to put down piracy, but it was not 

 of much avail. Occasional references show that owners proceeded in much the same manner as 

 heretofore; in 1567 one Morryce, of Rye, was preparing a ship for sea, and some information 

 must have reached the Council, for they ordered the mayor to stop him to prevent ' such inconveni- 

 ence as might hap.' * In October, 1571, the queen sent a small squadron to sea, which speedily 

 swept up seven pirates in the Straits of Dover alone ; the Kentish prisons were crowded, and 

 special commissioners were sent who had power to try by court-martial as well as by the ordinary 

 process of the law.* The business of crushing the freebooters became still more difficult when the 

 Prince of Orange issued letters of marque, many of which were taken out by Englishmen, while 

 many of his ships had Englishmen on board. The Orange privateers were an element of /a haute 

 politique, and Elizabeth did not hold it advisable entirely to crush them even if it had been in her 

 power to do so. Then the Spanish Netherlands followed the example of the Dutch and sent out 

 privateers, the beginning of the affliction of ' Dunkirkers,' which plagued the coast for more than a 

 century, while Englishmen also obtained letters of marque from the Huguenot leaders in France. 5 

 An early victim of the successes of the Spanish privateers was George Fenner of Chichester, who 

 petitioned that, within eighteen months, they had taken four of his ships, and that some men 

 belonging to them had been sent to the galleys. 6 The English and Dutch pirates and privateersmen 

 used the home ports, secretly or openly, with an almost complete indifference to proclamations, and, 

 it is to be suspected, with the connivance of mayors and vice-admirals. In 1573 a drastic circular 

 letter forbade the preparation of any fighting ship except for service in Ireland, but this apparently 

 did not prevent the voyage of the John, which perhaps belonged to Arundel, and certainly returned 

 to Littlehampton in 1575, after a voyage to the West Indies where her crew robbed the Spanish 

 ships of gold, silver, and less valuable commodities. 7 Her captain, Gilbert Horsley, was in trouble 

 at Chichester with another ship in 1577. Wrecking was, of course, a concurrent industry with 

 piracy, and was common to the whole coast ; but Sussex, like Cornwall, eventually obtained a 

 national reputation for misdeeds in that particular branch of maritime lawlessness. In 1576 five 

 Breton ships were lost somewhere on the coast of Sussex ; some part of the cargoes was saved, but 

 the salvors ' have refused by any means to make restitution thereof,' so that the Privy Council had 

 to intervene. 9 In 1600 and 1601 Dutch and French wrecks were plundered at Aldrington and 

 Shoreham, and the owners appealed to the Council to make the thieves disgorge their spoil. 10 



In May, 1577, some of the inhabitants of the Cinque Ports offered to send out ships pirate 

 hunting at their own expense if promised ' reasonable recompense ' out of the goods found on board 

 the captures, which is good evidence that there was known to be a sufficient number of the 

 freebooters at sea to make it a promising speculation. 11 Later in the year new piracy commissioners 

 were appointed, and still more stringent methods of repression adopted ; the aiders and abettors 

 ashore were now to be prosecuted and fined, and the fines were to go towards recouping the 

 victims ; the takers of pirates were to have a proportion of the property found on board, and* 

 commissions were to be granted to private persons to send out ships to cruise for pirates. 1 * This 

 time there were separate commissioners for the Cinque Ports and for western Sussex ; 13 the latter 

 body certified that they could not find any aiders or harbourers of pirates. The Privy Council 



I Hist. MSS. Com. Cecil MSS. i, 286. 



' Acts ofP.C. 8 Nov. 1565 ; S.P. Dom. Eliz. xxxviii, 28 : xxxix, 1 1, 12. In Sussex commissioners were 

 appointed for each rape, and it is noticeable that the Lord Warden was not among them, although he was 

 appointed for Kent. 



3 Acts ofP.C. 23 Jan. 1566-7. ' Ibid. 30 Oct. 1571, 15 Feb. 1572 ; S.P. Dom. Eliz. Ixxxv, 57. 



* In 1569 Martin Frobisher was sailing under such a commission, and his proceedings caused the Rye 

 merchants to appeal urgently to the Council (R. G. Marsden in Engl. Hist. Rev. xxi, 541). 



e S.P. Dom. Eliz. Ixxv, 1 1 ; cv, 22. 7 Admir. Ct. Misc. Bks. 834. * Acts ofP.C. x, 89, 102, 124. 



9 Ibid. 28 May, 1576. 10 Ibid. 5 Oct. 1600, 24 May, 1601. " Ibid. 14 May, 1577. 



II Add. MSS. 34150, fol. 6 1, 64. In 1559 the judge of the Admiralty Court held that all property must 

 be restored to the owners (S.P. Dom. Eliz. vi, 19), therefore this must refer to goods belonging to the pirates 

 or unclaimed. There had been some doubt whether accessories ashore could legally be prosecuted (Acts of 

 P.C. 6 June, 1577) ; and legal opinion was obtained before the government took action (Harl. MSS. clxviii, 

 fol. 1 14). The spoils found stowed in pirates were sometimes very valuable, e.g. in two taken in December, 

 1577, there were 634 elephants' tusks, cochineal, and Spanish brandy (S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxxxv, fol. 15). Such 

 cargo certainly never came out of English ships. 



u S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxxiii, 24, 25. 



148 



