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Protestants as Pirates, Slavers, and Protomissionaries: Sierra Leone 1568 and 1582

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

P. E. H. Hair
P. E. H. Hair*
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in African History, University of Liverpool
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Extract

The great bay of the Sierra Leone estuary is a show-piece of tropical scenic beauty, and the nineteenth-century hymn-writer may well have been alluding to it when he spoke wistfully of the land where ‘every prospect pleases…’ Four centuries before that, the first visitors from Europe compared the wild peaked hills on the south side of the estuary, as they crackled with thunder in the summer storms, to the proud mane of a roaring African lion; and they gave Sierra Leone (originally Serra Lyoa, ‘The Leonine Hills’) its name. On the north side of the estuary, long golden beaches are still today backed only by mop-headed palms and by slow-rising smoke from hut- or bush-fires. The estuary runs from the Atlantic to the east, and its throat closes round a score of islets: seen from the entrance channel, they reminded a seventeenth-century French captain of ‘hay-stacks on a distant field’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 203 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

page 203 note 1 The prospects listed in the previous verse include—‘Where Afric's sunny fountains/Roll down their golden sands …’. The hymn (‘From Greenland's icy mountains’) was written in 1819 by an Anglican clergyman: at this date, the only Anglican mission in Africa was at Sierra Leone; hence it is possible that the reference to Africa was coloured by descriptions of Sierra Leone's mountain streams and beaches. On the circumstances of writing, see Julian, J., Dictionary of Hymnology, 1892, 399 Google Scholar.

page 203 note 2 Hair, P. E. H., ‘The spelling and connotation of the toponym “Sierra Leone” since 1461’, Sierra Leone Studies, xviii (1966), 43–58 Google Scholar.

page 203 note 3 ‘Toutes ces Islettes et Rochers … semblent à des mulons de foin’: Admiralty Library MS. 63, 88; ‘like hay-reeks’: Barbot, J., A description of the coasts of North and South Guinea, 1732, 99 Google Scholar.

page 204 note 1 Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter, A.G.N.], Inquisición, tomo 49: proceedings against Robert Barrett, October 1570. All quoted documents from the Mexican archives, and from the Spanish archives at Seville, have been examined by means of transcripts and translations made for the late G. R. G. Conway, one set of which is deposited at Cambridge University Library, where the proceedings against Barrett are in Add. MS. 7229. In the quotation in the text, and in subsequent quotations from documents, oratio recta has been restored and some formal repetition omitted.

page 204 note 2 Groves' Dictionary of Music (ed. E. Blom, 5th ed., 1954, vi. 958–63) notes that ‘a knowledge of music was so general at this time that the number of persons able to sing or play these tunes at sight was probably very considerable’.

page 205 note 1 The Spanish authorities originally distinguished between ‘contrabandistas’ (i.e. smugglers, those who traded illegally) and ‘corsarios’ (i.e. pirates, those who committed violence). But the violent activities of French ships in the Caribbean from the 1540s led the authorities to regard all foreign interlopers thereafter as ‘corsarios’; and although the English expeditions of the 1560s made some effort to appear non-violent, there is no evidence that they were considered for a moment to qualify for treatment as mere contrabandists. On die three-fold illegality of English trade in the Caribbean, see I. A. Wright, Spanish documents concerning English voyages to the Caribbean 1527–68, 1929, 8. That political, religious and commercial hostility were combined in the Spanish attitude is shown by the proclamation issued in Santo Domingo in 1563, before the first English expedition arrived, warning the inhabitants about the visitors—‘for it was suspected that their intentions were hostile, that they were “Lutheranos”, and that they had come without his majesty's manifesto or licence’: Wright, op. cit, 9 n. 1.

page 205 note 2 From the late 1550s, the king of Spain took upon himself to complain to the English government, through his ambassador in London, about English incursions into Guinea waters, partly, perhaps, because there was no permanent Portuguese ambassador in London: Álvarez, Manuel Fernández, ‘Orígenes de la rivalidad naval hispano-inglesa en el siglo XVI’, Revista de Indias, Madrid, viii (1947), 311–69Google Scholar, especially 315–21. Spanish interest in Guinea episodes was further shown in 1563, when the authorities in the Caribbean accused an English expedition of stealing ships and goods from the Portuguese in Africa (Wright, op. cit., 62). In the early 1560s, the Spanish and Portuguese fleets cooperated against pirates, and stationed a joint fleet off Cape St. Vincent: Chaunu, P., Simile et l'Atlantique (1504–1650), Paris 1959, 8/1, 261–3Google Scholar. But the Portuguese who held licences to import slaves into the Spanish Indies regularly sub-let their privilege, and apparently could have done so legally to Englishmen: Scelle, G., La traite nigriere awe Indes de Castille, Paris 1906, i. 226 Google Scholar. Moreover, the earliest contrabandists in the Caribbean were Portuguese (Wright, op. cit., 6). A further complicating factor in Spanish-Portuguese relations was the struggle within both empires between the royal monopoly with its dependent interests, and excluded interests, e.g. in the Spanish system the interests of the Canary Islands, which thus became ‘un fuerte foco de defraudación’: Padron, Francisco Morales, El comercio Canario-Americano, Seville 1955, 288 Google Scholar. The Spanish authorities, therefore, both supported official Portuguese interests, and suspected collusion between the English ‘corsarios’ and unofficial Portuguese (and Spanish) interests.

page 205 note 3 The most detailed discussion of the Anglo-Portuguese negotiations is in E. Bekker, ‘Der Afrikahandel der Königin Elisabeth von England und ihr Handelskrieg mit Portugal’, 30–74, in Beiträge zur Englischen Geschichte im Zeitalter Elisabeths, Giessener Studien auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte x (1899), which points out that the official translations of the diplomatic exchanges are not in accord. See also Williamson, J. A., Sir John Hawkins, 1927, 58–62 Google Scholar.

page 206 note 1 Blake, J. W., Europeans in West Africa 1450–1650, 1942, ii. 358 Google Scholar.

page 206 note 2 The claims are analysed in Williamson, op. cit., 81–3, 102–4: the original documents have never been printed in full. Williamson's overall defence of Hawkins against the Portuguese charges is justly criticised in Andrews, K. R., Drake's Voyages, 1967, 16–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 206 note 3 Quoted in Williamson, op. cit., 53. However, the crude view expressed by many Iberian historians to the effect that the English only challenged the papal award after the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne must be controverted: English voyages to Guinea took place during the reign of the Catholic Mary (and her Spanish consort). While Protestantism no doubt encouraged the challenge, it must be recollected that the earliest advocate of a ‘free sea’ and the first challenger of Portuguese and Spanish monopoly was Catholic France in the 1530s: see Julien, C. A., Les voyages de découverte et les premiers établissements (Histoire de l'expansion et de la colonisation françhises), Paris 1948, especially 115–17.Google Scholar

page 207 note 1 The account quoted in British Museum Cotton MS. Otho E VIII, fols. 17–41v, printed in Williamson, op. cit., 493–534, hereafter referred to as ‘Cotton MS’; the second account in Archivo General de Indias [hereafter A.G.I.], Seville, 51–3–81/5: proceedings against Valentine Green, Seville, 3 November 1569. Owing to the mutilated state of the Cotton MS., it is not clear whether the Portuguese representative was the captain of one of the abandoned vessels or another Portuguese captain.

page 207 note 2 That the Moroccans obtained arms from the English was a frequent complaint of the Portuguese in the later sixteenth century: de Castries, H., Les sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc, Archives et bibliothéques d'Angleterre, Paris 1918, i. p. ii Google Scholar. But the complaint was probably unjustified in the 1560s. However, it is difficult to believe that Hawkins was altogether sincere in his concern, since the possibility of the Moroccans seizing shipsat Cap Blanc must have been very slight.

page 207 note 3 Cotton MS., fol. 23v; A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7258): declaration of William Holland, 24 November 1569—‘contained no merchandise and carried twenty men, this convinced them that it was a pirate ship’ (others gave similar evidence).

page 207 note 4 Conway, G. R. G., An Englishman before the Mexican Inquisition 1556–60, Mexico City 1927. 155–62.Google Scholar

page 208 note 1 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 149/4 (C.U.L., Add. 7246–7): proceedings against George Day, 1574.

page 208 note 2 Mrs. Alison Quinn has pointed out to the writer that many English seamen had appeared, as witnesses or involved parties, before the Court of Admiralty, and in so doing had acquired experience of equivocating, stone-walling and editing statements in collusion.

page 209 note 1 A.G.I., 2–5–1/20 (C.U.L., Add. 7256–7): depositions of William Sanders and Thomas Bennet, San Juan de Ulua, 17 September 1568; A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7258, 7260): depositions of Antony Goddard, Valentine Green, John Bones, Thomas Ellis, Christopher Robinson, William Holland, Michael Sole, Richard Temple, Christopher Bingham, at Seville, November–December 1569.

page 209 note 2 Cotton MS., fol. 25: ‘Oure generall when he heard this was sore displeased for the yll order and that the master after such a sorte put so many menne in jepardy. Oure generall wolde not that he showlde have had to doe with them aland, but that he showlde have gone up the river, and there have seased upon the ships that were there, where alsoe the King of Portugal's factor was, and at his handes there mighte trafique have bene soner then any other waves’. It must be admitted that Hawkins's pacific intentions apparently did not preclude the seizure of Portuguese ships, and that he appears to have been more concerned about the tactics than the morals of Barrett's action.

page 210 note 1 A.G.I., 2–5–1/20 (C.U.L., Add. 7256–7): deposition of Valentine Green, Vera Cruz, 8 October 1568; A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7258, 7260): depositions of Christopher Robinson, Thomas Fowler, Christopher Bingham, Noah Sergeant, Thomas Stephens, at Seville, November–December 1569.

page 210 note 2 The troublesome voyage of Captain Edward Fenton 1582–3, ed. Taylor, E. G. R., 1957, 174, 207.Google Scholar

page 210 note 3 ‘Lutheranos’: the Spaniards regarded all heretics as followers of Luther, partly through ignorance, partly through theological perversity. Since the term was employed abusively and broadly, the translation ‘Lutherite’ has been preferred to the more precise, and more sober-sounding, modern term ‘Lutheran’.

page 210 note 4 A true declaration of the troublesome voyadge of M. John Haukins to the parties of Guynea and the West Indies, in the yeeres of our Lord 1567, and 1568, London 1569: reprinted with only verbal changes in R. Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, 1589, where the quotation is on p. 557. Hawkins's ‘paynfull man’ was probably John Foxe, whose ‘Book of Martyrs’ was published in English in 1563.

page 211 note 1 Quoted in Williamson, Sir John Hawkins, 148.

page 211 note 2 Cotton MS., fol. 19.

page 211 note 3 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 149 (C.U.L., Add. 7250, 7264): proceedings against Roger Armer, 1573.

page 211 note 4 Cotton MS., fol. 23.

page 211 note 5 The rare Travailes of lob Hortop …, London 1591; a revised version printed in Hakluyt, R., Principal Navigations, 1600, iii.Google Scholar

page 212 note 1 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 52 (C.U.L., Add. 7230–1): proceedings against William Collins, 1573.

page 212 note 2 A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7260): deposition of Thomas Fowler, Seville, 2 November 1569.

page 212 note 3 Probably about 90 men died before the expedition reached Cartagena (Williamson, op. cit., 179 n. 1): the vast majority of these died in Guinea.

page 212 note 4 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 55 (C.U.L., App. 7243–4): proceedings against Roldan Escalart, 1573, evidence of William Collins; cf. the words of Drake's chaplain—‘upon every cape and small head they [the Portuguese] sett up a cross … one of the crosses myself and others did breake down’: Drake, F., The World Encompassed (1626), Hakluyt Society, 1854, 21 Google Scholar.

page 212 note 5 ‘Ordinances … for … the intended voyage for Cathaye … 1553’, in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1589, 260.

page 212 note 6 Drake, op. cit., 185, 212.

page 213 note 1 Taylor, Troublesome voyage …, xxii, xxxviii: Madox's sermon was reprinted in Walker, G., Puritan Salt: the story of Richard Madox, London 1935 Google Scholar, chap, vi, and is referred to in J. W. Blench, Preaching in England in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 1964, 172.

page 213 note 2 Taylor, op. cit., 178. It was probably for the first time in any part of Africa.

page 213 note 3 Cotton MS., fol. 22v.

page 213 note 4 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1589, 525.

page 213 note 5 A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7260): deposition of John Carvell or Varney, Seville, 26 November 1569.

page 213 note 6 Hakluyt, op. cit., 525; A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7258): deposition of Michael Sole, Seville, 26 November 1569.

page 213 note 7 The employment of poisoned arrows by peoples north and south of Cape Verde was described by Cadamosto in 1463 (‘subito la creatura e morta’: Viagens de Luis de Codamosto, Lisbon 1948, 48, 53)Google Scholar and by the Portuguese trader Almada, who witnessed a war in 1566 (‘e escapam muito poucos que são feridos com elas’: d'Almada, A. Alvares, Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné, Lisbon 1946, 13)Google Scholar. Also cf. Hakluyt, op. cit., 145 (Fenner in 1566).

page 214 note 1 Cotton MS., fol. 23v.

page 214 note 2 Cotton MS., fols. 25v, 27.

page 214 note 3 Rodney, W., ‘A reconsideration of the Mane invasions of Sierra Leone’, Journal of African History, viii (1967), 219–46Google Scholar (not all the references to the 1568 expedition are correct); Hair, P. E. H., ‘An ethnolinguistic inventory of the Lower Guinea coast before 1700, Part I’, African Language Review, vii (1968), 47–73 Google Scholar.

page 215 note 1 Cotton MS., fol. 27.

page 215 note 2 A.G.I., 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7260): depositions of Gregory Simon and John Holland, Seville, 24 November 1569 and 9 December 1569.

page 215 note 3 Cotton Ms., fol. 27.

page 215 note 4 Cotton MS., fol. 25.

page 215 note 5 Hakluyt, 553, cf. 563. English opinions about Africans were thus more varied than has been suggested in works which set out to show that Anglo-African contacts in Elizabethan times were dominated by ‘racialist’ considerations, e.g. Jordan, Winthrop P., White over Black, Williamsburg 1968.Google Scholar

page 216 note 1 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1600, 488.

page 216 note 2 Cotton MS., fol. 26.

page 216 note 3 Almada, Tratado breve …, cap. xvii. 81; Hair, P. E. H., ‘An ethnolinguistic inventory of the Upper Guinea coast before 1700’, African Language Review, vi (1967), 52 Google Scholar.

page 216 note 4 Almada states that the term means ‘cannibal’, but it resembles a modern Temne term meaning ‘disgrace’.

page 216 note 5 Taylor, Troublesome voyage, 55, 108–9.

page 217 note 1 Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, 1959.

page 217 note 2 On the controversial topic of Las Casas and African slaves, see Bataillon, M., ‘Le cerigo Casas …’, Bulletin Hispanique, liv (1952), appendix, 366–9.Google Scholar

page 217 note 3 ‘Spaniards never fought as hard or as consistently against Negro slavery as they did on behalf of the Indians, not even Las Casas…. No document has come to light which reveals any concerted opposition to Negro slavery during the sixteenth century’: Hanke, op. cit., 9. ‘Les conditions dans lesquelles cette esclavisation se produisait ne semblent guère avoir été discutées avant Molina dernier tiers du xvie siècle)’: Bataillon, op. cit., 368. These judgements are perhaps a little too severe.

page 217 note 4 ‘De la licéité morale de l'esclavisation des nègres captures dans une guerre juste, aucun theologien n'a douté au xvie siècle’: Bataillon, op. cit., 368, quoting Höffner, J., Christentum und Menschenwürde, das Anliegen der Spanischen Kolonialethnik, Trèves 1947, 153 n. 16.Google Scholar

page 217 note 5 Thomas de Mercado, Tratos y contratos de mercaderes y tratantes discididos y determinados, Salamanca 1569, 64–5. The author had worked in Mexico and had apparently seen the slave trade at first hand.

page 218 note 1 On Inquisition procedures, see Lea, H. C., A history of the Inquisition of Spain, 1906, especially ii–iii Google Scholar, and, in judicious summary, Turberville, A. S., The Spanish Inquisition, 1932 Google Scholar: on the Mexican Inquisition, see Medina, J. Toribio, Historia del tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisition en Mexico, Santiago, Chile 1905 Google Scholar; H. C. Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, 1922; G. R. G. Conway, An Englishman before the Mexican Inquisition 1556–1560, 1927; Lewin, B., La Inquisición en Hispanoamérica, Buenos Aires, 1961 Google Scholar. The immediate campaign against the English in Mexico may have been due to the fact that one of the inquisitors had been transferred from the Canaries, where the Inquisition had campaigned against English merchants and seamen in the 1560s.

page 218 note 2 Other Inquisition records have been used to throw light on English religious life; see Lomax, D. W., ‘Recusants in the Spanish Inquisition’, Recusant History, ix (1967), 53–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 219 note 1 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 58 (C.U.L., Add. 7237–8), proceedings against John Martin, alias William Cornelius.

page 220 note 1 Conway, op. cit., 155–62.

page 220 note 2 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 55 (C.U.L., Add. 7236–7), proceedings against Paul Hawkins.

page 220 note 3 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1589, 562–80: Taylor, E. G. R., The writings and correspondence of the two Richard Hakluyts, 1935, ii. 241 Google Scholar.

page 220 note 4 Apart from the score of prisoners at Seville released by the Spaniards, and the probably less than a score of survivors aboard Hawkins's ship when it reached England, there were the crews of the two small ships which returned to England separately, the ‘Judith’ under Drake, and the ‘William and John’, which lost contact with the rest of the fleet before San Juan de Ulua. The normal complement of each of these ships would be about 40–60 men, and there was probably heavy loss of life on the passage home.

page 220 note 5 Wright, Spanish documents … 1527–68, 155: Robert Barrett's testimony that ‘fifty blacks’ had been broughtfrom England; A.G.I. 51–3–81/5 (C.U.L., Add. 7258): depositions of Walter Jones, Richard Temple and Michael Sole, Seville, November–December 1569.

page 220 note 6 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1600, 495.

page 221 note 1 Wright, I. A., Documents concerning English voyages to the Spanish Main 1563–80, 1932, 113 Google Scholar.

page 221 note 2 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1562, edited J. Stevenson, 1867, 54.

page 221 note 3 Taylor, Writings of the two Hakluyts, ii. 217; cf. a contemporary Catholic claim, ‘… now in the latter days the Empire of Constantinople becoming Turkish, and in our days a great part of our [Western] Empire being (the more pity) carried away with errors and heresies, God hath … opened and revealed to us, as it were a new world … and hath so ordained that the countries in Asia and Africa are become, of plain and open Idolators, of Mores and Saracens, very good Christians; and that chiefly by the great help and travail of those blessed and vertuous Jesuits, whom you so lewdly call Jebusites’: A counterblast to M. Hornes Vayne Blast against M. Feckenham, 1567, quoted by Richards, M., ‘Thomas Stapleton’, in this Journal, xviii (1967), 190 Google Scholar.

page 221 note 4 Reverdin, O., Quatorze Calvinistes chez les Tupinambous/Histoire d'une mission genevoise au Brésil (1556–1558), Geneva/Paris 1957 Google Scholar; cf. Poulenc, J., ‘Tentatives de Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon en vue d'obtenir un envoi de missionaires [Catholiques] en France Antarctique’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, lx (1967), 397–407 Google Scholar. It is of interest that the Calvinists travelling to Brazil complained about the piracies committed by the French fleet against the Spaniards: Reverdin, op. cit., 33.

page 221 note 5 A. Teixeira da Mota, A primeira visita de um governador das Ilhas de Cabo Verde à Guiné, Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, Lisbon 1968 (and in Ultramar, viii (1968)), 13–14.

page 222 note 1 Of the first missionary who arrived in 1603, a Sierra Leone king was reported to say: ‘This one is a true padre, unlike the others who came here who … never carried out priestly duties, not even saying Mass, and only busied themselves buying and selling’. The missionary reported that even the Portuguese living at Sierra Leone had had no contact with the Church: ‘the confessions that I heard covered ten, or twenty, or thirty years …’. In the course of their missionary efforts, the Catholics inculcated political animosities: ‘Dom Philip [a converted Sierra Leone king] is not content zealously to encourage the conversion of his brother kings, but he also zealously persecutes the heretics and pirates [i.e. Dutch, English and French] who come to his kingdom’. Quotations from F. Guerreiro, Relaçam anual das cousas que fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus…, 1603–11, reprinted 1930–42, part 1604–5, cap. 8, fols. 150v, 153v; part 1607–8, cap. 6, fol. 244v.

page 222 note 2 Walls, A. F., in Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, v (1963), 40.Google Scholar

page 222 note 3 Drake, World Encompassed, 124, 129.

page 222 note 4 Taylor, Writings of the two Hakluyts, ii. 215.

page 223 note 1 B.M. Cotton MS. App. LXVII, fol. 43. An edition of Madox's diary is being prepared by Dr. Elizabeth Storey Donno of Columbia University.

page 223 note 2 Hair, P. E. H., ‘The contribution of Freetown and Fourah Bay College to the study of West African languages’, Sierra Leone Language Review, i (1962), 6–18 Google Scholar: Hair, P. E. H., The Early Study of Nigerian Languages, 1967, 1–2 Google Scholar.

page 223 note 3 A.G.N., Inquisición, tomo 52 (C.U.L., Add. 7230–1): proceedings against William Collins, 1572.