British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563-1760 (Atlantic World: Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500-1830, 28) [Lam ed.] 9004264493, 9789004264496

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British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760

Atlantic World Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500–1830

Edited by Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington) Wim Klooster (Clark University)

VOLUME 28

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/aw

British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563–1760 By

Nabil Matar

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Proscenium border by Inigo Jones. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Matar, N. I. (Nabil I.), 1949 British captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563-1760 / by Nabil Matar.   pages cm. -- (Atlantic world : Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500-1830, ISSN 1570-0542 ; volume 28)  Summary: “British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563-1760 provides the first study of British captives in the North African Atlantic and Mediterranean, from the reign of Elizabeth I to George II. Based on extensive archival research in the United Kingdom, Nabil Matar furnishes the names of all captives while examining the problems that historians face in determining the numbers of early modern Britons in captivity. Matar also describes the roles which the monarchy, parliament, trading companies, and churches played (or did not play) in ransoming captives. He questions the emphasis on religious polarization in piracy and shows how much financial constraints, royal indifference, and corruption delayed the return of captives. As rivarly between Britain and France from 1688 on dominated the western Mediterranean and Atlantic, Matar concludes by showing how captives became the casus belli that justified European expansion”--Provided by publisher.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-26449-6 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26450-2 (e-book) 1. Piracy-Mediterranean Region--History. 2. Piracy--Atlantic Ocean--History. 3. Piracy--Africa, North--History. 4. British--Mediterranean Region--History. 5. British--Africa, North--History. 6. Captivity--Mediterranean Region-History. 7. Captivity--Africa, North--History. 8. Captivity--Political aspects--History. 9. World politics--To 1900. 10. Mediterranean Region--History--1517-1789. I. Title.  DE61.P5M38 2014  364.15’40892101821--dc23

              2014007724

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-0542 isbn 978-90-04-26449-6 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-26450-2 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

‫‪For Wadad Kadi,‬‬ ‫‪friend and mentor,‬‬ ‫‪from Beirut to Minneapolis.‬‬

‫∵‬ ‫َو ِع َبا ُد َّالر مۡ ٰح ِن ذَّ ِال ۡي َن ي َ ۡمشُ ۡو َن عَ ىَل اۡ َال ۡر ِض ه َۡوناً َّوِا َذا خ ََاطبهَ ُ ُم الۡ ٰجهِلُ ۡو َن قَالُ ۡوا َس ٰل ًما‬ ‫‪Qur’ān 25:63‬‬

Contents Apologia ix Foreword xi A Note on Citations xiv List of Figures xv Introduction 1 1 Britons in Mediterranean and Atlantic: Captivity and Piracy 20 Sources 20 Caveats 32 North Africa, the Indian Ocean, and North America 52 ‘Christian’ Piracy 60 2 Captives and Captors: 1563–1760 71 The Elizabethan Period, 1558–1603 71 The Jacobean Period, 1603–1625 75 The Caroline Period, 1625–1649 82 The Interregnum Period, 1649–1660 102 The Restoration Period, 1660–1688 113 William and Mary, and Queen Anne, 1688–1714 132 The Periods of George I, 1714–1727, and George II, 1727–1760 141 3 The Northern Invasion 160 Tripoli 165 Algiers 172 Conclusion 192 Appendix: Captives’ names 197 Works Cited 300 Index 324

Apologia I was released from captivity in Beirut, Lebanon, on 21 October 1986, just over a quarter of a century ago. Since this book will be my last foray into the area of captivity studies, I would like to extend my tribute, one final time, to my liberators. My freedom is to be credited to the heroic efforts of Dina Kassir, who, as a journalist for The Daily Star and the German Press Agency, used all means to track me down in the threadless labyrinths of Lebanon. Also, thanks to her sister, the late Dr. Ghada Kassir, who clinched the release in an outburst of anger and defiance that shamed the captors. Without those two women, I would be dead. I also want to thank my sisters and all my friends, relatives, students and colleagues who tried to help. And as always, to Ibrahim and Hady, both now forging their lives: in the innocence of your wondrous childhood, you brought me back from horror to humanity.

Foreword This project began after a panel at the AHA in Boston, when the first claim was made for the 1,000,000 Christian slaves under Muslim masters. From that memorable day in January 2001, I started collecting names and numbers of early modern Britons captured to the North African regions of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria (the “Barbary Coast,” although it is a term I will not use, nor the French term, “Barbaresques”), and the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions of Morocco. I am grateful to many people who have shared with me their ideas and sent me information and publications. In particular, I wish to mention Professor Jocelyn Dakhlia and Professor Wolfgang Kaiser who invited me to the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in 2008, both of whose work on captives in the Mediterranean has been groundbreaking. Professor Gillian Weiss kindly sent me a copy of her Ph.D. and later her autographed book on Captives and Corsairs (2011) – which has been a most helpful source. Professor Salvatore Bono was gracious in sending me his publications and bibliographies, and in our last meeting at the University of Exeter, autographed a copy of his latest book (then) to me, Lumi e corsari: Europa e Maghreb nel Settecento (2005). Professor James Tracy was, before his retirement, and remains after it, a most inspiring mentor. Dr. Justin Meggitt very kindly sent me a pdf of his book on Quakers and Islam which was about to appear in print. And for years, I benefited from conversations with, and lectures by, Molly Greene, Barbara Fuchs, Giancarlo Casale, Khalid Bekkaoui, Galina Yermolenko, Mathieu Grenet, Ian Larson, Adrian Grima, Godfrey Wettinger, Jane Tolbert, Wadad Kadi, Katharine Gerbner, and Mario Klarer (by telephone and email). To all, I remain grateful. Every other year at the University of Minnesota, I taught a course on captivity: many students asked excellent questions which helped me think further about the subject. At the same time, I have had the most exciting discussions with my two graduate students whose dissertation projects focus on early modern English writing: David Moberly and Katie Sisneros. To all of them: Thank you. I also like to thank the anonymous readers whose comments were helpful in pointing out areas which needed development and in directing me to references I had not consulted. I am grateful to I.B. Taurus for permission to publish parts of my article which appeared in “The Maghariba and the Sea: Maritime Decline in North Africa in the Early Modern Period,” in Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Braudel’s Maritime Legacy, eds. Maria Fusaro, Colin Heywood, and Mohamed-Salah Omri. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010 (117–138). I am grateful to Professor Denys Pringle for

xii

foreword

permitting me to use his slide of Henry Veasy, and to Professor Steven Ostrow for permitting me to use his slide of the Livorno slave. Without the patience and meticulousness of Heather Krebs, a former graduate student in the English Department at the University of Minnesota, I would have been much delayed in this project. I also want to thank Benjamin Hulett and Jacqueline Buringa for their dedicated assistance in preparing the final copy of the manuscript. *** Research for this book took me to many libraries, but the lion’s share of my time was spent at The National Archives in Kew. I also visited the national libraries in Tunis, Rabat, Gibraltar, and Madrid, but found little of use for this project; only the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris contained material that proved useful. In the United States, the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota owns the Bendysh Papers which included a number of surprises. I am grateful to Dr. Marguerite Ragnow, Curator, for drawing my attention to the collection. I am also very grateful to Margaret Bork, Assistant Librarian, for all the help she extended to me in identifying illustrations and maps. I also wish to thank the Northumberland Estate which granted me permission to examine microfilms of the manuscripts of the duke of Northumberland at the British Library. I started working on this project long before The National Archives put up most of SP Domestic, SP 71, and other material relating to North Africa online. Working with the original documents was a joy that perhaps only ‘old timers’ cherish: I must admit that I enjoyed sitting in the lovely TNA building at Kew, opening boxes that were full of wonders. Additionally, I consulted the Tangier Colonial Office records and the Foreign Office records, also at TNA; the British Library; the Bodleian Library; Cambridge University Library; the National Maritime Museum; the Devon Public Record Office; Trinity House records; correspondence by consuls and ambassadors; Parliamentary journals (both of the Commons and the Lords); travel accounts; captivity accounts; sermons; and autobiographies.1 The majority of the documents at TNA were in English, but there was material in all the languages of the Mediterranean: French, Italian, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and (very few) Latin. To all who helped me in reading them: thank you. 1 Roslyn I. Knutson has searched for documents in the Guildhall Library, London, and London Record Office, London. Her findings appear in “Elizabethan Documents, Captivity Narratives, and the Market for Foreign History Plays,” English Literary Renaissance, 26 (1996): 75–110.

xiii

f oreword

Having spent so much time in England, I would like to thank the many friends who hosted me during my various research visits. Foremost are Dina Matar and John Taysom, not only for their wonderful hospitality but also for John’s detailed discussion of statistical analysis and the problems therein; David Brooks, my Cambridge friend of yore; Samira Kawar, my student during my first job in Amman, Jordan, and her husband Yacoub Douani – both of whom always insisted on dining and wining me; Patrick Spottiswoode of the Globe Theatre, a dear friend and always a wonderful inspiration; and Basim Ziadeh, friend from childhood in Beirut, as well as Riad Nourallah and Anas Al-Shaikh-Ali, from the wonderful days of AUB. *** This book is dedicated to Wadad Kadi. Wadad has been a dear friend and mentor ever since we taught together in that amazing American University of Beirut, just as civil warriors began destroying everything around us. She was, and has ever been, generous with her knowledge and scholarship – even in the most difficult of times. Retired from the University of Chicago, where she had been Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Wadad continues to find her email brimful with inquiries from all around the world. France Street in Edina, Minnesota, has become a pilgrimage site to which national and international students and colleagues constantly trek, all of whom could well repeat the famous words: man ʿalamanī ḥarfan ṣirtu lahu ʿabdan/ I am indebted to whoever teaches me even a single word. I am privileged to be one of many who will ever be indebted to Wadad – since that first discussion we had at “Restaurant Socrate” on Bliss Street in 1977. Whether she discusses Arabic philology or the latest opera in Minneapolis, the complexity of a Qur’ānic verse or an ambivalent term in the letters of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib, Wadad is a scholar of charm and erudition. In the endless winters of Minnesota, and whether at Caribou or under the watchful gaze of Phoebe, Wadad is an inspiration and a companion – and a witness to the intellectual energy that was once Beirut.

A Note on Citations Some SP (State Papers) volumes are clearly paginated, but others have three different pagination sequences in three different hands on the same page. Unless otherwise indicated, I have used the pagination in print type, although on some occasions, that pagination was crossed out and replaced by a handwritten entry. Sometimes pagination was handwritten in two different sequences, one at the top right-hand corner, and the other in square brackets at the bottom (SP 71/1); in SP 71/2, there are sometimes four sequences, one in pencil in the upper right-hand corner; one in type near it; one in pencil at the bottom of the page; and one in type in the lower left-hand corner on verso; I shall refer to the last as it is the most consistent. SP 71/4 starts with pagination in bold and in pencil, then the bold is crossed out and pencil pagination is added to replace the bold, but then, pagination reverts to the bold – alongside the initial pencil pagination. I used the bold. In SP 71/26, as of fo. 33, the pagination is completely irregular and a new pagination begins after 221r. SP 71/12 has three paginations, two in bold and one in pencil, sometimes crossed out; SP 103 has five paginations, two in bold print and three in pencil, some of which are often crossed out – with no consecutive numbering. It is not possible to reference material from this box. I have used the bold pagination that is on the right-hand side of the folios, unless such pagination was not there, in which case I used others. Unless otherwise indicated, I have converted Julian and Hijri dates to Gregorian, and I have included dates wherever available. Where they are not available, I have made a judgment based on the chronological organization of the large majority, but not all, of the SP files.

List of Figures Map of Great Britain: Places of origin of the 1647 captives ransomed by Edmond Cason 43 1 Sinking British ship off the Moroccan coast. From Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty (London, 1751). With permission from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota 8 2 Underground granary, Meknes. By the author 12 3 Gravestone from the Anglican Church cemetery in Tunis. With the gracious permission of Professor Denys Pringle, Cardiff University 26 4 Proscenium border by Inigo Jones. With permission from the Chatsworth Photo Library 30 5 Names of captives, with marks by illiterate sailors. From Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty (London, 1751), A4v. With permission from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota 36 6 From Frederik de Wit, Atlas Maior (Amsterdam, 1707). With permission from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota 53 7 The “Morgiano, Quattro Mori,” the Monument to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Livorno. With the gracious permission of Professor Steven Ostrow, University of Minnesota 54 8 Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. By the author 55

Introduction Britons began their seaborne trade in the Mediterranean basin and the east Atlantic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and repeatedly found themselves, merchants and sailors alike, clashing with “Turks” and “Moors.” At the end of the sixteenth century, numerous Britons were taken captive in regions extending from the Ottoman Levant and the North African regencies to Morocco, all the way to Atlantic Larache/ʿArā’ish and Agadir; half a century later (1640), there were “thousands” of captives in Algiers and Salé, according to an Act of Parliament. But by the beginning of the eighteenth century, Britain had succeeded in establishing its control over the major commercial and maritime zones, and although captives continued to be taken (mainly as a result of ship wreck), their numbers declined dramatically, ending completely at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Numerous literary critics have written about the impact of captivity on British “identity,” “hybridity,” “multiculturalism,” and “performativity,” while others have interpreted Elizabethan and Jacobean literature (drama in particular) in the light of captivity. Historians have studied the captivity of Europeans in the early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic, emphasizing its violence and anti-Christian motivations, and extrapolating from the seizure of Britons (and Continental Europeans) a casus belli that resulted in the European commercial and maritime domination of the basin. Notwithstanding the pillage committed by all pirates, Christian and Muslim alike,1 and notwithstanding the indiscriminate nature of captivity in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the scholarly and popular focus has been chiefly on North Africans and their Islamic anti-Christian design. Such focus has led to parallels with recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere: thus the bagnios of the seventeenth century in North Africa have been compared to the Stalinist Gulag, while the Muslim 1 See John L. Anderson, “Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation,” 82–106, esp. 83–84 and his references to Alfred P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy (Newport, R.I., 1988); and Gonçal López Nadal: “In the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of the islands, like those of several mainland ports in the western Mediterranean, took up the practice of corsairing as a simple (but vital) means of development and even of economic growth. Because they carried on doing it, virtually without interruption, corsairing was transformed into a normal part of economic life,” “Corsairing as a Commercial System: The Edges of Legitimate Trade,” 129 in 125–136 – both articles in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, ed. C.R. Pennell (New York and London, 2001).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004264502_002

2

INTRODUCTION

pirates of early modernity have been seen as precursors of modern-day ‘Middle Eastern terrorists’ and of Somali pirates.2 It is unfortunate that the study of North African and Mediterranean captivity has been underpinned, as Gordon M. Sayre has noted, “by geopolitical events since 2001.”3 For, allusions to contemporary geopolitical events ignore historical specificity and invoke the Orientalist doctrine, described by Edward Said, that all Muslims are alike in their opposition to the “West,” that their actions never change, and that the piracy of the Mediterranean Algerians in 1608 continues among the Somalis of the Indian Ocean in 2008. Such comparisons raise serious historiographical concerns about the ideological motives of captivity scholarship since those motives do not remain confined to the ivory towers of academic agreement or disagreement: ‘Muslim’ piracy, slavery, and “terrorism” serve in stoking contemporary Islamophobia because they ignore completely ‘Christian’ piracy, slavery, and “terrorism” (per Janice E. Thomson) that occurred at the same time and in the same waters.4 With the exception of a few careful historians whose work I will be citing frequently, scholars and popular authors continue to demonize the “Barbary Corsairs,” and by extension Muslims, at the same time that the media and entertainment industry romanticize ‘Christian’ corsairs. The pirates of the Caribbean, who were contemporaries of the “Barbary Corsairs,” have been celebrated in theme parks in Disney World, in “Pirate’s Dinner Adventure” in Orlando, Florida, and in the Johnny Depp film sequence Pirates of the Caribbean. No denunciation of the ‘Christianity’ of those pirates is on record, neither now or in the early modern period when numerous reasons were presented to King Charles II in 1670 why “privateers should not be wholly 2 For the analogy with the gulag, see Stephen Clissold, The Barbary Slaves (New York, 1977); for “terrorists,” see Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (New York, 2002),50; for the Somali analogy, see Alan G. Jamieson, Lords of the Sea: A History of the Barbary Corsairs (London, 2012). In his conclusion, Jamieson warns of a “New Barbary” in Somalia! See also Christopher Hitchens, “Thomas Jefferson: The Pirate War: To the Shores of Tripoli,” Time Magazine, 5 July 2004, 56–61. For a critique of this Barbary-terrorist discourse, see Anouar Majid, Freedom and Orthodoxy (Stanford, 2004), ch. 5 and notes 16, 17, 18, and 19. 3 Gordon M. Sayre, “Renegades from Barbary: The Transnational Turn in Captivity Studies,” American Literary History 22 (2010) 350 in 347–359. 4 As Janice E. Thomson showed, the commercial expansion that accompanied the process of state-building in early modern European history succeeded because of its “extraterritorial violence” and “terrorism”: see her description of Walter Ralegh’s activities as “state-sponsored terrorism,” Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns (Princeton, New Jersey, 1994), 23. To build the imperial states, Europeans had to resort to violence in order to cleanse continents of natives and gain free land, at the same time that they relied on the free labor of slaves, from Virginia to Potosi and from Oran to Agadir.

Introduction

3

discontinued in the West Indies.5 At the same time, the pirate “Colonel” Morgan received praise from John Evelyn (20 October 1674), and in the twentieth century, Hollywood films were made about his heroic predations. Only after heavy criticisms alleging racial prejudice were leveled against the anti-Spanish/ Hispanic theme park in Disney World was it ‘politically corrected,’ having entertained millions of children and parents alike. The focus on captivity and piracy by the ‘Barbary Corsairs’ that excludes the concurrent captivity and piracy by the ‘Christian Corsairs’ serves to confirm a binary between evil and good, Muslim and Christian, African and European. Captivity of ‘Christians’ by ‘Muslims’ has become one of the dominant motifs in the study of early modern relations between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ in the same manner that the accounts of captivity of English colonists by Indians in Cotton Mather’s Decennium Luctuosum (1699) became, as Louise K. Barnett has observed, “the central experience of white-Indian relations.”6 Athough the white colonists forced Indians out of their lands, theological and scholarly studies have remained focused on the whites who were captured by the Indians and on their ordeals and tribulations. But as Pauline Turner Strong has argued, the number of Indians captured by the colonists was by far higher than the number of colonists captured by the Indians, and that “it is in large part through…the suppression of the colonists’ role as captors of Indians – that the selective tradition of captivity has gained its ideological force” in American studies.7 A similar suppression has dominated the study of British and other European captives in North Africa, and as in scholarship on North America where the “heathenism” and “savagery” of the Indian precipitated suppression of the Indian perspective, so in the prevailing scholarship on ‘Muslim’ captors and ‘Christian’ captives. From R.L. Playfair’s work about North Africa with its ominous title, The Scourge of Christendom, to the many book blurbs and titles about “Christian slaves” and “Muslim masters,” there is emphasis on irreconcilable religious polarization that gives shape to much of the critical body of literature on the “Barbary Corsairs” and allows for the continued use of the term “Barbary coast” in contemporary scholarship, a term that was never used by the North Africans themselves and that does not appear on any modern atlas.8 5 TNA CO 1/25/67 (1670?). 6 Louise K. Barnett, The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism, 1790–1800 (Westport, CT, 1975), 4. 7 Pauline Turner Strong, Captives, Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives (Boulder, 1999), 3. 8 See, for instance, David Abulafia, The Great Sea (Oxford, 2011).

4

INTRODUCTION

Meanwhile, the Arabic biographical dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which include entries about thousands of men, allude to Euro-Christians only in the context of captivity: of Muslims being seized at sea and enslaved, very frequently, to Malta. As Father J. Mesnage put it just under a century ago, on the coasts of North Africa lived “une population qui se disait victim de l’intolérance des chrétiens.”9 The focus on captivity in the context of Christian-Muslim polarization ignores three factors: First: the Euro-Christians did not see only Muslims as their adversaries to be captured, tortured, and enslaved. Jews too were captured, making the Muslim and the Jew fellow victims of the ‘Christian Master.’ In their piracy and privateering, Western Europeans captured Jews from North Africa, selling or exchanging them in the manner they did Muslims. After all, in the early modern Islamic world lived the largest number of Jews in the world, spread from the interior of Morocco all the way to the Ottoman Levant and beyond.10 In North Africa, Jews were employed at court, were sent as diplomatic emissaries, and a Jew serving the Moroccan ruler (Mulay Zaydān) turned pirate and captured three Spanish ships.11 There were many occasions when Jews appealed to Muslim authorities to help them against Europeans: Mulay Ismāʿīl (reg. 1672– 1727) defended and supported their causes in Morocco, as did the Beys and Deys of the regencies. Actually, when Ismāʿīl sent Hayyim Tulidanu as ambassador to England, he indicated clearly that the Jew was a “dhimmi of our house,” and because he was of “our house,” he was to receive all honor due to an ambassador.12 A letter from the British consul in Algiers described how “Turks, Moors and Jews” demanded justice from the Dey “on score of a Brittish Satia freighted by their freinds from Tunis to this place.”13 In 1751, and at the signing of a treaty between the British Consul-General, William Petticrew and Sidi Muḥammad of Morocco (reg. 1757–1790), the latter insisted on an article that his “Subjects, 9 10 11 12 13

Le Christianisme en Afrique (Paris, 1915), 177. In Algiers alone, in 1674, there were “13 thousand [Jewish] families,” aside from the “Christian Jewes,” according to Consul Martin TNA SP 71/2/I, 64v (10 June 1674). CSPD James I, 1611–1618, 9:260 (24 November 1614). TNA SP 102/4/98 (1) (27 March 1691) in Letters from Barbary 1576–1774, trans. J.F.P. Hopkins (Oxford, 1982), 34. TNA SP 71/4/193(15 September 1712). See also the letter he sent a few days earlier TNA SP 71/4/198 (12 September 1712) about the seizure of “Moors and Jews with their goods” in Sardinia. In the treaty between Britain and Morocco signed by Sidi Muḥammad ibn ‘Abdallah in 1760, Jews were included among the “subjects” of the “Emperor”: Jacques Caillé, Les Accords internationaux du Sultan Sīdī Mohammed Ben Abdallah (1757–1790) (Paris, 1960) article XIV.

Introduction

5

whether Jewish or Muslim, should not be prohibited from living and working in Gibraltar.”14 References to Jewish captives appear periodically in English and other sources. On “February 1668 the 25th day thereof,” wrote Admiral Thomas Allin, “three Turks Three Jewes and two wives with a Portugall were by a mayorkeene of 36 guns forcibly taken of a small English vessel;”15 in 1685, twenty Jews were captured and enslaved from Coron in Morea by Maltese pirates.16 Such was the hostility to Jews among the English that a few years earlier, in 1681, Jews were “removed from Tangier.”17 Because of their intimate involvement in slave trading and their roles as intermediares in ransom negotiations, they were frequently attacked in official letters and consular correspondence. In December 1715, George Paddon, the British ambassador to Morocco, wrote from Gibraltar: [I]n this Garison [Gibraltar] of Moors and Jews about the Number of our Captives in Mequiness, Subjects of Muly Ismail & some of those Jews Principals who have the handling of the Emperor’s Money and pay him yearly use for the same. The only way to make them weary…is to use the Jews here as the poor Christians are used in Barbary or rather worse…to seize on their Goods, they being all belonging to the Moors, to put in Prison the Chief, making the others work at the fortifications, to keep all manner of Trade from them, no ships to hover on their Coasts and what should be strictly examined & under pretext be brought in & rummaged well for contraband Goods…the Jews at Mequiness for the sake of their Brethren here would help in procuring a lasting Peace. I wish the Jews in my Power I have & am well assured that the Chief of the Jews at Salee & one Pettet a french broken Merchant have been the sole occasion of our Rupture.18 The capture and enslavement of Jews by Europeans encouraged an English resident in Morocco to inquire in 1716 from the secretary of state, after an English ship had been seized by pirates, “whether he may not seize the Moors 14 15

16 17 18

P.G. Rogers, A History of Anglo-Moroccan Relations to 1900 (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1970), 96. TNA SP 71/1/382r (15 August 1668) from “A Narrative of ye Voyage of Sir Tho: Allen”; and Sir Thomas Allin, Journals, ed. R.C. Anderson, 2 vols. (London, 1939), 2:198 (7 October 1670). See also TNA SP 71/22/II, 53 about the capture of “foure Jewes” by the Spaniards (October 1684). Godfrey Wettinger, “Coron Captives in Malta: An Episode in the History of Slave-Dealing,” Melita Historica, 2 (1959): 216–223. CO 1/47/10 (9 June 1681). SP 71/16/204–205 (26 December 1715).

6

INTRODUCTION

& Jews Inhabitants of Gibraltar by way of Reprisal for the cruel usage of British Captives.”19 In 1735, Spaniards seized Turks and Jews off an English ship and took them captive.20 Because Jews were part of the North African polities, they were viewed by Europeans as part of the enemy and therefore legitimate slaves. Secondly: the ‘Christian’ slaves on board the ‘Muslim’ galleys were rarely eastern Christian Arabs or Greeks – unless they were living in west European countries.21 In the period under study, and in the eastern Mediterranean of the Ottoman Empire lived the largest indigenous Christian population outside Western Europe. A French captive in Algiers in 1619 wrote that 3,000 families of free Christian merchants (presumably Catholic) and 179 Greek (Orthodox) families were living in the city and over 20,000 free Christians in other parts of North Africa, outside the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.22 Were these Christians Ottoman subjects protected by the Sultan?23 Professor Molly Greene has shown in Catholic pirates and Greek merchants (2010) how Christian Ottomans were attacked and captured by the Maltese and other Catholics. Britons treated Eastern Christians in a similar manner: The Case of the poor Grecian Seamen (undated, but probably mid-to-late 1670s) reported that fifty Greeks were serving on British ships. Many of them were not paid and, upon landing, were impressed again “to the Damage of their Families at home…All which being contrary to Law, and Scandalous in a Christian State, is to be presumed to be done without the Knowledge of the Lord High Admiral or his Council.” They preferred to serve on Christian rather than Ottoman ships, but when they are “pull’d and hall’d by the Press – Masters like Dogs out of the Merchant-Ships and put upon Men of War,” they merely “change their Slavery” from among Muslims to Christians. The petition concludes with the following 19

20 21

22 23

TNA SP 71/16/237v (25 July 1716). See the reference to the enslavement “of Moore and a Jew” by Consul Thomas Baker in 1684, Piracy and Diplomacy in Seventeenth-Century North Africa: the Journal of Thomas Baker, English Consul in Tripoli, 1677–1685, ed. and introd. C.R. Pennell (Cranbury, NJ, 1989), 187. TNA SP 71/18/63 (3 July 1735). See also the Moroccan letter to the secretary of state complaining about the Spanish capture of “6 Moors & 6 Jews,” TNA SP 71/18/115 (31 May 1737). In 1679, a Maronite patriarch with three of his pupils, sailing from Lebanon to Italy were kidnapped to Tripoli, and were ransomed by the Pope, Nāṣir Jumayyil, Al-Madrasa al-Maūrniyya al-ḥibriyya al-Rūmaniyya (Beirut, 1993), 90. For some other names of Eastern Christians, see Wipertus H. Rudt de Collenberg, Esclavage et rançons des chrétiens en Méditerranée (1570–1600): d’après les Litterae Hortatoriae de l’Archivio Segreto Vaticano. Préface by Jean Richard (Paris, 1987), 480–481. For the free Christians, see Jean-Baptiste Gramaye, Alger XVIe-XVIIe siècle, ed. Abd El Hadi Ben Mansour, introd. André Mandouze (Paris,1998), 135 ff. See the reference to Christian volunteers on Ottoman fleets, Abulafia, The Great Sea, 425.

Introduction

7

order: “ORDERED, That the several Greeks belonging to Tripoli which were sent to Tangier by Sir John Narbrough and employed as slaves there, be, upon their humble petition this day presented on that behalf, discharged.”24 Since the Greeks had come under Ottoman rule, they were viewed as fair game for captivity – in a manner that the vast population of Christians in Egypt and Syria and Palestine were not by Muslims.25 When, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Moroccans captured a group of Greek Christians, the Ottoman sultan sent an emissary to the ruler, Muḥammad ibn ‘Abdallah, asking for their release – which the Moroccan did.26 In his attempts to eradicate captivity and enslavement from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Sidi Muḥammad urged his French and Spanish counterparts to allow Muslim jurists to lead prayer among Muslim captives in the manner that he allowed Christian clergy to officiate at religious services.27 The Spanish monarch refused. Thirdly: the terms “captives” and “slaves” are always used in early modern writings as well as in current scholarship, and I will use them in this study. But, from the second half of the seventeenth century, when Britain occupied Tangier and its troops fought against the Moroccans, the captives were soldiers captured in battle and therefore prisoners of war. Many Britons who were seized by North Africans fit this category. Furthermore, and as the numerous letters and complaints by North African rulers reveal, British seamen frequently broke the terms of peace and commerce treaties which specifically stipulated that Britons should not serve on ships from countries at war with the North Africans, that they should not have a crew made up of more foreigners than Britons, and that they should not ‘rent out’ their flag to ships of other countries.28 On many occasions, when the Algerians and the Tunisians captured Britons in noncompliance with treaty terms, they (and sometimes British officials, too) viewed the captives as culprits deserving of punishment and enslavement. Such actions 24 25

26 27

28

TNA SP 105/109/266 (pagination in bold). Narbrough wrote about having twenty Greeks who “pretend they are Xtians,” 71/22/I, 114r (5 August 1675). See the discussion as to whether Greeks could be enslaved, “they pretending themselves Christians,” A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval manuscripts in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, ed. J.R. Tanner, 4 vols. (London, 1923), 4: 219 (12 September 1675). Abū al-Qāsim ibn Aḥmad al-Zayānī, al-Tarjumāna al-kubrá fī akhbār al-maʿmūr barran wa-baḥran, ed. ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Filālī (Rabat, 1967), 167. Ramón Lourido Diaz, Marruecos y el mundo exterior en la Segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1989)/Al-siyāsa al-khārijiyya li-l-Maghrib fi al-niṣf al-thānī min al-qarn al-thāmin ‘ashar, trans. Mulay Aḥmad al-Kamoun and Badīʿa al-Kharāzī (Casablanca, 2013), ch. 2 See the reference to the issuance of “blank passes for Denmark,” TNA SP 63/338/64 (17 March 1677). Such a practice was quite common: see the reference to the “flag of convenience” in Abulafia, The Great Sea, 463.

8

INTRODUCTION

continued well into the eighteenth century,29 at which time, most captives were men of the Royal Navy. These men did not sail into the Mediterranean or the Atlantic on “une simple promenade,”30 but were involved in military action, and upon being captured were prisoners of war, as the 1751 illustration shows. It is important to remember that for the North Africans, the sighting of European ships could not but evoke the danger of invasion and occupation – as had been the case from Ceuta (1415) and Tripoli (1510), Tangier (1471) and Oran (1509), Melilla (1479) and Bougie (1510), Tunis (1535), Mehdia (1515 and 1614),

Figure 1

29

30

Sinking British ship off the Moroccan coast. From Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty (London, 1751). With permission from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.

See the letter by Consul Robert Cole in Algiers about a Genoese ship whose master claimed to have “Governour Elliots pass, and British Bandera, though had not a subject of her Majesties on board.” The Algerians captured the ship, TNA SP/71/4/101 (29 September 1710). Other ships carried two passes, British and Spanish, as a result of which they were captured by the Algerians because they had “more Spanish than English” sailors on board, TNA SP 71/4/119 (13 February and 16 March 1711). Mustapha El-Ghachi, “Les routes maritimes et les conditions de voyages dans la Médi­ terranée aux XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles – Example: France – Empire Ottoman,” in Revue MarocEurope 11 (1997–98), 113 in 113–138.

Introduction

9

and Larache (1610). The study of captivity in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic should take into account who the “captives” were: while a chaplain or a merchant might well qualify as an innocent captive, a soldier or a gunner or a pirate on board a ship cruising North African waters for the purpose of capturing booty and slaves should be treated as a prisoner of war. Because of the complexity of captivity, every attempt should be made to establish precise data about who and how many those captives were and why they were seized. In 2001, Robert C. Davis conjectured that between 1530 and 1780, the number of West European Christians in Muslim captivity in North Africa was as high as 1,250,000; and David Brion Davis, writing in support, confirmed the extensiveness of “Black” Muslim depredations on “White” EuroChristian slaves in the early modern period.31 In explaining how he reached his conclusions, Davis gave the example of vice-consul Joseph Morgan, an eighteenth-century writer, who had mentioned a “‘List, printed in London in 1682’ of 160 British ships captured by Algerians between 1677 and 1680. Considering what the number of sailors who were taken with each ship was likely to have been, these examples translate into a probable 7,000 to 9,000 able-bodied British men and women taken into slavery in those years.”32 Davis did not consult the 1682 broadside to which Morgan referred and took him, even though he wrote half a century later, at his word. The broadside mentions ninety-one ships seized to Algiers between August 1677 and October 1679 (see the text in the appendix). And it shows the following numbers: fifty of the ships had ten or less seamen on board; eight ships had more than twenty seamen on board; and the total number of all the seamen was 918, with a few ships where “some” seamen were “wanting.”33 The average was ten seamen per ship. To reach the “7,000 to 9,000 able-bodied British men and women,” the Algerians would have had to capture around a 1,000 ships. The list further shows that there was not a single “able-bodied” woman on board any of those ships. Peter Earle, who had studied the ‘Barbary’ pirates in conjunction with Maltese pirates, was unconvinced by the claims of Davis: the “figures” that Davis proposes “sound a bit dodgy and I think he may be exaggerating.”34 31

Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800 (New York, 2003); David Brion Davis, “Slavery – White, Black, Muslim, Christian,” in NYRB 5 July 2001, 51 ff.; and idem, “Blacks: Damned by the Bible,” NYBR, 16 November 2006, 38 in 37–40. 32 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml. 33 List of Ships taken since July, 1677 from His Majesties Subjects, by the Corsairs of Algier (London, 1682). 34 Quoted by Rory Carroll, “New book reopens old arguments about slave raids on Europe,” The Guardian, 11 March 2004. See also Wolfgang Kaiser, “Les mots du rachat: Fiction et

10

INTRODUCTION

To reach a reasonable calculation of the number of men on board a ship, it is necessary first to ascertain the sources of the data and determine their reliability. There is also need to identify the size and tonnage of ships: oarpowered galliots, galleys, and brigantines carried by far fewer sailors than bertons or galleons. Most ships that were seized by the North African pirates were not of the latter size; of the ninety-one ships in the 1682 list, only two ships had forty-six and forty-nine seamen, while the rest sailed with a small number of crew. Corroborative evidence can be found in other documents: in 1670, the Algerians captured thirty-two small vessels with “385 persons,” an average of ten men per ship.35 Eight years later, Richard Blome gave the sum of forty-one ships that had been seized by the “Algier Corsayres” with a total of 463 men on board.36 He may well have included the “Speedwell” of Joseph Pitts which carried the boy and only six others. In the first precise record in England of the names, the number of captured men, their ships, and their origins and destinations, which was prepared in 1721, there is no vessel among the thirty-nine that were captured which had more than a score of men. Especially from the second half of the seventeenth century, the North African pirates were not able to capture large merchant ships traveling in convoy, and most of the evidence about British ships lost to the corsairs shows that small fishing or cargo ships were the target. And, there were ships that were taken with “00” men – suggesting perhaps that the sailors had escaped or had been released by the pirates who wanted booty not humans. The seizure of a ship did not necessarily lead to captivity, since crewmen sometimes negotiated with the “Turks” to hand over the ship and its cargo without struggle, in return for their freedom.37 John Rawlins reported that after he and other English crew were captured by Algerian pirates in 1621, the Algerian rais released a dozen sailors, along with “divers other English;”38 in 1667, the Algerians captured an English ship to Tunis but “whilst the Turks were ashore, the English brought the ship

35 36 37

38

rhétorique dans les procédures de rachat de captifs en Méditerranée, XVIe-XVIIe siècles,” in Captifs en Méditerranée, 103 in 103–117, although Kaiser is not too unsure: “peut-étre”; and Salvatore Bono in a paper delivered at Exeter University, 15 December 2007. TNA SP 71/1/454 (16 March 1670). Richard Blome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica…Together with the Present State of Algiers (London, 1678), appendix. Some “leapt into the skiff,” wrote Richard Hasleton in 1595 describing the sailors on board his ship, “as many as it was able to bear. The rest leaping overboard, such as could swim saved themselves, going aboard the galleys, the others were drowned,” in Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus, introd. Nabil Matar (New York, 2001), 75. See also David D. Hebb, Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1842 (Ashgate, 1994), 150. “The Famous and Wonderful Recovery,” in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 101.

Introduction

11

off;”39 Consul Cole from Algiers reported that an “Araish brigantine” was seized by the Algerians, but “the Men escaped.”40 And so did over thirty captives who, in 1714, seized a ship in Algiers and sailed away.41 The over-a-million number of ‘Christian’ captives presupposes very large North African fleets with firepower superior to that of the British or the French or the Dutch; it also presupposes advanced naval capabilities, advanced artillery, and relentless and uninterrupted attacks over the decades and the centuries. Furthermore, had the North Africans captured 1,250,000 European Christians, these captives could not but have left their mark on the region, both economically and socially: if there had been so many Christian captives working for free in the cities and fields, the ports and mines, the galleys and bagnios of North Africa, these Europeans could not but have made a transformative impact and would have ‘Europeanized’ the captors in the same manner that African slaves “Africanized” the southern whites in “language and religion…agricultural practices, sexual attitudes, rhythm of life, architecture, food and social relations.”42 African slaves ‘Africanized’ America because their numbers were high.43 But European captives in North Africa did not ‘Europeanize’ the region and left little if any impact on their captors. That Meknes, the capital of Mulay Ismāʿīl, held tens of thousands of slaves, as often is claimed, is physically impossible, given the size of the city in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – which is why there is no European influence on the city, much as slaves (Britons included) were instrumental in building its wall. The suggestion that the underground granary was a bagnio is highly contested.44 39 40 41 42 43

44

TNA SP 29/194/26 (16 March 1667). BL ADD MS 61536 fo. 39v. TNA SP 102/1/128 (23 November 1714). John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford, 1979), 101. Although with African slaves, too, the “Numbers Game” remains problematic: see Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), esp. ch. 1. See the vast website dedicated to the study of African slaves in America and their numbers: http://www .slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces. Another area of slavery was Ukraine, where the claim is made for 2.5 million captives by the Ottomans, as a result of which the region became depopulated and vacant: see Galina I. Yermolenko, “Tatar-Turkish Captivity and Conversion in Early Modern Ukrainian Songs,” in Mediterranean Identities, eds. Kay Ryerson and John Watkins (forthcoming, Ashgate). See also Mikhail Kizilov. “Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea from the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources,” Journal of Early Modern History, 11.1 (2007): 1–31. In a discussion with Mustafa Benfayda, formerly Professor of History at the University of Mulay Ismāʿīl in Meknes, 5 June 2013. Professor Benfayda strongly contests the claim that the underground granaries near the Ambassadors’ Hall were used for captives.

12

Figure 2

INTRODUCTION

Underground granary, Meknes, by the author.

It is because of such complexity that this book focuses on Britain in order to examine captivity in one specific European country from 1563, when the first names of captives are known, to 1760 when the last group of British prisoners of war was ransomed. While Britons were sporadically taken before and after those dates, the grim ‘golden’ age of captivity belongs to those two centuries.

Introduction

13

The geographical focus will be on the region extending from modern-day Libya to Morocco, via Tunisia and Algeria. Although there were English pirates and captives in the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, the story of British captives and prisoners in Islamic lands is chiefly their story in Morocco and the Ottoman regencies: there are dozens of accounts about captivity in North Africa, but only a handful about the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and beyond.45 In particular, this book will attempt to answer two questions: 1.

How many Britons were seized to North Africa? No proper study of the impact of captivity or of ‘Muslim’ mastership can be undertaken without determining some kind of number for the captives, be they merchants, pirates, or soldiers. Numerous historians have debated numbers,46 and in the case of Britain, “estimates” have been made: David Delison Hebb, however, in his detailed and groundbreaking Piracy and the English Government, 1616–1642 (Aldershot, 1994), has been the only historian to focus on the precise number of British captives. He stated that between 1622 and 1642, about 7,000 Britons were seized to the whole of North Africa, but by adding “all the figures,” he continued, the number would be “approximately…above 8,000 persons.”47 Hebb was very careful in his research, but inevitably he had to average the number of ships and the number of men per ship that appear in the documents – averages which are not always certain. Still, his is the most methodologically accurate approach to the archives. Linda Colley, too, included numbers in her section on “Counting,” 48 and in 2008, Miles Ogborn wrote that between 1600 and 1750, 20,000 British and Irish prisoners were held as slaves. Neither scholar, however, gave any explanation how the estimates were made.49

45 For English piracy in the eastern Mediterranean, see Colin Heywood, “Ottoman Territoriality versus Maritime Usage: The Ottoman Islands and English Privateering in the Wars with France, 1689–1714,” Insularités ottomans, eds. N. Vatin and G. Veinstein (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose: Institut français d’études anatoliennes, 2004), 145–173. For a chronological list of English captivity accounts, see appendix I in my Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999), and the additional entries in the “Bibliography of English Captivity Narratives,” in Piracy, ed. Vitkus. These entries do not include brief references such as “News of an English boy sold in Arabia,” CSP Colonial Series, East Indies, China, and Japan, 1617–1621, 21. 46 See for instance the latest discussion in Jamieson, Lords of the Sea, 114–116. 47 Hebb, Piracy, 139, 140. See the whole of ch. 7. 48 Colley, Captives, 48–56. See also notes 24 and 32, p. 392, where she writes of “estimates.” 49 Miles Ogborn, Global Lives (Oxford, 2008), 171.

14

INTRODUCTION

2.

How many Britons were “captives” and how many were prisoners of war or pirates or men breaking the terms of peace and commerce treaties? Separating these categories is difficult, but approaching the question from these categories will help to contextualize captivity and move it beyond the Christian-Muslim polarization. In which decades/periods was the captivity of Britons at its zenith, and when at its nadir? Did the number of captives rise during periods of diplomatic ruptures? One of the questions that should be examined pertains to the financial factors which determined the fate of “captives.” In 1629, James Wadsworth was captured with twelve other Englishmen by Saletians, after which he was ransomed by his rich uncle; nothing is mentioned about the fate of the others.50 A quarter of a century later, in the early 1650s, Charles Longland was conducting negotiations to ransom British captives in Algiers. But, instructions from London told him to ransom “5 men named”: either these were men with connections, or they were men who would be able to repay the ransom money. Shuttling between Livorno and Algiers, Longland did not want to leave any of his compatriots behind. In order to convince the London Committee to extend to him money for all captives, he explained that “…there are 60 English captives there [Tripoli] besides five or six masters and merchants of ships who are not within the agreement, having cut their own ransoms with the Turk, and some of them for above 1000 dollars.”51 The Committee insisted on the five, leaving the rest to fend for themsevles.52 In 1739, Britons who had been captured to Oran by Spaniards fled “to the Camp of the Turks, being thereby encouraged by several letters wrote, promising to all that were that way inclined free Liberty, and to be delivered into the Hands of their respective Consuls.” But on arrival in Algiers, they were enslaved after which the “Admiral of the Algerine Fleet being a Renegado, and desirous to buy these English Sailors, went to the [English] Consul, & demanded of him if he could buy them with safety, the Consul answered that they were as lawfull slaves as any taken under the Spanish Colours.”53 These and many other examples show that there were numerous social, monetary, and political factors

50 51 52

The English Spanish Pilgrime (London, 1629), chapter III. CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–1653, 5: 58 (27 December 1652). Even after Longland urged that if he negotiated with the Algerians for the five named captives, he would end up having to pay 100 pounds for each; but if he negotiated for all the captives, he could get them for less. CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–54, 6: 163 (21 November 1653). Names of the signatories: John Holmes, John Thomas, John Rogers, Rich. Berry” BL MS Egerton 2528, fo. 97.

53

Introduction

15

that facilitated or prevented the ransoming of captives and prisoners. Were prisoners of war ransomed but “captives” ignored; were people with connections given priority, as was the case when King Charles II paid £ 5,000 to ransom his cousin and the latter’s son in Algiers, at a time when there were hundreds of unransomed sailors whose average price was £40?54 Why did some captives remain for decades, forgotten and ignored, while the captives who were seized on 9 May 1670 were released on the 22nd of that month, and the captives seized on 6 October 1671 released on the 13th of that month?55 From the slave markets in Tunis and Salé to the slave trade in Livorno and Valletta, and from the bagnios of Tripoli to the bagnios of Tangier (during the British occupation), it is important to determine the historical context of captivity. Given the vastness and diversity of sources, it is tempting to generalize and/or to extrapolate numbers. But then the impact of captivity will not be precise: if 1,500 captives were seized, their impact could not but have been different from the impact of captives whose number was five or ten times higher. Establishing some kind of number will set parameters, and although no definite number can be reached with any degree of accuracy, it is possible to arrive at a minimum by collecting the names that have survived in the archives – as did Emma Lewis Coleman in her work about English captives in the first century of North American colonization. For Coleman, the only way to measure the consequences of English captivity among the Indians was to count the captives, and in her New England Captives Carried to Canada (1925), she listed the names of all captives between 1677 and 1760, concluding with a figure of 750 captives, or thereabouts. Her list of names established the facts on the ground, or close to those facts, since as Richard Slotkin observed, “there is little doubt that this [figure] represents less than half of the total number of captives.”56 Even if Coleman’s number is doubled, it still shows the scope of the English-Indian encounter.57 Similarly, and in his Black Lives in the English 54

55 56 57

See the petitions by the Countess of Inchiquin on 20 July and 2 August 1660, TNA SP 71/1/495 and 496. Charles ordered that everything be done “to demand their release in our Name alleging all those inducements wch you shall conceive proper to effect the same: wherein if the successe shall not answer our desire in obetyning their deliverance; our Pleasure is that you treate and compound their Ransome on as easy termes as may be.” BL MS Sloane 3511, fo. 137. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, Connecticut, 1973), 97–98. See also the study by Alden T. Vaughan and Daniel K. Richter, “Crossing the Cultural Divide: Indians and New England, 1605–1763,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian

16

INTRODUCTION

Archive, 1500–1677, Imtiaz Habib identified the names of all black men, women and children in England, showing how the references which have been used by literary and cultural critics need a careful grounding in the historical record. Habib went through the English archives in Greater London, and in his “Chronological Index of Records of Black People, 1500–1677,” he listed the names of all the “blacks” who were baptized, married, or buried.58 And although it might not always be the case that a person whose family name was “More” should have been black, Habib furnished a comprehensive list on which historians can rely. The study of Africans in England now has a valuable compendium and a cogent analysis of the data.59 The appendix below will list the names of every captured man, woman, and child (that I have found) in a chronological order. The names will be limited to those that Society 90 (1980): 23–99, especially figure 1, p. 54: “New Englanders captured during periods of war and peace, 1676–1763.” See also Edmund S. Morgan, “The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 28 (1971), 169–198, n. 4, where the number of English settlers in Virginia and neighboring parts is given as 1,292 – based on the surviving lists of names. 58 Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677 (Burlington, VT, 2008), 273–369. 59 From the Islamic side, and by studying the names in the sixteenth-century records of the Office of the Inquisition, Aḥmad Bū Sharab counted 9,287 Moroccans who were captured by the Portuguese from 1495 until 1541: Maghāriba fī-l-Burtughāl (Rabat, 1996), 26–27. But for Juan Daza, the number of Moroccans who between 1521–1522, fled to Spain and sold themselves into slavery to escape the famine in their land was 60,000: Bernard Loupas, “Destine et témoignage d’un marocain esclave en Espagne (1521–1530),” Hespéris Tamuda 17 (1976–77), 69 in 69–80. Michel Fontenay estimated the number of Muslims in early modern slavery by consulting French and Maltese records: “L’Esclave galérien dans la Méditerranée des temps modernes,” in Figures de l’esclave au Moyen-Age et dans le monde moderne (Paris, 1996): 115–143. M. Belhamissi collected lists of Algerian captives, confirming what Paul W. Bamford noted that “Nearly all the slaves used at French galley oars in the reign of Louis XIV and afterward were infidels”/Muslims: Belhamissi, Les captifs algériens et l’Europe chrétienne (Algiers, 1988) and Paul W. Bamford, Fighting Ships and Prisons: The Mediterranean Galleys of France in the Age of Louis XIV (Minneapolis, 1973), 139 and the whole chapter on “The Procurement of Salves.” See also for Muslim captives in the French record, Les Sources inédites de l’Histoire du Maroc…Dynastie Filalienne, ed. Phillip de Cossé Brissac, 6 vols. (Paris, 1922–1960), 6: 53–83. Vol. 4 is edited by Pierre de Cenival, vols. 5 and 6 by Philippe de Cossé Brissac; Claude Larquié, “Captifs chrétiens et esclaves maghrébins au XVIIIe siècle: Une tentative de comparison,” in Captius i Esclaus a l’Antiguitat i al Món Modern, eds. María Luisa Sánches León and Gonçal López Nadal (Napoli, 1996): 347–364; and a general survey, William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis, 1985), 154–170.

Introduction

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

17

Appeared on signed petitions; Belonged to captives who were reported to have been seized or to have been ransomed; Appeared in lists of the ransomed prepared by British factors, sea captains, or government emissaries. When there are duplicates of the same name, they will be retained since some seamen were captured more than once; Appeared (very rarely) in lists by North African rulers who negotiated for their ransoms; Belonged to captives who escaped and returned to their home parishes – and were mentioned specifically in manuscript or published captivity/ escape accounts.

The names will not include Britons who converted to Islam (although some lists mention them), nor non-Britons who were ransomed, particularly French Protestants, or Dutch and German nationals during the reigns of William III, George I, and George II.60 Some names were not complete, or were written in abbreviation, or were mentioned as the “father of” or the “son of.” I have included them because they are specific enough. By listing captives with names, it will be possible to arrive at a bare minimum because on numerous occasions, a name of a captive is given, and then reference is made to “many” or “some” other captives, or a number is added alongside. From the beginning of the eighteenth century on, information about captives becomes much more precise than in earlier decades. Still, as late as 1730, James Argatt wrote from Tangier that “the Sally couriers are out who have brought into that bay Two Sail of English shipps, the Names and Masters Unknown.”61 There is no possibility of determining the ratio of named captives to the overall number of captives given the absence of supporting data, the rounding and the generalization of numbers, and the dishonesty and/or inaccuracy in various records. Names furnish the minimum number of British captives and open the door for future research.62 60

61 62

Dutch captives were sometimes returned to England: TNA SP 71/15/11 ff. (c. 1701–1702); for German captives, see TNA SP 71/17/103 (29 August 1728); for French Protestant captives, CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700 – 8 March, 1702, 6:434 (14 October 1701). Did King William agree to ransom them after they decided to give up their French nationality? “In the seventeenth century, French Protestants in Tunis came under the protection of the English consul,” Denys Pringle, An Expatriate Community in Tunis, 1648–1885 (Oxford, 2008), 32. There were also Spaniards after Majorca came under British rule, BL MS Egerton 2528. fos 95–96. TNA SP 71/17/1169 (13 August 1730). I intend to create a website with all the names below through my University of Minnesota address, and then continue to add to it. I trust that scholars who find further names will

18

INTRODUCTION

*** The causes and outcomes of captivity and ransom/liberation changed from decade to decade and from region to region. It is not always possible to generalize from Meknes to Tripoli, given the different conditions in labor (whether on land or in galleys), accessibility (whether there were factors and consuls willing to negotiate for their countrymen), vulnerability (whether the North African cities were on the sea and thus exposed to enemy bombardment), and the nature of diplomatic relations with England. Captivity was not uniform: while British captives were, of course, Christian, they were, depending on the time period, treated differently from French or Italian or Spanish or Dutch Christian captives. Each ‘national’ community had its specific history of engagement and conflict with the North African region which is why Christian captives were not viewed as an undifferentiated mass by their captors: captives from Malta of the Knights, along with Italy of the Papacy, were different from captives from Protestant Holland with its often amicable dealings with the North Africans, or from England of anti-Spanish Elizabeth or pro-Turkish Tangier.63 At the same time, “redemption” was also determined by whether captives were soldiers or mere fishermen, rich or poor, men or women. In the list below with its over three thousand names, there is a mere handful of women’s names and an equally rare number of allusions to their ransoming; but there are numerous references to their captivity. Furthermore, there were differences stemming from international relations: at the end of the sixteenth century the English merchant Richard Hasleton had an ‘easier’ captivity among the “Mahometan” Algerians than among the “Papist” Spaniards, and in Malta in 1662, Quaker English women were captured and tortured by the Inquisition, while the Quakers who arrived to preach the message of George Fox in Istanbul were left unharmed and then shipped off.64 Nevertheless, Mediterranean and Atlantic piracy-cum-slavery remains couched in the discourse of Muslim holy war/jihad, with little attention paid to 63

64

communicate them to me so I can add them to the list. I will fully credit them for the entries. As Sir Thomas Allin noted c. 1668 : Turks’ ships were resupplying and refitting in Tangier “with more [freedom] then to Christian strangers,” TNA SP 71/1/385. He added how English ships protected Turkish ships against the Dutch. This is a short Relation of some of the Cruel Sufferings ( for the Truths sake) of Katharine Evans & Sarah Chevers, in the Inquisition in the Isle of Malta (London, 1662); Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge, 1998), 132–133.

Introduction

19

the European interlopers and their agencies of war.65 The violence committed by the ‘Muslim’ captors on their ‘Christian’ captives is seen as a manifestation of Islamic hatred and structural Muslim antipathy (“roving psychopaths”),66 ignoring the equivalent violence in Western Europe: of English “White Slavery” in the North American colonies (often compared to slavery under the “Turkes”), or galley enslavement of Protestants by Catholic France up to the middle of the eighteenth century,67 where the “barbarities committed” exceeded “all that can possibly be imagined,”68 or the enslavement of Muslims from Livorno and Cadiz to Valletta, Portsmouth (England), and Tangier. The memoirs of Alonso de Contreras present a grim reminder of the violence of ‘Christian’ pirates in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.69 In the early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic, there was more to the captivity of ‘Christians’ (and of ‘Muslims’ and ‘Jews’) than the conflict “between Islamic East and Christian West.”70 There was profit to be made by captors and ransomers alike, as Wolfgang Kaiser has shown in his extensive research, and after the occupation of Tangier in 1661, there were plans for British colonization of North Africa. 65

66 67

68 69

70

Although Peter Earle is fully aware of the complexity of corsairing and piracy among the North Africans and the Maltese, he still used “The Holy War in the Mediterranean” as a title to chapter 1, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (London, 1970). For the overwhelmingly religious focus in the study of Mediterranean captivity, see the proceedings of the conference held in Rome in 1998, 800 years after the founding of the order of the Trinitarians: La Liberazione dei ‘Captivi’ tra Christianità e Islam: Oltre la Crociata e il Ğihād: Tolleranza e servizio Umanitario, ed. Giulio Cipollone (Vatican City, 2000). As Abulafia designates the “Barbary Corsairs,” but not other pirates: The Great Sea, 415. See Elias Neau, An Account of the Suffering of the French Protestants, Slaves on Board the French Kings Galleys (London, 1699) and the list at the end which includes two Londoners, 14, 20. As the author of “A Letter from a Gentleman to…Henry Lord Bishop of London” in 1701 noted, the French galleys were even worse than captivity in Morocco, BL MS 1434.i.5, fo. 4. Jean/John Bion, An Account of the torments, the French Protestants endure aboard the Galleys (London, 1708). The Adventures of Captain Alonso de Contreras: A 17th Century Journey, trans. Philip Dallas (New York, 1989). See also the fictionalization of his life in Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Pirates of the Levant: The Adventures of Captain Alastriste, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (London, 2006). From the book cover of Adrian Tinniswood’s Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests, and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean (London, 2011) – although Tinniswood’s approach is soundly historical and not religious.

Chapter 1

Britons in Mediterranean and Atlantic Captivity and Piracy

Sources The archives of the North African region – at least the two archives of Tunisia and Morocco where I conducted research – do not include lists of British, or other European, captives – in the same manner that no information from Native American sources was to be found by Coleman. Neither does the archive in Gibraltar include records about British relations with North Africa before the middle of the eighteenth century. There are numerous chronicles, histories, hagiographies, and taqāyīd/short reports in the Arabic archives that include information about captivity, albeit not in a systematic manner, and not about Britain. There is little doubt that captors kept a record of the numbers and names of their British and other European captives in order to conduct ransom negotiations;1 there also must have been ship logs and customs records. But such material does not seem to have survived (unless there are records in Algiers) – which makes the study of European captives as well as of North African piracy, diplomacy, and trade largely dependent on European sources. British consuls and traders in North Africa furnished a steady stream of information to London merchants, politicians, and writers – and to the merchantmen and the fleet in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Their information is extensive and increases in volume and detail in proportion to the expansion of trade and naval power. Importantly, their information about the Libyans, Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans is not tainted by fantasy or Orientalistic attitudes (as for instance in Lady Montagu’s description of the baboon-like Tunisian women in letter 45): the consuls conveyed accurate facts. Although sometimes they lashed out in anger and denigration at the local population, in the vast corpus of their correspondence they were factual, and described North African domestic politics, rivalries and rebellions, Ottoman interventions, wheat harvests, ships 1 See the reference in the draft of the 1622 peace agreement between Algiers and England where the Algerians are asked to make a list of all the English slaves in Algiers and Tunis in order to exchange them with the “Musslemen slaves taken by the English shipps,” TNA SP 103/1/148. See also the reference to the list of names prepared by the Moroccan ambassador to Malta in 1781, Ibn ‘Uthmān al-Miknāsī, Al-Badr al-sāfir li-hidayat al-musāfir ila fikāk al-asārā min yad al–‘aduww al-kāfir, ed. Malīka al-Zāhirī (Muḥammadiyya, Morocco, 2005), 69.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004264502_003

Britons in the Mediterranean and Atlantic

21

and their ladings, and Franco-British tensions. They listed the names of Algerian sea captains, the number of men, guns, and “renegades” on board Libyan ships, their ages and backgrounds – showing how much more advanced they were in intelligence-gathering than the North Africans. As chapter III will show, consuls and emissaries reported everything they could see and count about North African and European (chiefly French) diplomatic, commercial, and military activity. They collected their data in person and in situ and sent it back to London: after the British destruction of Algerian ships in 1671, the report that was sent included the number of enemy casualties, the ships that had been sunk, and the names of the enemy captains who had been killed.2 But British consuls and factors did not keep a consistent record of their nation’s captives. They mentioned captives, described interventions on their behalf, and sometimes listed names and expenses they incurred in ransoming and further assisting captives. But they did not keep records in the manner of the French and Spanish redemptionist priests from the Mercederaian and the Trinitarian orders, or of papal administrators, who went on missions to ransom their own. The Archivio Segreto Vaticano furnished detailed information about captives’ names, places of origin, locations of captivity, dates, and beneficiaries,3 while the Office of the Inquisition even listed the numbers and names of Christians who, after captivity, converted to Islam.4 In France, “the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce functioned as a kind of bank, advancing ransom money to the redemptive orders, transferring currency from the king to royal envoys, and reimbursing consuls for expenses.”5 Such extensive information has enabled historians to arrive at various reliable numbers of captives:6 2 See “An Exact List of the Algier shipps burnt in Burgia with their number of Gunns & Age” and names of captains: TNA SP 71/2/I, 3v–4r (8 May 1671). Interestingly, the names of the ships were given by the English, based on what they saw on the stern: thus, the Mary Gold had marigold on the stern; the Lyon had a “lyonn Redd,” the Moone had “Half moone in a Ring,” and others, TNA SP 71/2/ I, 71r (10 June 1674). 3 For an edition of the list in the Archivio, see Collenberg, Esclavage et rançons. See specifically the list of Euro-Christian families and their places of origin with one or more members in captivity, 470–479, and captives with first names only, 480–481. 4 See, for instance, the list in Bartolomé and Lucile Bennassar, Les chrétiens d’Allah: L’histoire extraordinaire des renégats XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris,1989), 477–480. 5 Gillian L. Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the early modern Mediterranean (Stanford, 2011), 13. 6 See for example: Antonio Franchina, “A census of slaves in 1565,” Archivio Storico Siciliano, 2nd series 32 (1907): 374–20; Michel Fontenay, “L’esclave galérien dans la Méditerranée des temps modernes,” in Figures de l’esclave au Moyen-Age et dans le monde moderne (Paris, 1996): 115–143, and “Le Maghreb barbaresque et l’esclavage méditerranéen aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles,”

22

Chapter 1

Salvatore Bono and Federico Cresti have collected information about Italian captives;7 Pierre Grandchamp in his monumental La France en Tunisie, Gillian Weiss, Leïla Maziane, and Jocelyne Dakhlia about French captives;8 and Isabel M.R. Mendes Drumond Braga about Portuguese captives.9 The literature on captives and their numbers is vast.10 But it is not without problems. The following brief survey of numbers in Tunis and Algiers shows the complexity and elusiveness of information:

Les Cahiers de Tunisie 44 (1991): 7–43; Leïla Maziane, Salé et ses corsaires (1666–1727): Un port de course marocain au XVIIe siècle (Rouen et du Havre, 2007); Wolfgang Kaiser, “La centralité du rachat dans l’histoire de la captivité. Expérience et narration,” in Anne Duprat and Émilie Picherot, eds., Récits d’Orient dans les literatures d’Europe XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris, 2008), 137–143. See also Kaiser’s collection of essays, Le commerce des captifs: les intermédiares dans l’échange et le rachat des prisonniers en Méditerranée, XXe-XVIIIe siècle (Rome, 2008). 7 See the calendar of the archive of the Congregation of the Faith, Documenti sul Maghreb dal XVII al XIX secolo: Archivio Storico della Congregazione “De Progaganda Fide”; “Scritture Riferite nei Congressi – Barbaria,” preface by Salvatore Bono (Perugia, 1988); Guillaume Calafat and Cesare Santus, “Les avatars du ‘Turc.’ Esclaves et commerçants musulmans à Livourne (1600–1750),” in Les Musulmans dans l’Histoire de l’Europe, eds. Jocelyne Dakhlia and Bernard Vincent (Paris, 2011), 471–522. 8 Weiss, Captives and Corsairs. Maziane lists the names of Moroccan owners of captives, and by so doing, confirms the number of Frenchmen in captivity, 294–295; see also 297 for the names of French captives, Salé et ses Corsairs (1666–1727). She added the numbers of European captives in late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century Morocco – Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italians, Nordic, and others – and concluded that they could not have been more than a few thousand, a large number of whom were ransomed back to their homelands, at the same time that the number of French captives in Morocco declined from under 300 in 1691 to about 75 in 1726: Leïla Maziane, “Les captifs européens en terre marocaine aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 65 (2002), accessed online, 17 May 2013. Jocelyne Dakhlia, “Musulmans en France et en Grande Bretagne à l’époque moderne: Exemplaires et invisibles,” in Les Musulmans dans l’Histoire de l’Europe, eds. Dakhlia and Vincent, 231–413. In their study of “Pirates of the Mediterranean: An Empirical Investigation of Bargaining with Transaction Costs,” Attila Ambrus, Eric Chaney and Igor Salitskiy assumed a figure of 10,000 Spanish captives between 1575 and 1739 – without giving an explanation for this number (Paper accessed online, 22 December 2012). There is no discussion, however, of Christian pirates. 9 Isabel M.R. Mendes Drumond Braga, Entre a Cristandade e o Islāo (séculos XV-XVII): Cativos e Renegados nas Franjas de duas Sociedades em Confronto (Ceuta, 1998), 219–221. Although she does not give names, Braga gives the general figure of 11,091 for captives held between 1557 and 1696. 10 An excellent essay with extensive references is by Salvatore Bono, “Slave Histories and Memories in the Mediterranean World,” in Maria Fusaro, Colin Heywood, and

Britons in the Mediterranean and Atlantic

1.

2.



23

Tunis. Writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, al-Wazīr al-Sarrāj mentioned 800 European captives in Tunis in the early seventeenth century.11 “By 1626,” however, “8,000 French sailors were held slaves in Algiers and Tunis,” noted a French historian in the 1940s.12 But then, Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador in Istanbul, had stated in 1623 that in the previous twelve years, “2000 [French] shippes and barckes, [had been] taken by [the North African] piratts” – which would suggest a higher number of French captives than the given figure indicates.13 In 1637, the redemptionist Father Pierre Dan wrote that there were 3,000 to 4,000 renegades and nearly 7,000 European slaves in Tunis after his visit there in the mid-1630s.14 But according to al-Wazīr al-Sarrāj, who relied for his information on a friend’s grandfather, the number of captives in Tunis in the second quarter of the seventeenth century was about 24,077.15 Algiers. Father Dan stated that there were the following captives in Algiers: in 1607, 1,400 captives; in 1608, 860 captives; in 1609, 632 captives; in 1610, 384 captives; in 1611, 464 captives; in 1613, 230 captives; in 1614, 467 captives; in 1616, 767 captives; in 1617, 1763 captives; in 1618, 1468 captives.16 But when Antonio de Sosa wrote his account about Algiers in 1612, he stated that there were “more than 25,000 who row in the galleys or who remain on land.”17 Fernand Braudel argued that there were 20,000 captives in 1621, while J.B. Wolf put the figure in Algiers in the 1630s at 25,000 males and 2,000 females.18 In 1623, however, and writing about his captivity in Algiers in 1619, Jean-Baptiste Gramaye stated that there were

Mohamed-Salah Omri, eds., Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Braudel’s Maritime Legacy (London, 2010), 97–116. 11 Al-Wazīr al-Sarrāj, Al-Ḥullal al-sundusiyya fī al-akhbār al-Tunisiyya, ed. Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb al-Hīla (Tunis, 1973), 2:1: 164. 12 Quoted by Michèle Longino in a paper delivered at the MLA, San Francisco, 29 December 2008, from Gérard Tongas, Les relations de la France avec l’empire ottoman durant la première moitié du XVIIe siècle et l’ambassade à Constantinople de Philippe de Harlay, comte de Césy, 1619–1640 (Toulouse, 1942). I am grateful to Professor Longino for providing me with the reference. 13 Roe, The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe (London, 1740), 224. 14 Pierre Dan, Histoire de la Barbarie et ses corsairs (Paris, 1637), 313, 319. See also n. 6 in Jane Tolbert, “Ambiguity and Conversion in the Correspondence of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Thomas D’Arcos, 1630–1637,” Journal of Early Modern History 13 (2009), 1–24. 15 Al-Wazīr al-Sarrāj, Al-Ḥullal al-sundusiyya, ed. al-Hīla, 2:1:200–201. 16 Cited in J. Mesnage, Le Christianisme en Afrique, 3 vols (Algiers, 1914–1915), 3: 198, n. 2 17 An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam: Antonio de Sosa’s ‘Topography of Algiers’ (1612), introd. Maria Antonia Garcés, trans. Diana de Armas Wilson (Notre Dame, IN, 2001), 119. 18 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 2:887; J.B. Wolf, The Barbary Coast: Algiers under the Turks, 1500s to 1830 (New York, 1979), 151.

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Chapter 1

“centum viginti millia.”19 But the number of captives who were ransomed from Algiers by the Trinitarians from 1557 to 1696 was 1,983; another source shows that from the year 1595 to 1644, the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians together ransomed 10,526 and 4,240 captives from Algiers and Tetuan.20 Although 4,500 captives were claimed in Algiers between 1623 and 1626, Gillian Weiss concluded that “[t]he most reliable ones [figures], produced by agents on the ground, are from 300–800. I have found no estimates for Tunis between 1615 and 1640. Tripoli reportedly had 150 French captives in 1629, as it had in 1615; Morocco 150–270 from 1626–1629.”21 Just under a century earlier, in 1920, a historian wrote of 35,000 European captives in Algiers in the second half of the seventeenth century, and “two to three thousand for the eighteenth” century.22 Salvatore Bono mentioned 7,000 captives in Algiers in 1749; 2,662 in 1767; and 500 in 1787.23 Neither early modern nor modern scholars describe the method by which such numbers can be reached. Any attempt to calculate numbers in the context of early modern war, famine, plague, piracy, and shipwreck cannot but be problematic. That is the nature of the beast. In 1640, an English captive suggested a way to calculate how many captives there were in Algiers. Francis Knight “esteemed”/estimated the Christian captives in Algiers to be 60,000, providing the following explanation of how such a figure could be reached: “By common probabilitie, there being 16000. Gardens, and one with another, having a Christian, some two, three, and foure, besides so great a Number as are in the Citie.”24 This method of counting is smart but remains conjectural; actually in 19

20

21

22

23 24

Jean-Baptiste Gramaye, Alger XVIe-XVIIe siècle, ed. Abd El Hadi Ben Mansour, introd. André Mandouze (Paris, 1998),286. Mansour discusses the number of captives and argues for “32 à 35,000” in Algiers without rejecting the 120,000 for all of “Barbarie”. See the chapter on “Une estimation,” 135 ff. It is interesting that among all the captives seized to Algiers between 9 May and 26 October 1619, none was identified as English, 141–143. Isabel M.R. Mendes Drumond Braga, Entre a Cristandade e o Islāo (séculos XV-XVII), 219–221; Daniel Bernardo Hershenzon, “Early Modern Spain and the Creation of the Mediterranean: Captivity, Commerce, and Knowledge” (Ph.D. Dissertation, U of Michigan, 2011), 249. And she adds, “The frequent assaults of the 1620s resulted in upward of a thousand French subjects in chains across Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco,” Captives and Corsairs, 17. See also 227, n. 11 and 241 n. 93. Augustin Bernard, L’Algérie (Paris, 1920), 164, cited by Norman Robert Bennett, “Christian and Negro Slavery in Eighteenth-Century North Africa,” Journal of African History, 1 (1960), 77 in 65–82. S. Bono, I Corsari Barbareschi (Turin, 1964) 220 ff. Francis Knight, A relation of seaven yeares slaverie vnder the Turkes of Argeire (London, 1640), 51.

Britons in the Mediterranean and Atlantic

25

the 1670s, William Okeley, who had been a captive in Algiers in the late 1630s, gave the number of captives as 25,000.25 But in 1674, Samuel Martin, the consul in Algiers, mentioned that there were 18,000 Christian slaves in Algiers alone, of whom “9 hundred are Gally slaves,” a view that was repeated by Richard Blome in 1678 that there were “circa 18000 [captives], of which about 900 are galley slaves.”26 Evidently, writers did not conduct their own investigations, but relied on previous documents and hearsay. There are two reasons that make the study of British captives in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic problematic. First: No records were kept of British captives chiefly because a large number of captives were “small” and unimportant seamen. Sir Thomas Roe complained in 1621 that English authorities rarely paid attention to captives, having a “multiplicity of other businesses, which tapes upp nights and dayes incessantly,” and they did not want to be bothered to list let alone ransom the “poore westerne fishermen.”27 In 1632, a petition stated that there were 500 captives “of yr Mjties subiects” along with another 1,000 “of the Western Parts.” But in the deliberations about ransom, it was decided to “redeeme the one [“subiects”] and to ignore those of the “Western Parts.”28 The 1682 list of ships taken by the Algerians between 1677and 1679 shows blunt indifference to captured seamen: while the names of the ship masters were mentioned, with the explanation that they were redeemed, dead, drowned, escaped, or in captivity, no mention was made of the names or fates of the seamen.29 During his 1683 visit to Tangier, Samuel Pepys wrote that the seamen were “at the best very unpleasant, full of labour and danger, no man that can get his living anywhere else will take to it, so that the whole trade and knowledge of it has been kept among poor illiterate hands.”30 No government or church official was going to expend effort or money to ransom such men – and when such men died, it is extremely unlikely that a stone was laid on their gravesite to register their names.31 From the first Stuart monarch who had his soldiers push away petitioners on behalf of captives to the last Stuart, captives and their clamoring kin were a source of bother: “What is indeed worst of al,” 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Okeley was captured in 1639 but his account was first published in 1675, Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 149. TNA SP 71/2/I, 65r (10 June 1674); Blome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica 7. The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe, 29, 35, 573. See the detailed study of Roe’s negotiations in Hebb, Piracy, ch. 8. TNA SP 71/1/135 (c. 1632). List of Ships taken since July, 1677 from His Majesties Subjects, by the Corsairs of Algier. The Tangier Papers, ed. Edwin Chappell (London, 1935), 120. See Pringle, An Expatriate Community in Tunis where the surviving gravestones belong to merchants, chancellors and consuls, and members of their families. Very few belonged to men about whom nothing is known, such as the one on the next page, 25–26.

26

Figure 3

Chapter 1

Gravestone from the Anglican Church cemetery in Tunis. With the gracious permission of Professor Denys Pringle, Cardiff University.

Britons in the Mediterranean and Atlantic

27

wrote an anonymous person from Tangier in March 1717, “Her Majestie being continually implored for Redemption, by the severall Families.”32 Secondly: Another reason for not listing names and numbers of captives was the sectarian divide in early modern England. In Bills of Mortality during plagues, for instance, the names of “Quakers and others” were not included (as Richard Baxter confirmed in 1665)33 – which is why Daniel Defoe complained in his Journal of the Plague Year (1722) that the Bills were inaccurate because they reduced the number of the dead. In such a climate, it would have been very unlikely for Canterbury or Whitehall to show interest in captives on the religious fringe, or during the Great Persecution of the 1660s and 1680s, of nonconformists, or of Catholics in the wake and the long shadow of the Popish Plot.34 Seventeenth – century Britain witnessed the persecution of “Protestants by Protestants which was without parallel in seventeenth-century Europe”:35 thousands of Dissenters were imprisoned or sent to the colonies in numbers by far higher than anything reliably recorded in the history of captivity. Furthermore, captivity in North Africa coincided with the ‘peopling’ of America with religious non-conformists, as the First Conventicle Act of 1664 shows; or with prisoners of internal rebellions, as with the 847 soldiers after the battle of Sedgmoor in 1685, who were transported to Barbados where they were to “be held compelled and obliged to serve and obey the Owner or Purchas of him or them, in their plantations within this island … for the full term and time of Ten Years from the day of landing.” And should one try to escape, he would be punished by Thirty-nine lashes on his bare body, on some public day, in the next market town to his Master’s place of abode: and on another market day in the same town be set in the pillory, by the space of one hour: and be burnt in the forehead with the letters F.T. signifying Fugitive Traitor, so as the letters may plainly appear in his forehead.36 32 33 34

35 36

TNA SP 71/16/254 (4 March 1717). The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, abridged by J.M. Lloyd Thomas, introd. N.H. Keeble (London, 1974), 195. It is interesting that in Sweden, when captives were to be ransomed, the emphasis was on liberating the “Best, the most functional, the youngest and purest Swedes,” quoted in Joachim Östlund, “Swedes in Barbary Captivity: The Political Culture of Human Security, circa 1660–1760,” Historical Social Research 35 (2010), 150 in 149–164. John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 (Harlow, England, 2000), 169. John Whiles, Sedgmoor 1685 (Chippenham, 1985), 53.

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There were also the indentured servants. Charles Molloy openly equated indenture with captivity in his oft-published Jure maritimo et navali (1676, 1677, 1682, 1690).37 Many young men wrote letters back to their parents pleading to be “redeemed” from indenture – the same word used by captives in North Africa in their own letters.38 It is not known how many of these “White Slaves” were captured by North African pirates as they were on their way to the colonies. In 1743, William Moraley published an autobiography of indenture in North America that included an account of a “Fortunate Andalousian’s” slavery in Morocco – showing how the two experiences overlapped.39 References to ransom appear in the English archive throughout the period under study: kith and kin never forgot their bread-earning sons or husbands or fathers. But there remains a big gap between the numbers of the allegedly captured and the numbers of the ransomed: if between 1627 and 1640, 2,828 men were captured to Algiers,40 why is it that Edmond Cason ransomed only 243 Britons in 1646 in the only (well-publicized) mission sent by Parliament to that city? And if there had been 2,400 to 2,800 Britons taken by Saletians after 1630, why is it that in 1637, only 339 were ransomed (including some non-Britons)?41 Such discrepancies give support to J.S. Bromley’s statement that “We may have exaggerated, for instance, both the numbers and the relative hardships of their [North African] prisoners.”42 Exaggeration can help to explain the mysterious absence of artistic and literary representations of captives in England. Spain witnessed the seizure of large numbers of captives and prisoners of war, especially after the 1571 battle of Lepanto (in which Cervantes was taken prisoner) and the 1578 battle of Wadi al-Makhazin. Later, Cervantes and Lope de Vega 37 38

De Jure Maritimo et Navali (1676), 387. See for instance the 1623 letter by Richard Frethorne, in Colonial American History, eds. Kirsten Fischer and Eric Hinderaker (Oxford, 2002), 127–130. On the similarity between captives in North Africa and indentured servants in North America, see the letter by Sir Thomas Montgomery to Lords of Trade and Plantation, CO 1/65, No. 35 (3 August 1688): “I beg also for your care for the poor white servants here, who are used with more barbarous cruelty than if in Algiers. Their bodies and souls are used as if hell commenced here and only continued in the world to come.” See also Daniel Vitkus, “The Circulation of Bodies: Slavery, Maritime Commerce and English Captivity Narratives in the Early Modern Period,” Colonial and Postcolonial Incarceration, ed. Graeme Harper (New York, 2001), 23–37. 39 The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant, eds. Susan E. Klepp and Billy Gordon Smith(University Park, PA, 2005), 2nd. ed. 40 Hebb, Piracy, 138. 41 Ibid., 139. 42 The Straights Voyage or St Davids Poem by John Baltharpe, ed. J.S. Bromley (Oxford, 1959), xi.

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wrote numerous plays about the Spanish-Ottoman and Spanish-Moorish encounter, full of romance, heroic Christians, evil Muslims, inter-religious love affairs, and conversions from Islam to Christianity.43 If England was exposed to a similar onslaught of the “Barbary Corsairs,” it is not clear why not a single English author wrote a play or a novella about Britons in captivity. Aside from few allusions to generic Christian (but not specifically English) captives, there are no plays with British captives as central dramatic figures. The only captives in Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays are North African, not English: Othello and Caliban,44 while Thomas Heywood’s Spencer and Bess in The Fair Maid of the West (Part II) do not remotely approximate to captives in Morocco in the 1630s. There was only one representation of an English captive/slave on the Caroline stage in a play that was very likely performed by the King’s Men: Philip Massinger’s A Very Woman was first licensed for the stage in June 1634 (but first published in 1655).45 The nameless English slave in the play is mocked, and presented as aping French manners, while doing “some more devices” (3.1.105 ff). Perhaps reacting to his countrymen’s lack of concern for captives, and eager to praise King Charles for ransoming over 300 captives in 1637, Inigo Jones depicted a man and a woman among the captives in his masque Britannia Triumphans (1638) – the only original visual depiction of English captives, unlike book illustrations many of which were taken from French or Spanish publications.46 By including captives in a masque about Britain, Jones made them part of royal entertainment in London. But the captives did not influence the religious or literary imagination of English society: parents and families were ever concerned about their kin and petitioned repeatedly on their behalf; they did not forget them. And while some members of Parliament, active in 43

44

45 46

For two of the many studies on Spanish literary representations of captives, see Marίa Antonia Garcés, Cervantes in Algiers: A Captives Tale (Nashville, 2002); and Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika, eds. and introd., The Bagnios of Algiers and the Great Sultana (Philadelphia, 2010). As Mohamed-Salah Omri observes, “The ‘spectre’ of Cervantes, as a literary founding figure and as a sixteenth-century Mediterranean subject, is present in the twentieth – century North African historical fiction set during that period [the sixteenth century],” “Representing the Early Modern Mediterranean,” in Trade and Cultural Exchange, eds. Fusaro et al. 280 in 279–298. See Nabil Matar and Rudolph Stoeckel, “Europe’s Mediterranean Other: The Moor,” The Arden Critical Companions, eds., Andrew Hadfield and Paul Hammond (The Arden Shakespeare, 2004), 230–252. The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, eds. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson (Oxford, 1976), 4: 201. Percy Simpson and C.F. Bell, Designs by Inigo Jones for Masques & Plays at Court (New York, 1924),103, reproduced on the cover. Another appears on the next page.

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Figure 4

Chapter 1

Proscenium border by Inigo Jones. With permission from the Chatsworth Photo Library.

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Mediterranean and Atlantic trade, brought the matter of captives to the attention of the Commons and the Lords, none of the Fast Sermons in the 1640s mentioned captives, nor did the diaries of John Evelyn and Roger Morrice, as well as the histories of Lord Clarendon/Edward Hyde and Bishop Gilbert Burnet, and the correspondence of John Locke, all of which cover most of the seventeenth century. The diary of a rural clergyman like Ralph Josselin shows him writing more about the weather, crops, hogs and sheep, than about captives in far off seas. While he picked up sundry news about Turkish advances on the continent, as did many of his contemporaries, in all his diary that stretches over decades, he had only one reference to captives (6 February 1680).47 Samuel Pepys was deeply involved in the navy and the colonization of Tangier, and while he reported on the financial value of ships lost to the “Algerines” and on the progress of the Turks’ war on the Continent, the only time he mentioned the plight of captives was when he was having a drink and listened to stories of Algier and the manner of the life of Slaves there; and truly, Captain Mootham and Mr. Dawes (who have been both slaves there) did make me full acquainted with their condition there. As, how they eat nothing but bread and water. At their redemption, they pay so much for the water that they drink at the public fountaynes during their being slaves. How they are beat upon the soles of the feet and bellies at the Liberty of their Padron. How they are all at night called into their master’s Bagnard, and there they lie. How the poorest men do use their slaves best. How some rogues do live well, if they do endent to bring their masters in so much a week by their industry or theft; and then they are put to no other work at all.48 The ex-captives conveyed to Pepys the normative images about slavery – little food and drink, and beatings – but then they mentioned the “rogues” who were industrious – the same who, as other sources confirm, were able to make a living and then buy their freedom. Pepys eagerly listened to the stories about Algiers but he did not discuss the need for ransoming captives or for raising funds; captivity was part of a convivial chat in the Fleece tavern. Nor do captives appear except in a handful of ballads: even among the poor who suffered most from captivity, the “Mahometan” captors did not become the object of 47 48

The Diary of Ralph Josselin 1616–1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London, 1976), 631. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds. Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (Berkeley, 1970), 2: 33–34 (8 February 1661).

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invective, ridicule, or defiance. At the same time, religious works written for seamen spiritualized their lives without touching on the horror of captivity: thus John Flavell’s A New Compass for Seamen(1664, 1677, 1682, and published posthumously in 1698). Flavell “spiritualiz’d” navigation: sin rather than captivity was the danger, and the Quakers and Socinians and “Famalists” were more threatening to sailors than North African pirates.49 And yet in the years he was preaching his sermons, dozens of ships had been seized to North Africa and hundreds of captives had been ransomed – after spending dangerous time among the “Mahometans.” Actually, it may well be that the North Africans were no longer powerful enough to strike terror. For English writers of the second half of the seventeenth century such as John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, Henry Stubbe, Charles Molloy and others, the Dutch were the dangerous enemy, and after 1688, the French. Although captives continued to be seized by the North Africans, their numbers did not match the numbers of British soldiers and seamen who were captured by Britain’s European adversaries during the numerous wars of emerging empires. Caveats In 1598–1600, Richard Hakluyt published a list of captives’ names in his Travels and Navigations of the English People (the first to appear in print in England), but information about captives remained nearly always confined to manuscripts dispersed in maritime and consular archives, to letters sent to the Privy Council from mayors in port cities in the south and south west of England and Wales, to depositions by seamen and returning captives, and to information furnished by sea captains, repentant pirates, and factors. From the 1610s on, the crisis of captives started becoming visible and vocal as wives and kinswomen took to the streets of London, clamoring for assistance, and presenting petitions on behalf of captives (one petition by 2,000 women). Sometimes, lists of 49

Navigation spiritualized, or, A new compass for sea-men, consisting of XXXII points Of pleasant observations, profitable applications, and serious reflections, all concluded with so many spiritual poems : Whereunto is now added 1. A sober consideration of the sin of drunkenness, 2. The harlots face in the Scripture-Glass, 3. The art of preserving the fruit of the lips, 4. The resurrection of buried mercies and promises, 5. The sea-mans catechism : being an essay towards their much desired reformation from the horrible and detestable sins of drunkenness, swearing, uncleanness, forgetfulness of mercies, violation of promises, and atheistical contempt of death : Fit to be seriously recommended to their profane relations, whether seamen or others, by all such as unfeignedly desire their eternal welfare presented (London, 1677).

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names were prepared of ransomed captives after ransomers were asked to account for moneys they had paid. But there was no official statement about captives from either Whitehall or Parliament until the 1640 Act of Parliament, the first royal document about the “thousands” of English captives in North Africa.50 How many thousands, and how such a figure was established, are questions that were not answered until three years later: 3,000.51 The same number had been mentioned in a petition presented to King Charles in October 1640, but then the document that accompanied that petition with “The names of the shipmasters and the number of their men who have been taken prisoners since May 18, 1639, Total 957” (but no names): 90, 32, 11, 11, 305, 14, 15, 19, 14, 9, 10, 9, 15, 361, 8, 11, 46, 40, 46, 5, 26, 40, 41, 39, 9, 5, 6, 6, 8, 7, 24, 9, 13, [?30], 15, 17, 11, 8, 7, 5, 19, 5, 3, 13, 4, 6, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 5, 7 = 957 (actually 1489).52 There was difficulty in establishing the precise number of captives: nobody could tell exactly how many Britons were in captivity. Of course, unreliability of sources and imprecision bedeviled all collectors of names and numbers – not just the British. Even French redemptionist records were not without mistakes or omissions. The Mercedarians, for instance, claimed at one point to have ransomed between 1,500 and 2,000 captives, but could only furnish the names of 463 captives.53 It is quite possible that they exaggerated the numbers in order to gain additional financial support for their missions. The Trinitarians claimed that they had ransomed 900,000 captives from 1198 to 1787, but later historians challenged them pointing out how forty captives became, on paper, 4,000.54 In England, there was similar difficulty in ascertaining numbers even in lists of the immigrants or the deceased that were prepared in North America.55 In the case of captives, it was not always possible to find the exact number given their dispersal after their sale into the hinterland

50

51 52 53 54 55

See the “Act for the releife of the Captives taken by Turkish Moorish and other Pirates and to prevent the taking of others in time to come,” reproduced in appendix 1 of my Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainesville, 2005), 173–176. CSPD Charles I, 1641–1643, 17: 134 (3 October 1640). TNA SP 16/469/44 (3 October 1640). See also the earlier list of men, compiled in November 1638, where the number is 1473 (TNA SP 71/1/157). See the reference to J. A Gari, La Orden Redentora de la Merced, 435 in Mesnage, Le Christianisme en Afrique, 3:187. Ibid., 183. See the “List of the names of the Dead in Virginia since Aprill last February 16: 1623” where numerous names of the dead are repeated: John Camden Hotten, ed., The Original Lists of Persons of Quality … who went from Great Britain to the American Plantations 1600–1700 (New York, 1931), 190–196.

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of North Africa.56 In 1637, Robert Blake paid 200 ducats to officers in Salé just to help him “find out the captives.”57 A year before, 1636, the numbers of captives differed from one document to another, from 150–250 captives, to 870, to 1,000 – but then the names of ransomed captives in 1637 added up to 302.58 Similarly, in a petition of 1665, wives of captives mentioned the presence of eighty men in Algiers, but the petition included no more than a dozen names.59 Different numbers of captives were given by different sources – about the same alleged captives. Sometimes, numbers were rounded by some consul or parliamentary report: 3,000, or 5,200 or others, but there is no indication whether such numbers were based on an actual headcount, or whether they reflect a general estimate, or whether they refer to a new influx of captives over and above earlier captives. Even a small community like the Quakers, meticulous in recording names and locations of fellow coreligionists in North African captivity, missed out on some names. The evidence collected by Kenneth L. Carroll and Justin Meggitt shows a few captives who remained in limbo, neither ransomed nor dead, with no record left of what happened to them.60 There were also scribal and clerical errors, misspellings and confusions since copyists wrote the same names differently. During war periods, there were few ships to carry letters from North Africa via (usually Livorno) to England, which is why consuls had their letters copied various times and sent three, four or five copies in the hope that one would reach its destination (sometimes many did, as in the holdings at The National Archives). Without the names of captives, duplication or miswriting of numerals was inevitable. A high percentage of sailors were illiterate, leaving a mark instead of their name on captive lists (which were even reproduced in print).61 To complicate 56

57 58

59 60

61

It is important to keep in mind that captives were also transferred from one region to another, as with captives taken in Tangier but then ransomed in Algiers, TNA SP 71/1/438 (8 October 1668). TNA SP 71/13/80 (1637). Henry de Castries, Les sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc … Archives et bibliothèques d’Angleterre. Vols 1 and 2 (Paris, 1918–1935) ; Cenival and Brissac, Sources … Angleterre, 3:250 n. 2. TNA SP 29/138/58 (5 December 1665). Kenneth L. Carroll, “Quaker Captives in Morocco, 1685–1701,” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, 55 (1983): 66–79 and “Quaker Slaves in Algiers, 1679–1688,” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, 54 (1982): 301–312. I am grateful to Dr. Meggitt for the information he sent me (see appendix). A manuscript list of captives shows that of the fifty-two names, twenty-four could not sign their names and left different marks on the petition: TNA SP 71/18/111v (c. 1737–39) See also the reproduction p. 36.

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matters further, Britons converted to Islam and changed their names, subsequently disappearing from public records. Many captivity accounts that were published after the return of captives to England referred to converted Britons, “renegades,” as did merchants’ reports that included notes about sailors who had “turn’d Moor.” Such converts raise the question whether they should be included among the “Christian” captives – since many so eagerly joined their new religious communities that they later attacked and captured their (former) countrymen: thus “Dja’far, an English renegade” or “Assan Aga, Eunuch and treasurer unto Hassan Bassa king of Alger: which Assan Aga was sonne to Francis Rowly merchant of Bristol, and was taken in an English ship called the Swallow.”62 There is ample evidence that many Britons willingly deserted their family, country, and monarch, as did William Appleby who jumped ship in Algiers and went into hiding. Later he “went to sea with Turkish pirates against Christians.”63 He and such other men (and women from the last quarter of the seventeenth century on) gave up their God, their nationality, their clothes, their diet, and their names to stay among their captors-turned-co-religionists.64 The 1721 ransom record (reproduced in the appendix) shows the number of men who converted, but it is not possible to extrapolate a reliable percentage of captives who converted in the whole period under study.65 There was also uncertainty because of the mortality rate. When a ship sank because of bad weather, many sailors drowned while others escaped or were taken captive. At such junctures, it was not possible to determine exactly the different fates of the men on board. Furthermore, early modern conditions at sea were quite dangerous and ships lost large numbers of their crews to disease, scurvy, accidents, and desertions. Not all Londoners from Wapping or 62

63 64

65

See the letter by William Harborne in Hakluyt, The Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation (Glasgow, 1903–5), 5:282 (28 June 1586). Some forgot their English names: thus “Usta Mahamett an English Renegado,” TNA SP 71/22/III, 54r (1695). See also on converts, Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612) in An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam, introd. Garcés, trans. Wilson, 129. Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35, ed. G.G. Harris (London, 1983), 40. Sometimes, but only if they had not been involved in military actions against Britons, renegades were brought back to England: notwithstanding the heinousness of their apostasy, they were well informed about the North African regions and could furnish reliable intelligence: see CSPD Charles II, October 1668 to December 1669, 9:385 (26 June 1669); CSPD Charles II, 1 March 1676–28 Feb. 1677, 18: 246 (27 July 1676); and the escape of twelve renegades on an English ship (back to England?) TNA SP 71/15/165 (14 June 1706). See also the reference to 11% in Tunis and 14–16% in Algiers: G.N. Clark, War and Society in the 17th Century (Cambridge, 1958), 105–129 and Robert C. Davis, “Counting European Slaves,” Past and Present 172 (2001): 116 in 87–124.

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Figure 5

Chapter 1

Names of captives, with marks by illiterate sailors. From Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty (London, 1751), A4v. With permission from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.

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sailors from Portsmouth had enough stamina or physical fortitude to withstand the humidity of the Mediterranean or the scarcity of water on board ship or the change in temperature and diet.66 During the first foray of the British fleet against Algiers in 1620, the sailors who fell sick were by the hundreds.67 In 1695, a captive from Algiers reported that “his companions, for whom a fund had been raised, were escaped, dead or had renounced Christianity.”68 In August 1734, 144 captives were ransomed from Meknes, but having survived captivity, some did not survive the trek to the ships. Within a month, ten had died and many others became “sickley.”69 The loss of seamen was caused by disease and drowning as well as by captivity. Another uncertainty arises from the confusion regarding who had been a captive and who falsely claimed to have been one. That is why captives had certificates to prove that they had been ransomed: “I John Spreen was redeemed out of slavery in ye Kingdome of Tripoli” (25 June 1677).70 In that year a few captives were ransomed, but it is curious that the certificates which verified their redemption were recorded six years later.71 Were they trying to recoup losses and were meeting with failure – even years after their return? Anticipating problems at home, some captives asked for certificates from North African officials or local English agents: “Certificate of Hamad Benali, Secretary and Custom House officer of Sally, that Rob. Denis, merchant of London, and his nephew, Mark, have ransomed 22 English slaves, paid the ransoms to the Governor and the masters, 66

67 68 69

70 71

Similarly, numbers of the dead in lists from India show the high rate of mortality: from 13 February till 14 September 1612, 20 men on board the Peppercorn died; on board the Clove, 31 men (including two Indians) died between 30 July 1611 and 4 January 1612; on board the Hector, 43 men died between 2 May 1611 and 24 December 1612: Letters received by the East India Company from its servants in the East, 1602–1613, ed. Frederick Charles Danvers (London, 1896), 1: 294, and 222–224. See for a general study, R.L. Cohn, “Maritime mortality in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a survey,” International Journal of Maritime History 1 (1989): 159–91. See the section on “Disease and Sickness” in Charles A. Le Guin, “Sea Life in SeventeenthCentury England,” American Neptune 27 (1967): 111–134. CO 5/1184/19–20 (26 March 1695). TNA SP 71/18/21 (2 August 1734). See the description of the harrowing journey from Meknes to the seacoast in the journal of Ambassador Russell edited by Magali Morsy, “A Journal of Mr. Russell, Journey from Gibraltar to Sally,” Les Cahiers de Tunisie, 24 (1976): 15–43. TNA SP 71/22/II, 4. See also fos 6–13 for other examples; and Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–1635, ed. Harris, 4–5. “Certificate of redemption of two for the above captives … Certificate of George Miller of his being redeemed for 100 £” and the rest of the entry, CSPD Charles II, October 1, 1683 – April 30, 1684, 26: 116–117 (28 November 1683).

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and also the port dues. Also certificate by John Ware and four others to the genuineness of the said certificate – Sally 13 August 1653.”72 There were many unsubstantiated/fabricated claims from captives: did all the mutes who were given alms really lose their tongues after being captured by the Turks, a form of punishment that is not mentioned anywhere else in the British records of captivity?73 Dr. Gilbert Anderson traveled widely around the world and having gained the “gift of Revelation,” prophesied the Restoration of Charles II – after which he petitioned the king for assistance because he had lost his hearing while in captivity among the Turks. Had he really been a captive? And was William Harrison, “formerly Stewart to the Lady Nowel of Cambden,” murdered or had he been carried captive to “the Turkish Land” as the ballad reported?74 Given such and many other cases of duplicity, certificates continued to be needed well into the second quarter of the eighteenth century.75 Handwritten petitions by the parents of Devon captives in the second half of the seventeenth century included an additional sentence, by another hand, testifying that “Wee believe the truth of this petition,” or we “believe the contents of this Petition to be true.”76 Notwithstanding such assurances, some of the captives remained for years in Algiers or Salé (seven years in the case of Joshua Woodmason). By identifying names and numbers, it becomes possible to verify, for instance, how many members of the same family of sailors, nuclear or extended, sailed together; or how many foreigners were manning English ships (a constant bone of contention between England and the North African rulers throughout the period under study). Names show that whole families were infrequently taken, unlike among the Muslims of North Africa;77 they also show that there were not, on any single occasion, the large numbers of Britons 72 73 74

75

76

77

TNA SP 18/39/93. Historical Manuscripts Commission Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. VIII (London, 1914), 95–97, “The Records of the Dissolved Corporation of Dunwich.” See the discussion of the ballad, “Truth brought to light,” which refers to his murder and to the captivity account that was published in 1676, The Pack of Autolycus, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, MA, 1927), 93–100. See TNA SP 71/17/199 (5 April 1731) for the “Certificate of the sailors that were cast away on the Coast of Barbary & detained at Tangier.” See earlier TNA SP 71/22/II, 4 where each captive is given an affidavit stating the name of his ransomer (25 July 1693). Devon Public Record Office, Quarter Sessions,128/69/7, 10. Nearly all the petitions include such attestations. The signatories were friends, family members and relations, or the local vicar. See the accounts about Muslim families in Wettinger, Slavery in the Islands of Malta and Gozo, 200–205.

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who might have risen in rebellion, similar to the Portuguese captives who blew up the city mosque in Marrakesh in 1574, or the Muslims who rebelled in Valladolid between 1601 and 1606, or in Malta in 1749.78 Names answer the question whether sailors were captured more than once (although there were men with the same names who appear on many lists of captivity), whether after experiencing captivity, they gave up on the sea or returned to it, and how many years separated their captivities. Names show that captives in British history did not include either the nobility or figures of religious importance (except in the case of Lord Inchiquin and his son in 1659–1660). Generally, British nobility did not have to venture into dangerous waters in search of livelihood and were spared the humiliation of captivity.79 Nor is there anything in English history similar to the story of Vincent de Paul, whose (alleged?) captivity contributed to his popularity and later canonization – and to paintings about his heroic preaching among the ‘infidels.’80 Names furnish an opportunity to trace the later life course of some captives and situate captivity in a historical chronology, thereby separating actual victims from the exaggerations of early modern writers and modern scholars.81 78

For Valladolid, see Abd el Hadi Ben Mansour, “Maghreb-péninsule Ibérique aux XVIeXVIIe siècles,” in Revue Maroc – Europe, no. 11 (1997–1998), 81 in 65–95; for Malta, see Wettinger, Slavery in the Islands of Malta and Gozo, 145–51. 79 Unlike Wenceslas Wratislaw, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz: what he saw in the Turkish metropolis, Constantinople, experienced in his captivity, and after his happy return to his country, committed to writing in the year of our Lord 1599, trans. A.H. Wratislaw (London, 1862). 80 He was alleged to have been captured and taken to Tunis in 1605–1607, and later established the order of the Congregation of the Mission. Although Pierre Grandchamp presented evidence against the claims of captivity, the saint is still venerated for his trials among the infidels: see Grandchamp, “La prétendue captivité de Saint Vincent de Paul à Tunis (1605–1607),” in Etudes d’Histoire Tunisienne XVIIe – XXe Siècles (Presses Universitaires de France, 1966), 51–84. For a painting showing him preaching on the seacoast with an Algerian pointing to a ship in the distance, see the painting by Giacomo Zoboli (1682–1759) at the Villa Farnesina in Trastevere, Rome. In England, the only church figure to experience captivity and write about it (and he was mentioned by William Okeley) was Devereux Spratt. 81 See Encountering Islam. Joseph Pitts: An English Slave in 17th – Century Algiers and Mecca. A critical edition, with biographical introduction and notes of Joseph Pitts of Exeter’s “A Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahometans,” 1731 (London, 2012), where Paul Auchterlonie investigates Pitts’s life after returning from captivity. Dr. Justin Meggitt of Cambridge University kindly furnished me with names of Quaker captives whose lives he is trying to reconstruct, before and after captivity. See also Claire S. Schen, “Breaching “Community” in Britain: Captives, Renegades, and the Redeemed,” for a study

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Names help in determining the percentage of English women among the captives.82 Actually, the evidence shows that British women were not infrequently captured on the high seas – but infrequently ransomed.83 There is a reference to alms given to “two poore women, prisoners in Turkey” in 1624,84 but in 1631, two women voluntarily joined their kinsmen in “Barbara.”85 Others were captured on their way to Virginia.86 In March 1656, the Venetian secretary in England reported that soldiers had gone into “brothels and other places of entertainment where they forcibly laid hands on over 400 women of loose life, whom they compelled to sail for the Barbados islands” to increase the population.87 If/when such or other women were captured by North Africans, there is no likelihood that anyone would have bothered to list their names, let alone ransom them. Not so for women of wealth and connection: in The Straights Voyage, or St. Davids’ Poem, John Baltharpe mentioned the 1670 capture by the Algerians of “One English Lady and her Maid” whose uncle, a consul, quickly paid her ransom.88 After 1685, an English woman captive was married to the Moroccan sultan Mulay Ismāʿīl and became so powerful that English merchants courted her, and sometime in the first decade of the eighteenth century, sent her “A Rich Crimson Velvet Chair or sidan for the Darling sultaness a Native of England.…50:00.”89 Another English woman, mother of Mulay ‘Abdallah, was known as Lalla 82

83

84 85 86 87 88 89

of three captives, in Defining Community in Early Modern Europe, eds. Michael J. Halvorson and Karen E. Spierling (Aldershot, 2008), 229–246. As Lëila Blili notes about the captured 131 European women in Tunisia from 1582–1700, all came from the Mediterranean (Zante, Crete, Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia, Genoa, and Venice). None were English, “Course et captivité des femmes dans la régne de Tunis aux XVIIe et XVIIe siècles,” in Captius i Esclaus a l’Antiguitat i al Món Modern, eds. León and Nadal, 259–273. See my discussion of women captives in Britain and Barbary, ch. 4. As Claude Larquié has shown, less European women were taken captive than North African women because, while the North African pirates attacked European ships at sea, which carried very few women, European pirates attacked North African coastal villages: see “Captifs chrétiens et esclaves musulmans au XVIIe siècle: Une lecture comparative,” in Chrétiens et musulmans à la Renaissance, eds. Bartolomé Bennassar and Robert Sauzet (Paris, 1998), esp. 396 in 391–404. Fifth Report of the Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts, Part I, Report and Appendix (London, 1876), 574. Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1630 June – 1631 June, 264. TNA SP 16/332/46 v (24 September 1636). CSPM. … Venice, 1655–1656, 30:184 (3 March 1656). See also 309. The Straights Voyage, or St. Davids’ Poem (London, 1671), 39 TNA SP 71/16/95 (24 June 1713).

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Janet.90 In 1687, there was a demand for the release of “Eleanor Browne marryed in England to one of the Kings subjects and her daughter.”91 While British women were captured, it is not clear why the first account about captivity in North Africa/Morocco by a British woman was written/published by Elizabeth Marsh in 1769 – just under a century after the publication of the first account of captivity of an English woman by Indians – Mary Rowlandson’s in 1682.92 Neither on stage nor in print was a single British woman depicted in “Mahometan” captivity – in contrast to the Spanish stage. Names and numbers show the extent of British familiarity with Mediter­ ranean and Atlantic “Moors” and “Turks.” Since travelers rarely ventured to North Africa, in the manner they did to the Ottoman Levant and the Holy Land, returning captives furnished the only information about the people and the geography of the region, inevitably telling tales of wonder and horror to their kith and kin, in church as in public house, for a pint or for a meal.93 Having seen cities, foods, commodities, mosques, turbans, baths, bagnios, quarries, gardens, galleys, and markets, captives could not but have told many a story about their experiences with all the ‘tall tales’ for which travelers were denounced by James Howell in his “abuse of foreign travel.”94 Those who went around begging for money to pay off their ransom debts to sea captains could not but have appealed to the sensational to increase charitable offerings. That is why the few who published accounts of their captivity always opened with emphasis on their truthfulness. From the oral accounts to the inexpensively printed texts, captives disseminated grim images of an alien culture which instilled deep fear and hatred of Muslims among early modern sailors, cabin boys, men of the sea, families and parish communities. By so doing, the returned captives-turned-storytellers showed how heroic and Christian they 90

91 92

93 94

Fernando de Carranza, La Guerra Santa por mar de los Corsarios Berberiscos (Ceuta, 1931), 150. See also the reference to her in “A Journey to Mequinez, 1725”: “He [Mulay Ismāʿīl] never had but one Rebellion against him, and that was by one of his Sons by an English woman … we may observe that English Blood is averse to Slavery,” BL MS Leake Papers, 47995, fos 45r and 46r. TNA SP 71/3/90 (May/August? 1687). See the selections and analysis of women captives’ writings in Khalid Bekkaoui, White Women Captives in North Africa: Narratives of Enslavement, 1735–1830 (New York, 2011). See also his edition of Marsh’s The Female Captive: A Narrative of Facts which Happened in Barbary in the year 1756. Written by Herself (Fez, 2003) and the extended discussion in the introduction. See the introduction in Kenneth Parker, Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London, 1999). Instructions for forreine travell (London, 1642).

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had been among the ferocious ‘Moors’ and ‘Turks’ – and therefore how much they were deserving of community financial support and/or public admiration. Captivity accounts also offered a place for demonstrating allegiance to the monarch: after he and his fellow sailors were ransomed, Thomas Troughton praised “the paternal Tenderness, and Indulgence” of the monarch, “his present Majesty King GEORGE,” as over a century before, similar praise had been offered to Queen Elizabeth, too. At the same time, and to further confirm their patriotism, captives furnished military and naval intelligence. Many depositions consist of names and numbers of enemy ships and their whereabouts, while the second part of Francis Knight’s account about his captivity (London, 1640) is nothing less than a detailed survey of Algerian fortifications and military preparedness that would help a British conquest of the city, which he passionately urged.95 Over a hundred years later, Troughton offered “a succinct Account likewise of the Country” in which he and his companions had been held: Morocco.96 Doubtless, there were by far more captives who narrated their stories than captives who wrote them, and so listing names and places of origin could help map out the range in which the captives’ stories would have traveled. The captives whom Edmond Cason ransomed in 1647 came from all around the United Kingdom: Pool/e 3; London 70; Dover 8; Liverpool 1; Plymouth 29; Southampton 4; Barnstable 18; Weymouth 11; Dartmouth 19; Baltarne 2; Apson (Epson) 8; Swansee 1; Edinburgh 3; Falmouth 1; Watchet 1; Foulston 1; Dorcetshire (Dorchester) 1; Worcester 1; Low 3; Foy (Fowey) 5; Saltash 1; Sandwich 1; Rye 1; Cidmouth (Sidmouth) Warom (Wareham) 1; Yahall (Youghal) 11; Yarmouth 2; Ipswich 1; Dundee 1; Hull 1; Bristol 14; Chatham 2; Christchurch 1; Lime (Lyme) 3; Newcastle 1; Exeter 1; Penzance 3; Milbrook 1; Seborne ( Sherborne) 1.97 The names and numbers of captives will show the geography in which the oral accounts circulated. A list prepared in the 1680s by William Bowtell of captives 95 In Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic, Lisa Voigt has shown how Spanish and Portuguese captivity accounts in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries were used in imperial strategy (Chapel Hill, 2009). 96 Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty; or, an Accurate and Impartial Narrative of the Unparallel’d Sufferings and almost incredible Hardships of the British Captives (London, 1751). 97 A Relation of the whole proceedings concerning the redemption of the Captives in Argier and Tunis (London, 1647). It is significant that the higher number of captives came from port cities that had grown extensively in the first part of the seventeenth century (other than London), such as Portsmouth and Dover, but not from the most prosperous cities, where there was enough employment to prevent internal migration: see for a study of cities, Alan Dyer, Decline and growth in English towns 1400–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), especially appendix 3.

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Britons in the Mediterranean and Atlantic

Cities in Great Britain Population in 1,000s 1 2–5 8–11 14–19 29 70

0

150

300

600 Kilometers

and their places of origin of the ships they sailed shows the expansion of British trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. At the same time, it shows the places where stories would have been told: no longer was it only in England and Wales that stories about ‘Mahometans’ circulated, but also around the Atlantic basin, since ships sailing to, or returning from, New England, New York, Newfoundland, and the Bermudas were sometimes seized. Although the vast majority of captives still came from England and the coastal towns of the south and the south west, captives who sailed back to their trans-Atlantic homes participated in the dissemination of the frightening image of the Muslim – where no Muslim ship ever docked. An examination of the names of captives can shed light on the rise of “English” identity by distinguishing the “English” from the non-English

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(Irish and Scottish, chiefly) and the foreigners. One of the constant complaints that the North Africans raised during negotiations over captives was in regard to British subterfuge: English merchants fitted out ships with a few English and many foreign sailors and then sent them out to sea. Such actions went against the peace and commercial agreements that were signed which stipulated that ships flying English colors should not transport cargo for, or employ crew from, countries that were at enmity with the North Africans. In letter after letter, the Deys and Beys of the regencies warned Britons about such breaches. And they were not mistaken as the following list demonstrates: A liste of ye 8th of March 1675/6 On bord Catherine have been under English Collours – 21 persons 1 Capt. married in London is freed 12 Englishmen freed 1 Dutchman dyed 1 Englishman turnd Turk 1 One Frenchman redeemed here be still left 1 fra Pietro a Capuchin 1 Andrews Muller is at sea wth ye ships 1 Thomas Lewis a Portugals.98 After the accession of Dutch William III to the Stuart throne, and after the arrival of the Germans under the Hanoverian monarchs, the issue of who was “English” or “British” (after the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707) and therefore deserving of protection/ransom and who was not, became difficult as subjects of the crown started including Dutch, Majorcans, Germans, French Protestants and others.99 From 1688 on, the issue of ‘national identity’ was often at the center of ransom negotiations in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. But also at the center of negotiations was money. Repeatedly and bluntly, politicians and others in Britain did not want to pay for captives, although England’s wealth by the second half of the seventeenth century had grown exponentially (James Harrington gave the name “Emporium” to his representation 98 99

A Helstein, “A Journal kept after my return ye 6th of February out of Holland from ye year 1675. Until 1676,” BL MS Sloane 2755, fos 48–49. On 12 December 1701, ambassador Delaval negotiated the release of French Protestant captives, TNA SP 42/67/11. Earlier, and after the occupation of Tangier, there were also the Portuguese: BL MS Sloane 1955, fo. 69 (26 October 1666).

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of London in Oceana, 1656). But it was not because they were “mean”:100 they argued that they should not be responsible for ransoming cheats and men who falsely claimed that the ships they sailed were English, and thus protected by treaty. John Ravenscroft got himself “a false certificate yt ye ship would passe as an English ship.”101 And there were many others like him. There was so much British subterfuge, which angered the North Africans, that in 1676, King Charles II had to issue a proclamation against such breaches of agreement and “putt [it] into Arabick,” giving the Algerians “Extraordinary satisfaction” as Consul Samuel Martin reported to the secretary of state.102 But subterfuge continued: in April 1699, the Dey of Algiers wrote the following: “… although sometimes an English vessele thats abroad may be put to it for want of English saylors, to take in forreigners, yet it can’t be thought that they should have above two thirds strangers when not one third Englishmen on board”;103 in 1710, a Genoese ship was captured by the Algerians with a “British Bandera, though [it] had not a subject of her Majestie’s on board.”104 Hundreds of Britons who were enslaved were captured on board such ships, or on board enemy ships on which they were employed. The enslavement of such men was therefore within the terms of the treaties and was viewed as punishment, which London officials did not contest. Oliver Cromwell agreed with the rulers of Tunis that if English crewmen were captured working on non-English ships, the Tunisians had the right to enslave them (but not if they were merchants or passengers).105 Britons who were seized by North Africans on ships that sailed without convoy or that did not have royal passes were expressly denied help and were not redeemed. As a 1683 letter from Whitehall explained: I do not find his Maty concerned for those Seamen that have happened to fall into the hands of the Algerines being in Forraine Vessells; He hath graciously declared, he will use all the endeavours possible to get those poore men redeemed that have been taken in the Vessells of his Subjects; 100 Colley, Captives, 53. 101 TNA SP 71/2/19 (17 December 1672). 102 TNA SP 71/2/89 v (22 January 1676). See the proclamations “Relating to the Articles …with Algiers” (22 December 1675) and “Concerning Passes and Sea-Breifs in pursuance of the Treatises wth Argier, Tunis & Tripoli,” TNA SP 103 (28 January 1675). I could not find Arabic copies. 103 TNA SP 71/4/5 (9 April 1699). 104 TNA SP 71/4/101v (23 September 1710). 105 The treaty stipulated that if English merchants were captured by Tunisians on board enemy ships, they were to be released; but if “serving for wages, they are to be made slaves,” CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:309 (27 February 1658).

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and they must blame themselves, if they, be thought of in the last place, that have been taken in Forraine Bottomes.106 As a result, many Britons remained in captivity for years and decades.107 Kith and kin petitioned to have their captured breadwinners back; consuls, too, felt compassion at the sight of compatriots in chains and pleaded repeatedly with the secretaries of state to help them. But action was slow in coming, if it came at all. A letter of 1674 from the Dey of Algiers expresses surprise that no one has bothered to ransom the “English Christians” in his dominion, and it urges King Charles II to do so.108 There are many such reminders to the British monarchs since treaties stipulated that captives had to be ransomed or exchanged.109 In 1681, the “Committee for the Redemption of the English Slaves in Algiers and Salley” turned to the “Relations and Friends” of the captives for money,110 since “many Persons” who had promised to help in ransoming captives “failed” to step up.111 Such indifference was a major factor that drove captives to conversion to Islam – so much so that in peace treaties from 1676 on, an article was added to make conversion difficult.112 When captives realized that their country would not help them, they “turned Turk.” In 1705 John Lille was left “sick ashore” in Algiers after captives had been ransomed. In anger, he “renounced his Baptism and Imbraced the Mahomitan Superstition,” as Consul Cole 106 BL ADD MS 46412, fo. 21v (Whitehall, 25 January 1683). See also the same, 16 May 1679, Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, 1613–1680, 1:821. For ships without convoy, see the proclamation on 23 June 1681, CSPD Charles II, September 1st, 1680, to December 31st, 1681, 22:328. 107 Some captives who petitioned King Charles I in 1626 had been in captivity for twenty, sixteen, and twelve years: TNA SP 71/12/113–115. 108 TNA SP 102/1/vol. 1, part 1, 48 (22 July 1647). 109 See another letter over a decade later, also from the Algerian ruler, TNA SP 71/102/vol. 1, part 1, 92v (13 June 1691). 110 The London Gazette, 18 April 1681, 2. See also The London Gazette, 2 December 1689, 1, where the king threatened to revoke the subscription of donors who had not made “good such Redemption”; CSPD Charles II, September 1st 1680, to December 31st, 1681, 22: 303 (2 June 1681). 111 The London Gazette, 25 September 1681, 1. 112 See the references to this article in the treaty with Tripoli in 1676, Tunis 1699, and Morocco, 1703, CSPD Anne, 1702–1703, 1: 714 (10 May 1703). The article applied to the conversion of a free man: “he shall immediately be sent to the English Consul’s house, and there remain three days and if in that time he doeth not recant, but continues in the same Humour, and still desires to be a Mahometan then the said Consul shal acquiesce therein,” TNA SP 71/15/50 (1703?). It is interesting that the same clause had been included in an Algerian peace treaty with France over a decade earlier: Adrien Berbrugger, “1689 – Traité de paix avec le gouvernement de la ville et du royaume d’Alger,” Revue Africaine, 7 (1863), 438 in 433–443.

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wrote.113 In 1719, captives were in such a miserable condition that “5 has lately turn’d Moor [and] ... several more will turn.”114 There were not even donation boxes, as in “Popish Countries” for collecting money “for the Redemption or Reliefe of Captives,” as Thomas Pocock lamented as late as 1720.115 Nor was the church willing to be involved on a regular basis, except through the Easter Spital Sermon collections during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Rather the church’s concern was theological: to ensure that returning captives had not ‘turned Turk,’ or if they had, what to do about them, as the 1627 sermons by Henry Byam, “A Returne from Algier,” and by William Gouge in 1638, show. Parish clergy could not but worry about the families of captives who were left without income, and who ended up at their doorsteps seeking alms, and so, on and off, they and the bishops of their sees collected money for ransom (at the same time that they asked the families of returned captives to spy on their kin in the “privy” to find out if they had converted to Islam or not). In October 1636, Charles FitzGeffry pleaded with his Plymouth congregation to be charitable and help raise the ransom money for captives. There is some evidence that parishioners, clergy, and sometimes lords of manors, contributed, but such ad hoc collections were riddled with dishonesty. In 1618, Edward Eastman pocketed money earmarked for captives;116 only a few months before FitzGeffry preached, merchants who had been given £942 to spend on captives were discovered to have spent £424 only, and had kept the rest;117 in December 1670, collections were fraudulently made under the guise of ransoming captives, which discouraged donors from “their charitable intentions of contributing to the relief of the said Captives at Algiers, which discouragers may in due time be brought to condign punishment.”118 A year later, a petition was presented to the king regarding the case of John Pile who had collected money for captives, but then absconded.119 Ten years later, in Algiers, John Nevell complained about Lionel Croft who claimed to have paid ransom for captives redeemed by others.120 113 114 115 116 117 118

TNA SP 71/4/81(24 November 1705). TNA SP 71/61/300 (3 February 1719). Thomas Pocock, The Relief of Captives (London, 1720), 21. Acts of the Privy Council of England, Jan. 1618 to June 1619, 146 (19 May 1618). CSPD Charles I, 1635–1636, 9: 288 (11 March 1636). The London Gazette, 1 December 1670, 2; The London Gazette, 20 February 1670, 2; see the reaction of the Bishop of Lincoln when people stopped donating money, CSPD Charles II, January to November, 1671, 11: 59–60 (31 January 1670) and CSPD Charles II, December 1671 to May 17th 1672, 12: 1 (Dec? 1671) where collections are described as “few and small”. 119 CSPD Charles II, December 1671 to May 17th 1672, 12: 1 (Dec.? 1671). 120 TNA SP 71/2/331r-v (6 October 1682).

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Collectors in London were not the only ones who were dishonest in their dealings. Some consuls in North Africa were also dishonest and cooperated with local factors and North African captors to raise the amount of ransom money – so as to increase the percentage they received for every ransomed Briton. Perhaps that is the “breach” that got Samuel Tooker, who had been consul in Tripoli, imprisoned by King Charles II in 1671.121 In February 1682, Admiral Arthur Herbert commented that his countrymen were driving “a subtle trade in redeeming captives.” “I would heartily wish his Majty,” he urged, “would plan to recall all his Subjects from that place [Algiers], that are not in slavery, for I am very certain that most if not all doe him very considerable disservice [by …] raising the ransoms of poor captives.”122 Herbert must have had Consul Martin in mind since a year later Martin was accused of entering “into a strict combinacõn” with the Algerian government “advising frequently with them, insomuch that he boaste himself to be one of their Councill.” Evidently, he was colluding to keep the captives in chains so that by the time Admiral Narbrough arrived to pay for their liberation, the number would be high – and Martin’s commission would be substantial. In the light of such behavior, a recommendation was presented later in the year stating that the consul who is sent to the region be “a good Man, to have a good salary” so that he would not have to rely for his income on commissions.123 It is not surprising that Admiral Herbert believed that “his Majesty hath been twice if not thrice, engaged in a Warre with these People [Moors] by the Misbehaviour of his Consuls.”124 Philip Rycaut (cousin of the Izmir consul, Paul) insisted that he receive “the right of Conuslage of 2% cent on the ransome of English captives,”125 but soon after, the matter was discussed at Hampton Court and a decision was taken to abolish the fee, although consuls paid little attention to directives from faraway London. Years later, the servant of Consul Thomas Baker in Algiers, John Butler, lent money to captives who were keeping taverns, at 4% interest per month.126 Meanwhile, some factors received payment for captives they claimed to have ransomed but had not, whereupon Consul Erlisman urged the secretary of state in 1688 not to use “Merchts (wherein is great Abuse)” but to have ransom 121 122 123 124 125 126

TNA SP 71/22/I, 51 (February 1671). TNA SP 71/2/299 (18 February 1682). TNA SP 103/672r-v and 704v (1683). TNA SP 71/2/243r (8 September 1682). TNA SP 71/2/380 (17 April 1684). TNA SP 71/3/II, 278 (26 March 1694). His actions angered the Algerian Dey: “our Butler [is] an Englishman your [Baker] servant, who is so every way medling out of his business, and alwayes getting Christian slaves into his hands; and by getting them into some Christian Barque, helps them to get away,” TNA SP 71/3/III, 323 (1 Shawwal 1107/3 May 1696).

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money sent directly from Cadiz.127 By 1695, corruption was so rampant that Consul Baker was cooperating with the French even though Britain and France were at war: he has, complained the Dey of Algiers to William III, “yearly supply’d your enemies the French with vast quantities of corn without which they might have suffer’d hunger.”128 Such behavior was not surprising to Consul Loddington in Tunis: Consul Baker was “publiquely…called there Tomas il mariot or drunken Tom,” while, according to Consul Goodwyn in Tunis, Consul Cole had long been suspected “to be much inclin’d to a Turbant, Circumcision, that ceremony of most paine is already undergone, as I understand, by reason of unfortunate female adventures.”129 In 1712, Consul Thomson reported the anger of the Dey of Algiers because a certain “Consull for the British nation several years” had sold the Algerian passengers on a “Brittish vessel” into slavery.130 One other reason for not ransoming captives was to encourage them to rely on themselves and escape – showing thereby their British mettle. All the captivity accounts that were published in England under the Stuarts showed men who escaped and had not awaited ransom: as John Rawlins wrote in 1622, he escaped from Algerian captivity in order to become an “example to others.”131 But escaping back to England was not only hazardous but problematic: dramatists had shown the return of (Continental not English) captives to be fraught with anxiety since the captive raised suspicions in his community “of sexual adventure, cultural transformation, political treason, and religious conversion.”132 Still, a letter sent on 10 June 1675 to the king’s “Principall Secretary of State,” Sir Joseph Williamson, emphasized how “many thousand Captiues obtayned their liberty by theer own Industry,” having worked in 127 TNA SP 71/3/III, 113 (11 January 1688). 128 TNA SP 102/vol. 1, part 1, 98v (19 July 1695). 129 TNA SP 71/22/ III, 53v (1695); TNA SP 71/27/87 (3 February 1696). He seemed to have been suspected as early as 1684: “[W]hat cares Cole,” wrote Philip Rycaut (cousin of Paul), “how much a Ransom amounts onto, so he gets but an asper, & withal never redeemed a man, but charges him with 10/cento Cambio” TNA SP 71/2/374 (24 February 1684). For the career of Cole, see Colin Heywood, “An English Merchant and Consul-General in Algiers c. 1676–1712: Robert Cole and His Circle,” in the Movement of People and Ideas between Britain and the Maghreb, eds., Abdeljelil Temimi and Mohamed-Salah Omri (Zaghouan, 2003), 49–66. 130 TNA SP 71/4/244 (10 December 1712). See also the reference to the consul deserting the captives in Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty (London, 1751), 20. 131 Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 114. 132 Joshua Mabie, “The Problem of the Prodigal in The Fair Maid of the West, A Christian Turned Turk, and The Renegado,” Renascence, 64( 2012), 301 in 299–319.

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“Shopps, Taverns.”133 Captors were eager to benefit from the captives, and so employed and paid them wages so much so that William Okeley collected a small fortune which he smuggled out with a returning clergyman, Devereux Spratt.134 Others bought their freedom: a father in Devon petitioned on behalf of his son who was captured for the fourth time that the son had “himself been 3 all times taken into Captivity … out of his owne Labor redeemed himselfe.”135 Captives were to use their initiative, and unless they had “made the best and gallantest Defence before they fell into the Enemies Hands,” according to the Privy Council, they were to be bypassed in any ransom negotiations.136 The encouragement toward ‘gallantry’ was really driven by the high cost of ransom. While ransoming captives from among the Indians in North America was cheap (£20 for Mary Rowlandson in 1676), ransoming captives in North Africa was expensive, starting with £40 and up.137 In North Africa, consuls always had to give expensive gifts during their residence in order to maintain good relations. Thus Consul Baker gave presents on feast days (“Bayram” and “Corban”) as well as to “Cryer of the Town” to the “Watchmen,” the “Pasha’s Coffee Maker,” “Common Executioner” and the “English Dragoman.”138 During ransom negotiations, “publique” and private gifts/bribes had to be distributed to the captors to ensure speedy progress, as Baker explained in 1702.139 The public bribe included masts, cables, shots, and other ammunition that went to the navy and the army; the private bribe consisted of luxury goods to the ruler and his consort/s (“To the Dey and his Sultana a Diamond Ring of 500 each”), and to the members of the diwan/court.140 Gifts were also distributed among eunuchs, guards, translators, and others.141 After these preliminaries, ‘proper’ payments were made to 1. To the local intermediary (in many cases, a Jew or an Andalusian/Morisco with some European connections); 2. To the resident consul; 3. To the ship captain who carried captives back to England; 4. To the 133 TNA SP 71/2/65v (10 June 1674). 134 See his account in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 124–192. 135 Devon Record Office, QS 128/105/3. 136 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, A.D.1613–1680, 1: 547 (15 July 1670). 137 See Hebb, Piracy, for the fluctuation in prices, 152. 138 TNA SP 71/3/III, 295 (20 June 1694). 139 See Consul Baker’s description, TNA SP 71/4/45 (5 October 1702). 140 Ibid. 141 Presents that Consul Loddington gave in Tripoli came up to £ 1,600 in 1694; £ 1,350 in 1697 (TNA SP 71/22/III, 68 and 32). In 1715, when Captain George Paddon ransomed captives from Morocco, he had to pay “the Spanish Chyrugeon of the Convent of Frayers at Mequinesse who did at severall tymes cure and relieve his Majties Subjects and many many others,” TNA SP 71/16/173 (c. 1715).

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money lender, who, as in one case, charged interest as high as 35% to Consul Baker in 1691;142 and 5. To captives themselves who needed clothing and supplies. Robert Downe recorded some of the financial requirements for ransom: Robert Downe, merchant to the Council of State. Being bound with the Mary for Salle in Barbary, where there are 32 English men and boys in misery and bondage, I will undertake to clear them, if allowed all expenses and 1,000 £ in advance, you limiting what is to be paid for ransom and I will give an account of all disbursements on my return. If I am taken, either outward or homeward bound, I desire 12 months’ time for repayment of what shall be granted for this object. Others employed in this service have been allowed 4s. 6d. and 4s. 8d. per piece of eight, but I will be content with 4s. 6d. for what I disburse in so charitable an employment. May 9. Postscripts to the report, stating that the usual ransom for captains was 42l. 3s. 9d. apiece, for ordinary mariners and boys 29l. 10s. 7d., and for an officer under the degree of a lieutenant 60l. For customs of each captive 1l. 8s. 6d. For two pair of shoes, two shirts, and one suit to each, 2l. 10s. 0d., and for diet after the rate of 20s., a man per month.143 Other expenses included paying off the debts that captives had incurred, buying them clothes, furnishing them with money to live on after their release and as they awaited transport back to England, and finally covering their expenses on board ship. Nathaniel Bradley, consul in Tripoli in the 1660s, paid £ 985 in expenses for ransoming eleven men.144 But as the number of men serving on the commercial and Royal fleets rose from 27,144 in 1688 to 44,743 in 1697 (the end of the Nine Years War), the expensive ransoming of captives could not be a priority.145 Impressment was widespread and effective: from 1693 on, the fleet was “fully manned,” as Robert Crossfield wrote in that year. Impressing sailors was cheaper than ransoming captives.146 142 143 144 145

TNA SP 71/3/216v (17 October 1691). CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–1653, 5: 339 (19 May 1653). TNA SP 71/22/II, 4 (no date). John Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 1689–1697 (Cambridge, 1953), 110; and John Brewer, The Sinews of Power (New York, 1989) for the rise in the number of ships, sailors, and soldiers after 1688, chapter 2, especially the chart, 30. 146 J.S. Bromley, The Manning of the Royal Navy: Selected Public Pamphlets 1693–1873 (London, 1974), 5. Impressment was also terrifying: “the press-gang was the terror of life along the coasts and in the harbours of England. Bands armed with cutlasses were led by the King’s

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North Africa, The Indian Ocean, and North America

In no other location in the world of the Islamic encounter (the eastern Mediterranean/the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia/the Safavid Empire, or India/the Mughal Empire) did Britons face the danger of captivity as they did in the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic.147 Many atlases with maps of the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean basin showed the figure of a European/white captive, cowering half-naked with hands shackled under the feet of a ‘sultan’ – in the same manner that statuary art, from Valletta to Livorno to Venice, showed Africans in similar captivity postures (see figs. 6–8). And as prayers were chanted in Western churches for protection from the North African pirates, so did Algerians and others inscribe in stone prayers for protection from European slavery.148 Descriptions of the danger of the ‘Mahometans’ frightened sailors and traders away from North Africa at a time when the English commercial and colonial project aimed at sending colonists to North America and traders to the more lucrative India. The Turkey/Levant Company and the short-lived Barbary Company were both chartered by Queen Elizabeth, but the Virginia Company was chartered by King James I who was eager for financial reward and colonial expansion, as his 1606 Charter to the Virginia Company shows. During his reign, publications advertising the advantages of plantations in Virginia, Newfoundland, and elsewhere began to appear, building on earlier descriptions especially in Hakluyt, while offering, at the same time, descriptions of the harsh conditions in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic.149 The propaganda machinery of the newly chartered companies to North America, often supported by clergymen’s sermons, advertised opportunities and riches that awaited colonists in the “Western” plantations. But, in 1608, the Popham Colony, which had been established by Plymouth Company the year before, was abandoned, followed by the “starving years” of 1609–1610 in Jamestown, also

officers to crimp mariners and landsmen from ships in harbor or at sea, from ale-houses and streets, or even at the churchdoor whence bridegroom and congretation were sometimes carried off,” G.M. Trevelyan, Illustrated English Social History (Harmondsworth, 1968), 4:66. 147 This is the thesis of Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar, Britain and the Islamic World (Oxford, 2011). 148 See the Turkish inscription (with French translation) from 24 September 1710: Gabriel Colin, Corpus des inscriptions arabes et turques de l’Algérie (Paris, 1901), 77–78. 149 See David B. Quinn, Explorers and Colonies (London, 1990), ch. 18, “Newfoundland in the Consciousness of Europe in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” esp. 310–311.

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Figure 6

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From Frederik de Wit, Atlas Maior (Amsterdam, 1707). With permission from the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota.

established in 1607. To convince colonists of the advantages of removal from England to North America, on 21 February 1609, William Crashaw preached a sermon calling for “the plantation of a church of English Christians” in New England, and the “conversion of the heathen,” and lambasted the theater for slandering the Virginian enterprise. A year later, the Society of Merchant Venturers (Newfoundland) was established, and in that same year, 1610, and to confront the negative publicity about the North American project, A True Declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia, with a confutation of such scandalous reports as have tended to the disgrace of so worthy an enterprise was published by the Virginia Company. It is not a coincidence that as efforts were made to support North American colonization, and as plans for the plantation of six Ulster counties (and the seizure of 500,000 acres) were completed, an account of captivity in North Africa, written by a hack writer, was published in 1608: Anthony Munday’s The Admirable Deliverance of 266. Christians by Iohn Reynard Englishman from the captiuitie of the Turkes. Munday told a story about the battle between Christian captives and “Christs professed and open enemies,” between English heroes

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Figure 7

Chapter 1

The “Morgiano, Quattro Mori,” the Monument to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Livorno. With the gracious permission of Professor Steven Ostrow, University of Minnesota.

Britons in the Mediterranean and Atlantic

Figure 8

Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. By the author.

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and “Turkish bulls” and “rats.”150 Although the text demonstrated Christian heroism, it presented a frightening image of the dangers of the Muslims.151 This fear/captivity motif may have inspired Shakespeare, too: The Tempest (1611) reiterates a motif common in Spanish dramatic and literary accounts about the danger of Mediterranean captivity, most prominently in “The Captives Tale” from Don Quixote (1605). The Tempest was performed before King James and ended with the happy departure from the nameless island in the Mediterranean, leaving behind Caliban, son of the Algerian, in control of that dangerous zone. Numerous plays in the Jacobean period about the violent and “raging” Turk confirmed in English imagination the perils of the East. While the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic were depicted as sites of insecurity,152 alternative (non-Muslim) regions were promoted for colonization. In 1614, Madagascar was proposed, and in 1617, Sir Walter Raleigh sailed again to Guiana, and two years later, the Amazon Company was established. The Scots colonized Nova Scotia and the Mayflower sailed to Plymouth in 1620; in 1624, the colonies of Virginia and Bermuda came under the control of the Stuart crown. In that same year, Sir Thomas Warner established the colony of St. Kitts, and eager to promote Newfoundland settlements, Richard Eburne described numerous profitable possibilities there, pointedly emphasizing the absence of “Turks” and pirates near the shores.153 In April of that same year, 1624, Parliament tried to raise money for the “redemption of 15,000 English captives at Algiers under the Turks” – a number that could not have been remotely possible.154 But exaggeration could not but have helped in heightening the danger of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic for prospective sailors, especially after a “boom” year in Virginia.155 Captivity among the “Turks,” real or fabricated, played a role in directing early modern trade, migration, and settlement toward North America, where Britons could convert “heathen” Indians to Christianity, and not, as in North Africa, be themselves converted to Islam. In 1627, plans to 150 The Admirable Deliverance of 266. Christians by Iohn Reynard Englishman from the captiuitie of the Turkes (London, 1608), 59. 151 See my discussion of Jacobean captivity accounts in “English Captivity Accounts in North Africa and the Middle East, 1577–1625,” Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001): 553–573. 152 Consider the difference in the representation of Morocco between the first and the second parts of Thomas Heywood’s play The Fair Maid of the West (c. 1600 part I; 1631 part II). 153 A plaine path-way to plantations (London, 1624), 4. 154 Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I (London, 1874), 14. 155 Edmund S. Morgan, “The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630,” The William and Mary Quarterly 28 (1971): 169–198.

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colonize Barbados were launched,156 and in 1644, a merchant published a description of Madagascar, encouraging his countrymen to trade there, because that “famous Island” transcended “all the Eastern Parts of the World.”157 In an attempt to control bad publicity about North American colonization, not a single account about English captives among the North American Indians was published – until Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 account.158 All “publications were subject to political pressures,” as Pamela Neville-Sington has shown,159 and there was no desire to remind prospective colonizers of captivity by the Spaniards, from West Africa to Florida (at the end of the sixteenth century) or by Indians in Virginia or New England (John Smith’s account remains highly dubious), perhaps until after the victory over the Indians in King Philip’s War in 1676.160 By 1682 and the publication of Rowlandson’s account of captivity and ransom among the Indians (although the word “captivity” was followed reassuringly by “restauration” in the title), English and continental captives in the Islamic Mediterranean and Atlantic had been writing and publishing about their ordeals for over a century. It is significant that English captives taken by the Portuguese or the Dutch in the Indian Ocean did not receive attention in print, notwithstanding the numerous references in East India Company letters and correspondence. In 1607, English sailors were captured in the East Indies and after extensive negotiations were released.161 A few years later, the crews of two ships, Hector and 156 Kevin P. McDonald, “‘The Dream of Madagascar’: English Disasters and Pirate utopias of the Early Modern Indo-Atlantic World,” 102–109 in 95–114, New Worlds Reflected: Travel and Utopia in the Early Modern Period, ed. Chloë Houston (Surrey, England, 2010). 157 Richard Boothby, The Discovery & Description of the most famous Island of Madagascar, or St. Laurence, In Asia, near unto the East-Indies (London, 1644). 158 But a few years later, in 1688, Aphra Behn wrote The Widow Ranter, or the History of Bacon in Virginia (London, 1689), showing an unflattering view of life in the colony. 159 “‘A very good trumpet’: Richard Hakluyt and the Politics of Overseas Expansion,” Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England, eds. Cedric C. Brown and Arthur F. Marotti (New York, 1997), 74 in 66–79. Similarly, during the reign of James II, all information about the expulsion of the Huguenots from France was suppressed from the weekly Gazette, as John Evelyn noted on 3 November 1685. 160 It is important to note that the first published captivity accounts in Western literature were not about the “Muslim masters” but about captivity in Brazil (Hans Staden, 1563) and Florida (Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, 1555) by Native Americans. The first English captives were taken by Spaniards in Guiana (per Sir Walter Raleigh’s account). On the Continent, the first account of captivity among the Turks was by Bortolomej Georgijevic (1569). The earlier account by Johannes Schiltberger remained in manuscript. 161 CSP Colonial Series, East Indies, China and Japan,1513–1616, 2: 154 (June 1607).

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Ascention, were taken “prisoners” in the East Indies,162 and in June 1617, the king of Indraghiri had Christopher Saker bound to a tree and seized all his belongings, “not leaving the Englishman even a pair of linen breaches to cover his nakedness;” in that same month, the Dutch brought “40 or 50 Englishmen” to Amboyna and “kept them in irons and allowed them but one cake of bread a day per man.”163 In June 1619, there was a report of the following Britons being taken captive by the Dutch in the Indies: John Gunter, Aaron Burker, Richard Swanley, Arthur Archer, Josias Underhill, Thomas Hewes, Amrborse Busted, and George Yoemans.164 “A piece of a running jornall kept by some Inglish captive aboard some one of ye Holland ships in ye East Indies,” written a month earlier, in May 1619, never saw print,165 by which time numerous captivity accounts among the Mediterranean Muslims had been published. No playwright described the Amboyna ‘massacre’ until John Dryden in 1673, fifty years after the event, by which time the English had dominated the commerce of the region (the play was directed against the Dutch during the Third AngloDutch War). In 1651, Humphrey Morse, ship commander, was in Goa when the Indian governor came with 700 men. Morse, “inticed by oaths and promises to come to him [governor] (hee swearing by Mahomett and layin his hand upon his sonns head), was with our puruser clapt upp in irons,” where he continued for six weeks. With his associate Robert Cocks, author of the account, he escaped “by flight to Carapatam [Kharepatan], and from thence to Goa…[and then back] to Rajapore to revendge our injuries, where we burnt Jettapore [Jaitapur], and tooke three vessells.”166 In 1653, the ship, Blessing, was seized by the Dutch who took fourteen prisoners, including Adam Lee, Robert Tyndall, and Christopher Oxenden, about whom nothing further was heard.167 A year later, in November 1654, William Hargrave, late commander of the Roebuck, who had suffered two captivities among the Dutch, sailed home. In 1665, Britons who were captured during the Second Anglo-Dutch War petitioned to be released from “a Turkish Amboyna imprisonment in Amsterdam.”168 No accounts about British captivity outside the Mediterranean and the Atlantic were published – until Robert Knox wrote his Historical Relation of the Island 162 Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35, ed. Harris, 4. 163 CSP Colonial Series, East India, China and Japan, 1617–1621, 3: 37 (10 – 12 June 1617). Amboyna became synonymous with Dutch cruelty after the killing of Britons there in 1623. See also: the Dutch “keep our people in chains like slaves,” 3: 265 (22 March 1619). 164 CSP Colonial Series, East India, China and Japan, 1617–1621, 3: 277. 165 Ibid., 3: 273–274. 166 The English Factories in India 1651–1654, ed. William Foster (Oxford, 1915), 73. 167 Ibid., 21 (20 December 1653). 168 CSPD Charles II, 1665–1666, 5: 77 (29 November 1665).

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Ceylon (1681) – describing his rather prosperous condition as a captive on a farm, and with money to lend. Actually, the records of the EIC show that there was ample information about where captives were held, and who held them (which was not always the case in North Africa after captives were sold to private households), and the amount of money needed to liberate them.169 Captivity in India was infrequent, unlike the situations in North Africa and North America. But while ransoming captives from North Africa was riddled with delays and problems, in North America families and ministers took an active role in ransoming their kith and kin: they kept records of men, women, and children seized by the Indians, raised money from among the community for ransom, and solicited help even from the French “Papists.” As a result, scholars of North American captivity have been able to ascertain the names, ages, family ties, routes of captivity and escape, identity of captors (Indian or French), ransom sums, and the fate of many captives, including those seized to Canada. They have determined when and if captives returned, what kind of lives they subsequently led, and what impact captivity had on them; from the eighteenth century on, they gave lists of every “white” man and woman and child who was exposed to the “Heathens” or the French Catholics (until Britain’s acquisition of Canada in 1760).170 Collecting names in North America was easier than in North Africa because there were no seas separating captives from their relatives and ransomers. Further, the American northeast was quickly being conquered, giving ransomers ample information about Indian settlements and towns, in a manner that did not occur in North Africa where only after captives returned and wrote about the hinterlands did information become available. Generally, captives in North America came from contiguous villages; as a result, they often knew each other (as Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 and John Williams’ 1707 accounts show) in a manner that was rare in North Africa where captives could be from all over the British Isles, from Falmouth to Hull to Edinburgh.171 In New England, communities tried to ransom every colonist from the Indians and the French with their own money (they had no Parliament or king to help them). There is no reference in the North American captivity annals of white colonists selling their brethren to Indian slavery, as Cornish and Welsh 169 William Foster, The English Factories in India, 1661–64 (Oxford, 1923), 34, 46, 269–70, 361–384. 170 See, for instance, the names of the captives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid, in Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captive Histories (Amherst and Boston, 2006), and the earlier case study by John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive (New York, 1994) based on Williams’ The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion (Boston, 1707). See also J. Norman Heard, White into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by Indians (Metuchen, NJ, 1973). 171 Exceptions appear in the accounts by T.S. (1670) and Joseph Pitts (1704).

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pirates such as Edward Glemham did, selling “English captives to slavery in Algiers,”172 or of punishing offenders by sending them to enslavement among the Indians, in the manner that was proposed in regard to criminals: to have them exchanged for “Christian slaves in Turkey.”173 Nor was there in London a minister like Cotton Mather who was so concerned about North African captives that he reflected on them even in his private diary;174 nor is there anything close to the story of Eunice Mather, who even after years of captivity and integration (she married an Indian and raised a family), was sought after by her family who tried their utmost to ‘redeem’ her.175 In the North American encounter with the “shores of Tripoli” in the first years of the nineteenth century, names, cities of origin, written accounts, and ransom sums paid for captives were carefully compiled by the navy,176 at the same time that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams paid one sixth of that year’s government budget (just under one million dollars) to redeem United States captives.177 Nothing of this magnitude appears in the English records.

‘Christian’ Piracy

For a few decades in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, North Africans wrought havoc on European trade. At the same time, Britons (and others) were launched on similar acts of piracy and pillage, as Alonso de Contreras boasted.178 Any assessment of ‘Muslim’ pirates should not exclude ‘Christian’ pirates. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, English pirates made regular forays against Spanish Havana, Cartagena, St. Augustine (seventy-six expeditions between 1585 and1603).179 Piracy was royally although quietly encouraged. 172 David Mathew [sic], “The Cornish and Welsh Pirates in the Reign of Elizabeth,” The English Historical Review, 39 (1924), 345 in 337–348. 173 CSPD Charles II, Addenda, 505 (no date). 174 A Pastoral Letter to the English Captives in Africa from New England (Boston, 1698); The Glory of Goodness: The Goodness of God…in the Redemption Remarkably obtained for the English Captives (Boston, 1703); and the numerous entries in his diary, Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1709 (New York,., n.d.), vol. 1. 175 See the detailed history of this episode in Demos, The Unredeemed Captive. 176 The best study remains Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured, The United States & the Muslim World, 1776–1815 (Oxford, 1995). See also Paul Baepler, ed., White Slaves, African Masters. An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago, 1999). 177 Sayre, “Renegades from Barbary,” 350. 178 See also English piracies in the Azores in Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West (Part I). 179 Kenneth Andrews, The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder, 1530–1630 (New Haven, 1978), 156.

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During the reign of James I, Flemish and English pirates infested the western waters of Ireland, robbing in 1606 more than 100 ships.180 Although the king issued numerous proclamations against pirates (1604, 1605, 1606), piracy persisted so much so that on 31 August 1608, the Venetian ambassador in Spain reported to the Doge and Senate that there were “many English pirates in the Mediterranean [who] are joined to Turks.”181 Meanwhile, Dutch and French and Spanish ships, often flying “Turkish” flags, captured Britons – who returned to claim that they had been victims of “certen Turkes, Moores and Dutchmen of Sally in Barbary, which lye on our coastes spoyling dyvers such as they are able to master.”182 There was close cooperation between Irish and North African pirates so much so that “Barbary ducates” were used in Limecon, where the families of pirates lived at the same time that the pirates, Christian and Muslim together, were based in Maʿmūra/Mehdia.183 Since pirates’ families lived in the ports from which the pirates operated, it is possible that North African families of pirates also lived there – from the shores of Morocco to Ireland. In July 1611, the pirate Peter Easton captured “a London ship called the Concorde, richly laden, which he purposed instantly to carry away for the coast of Barbary.” Did he take the English crew to sell as captives? English pirates cooperated with the Duke of Florence against Ottoman shipping, while Dutch privateers, the Sea Beggars (reminiscent of the English Sea Hawks) were unwilling to “relinquish their profitable trade” after the truce with Spain (their chief prey) and changed their flags to look like Ottoman corsairs in order to continue their piracy.184 The Dutch pirate Simon Danziker was in cahoots with the Algerians, while the English pirate John Ward operated out of Tunis, and Rayyes Jaʿfar, an English convert to Islam, operated out of Salé.185 The former 180 CSP Ireland, James I, 1603–1606, 385 (16 January 1606). 181 CSPM…Venice, 1607–1610, 11: 168 (31 August 1608). 182 Castries, Sources … Angleterre, 2: 558 (28 April 1625). 183 CSP Ireland, James I, 1611–1614, 99 (23 August 1611); CSPD James I, 1611–1618, 9: 55 (5 July 1611). 184 Letters from George Lord Carew, ed. Maclean, 83, where there is mention of Ruppa and Franke; see also Alexander H. de Groot, “Ottoman North Africa and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 39 (1985), 132 in 131–147. 185 See also the reference to the ship of an “Englishman,” CSPM…Venice, 1607–1610, 11: 375 (31 October 1609) and the description of the piracies of Sir Francis Verney and Sir Henry Manwaring from their base in Maʿmūra in Morocco: Neville Williams, Captains Outrageous: Seven Centuries of Piracy (New York, 1962), chapter 4. For the career of John Ward, see Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary, chs. 3 and 4, and G. Bak, Barbary Pirate: The Life and times of John Ward, the Most Infamous Privateer of his Time (Stroud, 2006). See also the biography of Sir Francis Verney in the ODNB. For Jaʿfar, see Muḥammad al-Sammār, Madinat Salla-Ribaṭ al-Fatḥ biḍifatayhā (Salé, n.d.), 100. See also the reference to “English Runngdo Ramadan Rayes alias Winter” in Algiers TNA SP 71/1/244r (5 October 1663).

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two were responsible for the capture of over twelve Christian ships in 1609, most of whose crews were “made slaves.” As a result of confusion among pirates operating out of Muslim ports and pirates from Christian ports, the terms “Turk,” “pirate,” and “renegade” became interchangeable in English writings so much so that Lord Carew started using the phrase “circumcised pirates” to separate Christian from Muslim pirates.186 Between 1625 and 1630, English pirates were relentless in their attacks on French, Venetian, and Spanish shipping. On various occasions, they and other Euro-Christians joined with North Africans: in 1628, two galleys under Yusuf Dey included forty Christians who were helping in the attacks on Euro-Christian shipping.187 In a carefully documented study of Dutch-North African relations, Virginia West Lunsford included a list of names showing the “Origins of the Barbary Corsairs captured [by the Dutch] in November 1614” (my italics). Of the fiftytwo captured “Barbary Corsairs,” only four were Muslim, three from Salé (Haly Benaman, Borca Benmissou, and Abdela Mehemet), and one from Oran (Seltjman Sellijman). The rest were from England and the United Provinces.188 The Dutch were known to adopt red banners on their ships showing “the crescent, i.e., ‘Turkish colours’.”189 Many such Dutch pirate ships attacking English galleys or ketches were assumed to be “Turkish” because the “Barbary Corsairs” were known to winter in Flushing, where their Dutch “friends” made use of their ships in return for “helping the infidels.”190 During the first Anglo-Dutch war (1652–54), the fleet could not monitor the seas and so pirates of all kinds proliferated so much so that Irish merchants complained that “the seas between England and Ireland are much infested with pirates.”191 At the same time, the Dutch launched devastating attacks on English shipping, seizing large numbers of captives. As another list reproduced by Lunsford shows, in one year, 1652, the Dutch seized more than 197 English prizes (excluding the Spanish, Swedish, and German prizes).192 In the wake of the 186 Letters from George Lord Carew, ed. Maclean, 125. 187 Relation du voyage et prise de quatre galions du roi de Tunis en Barbarie faite par les galéres de Malte sous la charge et commandement du sr. Frère François de Crémeaux (Paris, 1629). 188 Virginia West Lunsford, Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands (New York, 2005), 233–234. 189 Mehmet Bulut, Ottoman-Dutch economic relations in the early modern period, 1571–1699 (Hilversum, 2001), 112. 190 Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35, ed. Harris, 75. See also the confusion between French and Turkish pirates, CSPD Charles I, 1636–37, 10: 87 (5 August 1636). 191 CSPD, Commonwealth 1653–1654, 6: 329 (1653). 192 Lunsford, Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands, 220–226.

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Third Anglo-Dutch wars (1672–74), Henry Stubbe, who wrote against the Dutch, stated that If we look upon the number and quality of the injuries which we have received from the Dutch, the Turks of Algiers and Tunis are less offensive, and less perfidious. If we consider the courses by which the Dutch attacque us, the Algerines are the more supportable to an English spirit, since they act by force, and open piracy; what the Hollanders do by finess and deceipt.193 Dutch attacks continued well into the 1680s (until the arrival to the throne of William III). Numerous petitions in the Devon Record Office were presented by relatives of captives who specifically mentioned Dutch “pirates” as the captors.194 According to Peter Earle, “As Moslem piracy waned from the 1660s, European piracy entered its so-called ‘Golden Age’.”195 In 1657, mention of corsairs from Tripoli was linked to corsairs from Spain, which suggests cooperation.196 In July 1673, the Pasha of Tripoli complained that the British ship carrying his goods, worth “two or three hundred thousand dollars,” was seized by pirates from Livorno – and he suspected British collusion with the pirates since the ship “went away with the corsair without any shot or sign of hostility.”197 English captors and captives were mixed together and no distinction was made of the nationality of the captives. At the same time, English ships with letters of marque to attack Algiers, as an admiralty letter of 1681 shows, were instructed not to fly the “Union flagg or jack,” which could not but lead to suspicion on the part of North African cruisers.198 In 1694, English pirates (“Privateers”) captured twenty-three Algerians and sold them in Cadiz, claiming that the captives were Saletians.199 Consul Cole complained 193 Henry Stubbe, A Justification of the present War against the United Netherlands (London, 1672), “To the Reader.” 194 The Devon Record Office, Quarter Sessions, 128. But many are about Barbary pirates, too, either from Algiers or Salé. 195 Peter Earle, Sailors, 118. Earle adds: “The Barbary corsairs took 300 English ships in their heyday between 1622 and 1642, a number which can be compared with the 360 English merchantmen taken by the Dutch in the four years of the Second Dutch War and the similar number taken in the Third Dutch War,” 120. 196 CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:96 (10 September 1657). 197 CSPD Charles II, March 1st to October 31st, 1673, 15: 470 (30 July 1673). 198 Documents relating to Law and Custom of the Sea, ed. R.G. Marsden, 2 volumes (London, 1915), 2: 412. 199 TNA SP 71/3/270 (3 January 1694). Consul Baker, who had lived for years in the region, scoffed at the excuse given by the English that they could not distinguish Saletians from

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from Algiers in 1701 that English merchantmen of the “Turkey Company” were constantly robbing North African ships: although the latter ships had legitimate passes, the English did not hesitate to “fling overboard their Passes when meeting Algier Man of Warr, meerly for an Opportunity to lay claime to goods that are none of their owne.”200 “The Barbary corsairs,” wrote Peter Earle, “were taking fifteen English ships a year in the 1620s and 1630s, the Dutch around a hundred a year in 1664–67 and 1670–72, while in the War of the Spanish Succession the French captured over six hundred ships a year of which four hundred or more were English.”201 And the French treated the captives “cruelly.”202 In 1666, Consul John Erlisman reported from Tunis that the French were seizing British sailors and captains and holding them captive;203 two decades later, during the 1688–1697 War, “French privateers captured or sank 1,400 English ships of a total value of three million pounds.”204 The French and Jacobite course targeted British and Grand Alliance shipping (British, Dutch, Spanish and others), especially after the corsairs made the “east coasts of Scotland and England … their habitual cruisingground.”205 On one occasion, the French captured a British ship, “richly laden,” and took it to Algiers where the “Christians [English Protestants] were used very barbarously.”206 As J.S. Bromley has shown, the number of ships seized by Dunkirk pirates (after England sold Dunkirk to France in 1662) was quite high – including fifty-four English and Scottish ships in 1707 alone. Indeed, Dunkirk brought in 959 prizes during the War of the Spanish Succession, while Brest brought in 506, and Calais 461 – but then the combined ships of Smyrna, and Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers brought in only eight.207 The Spanish presidios of Melilla and Ceuta also served as centers of piracy against Britain during Hispano-British conflicts. When Admiral Matthew Aylmer arrived in Cadiz in December 1698, he received a petition from the master of an English vessel and

Algerians by “their air speech and habit.” Five years later, the Dey was still angry and demanded of Admiral Aylmer that “no more such insolencies be offered our subjts” TNA SP 71/14/295r (August 1699). 200 TNA SP 71/4/26a (2 September 1701). 201 Earle, Sailors, 120. 202 CSPD Anne, 1702–1703, 1: 642 (21 March 1703). 203 TNA SP 71/26/163 (August 1666). 204 Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (London, 1935), 112 205 See J.S. Bromley, “The Jacobite Privateers in the Nine Years War,” in, Corsairs and Navies, 1660–1760 (London, 1987), 147 in 139–166. 206 TNA 71/4/76 (13 June 1705). 207 See the study of Dunkirk privateers in “The Importance of Dunkirk Reconsidered, 1688–1713,” in J.S. Bromley, Corsairs and Navies,73–101. For the list of ships, see 93–101.

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his men “that were prisoners in one of the Castles ashoare” – who were later released.208 Spanish and French piracy was by far more devastating and farreaching than that carried out by the North Africans.209 “Once the privateering war was fully under way,” wrote Julian Hoppit, “over 500 allied ships were being seized annually and in 1707, 1709, and 1711 over 700.”210 And these were not only fishing ships, but also merchantmen. A few years later, Swedish pirates became a threat so much so that Secretary of State Addison wrote to Vice-Admiral Cornwall to “protect the Trade of His Majesty’s Subjects” from “Suedish privateers” infesting the seas.211 In this context, it is important not to ignore what Professor James Tracy has called the “psychology of the interloper” – of the self-righteousness of Iberian or Dutch or English sea captains or company strategists who committed violence while thinking highly of their honorable motives.212 By ignoring this psychology, we ignore the devastation wrought by the “northern invaders” on the economies, social infrastructures, and commercial aspirations of the North Africans. By the early seventeenth century, for instance, many of the coastal towns of the Moroccan Atlantic had been colonized by Spain and Portugal – except Salé. In consequence, the culture of the marabout/saint defending the people from sea-borne attacks developed in North Africa as a form of religious/ superstitious protection “against European incursions along the coast.”213 In 1633, two English ships took corn from an island in the Aegean, contrary to Ottoman decrees as well as to the Company Council, and when they were set on by the Turks, they fought back, sinking five galleys and killing “at least 2,000 Turks.”214 Exaggeration aside, the English were breaking laws and destabilizing local food supplies. From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, Britons consistently traded in Muslim slaves, just as other Europeans had been doing since the sixteenth century.215 It is difficult to calculate the number of the 208 TNA SP 71/14/246r-v (7 December 1698). 209 J.S. Bromley, “The French Privateering War, 1702–1713,” in Corsairs and Navies, 224, 226 in 213–241. 210 Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England 1689–1727 (Oxford, 2000), 112. 211 TNA SP 71/16/248 (6 May 1717). 212 Professor James Tracy, private conversation, 26 May 2011. 213 Kenneth Brown, “An urban view of moroccan [sic] history, Salé, 1000–1800.” Hespéris Tamuda 12 (1971): 43, 41 in 5–106. 214 CSPD Charles I, 1633–34, 6: 190 (23 August 1633). 215 From the Islamic side of the Mediterranean, Aḥmad ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī reported 5,500 Muslim captives in Malta and Venice in 1611: Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn ala ʿl-qawm al-kāfirīn, eds. P.S. Van Koningsveld, A. al-Samarrai, and G.A. Wiegers (Madrid, 1997), 83. In 1669, after the Turks conquered Crete, they released 1,880 captives, according to an early

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North Africans who were captured by British pirates/privateers and brought to England; or those who were forcibly converted;216 or those who were kept in Gibraltar and in other British outposts; or those who were sent to America. While there has been much scholarship about British captives in North Africa, there is still much to be investigated in regard to “Turkish” or “Moorish” prisoners in England, some of whom spent several years in jail.217 In 1625, five Turks were reprieved after trial;218 in that same year, there were forty-six Muslim prisoners in Exeter, Plymouth, Bristol and Baronet Seymor;219 and a report of early February 1627 mentioned that ten captives had “runne away out of the Westerne parts, and doe hearber themselves in the cittie of London.”220 Which “Turk” was it who stayed in a house in London, from which he was later evicted?221 In 1660, the Royal African Company was founded in England to trade in subSaharan slaves, including “Moors”; by 1666, English ships had carried forty thousand Africans across the Atlantic; how many of those were North Africans

216

217 218 219 220 221

eighteenth-century historian, Al-Wazīr al-Sarrāj, Al-Ḥullal al-sundusiyya, ed. al-Hīla, 2:1:22. Godfrey Wettinger stated that there is no information about the numbers of Muslim captives in Malta, Slavery in the Islands of Malta and Gozo, chapter 2 and the lists therein; and 635–639. See also his “Esclaves noirs à Malte,” in François Moureau, ed., Captifs en Mediterranée (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) Histoires, récits et legends (Paris, 2008),155–169 for lists of baptized and captured blacks); still he suggested the figure of 1,500–2,000. But Anne Brogini gave a number of 400 in “1548, reaching about 1,800 by 1599” (Anne Brogini, “L’esclavage au quotidien à Malte au XVIe siècle,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 65 (2002): 137–158), while Frans Ciappara conjectured that there were 600 slaves in Malta/Gozo in 1582, 3,000 in 1630 and 1,000 in 1790 (Frans Ciappara, “Christians and Muslims on Malta in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries,” paper read at the Ecclesiastical History Society conference, 17 July 2013, University of Chichester, England). Salvatore Bono estimated that from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, “at least two million slaves from the Muslim Mediterranean world entered European countries.” “Slave Histories and Memories in the Mediterranean World,” in Fusaro, Heywood, and Omri, eds., Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 105 in 97–116. For an example from England, see the letter by Dr. Robert Mason on 31 October 1636: “There are two young Moors not above 13 or 14 years of age who some thinke here in regard of the tenderness of their yeares may be made good Christians,” TNA SP 36/334/130. Imtiaz Habib’s work is alone in focusing on Africans in Britain. TNA SP 14/183/75 and 77 for their names (13 February 1625); there are two other lists: TNA SP 71/1/53 and 54 (April 1625). Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1625–1626, 31 (25 April 1625) Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1627, January – August, 48. CSP Colonial Series, East Indies, China and Persia, 1625–1629, 84 (17 July 1626).

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is not known.222 Such was English pride at their feats that in 1665–66, the future poet laureate, John Dryden, sang the praises of his countrymen in their sea-borne pillage: Our greedy Sea-men rummage every hold, Smile on the booty of each wealthier Chest, And, as the Priests who with their gods make bold, Take what they like, and sacrifice the rest. Annus Mirabilis, 829–832

In 1669, Thomas Warren kept “fower moores” in his house in London; when admiral Spragge attacked Algiers, among the captives he seized (and took back to Tangier) were two women whom he sold to a major in the garrison, who in turn, kept one for his bed, while the other he sold to Cadiz. The Algerians tried to have the women captives returned to them – to no avail.223 In 1671, the first “bagnio for the [Muslim] slaves” was authorized by King Charles II in Tangier:224 the British had now become fully active in the Mediterranean (and not just Atlantic) slave trade, capturing Moors and Turks for sale or exchange or labor.225 A year later, William Blunden, an English merchant, bought a captain of an Algiers man-of-war, and treated him “with greater severity than in time of war”;226 and in 1673, “Mr. Blundell” brought Muslim captives to England.227 Generally, the British did not keep Muslim captives for long periods of time, unlike the French or the Spanish,228 but in Tangier, they did, and when they complained to Mulay Ismāʿīl that there were still 150 British captives in his realm, he reminded them that they held “400 Moors captive in Tangier.”229 222 Scott, When the Waves Ruled Britannia, 93, citing Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, a Census (Madison, Wisconsin, 1969), 119, 126. 223 Tangier at High Tide: The Journal of John Luke, 1670–1673, ed. Helen Andrews Kaufman (Paris, 1958), 102, 110. 224 CSPD Charles II, January to November 1671, 11: 352 (June? 1671). 225 See the reference to dozens of Turks and Moors captured after the December 1669 attack on Algiers by Sir Thomas Allin, CSPD Charles II, October 1668 to December 1669, 9: 632–633 (December 1669). 226 CSPD Charles II, December 1671 to May 17th 1672, 12: 450 (3 May 1672). 227 CSPD Charles II, October, 1672, to February, 1673, 14: 474 (24 January 1673). 228 The number of Muslim captives in European hands rose dramatically in the course of the seventeenth century: Ruth Pike, Penal Servitude in Early Modern Spain (Madison, Wisconsin, 1983) shows that in 1612, Muslim captives constituted 26% of the rowers on Spanish ships; by 1688, the number had risen to 41%, 5–11. 229 TNA CO 279/30/369r. For lists of captives, see Matar, Britain and Barbary, 128–129 and the chapter on “Moors in British Captivity.”

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Until the Moroccans were freed, he declared, he would keep the Britons. In 1682, there were “22 Turks” in English captivity,230 and in 1696, the Susannah of New York was carrying two Turks and ten Moors when it docked in Cadiz where eight of the Moors were sold.231 Such dealing in slaves became normative in Tangier,232 which may help to explain why in 1678, one writer compared “our Privateers” with the pirates of the “Barbary”: both were indiscriminate in their slavery.233 Less than a decade after its occupation, Tangier had become a mart where pirates sold their booty, on condition that it was seized from enemies of Britain. Sam, the brother of the resident clergyman John Luke, bought a prize ship for 5,000 pieces of eight.234 In 1686, the earl of Sunderland received a letter from Consul Erlisman in Algiers: “the world cries shame on us that free Xtians should assist these people to make Xtian Prizes.”235 The 1699 account, “Adventures among the Corsairs of the Levant,” by an English pirate describes attacks on ports from Tangier to “Tripoly Soria, Joppa, Caipha, St John de Acres, Sidon or Barute.”236 Piracy by Britons and others extended from the western to the eastern Mediterranean and beyond: in the Indian Ocean, the attacks by Henry Avery and William Kidd made the name of the English, in the eyes of the Dutch and the Mughals, synonymous with piracy.237 It did not help that Avery attacked Mughal/Muslim ships, and as rumors had it, raped the daughter of the Great Moghul.238 In 1717, eleven Moors “made their 230 CSPD Charles II, January 1st to December 31st, 1682, 23: 481 (18 October 1682). 231 TNA SP 71/3/338 (15 September 1696). 232 CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1676 to February 28th, 1677, 18:455 (16 December 1676). See also the purchase of “divers Turkish and negro slaves, 19 in all” to serve on galleys, CSPD Charles II, October 1672 to February 1673, 14: 139 (8 November 1672). 233 Blome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica, 10. 234 Tangier at High tide, ed. Kaufman, 164. 235 TNA SP 71/3/65 (25 August 1686). 236 “Mr. Robert’s his Voyage to the Levant, with an Account of his sufferings amongst the Corsairs,” in A Collection of Original Voyages (London, 1699), 9. 237 See especially chapter 4 in Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (Cambridge, Mass., 1986). For an Arabic account (in English translation) of Dutch and English attacks in the Red Sea, see “Al-Djarmuzi’s History” in R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast (Oxford, 1963),117–119. 238 CSPD William III, 1 January – 31 December, 1696, 2:278 (18 July 1696): “he has taken a great ship going to Mecca, with about a thousand persons going to pay their devotions there, among which was a Moorish Princess.” Interestingly, Daniel Defoe tried to exonerate him of the accusation, The King of PIRATES: Being an Account of the Famous Enterprises of Captain Avery, The Mock King of Madagascar. With His RAMPLES and PIRACIES; wherein all the Sham Accounts formerly publish’d of him, are detected (London, 1720).

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escape from Gibraltar” where they had been enslaved,239 and in 1722, fourteen “Turks” were captives on a British ship “near Bell Wharfe in Shadwell.”240 On 8 July 1726, the Moroccan ambassador Muḥammad ibn ‘Ali Abghālī presented a petition in London on behalf of some Moroccans who were captives in Gibraltar.241 As the evidence shows, Britons captured Britons, North Africans captured Britons, and Britons captured North Africans. Everybody was involved in enslavement. North Africans often looted ships that sank near their shores, but so did the English, earning from Daniel Defoe a strong denunciation for “the barbarous Treatment, poor shipwreck’d People meet with upon the Coast of England.”242 And as Algerians attacked Baltimore and abducted its local population in 1631, so did Frenchmen in 1668 land on “our coasts,” and after going “a mile up into the country,…[took] some goods,”243 as Britons did in Gibraltar, too – not kidnap the people but take possession of their rock. As Bishop Gilbert Burnet described the episode, the English fell in upon Gibraltar, where some bold men ventured to go ashore in a place where it was not thought possible to climbe up the rocks, yet they succeeded in it. When they got up, they saw all the women of the town were come out to a chapel there, to implore the Virgin’s protection. They seized on them, and that contributed not a little to dispose those in the town to surrender.244 *** The captivity of Britons by ‘Muslims’ with all its horrors occurred in a period of English history when the most violent persecutions of Catholics (under Elizabeth, during the Interregnum, and after the Popish Plot), witches, and Dissenters were taking place, with the number of men and women who were imprisoned, ejected, fined, forcibly converted (to Anglicanism) or banished by far higher than those who suffered “under the slaverie of the Turke.” Captivity 239 240 241 242

TNA SP 71/16/276 (6 September 1717). TNA FO 113/3/190 (2 June 1722). TNA SP 71/17/46–50. Review of the State of the British Nation (18 December 1708), in William Bragg Ewald, Rogues, Royalty and Reporters: The Age of Queen Anne through its Newspapers (Westport, Connecticut, 1978), 130. 243 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds. Latham and Matthews, 9: 96 (29 February 1668). 244 Gilbert Burnet, History of his own Time, abridged Thomas Stackhouse, introd. David Allen (London and New York, 1979), 400.

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in North Africa was grim, but it should not be studied as a religious Christianversus-Muslim phenomenon only: the social and political changes in England, the rivalry between king and Parliament, the civil wars and the revolution, the colonization of North America, and the rise in emigration, the occupation of Tangier as a spearhead for (a hoped-for) domination of Africa, the ‘enslavement’ of the indentured servants in the plantations, the collusion with Moroccan or Algerian pirates (from Maʿmūra to the Isle of Wight), the wars with the Netherlands and France, the censorship of the press, and the proliferation of captivity narratives – all these factors are integral to the understanding of captivity in Britain’s Mediterranean and Atlantic history. The pirates and privateers of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic belonged to all religions and nationalities and seized captives for ransom or labor – either by attacking coastal ports from Morocco to Libya (Spanish and Portuguese, followed by French and British) or from England to Wales and Ireland (Algerian and Saletian pirates, but also French and Dunkirkers during times of war). Captivity in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic was a complex phenomenon, determined by economic, diplomatic, and religious factors. And so was the ransom of captives. By tracing the sources for the study of captivity and ransom in Britain from beginning to end, as the next chapter will do, it will become possible to situate captivity in the context of Britain’s early modern expansion as well as its internal tensions and conflicts.

Chapter 2

Captives and Captors: 1563–1760 This chapter will present a survey of British captivity and ransom, from 1563– 1760. It will also furnish the historical context for captivity in the early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic, with special focus on political and naval developments, the various categories of captives, ranging from clergymen to soldiers, and the reasons for ransoming or not ransoming them. The chapter is divided according to monarchs, and although there was overlap, it is important not to lose sight of differences in specific periods of time. The approach is historical and geographical, not thematic, because a British captive taken in 1600, when England had no fleet and no naval clout, could not but see his plight in quite a different manner from a captive in 1700, when the British fleet largely dominated the western Mediterranean waters; and the commercial and military power of Britain at the beginning of the eighteenth century greatly superseded that of North Africa, by far more than a century earlier. Furthermore, different locations produced different dynamics of trade, piracy, and diplomacy: what was effective in negotiations or exchange in Meknes in the Moroccan hinterland was not necessarily effective in Algiers on the Mediterranean coast or in Salé on the Atlantic.

The Elizabethan Period, 1558–1603

Even before the arrival of the Tudors to the English throne, some sailors and crewmen had been taken captive in the Mediterranean.1 From the mid-­ sixteenth century, small fishing ships fell victim to pirates, both North African as well as Continental (especially from Dunkirk). Little is known about these captives except a few names from the early 1560s (and documented in a captivity account recounted in 1577 and published by Hakluyt in 1599–1600), but in 1567, Geoffrey Fenton declaimed against his compatriots in England for not helping captives. Although the Muscovy Company was using slaves in its

1 As early as 1480, indulgences had been “issued to raise money to fight the Turks or to ransom captives,” although some captives could have been held by Europeans, Anon., Indulgences (Westminster, 1480).

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Russian ­factory,2 he was angered at the enslavement of Englishmen, and in his translation of Matteo Bandello’s Tragical Tales, he lamented the “perversity of our age [which] is come to that point that where our fathers and grandfathers delighted in works of charity, with care to supply the necessity of such as did want, our helluos and gulfs of riches do not only close their ears against lamentable cries of the needy, but also make no conscience to despoil them.”3 Whether any English soldiers or youths were released from Turkish captivity after the battle of Lepanto in 1571, as George Gascoigne alleged in his “A Devise of a Maske for the Right Honorable Viscount Montacute” (1573), is not clear, but in 1572, Edward Webbe and seven other Englishmen were taken captive into the world of Islam and beyond, both real and imaginary, and were ransomed along with thirteen others in 1588 through the intervention of Queen Elizabeth.4 In 1577, John Foxe stated that out of 266 Christians captured by the Turks to Alexandria, only three were English.5 In this first account that appeared in print about captivity in the Islamic Mediterranean (in Hakluyt, 1589), Foxe described his captivity and escape and subsequent service to the Spanish king, thereby beginning the “genre” of narrating capture, endurance, and then escape or ransom. Although there were collections for captives in Easter 1579 which continued throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth,6 it was with the establishment of the chartered companies – the Turkey Company in 1581 (later renamed East Levant), and the Barbary Company in 1585 – and the investments in commercial shipping that the issue of captivity came to national and royal attention.7 Capitalists with friends in Greenwich Palace, Parliament, and the Privy Council complained about the loss of their ships, cargoes, and sailors, and demanded of the monarchy political or naval intervention. Throughout her reign, Queen 2 In 1567: see the reference in John Michael Archer, Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern English Writing (Stanford, 2001), 122. 3 Matteo Bandello, Tragical Tales, trans. Geoffrey Fenton, ed. Hugh Harris (London, 1923), 485. 4 Edward Webbe, His Trauailes (first publ. 1590) in English Reprints, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1869), 1–40. 5 The worthy enterprise of John Foxe an Englishman in delivering 266. Christians in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English nation (London, 1589), 150–156. 6 Historical Manuscripts Commission. Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections. Vol. 1 (London, 1901), 68; see also the letters by Archbishop Whitgift in 1596 “for the Redemption of Captives,” The Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, John Whitgift (London, 1718), 489; and the reference to the Spital Eastern sermons, Acts of the Privy Council, 1597–98, 28:408. 7 For a history of the Barbary Company, see ch. 4 in T.S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade (Manchester, 1959).

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Elizabeth, who enjoyed amicable relations with the High Porte (Murad III, reg. 1574–1595 and Mehmed III, reg. 1595–1603), was able to effect the release of many of her subjects. She also negotiated with the ruler of Morocco, Mulay Aḥmad al-Mansūr (reg. 1578–1603), for the freedom of British and also Dutch and French captives.8 But captives were not to be the sole responsibility of the monarchy: from the start, kith and kin, along with local parish communities and clergy, played a role in effecting captives’ release. In 1580, there were “many” captives for whom a church collection was made, although given the poverty of sailors’ kin, not much money could have been raised to ransom them; by September 1582, a “pitiful petition” was forwarded by “certain miserable Captives in Turkey” to the Lord Mayor of London who recommended a collection for them at Paul’s Cross.9 A document of 1580–82 states that in the previous twenty years, the ransoming of captives “hath cost this realm four thousand pounds” but that “some” captives had converted to Islam “for avoiding the great extremities of most miserable barbarous cruelty.”10 From 1569 to 1593, as Betty Masters has concluded from her study of the Remembrancia, “there were efforts to ransom eighty-three named men as well as others unnamed. The great majority were held on the North African coast with a much smaller number in Spain and elsewhere.”11 As a letter of Queen Elizabeth to Murad III shows, a chief reason why captives were taken by the Turks was reprisal for English piratical attacks. In 1581, she apologized for the “disorders of Peter Baker of Ratcliffe, committed in the Levant.”12 But English attacks continued, as did Ottoman reprisals, and in 1583, Christopher Carleill confirmed that “at this instaunt there are some prisoners poore ordinary Mariners, for whose releasing there must be paied tow hundred Duckets the man, for some three hundred, yea, fower or five hundred Duckets the man for some of them.”13 The capture of the “Jesus” by the Libyans from May 1584 to April 1585 left nine dead of the plague, two converted to Islam, and thirteen who were later ransomed.14 8

See my “Ahmad al-Mansur and Queen Elizabeth I,” in Journal of Early Modern History, 12 (2008): 55-76, and Bess’s intercession for Christian captives in Heywood’s Fair Maid, Part I. 9 Analytical Index to the Series of Records Known as the Remembrancia (London, 1878), 52, 54. 10 M. Epstein, The Early History of the Levant Company (London, 1908), 241–242. 11 Betty Masters, “Tales of the Unexpected: The Corporation and Captives in Barbary,” 1 in 1–5. 12 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, 12 volumes (Glasgow, 1903–1905), 5:189–191. 13 Christopher Carleill, A breef and sommarie discourse upon the entended voyage to the nethermoste partes of America in English Plans for North America. The Roanoke Voyages. New England Ventures, ed. David B. Quinn (New York, 1979), 28. 14 The voyage made to Tripolis in Barbarie, in the yeere 1583, with a ship called the Jesus in Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations (1598–1600), 2:184–194. See the discussion of this

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In 1584, an Algerian seizure of two galleys sent some English sailors to captivity,15 after which Hakluyt (in his 1598–1600 edition) added a list of seven ships seized to Algiers with the names of the English captives. This was the first list that appears in the English printed records, and interestingly, it was in Latin which suggests that it was addressed more to Levant Company officials than to sailors’ illiterate kin. By 1587, there was “a great Number of Christian Captives” in Algiers, wrote John Eversham, “whereof there are of Englishmen only fifteen.”16 A year later, in 1588, Richard Hasleton was captured by Spaniards, escaped, but then fell into Algerian captivity. He was ransomed back to England four years later.17 As a result of all these captivities, Sir Philip Sidney (Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 30), Christopher Marlowe (Tamburlaine) and Edmund Spenser mentioned the plight of Christians (though not specifically English): “captives to redeeme with price of bras,/From Turkes and Sarazins” (FQ x.40.2–4). Because of Elizabeth’s close ties with Aḥmad al-Mansūr, the captivities had occurred chiefly in the Algiers/Tripoli axis and not in Morocco, so much so that when the crew of the Toby were captured in 1593 after running aground in northern Morocco (reported in Hakluyt), they told their captors, correctly, that no Englishman had ever been captured “to the King of Morocco.” Actually, and as the account by Richard Hasleton showed, English seamen and merchants trading to Morocco were often captured by Spaniards and “thruste…into the Inquisition” to endure torture, conversion efforts, and if Hasleton’s account is truthful, solitary confinement, the first in the Mediterranean annals.18 Just about the same time, in 1591, the Moroccan ambassador to Istanbul, al-Tamjrūti, recalled how his ship was chased by six ships of qarāsīn/pirates – the word adopted into Arabic from “corsair” – but “God almighty protected us from them.”19 Whether those ships belonged to English pirates is not stated. Much as Queen Elizabeth wanted to control her subjects’ piracy, and episode in Sir Godfrey Fisher, Barbary Legend, War, Trade and Piracy in North Africa, 1415–1830 (Westport, Connecticut, 1974, first publ. 1957), 116–118. 15 Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations (Glasgow, 1903), 5:269. 16 J. Morgan citing Hakluyt, A Complete History of Algiers (London, 1728), 586. 17 A discourse of the miserable captiuitie of an Englishman, named Richard Hasleton (London, 1595). 18 Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade, 179. Hasleton’s account is edited in Vitkus, ed., Piracy. 19 ‘Ali ibn Muḥammad al-Tamjrūti, Al-Nafḥa al-miskiyya fī-l-safāra al-Turkiyya, ed. ‘Abd al-Laṭif al-Shādlī (Rabat, 2002), 29; translation in Matar, Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727 (New York, 2009), 147–159.

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much as she feared the “injuryes” they caused to trade with the Grand Signior, her powers were limited.20 In 1600, the Algerian Dey complained to her that John Audellay, “who says he is your Majesty’s Consul here” in Algiers, attacked a Venetian vessel, claiming it to be Spanish, and then set fire to it “when we Muslims were in the mosques at prayer…at midday with a great danger of setting fire to our Galleys…causing much scandal & indignation among the people of this city at the sight of such a criminal deed.”21 But nothing was done in London in regard to warning or punishment – nor could be done. As Edward Coke observed a quarter of a century later (he died in 1634), there was not yet a statute against piracy in England: “Piracy, or robbery on the high sea was no felony, whereof the common law took any knowledge, for that it could not be tried.”22 As a result, and as long as English pirates were capturing and selling Turks and Moors, the possibility of captivity for English sailors loomed large.

The Jacobean Period, 1603–1625

Queen Elizabeth kept on good terms with her Ottoman and Moroccan counterparts, unlike her successor, King James I, who inaugurated his rule with an English version of his poem on the Christian victory at Lepanto. Celebrating the fight “betwixt the baptiz’d race, And circumcised Turband Turkes,”23 James began a shift in policy from his predecessor against the Ottomans and in favor of Catholic Spain (and a treaty in 1604). But the termination of hostilities with Spain left large numbers of sailors without employment, who could not stay idle lest they be treated as felons (per Coke, “Of Felony in wandering Souldiers and Mariners”). And so they took to piracy, notwithstanding the king’s proclamations against them and his threats to hang pirates with his own hands.24 20 See Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1599–1600, 30:744. But as Edward Coke noted, she had not been averse to piracy: The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England; Concerning High Treason, and Other Pleas of the Crown and Criminal Causes (London, 1644), ch. 49. 21 TNA, FO 113/1/20 (20 December 1600). 22 Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, ch. 49. 23 His Maiesties Lepanto, or, Heroicall Song, being part of his Poeticall exercises (London, 1603). 24 “A Proclamation to represse all Piracies and Depredeations upon the Sea,” in Stuart Royal Proclamations, King James I, 1603–1625, eds. James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), 1:53–56 (30 September 1603). See also the other proclamations against pirates, 12 November 1604, 13 June 1606, and 8 January 1609. For a discussion of piracy and drama, see chapter 4 in Claire Jowitt, Voyage drama and gender politics 1580–1642 (Manchester, 2003).

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These pirates even attacked English ships, as William Graves, based in Tunis, did between 1605 and 1610.25 In 1607, Sir Thomas Shirley, Anthony’s brother, returned to London from his (unsuccessful) piratical expedition against “Turkie,” upon which an account about his as well as his brothers’ activities in the Ottoman and the Persian Empires was published.26 The account celebrated the depredations he committed, and soon after, pamphlets and ballads that continued in print for generations, sang the praises of John Ward, who had joined the Tunisian galleys and had risen in status and wealth after capturing chiefly English ships (from Hull, London, Bristol, Foy and Plymouth).27 Much as Britons embarrassingly asserted that Ward was no longer English, having converted to Islam, and much as a play depicted him committing suicide for his sins, in the eyes of European travelers and victims of his attacks, he remained one of “ces Anglais.”28 In 1610, the Venetian ambassador in Spain commented that when Don Anthony Shirley fitted out some galleys to attack the Turks, he behaved like “a regular buccaneer.”29 The week after, he continued, “two galleons belonging to Turks and English have, in the waters of Algiers, captured the galleon ‘Spinola’ and other Genoese.”30 With neither the Ottomans nor the Venetians able to police the Mediterranean from the beginning of the seventeenth century on, the British entered the basin to participate in the ‘age of piracy.’ Actually, the decline of Venice between 1580 and 1615 was largely a result of British (and Dutch) piracy in which they “showed themselves to be pirates more ruthless and dangerous than any others.”31 The deterioration in relations between James I and the rulers of North Africa and of the Ottoman Empire resulted in attacks on British shipping at a time when trade with the Mediterranean was growing.32 Such was the anxiety about the “Turk” that in the wake of Richard Knolles’ publication of a massive tome on the Ottomans (Generall Historie of the Turkes, 1603, reprinted frequently), 25 Bak, Barbary Pirate, 112. See also the list of names of other English pirates in the indictments reproduced in C. L’Estrange Ewen, Captain John Ward. “Arch-Pirate” (Printed for the author, 1939), 5–6. 26 The Three English Brothers (London, 1607). 27 See Daniel Vitkus, ed., Three Turk Plays (New York, 2000), appendix 1. 28 François Savary de Brèves, Relation des Voyages (Paris, 1628), 306–307. 29 CSPM…Venice, 1607–1610, 11:417 (5 February 1610). 30 Ibid, 423 (14 February 1610). 31 Alberto Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice, 1580–1615, trans. Janet and Brian Pullan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 61 and all of chapter 4. 32 Between 1609 and 1619, trade with the Levant rose from 46% to 79% of England’s total textile export: W.E. Minchinton, ed., The Growth of Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1969), 67.

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two pamphlets were published in 1607, the first expressing hope that the Turks would be driven out of Christendom by divine intervention; the second purporting to be a translation of “Svndrie Letters” sent by the Ottoman sultan to threaten “divers Emperours, Kings, Princes.”33 King James issued letters of marque to merchants intent on fighting the “Turks,” but the letters became so “promiscuous” that soon after the king commissioned the Levant traders to capture “our unnatural subjects…infesting the passages” of the seas.34 English pirates so grew in number that it was feared the ships that were sent out to capture them would not have enough space to hold them.35 Meanwhile, English unemployed soldiers, fearful of prosecution for “wandering,” left England to serve in Muslim armies, as Captain John Giffard did in 1609 in Morocco.36 Partly as a result of the expertise of European converts to Islam, “renegades,” the North African pirates grew in number and strength, and began to attack British ships not only in the Mediterranean but also in the eastern Atlantic and as far north as the English Channel (and, later, the coasts of Ireland and Iceland). In 1617, a “Turkish” ship sailed into the Thames – and was captured – perhaps because of unfamiliarity with the waters.37 By February 1619, the Privy Council reported that “The pirates of Algiers and Tunis have grown so strong that in a few years they have taken 300 ships, and imprisoned many hundred persons.”38 The hundreds were specified two years later when mention was made of “a 1000 Eng:” captives in Algiers,39 a figure that Sir Thomas Roe repeated.40 While there were English pirates in cahoots with the North Africans, others were attacking Turks, as Richard Stapers wrote to the earl of 33 Anonymous, The Tvrkes Secretorie (London, 1607) and Newes from Rome of two mightie Armies (London, 1607). 34 Documents relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea, ed. R.G. Marsden (London, 1915), 1: xxviii and 377. For later letters of marque see TNA SP 16/57/20, 21, 97 cited in Hebb, Piracy, 210, n. 3. See also the reference to letters of marque in 1681, CSPD Charles II, September 1st, 1680, to December 31st, 1681, 22:618 (14 December 1681). 35 Documents, ed. Marsden, 1:379. See also the commission of 1615 against pirates, 387. 36 See chapter 15 in R.C., A True Historicall discourse of Muley Hamets rising to the three Kingdeomes of Moruecos, Fes, and Sus (London, 1609) and my “Renaissance English Soldiers in the Armies of Islam,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 21 (1995): 81–95. 37 CSPD James I, 1611–1618, 9: 427 (October); see also Letters from George Lord Carew, ed. Maclean, 51. The ships that entered the Severn, however, in 1624, took prizes and escaped, CSPD James I, 1623–1625 With Addenda, 11:334 (4 September 1624). 38 CSPD James I, 1619–1623, 10:12 (7 February 1619). 39 TNA SP 71/1/31 (3 November 1621). 40 Roe, The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe, 52; see also Acts of the Privy Council, 1621–23, 228.

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Salisbury: “the Turk has reaped no benefit by us nor our country, but has sustained great losses, as by Jefford, Mellyn, etc. Likewise Thornton.”41 After much deliberation about the need to suppress piracy,42 King James agreed to send his fleet in 1620 under Robert Mansell, a pardoned pirate, to ransom Britons and to attack the harbor. The Merchant Adventures had agreed in February 1619 to pay “20,000l. per ann. for two years, to be used for suppression of pirates.” During negotiations, the Pasha reported that his city had “sustained greater losses by the English Nation (namely) That one William Mellyn an English Marchant carried awaie a great fflyboate laded wth Turkes, Moores and their goods…That Capt Gifford Carried awaie diverse Turkes from Bugea and sould them in Livorno…That Mr. Richard Allin Consull in Algier and Mr. Wm Garrett a Marchant carryed awai three shippes, with Turkes Moores and their goods…and sould them at Alicant.”43 The English had captured “300 Moores all of them being Merchants,” and the only excuse that Mansell could give for the actions of his countrymen was that they were “wicked and dissolute psons.”44 In retaliation, the Algerians seized Britons, but when Mansell desired to see the captives, “of many hundreds of his Majties Subts taken by turkes, eighteen persons only were brought in.”45 Whether he was exaggerating or whether the captives had escaped, died, or converted, is not clear.46 Despite the failure of the negotiations and the naval attack, Mansell was able to release the eighteen English captives,47 after which he seized “divers turkes” whom he sold in Spain.48 A report explained that the captives were “56 Turkes, Moores & Tagarens soe that I have now 60 and odd Captives where with to redeeme his Majt. Subts.”49 Later that year, in December, eight 41

42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Historical Manuscript Commission 9: Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury, Part XIX (a.d. 1607), eds. M.S. Guiseppi and D. McN. Lockie (London, 1965), 287. See the reference in Historical Manuscripts Commission 9: Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, part XXI (1609–1612), ed. G. Dyfnalt Owen (London, 1970), 250 (8 September 1610); and Sir Francis Bacon’s 1617 “Measures for Suppressing the Pirates,” in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding (London, 1872), 13:176–181; CSPD James I, 1619–1622, 10:12. BL MS ADD 36445, fos 23r–v (13 January 1620/21). BL MS ADD 36445, fo. 28 r. Ibid. 23 v. As Hebb notes, “A few captives” escaped to the fleet, Piracy, 95. Ibid., 90. See the detailed study of the expedition, chps. 2–6. TNA FO 113/1/105 (no date). BL MS ADD 36445, fo. 66r (22 March 1621).

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Englishmen were released from captivity in exchange for sixteen Andalusians/ Moriscos.50 Eager to preserve trade with the Mediterranean at a time of economic slump at home, and fearful that insecurity at sea would deter merchants from venturing their ships, King James sent Sir Thomas Roe to Istanbul to negotiate cooperation. The letter that the king sent to Osman II on 6 September 1621 mentioned the “common Rovers upon the seas, who are enemies to the Lawes of Nations…the pyrates of Tunes and Algiers.” The letter asked the sultan to effect the release of “divers of the Polish Nobilitie, now your captives, and… one Scottish gentleman, a subject of his Majesty.”51 While the king cared for one of his own, Roe wanted to negotiate the exchange of forty Muslims held captive in England with 800 English captives in Algiers and Tunis. Sultan Osman agreed to all of Roe’s propostitions and so the English emissary sailed to the regencies with the agreement that he had secured from Istanbul.52 But in Algiers, which was drawing away from the sultan’s control as Roe noted, there were arguments that preceded the signing of the capitulations showing the continued anger of the Algerians at English piracy. An early draft of the treaty mentioned the “Wronge an English ship in Alexandria did make [to] Musslemen, Pelgrims deceiuing them with faire promises to transporte them to Algier of whome they landed some Upon a desert Island where they perish with could and hunger and the rest they carried and should in Malta and in other places.”53 And, “English ships with some Spaniards came before your [Algiers] Porte and attempted to burne your Fleete.”54 The English replied that the Algerians had been robbing “Barques Goods and men,” but they did not deny the accusations that the Algerians had suffered too, and explained that not all ships that flew English colors were English, that many “Nations…under the Crosse of England for theire credit perhaps haue done such iniuryes certainly without the knowledge or Consent of Us.”55 The English had become such notorious pirates that other Europeans found it convenient to fly the Union Jack. 50

51 52 53 54 55

De Castries, Sources…Angleterre, 2:521–25. Over a century later, Joseph Morgan wrote that the Tetuanese were eager to exchange captives with Mansell, “offering for each Mahometan an English Captive; they having many in the Town, sold them by the Turks of Algiers,” A Complete History of Algiers, and its Territory, 646. Richard Knolles, The Generall historie of the Turkes (London, 1638), 1402. Ibid., 1403–1404. TNA SP 103/1/145: “The Captn Basshas Ltre to the Basha of Algiere to use Janizar Aga and cheifes of the armie Mar 1622.” Ibid., 150. Ibid., 147.

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Both Roe and the Algerians were eager for peace and trade, and so the tone of the final version of the capitulations was conciliatory – although the Algerians again reminded him that their seizure of English ships was in retaliation for English depredations committed in their seas: While wee did remaine constant and firme in the Peace wth the English Nation some of their [English] ships, contrary to the Captiulation, League of friendship long since contracted on both parts, haue done some divers damages and injuries unto us. And whereas from us there shall neuer any action proceed contrary to the said Imperiall Capitulations, the said English Nation often times made warre upon us; for which cause wee haue also been inforced to reuenge our selues.56 Notwithstanding, harmony prevailed and King James was praised as “the mighty & famous Prince, among the Princes of the faith of Jesus obeyed of the greatest followers of the Messiah, only Gouernor of the important affaires of the Nazaren Nation, Souereigne of the limits of honour and Power, Lord of greatnesse & authority, the benigne & sincere friend, the Glorious James King of England.”57 By December 1622, “all the captiues at Tunes are sett free, and the like expected at Algier,” wrote Roe.58 During the negotiations, it was agreed that a consul be appointed in Algiers to ensure that Britons did not continue in their piracy: an anonymous letter from Algiers in 1622 explained that a consul would “hinder the retreat of Piratts who would leave their Kings service & betake themselves to robbing every bodye.” In order to improve “trafficke,” the consul was to prevent his countrymen from turning pirates,59 and so James Frizell became the first consul in Algiers. In an anonymous account, probably by Frizell, about the “present state of the Algier cause,” the author admitted that “The Turkes were robbed by the English at sea, theire Captives taken from them pilladge of their apparel contrary to ye Articles.” Such depredations did not cease, resulting in “continuall complaints of many wronges donne by the English to ye Turks in these yeares,”60 even though one Article was to “give order to our [English] people that they wronge not those of Argiere and Tunis, 56

57 58 59 60

TNA SP 103/1/75 (“The Capitulations or Agreement of the Peace made wth Tunis and Alger at Constantinople, &accepted and signed by the Commissioners of Alger and Tunis”), folder of 1622/3 March. Ibid., 74. The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe, 112; and April 1623, 140. TNA FO 113/1/109. TNA FO 113/1/126.

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meetinge them at sea, and that they carrie no warlike provisions to their enimie.”61 The treaty included another article about freeing “all English slaues, wch shall bee found now in Algier,” but some were seized after the English broke the peace terms: John Rawlins, a sea captain, along with twenty-four captives overcame their Algerian masters and sailed back to England, but in his account, he mentioned “five hundred brought into the market…and above a hundred handsome youths [were] compelled to turn Turks…and all English!”62 Relatives of these and other captives petitioned the king who issued letters patent “for one whole yeere” for charities to be collected for the 1500 captives in “Argier, Tunis, Sally, Tituan”63 a number repeated by a ballad, “The Lamentable Cries of at Least 1500 Christians: Most of them being Englishmen (Now Prisoners in Argiers).”64 It may well be that money raised by these letters enabled Frizell to ransom 250 men,65 but in the last year of King James’s reign, Sir John Eliot confirmed that there were “at least, twelve hundred Christians” remaining in “Turkish” captivity.66 The numbers of captives varied in the sources, but there is little doubt that there were hundreds of captives many of whom were seized as they smuggled arms to rebels in Algiers,67 or as they captured and sold North Africans into (Spanish) slavery,68 or as they practiced indiscriminate piracy on the high seas. King James gave meager support to British merchantships in the Mediter­ ranean, leaving them to the mercy of English as well Algerian and other pirates: he had handed the navy over to his incompetent favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, and he was unwilling to intervene financially on behalf of captives. As a result the names of captives remained largely unknown, unlike in France, where the French redemptionists recorded all details about their 61 62

The “Articles” between Sir Thomas Roe and the Algerians, TNA FO 113/1/105. John Rawlins, The Famovs And Wonderfvll Recoverie of a Ship of Bristoll, called the Exchange (London, 1622), reproduced in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 102. 63 James by the Grace of God (London, 20 June 1624). See also CSPD James I, 1623–1625, 11:287 (29 June 1624). 64 Naval Songs and Ballads, ed. C.H. Firth (London, 1908), 31–33. 65 TNA FO 113/1/118 (12 February 1625). 66 Sir John Eliot, An apology for Socrates and Negotium posterorum, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London, 1881), 2:4. 67 See the letter from the Algerian Dey complaining about English smugglers TNA SP 71/1/41v. (15 October 1624). 68 See the reference to “Mr. Madox, of London, who sold 150 Moors and Andalusians as slaves,” CSPD James I, 1623–1625 with Addenda, 11:430 (1624?). In retaliation, a year later, pirates “plundered the country” near Cornwall, carrying off “a large number of slaves,” CSPM…Venice, 1625–1626, 19:149.

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captured compatriots. In Britain, there was no central governmental or commercial or religious organization that methodically prepared lists of captives’ names and ransoms or documented information about them.69 Nor did Continental sources include references to English names or numbers, except in the case of Catholic Britons, since in early modern ransoming, each religious denomination took care of its own.70 There was no redemptionist initiative of the kind that took place in France where town criers called on kin to register the names of captives – thereby leaving behind detailed lists of who had been captured and where. While there were hundreds of captives, there are very few names on record. The captives remained largely anonymous.

The Caroline Period, 1625–1649

In July 1625, soon after King Charles I succeeded to the throne, there were 600, or 800 captives in North African harbors.71 Although Roe’s negotiations with Algiers in 1622/23 had resulted in three years of relative safe trade in the Mediterranean, the Saletians had meanwhile become a dangerous maritime adversary. The mayor of Plymouth reported in August that twenty-seven ships and “200 persons had been taken by Turkish pirates in ten days”;72 by December, the number in Salé was 1500 “English, Scottish and Irish men, women and children.”73 In February 1626, the number of captives in “Barbary” was 2000,74 but in May, a source gave the number of captives as 3000 in Algiers and 1500 in Salé.75 How these figures were reached is not shown, but then, a few months 69 70

71 72 73 74 75

See John Brewer, The Sinews of Power for a discussion of “the absence of a sprawling, tentacular state apparatus made up of venal office-holders,” 15. The calendars of documents in the French archive in Tunis, edited by Pierre Grandchamp La France en Tunisie (Tunis, 1920–33), mention English merchants and consuls, but very few captives. See also Braga, Entre a Cristandade e o Islāo (séculos XV-XVII), 92–94; and the “schiavi olandesi, fiamminghi e inglesi cattolici romani” mentioned in Federico Cresti, Documenti sul Maghreb dal XVII al XIX Secolo, 34, entry 183. It is significant that the only account by a Catholic English captive was written in Italian: see Jean Pignon, “Un document inédit sur la Tunisie au début du XVIIe siècle,” Les Cahiers de Tunisie, 33 (1961): 108–219. CSPD, Charles I, 1625–26, 1:54 (5 July 1625) and 79 (3 August 1625). CSP Colonial Series, America and West Indies 1574–1660, 75 (8 August 1625); TNA SP 16/5/24 (8 August 1625). De Castries, Sources…Angleterre, 2:593 (12 December 1625). Cited in Hebb, Piracy, 136, n. 3. CSPD, Charles I, 1625–26, 1:343 (May? 1626).

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later, in August, Frizell reported that there were only “50 or 60 English” in Algiers.76 Again, the possibility of exaggeration arises: for Salé to have 1500 Britons and Algiers 3000 would have meant the loss of about 150 + 300 ships (based on the earlier ratio) – a loss that could not but have been anxiously reflected in commercial and naval records. And, if 1500 seamen had been captured to Salé, a small port, where could they have been kept so they would not escape or rise in revolt – assuming there were no other European captives with them in that port city?77 Be that as it may, when an Algerian ship docked in Plymouth, the angry populace took the thirty-seven Turks on board prisoners – although the King’s Advocate explained that they should be released in the light of the “league with Algiers.” They were.78 Meanwhile, “distressed wives” petitioned on behalf of “almost 2000 poor mariners remaining most miserable captives in Sallee in Barbary,”79 wording that was repeated in later petitions indicating that, mostly, the same kinswomen (and copyists) were behind them. But no one at court paid any attention to the petitions: “never yet receive any one answer.” Such indifference may explain why no list of the names of the captives or the petitioners was prepared; and again, it is not possible to verify whether to each woman petitioner corresponded one man/sailor, or whether the captive corresponded to a whole family – wife, mother, sisters, daughters, and other kinswomen. The only impact which the petition made was to alert King Charles to the danger of his subjects’ conversion to Islam. A devout man, he became concerned and turned to the church for assistance whereupon in October 1626, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, took care of moneys collected for captives;80 in December, the king commissioned John Harrison to negotiate with “the Kings, Princes, etc. of Barbary for the redeeming of captives,” promising to release Moorish captives in England in return, and to send military hardware as well.81 Unlike his father, and much more like Queen Elizabeth, Charles 76 77 78 79

80 81

TNA FO 113/1/137. For the population of Salé, see Muḥammad al-Sammār, Madinat Salla-Rabāt al-Fatḥ biḍifatayhā (Salla, n.d.), 131. TNA SP 16/32/13 (22 July 1626); see also Acts of the Privy Council of England 1626, June – December, 120. CSPD Charles I, 1625–26, 1:516 (no date). See also Hebb, Piracy, 136, n. 3, the reference to “2000 English persons held captive in Barbary,” citing Cambridge University Library MS Dd fos. 12–20. In October 1626, ten captives were ransomed: Acts of the Privy Council, 1626 June-December, 341 (29 October 1626). Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1626, June – December, 342; Cenival and Brissac, Sources…Angleterre, 3:11 (15 December 1626).

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tried to help captives by sending negotiators, but there is no report of Harrison ransoming 2000, only a reference to “ciento y noventa.”82 Actually, between 1609 and 1635, Trinity House of Deptford listed all the captives whose cases had been brought to its attention: around thirty men with their “crews.”83 Amidst a continuing economic slump, tension/war with France and Spain, and the devaluation of the currency, there was deep consternation among seamen and their kin about insecurity at sea. Captivity meant loss of income for sailors and their families which is why they gathered in a “tumultuous manner in and about the Cittie of London,” forcing the king to issue a proclamation to suppress and disperse them;84 there was a limit as to how much pressure he would tolerate. In March 1627, Henry Byam preached a sermon in Minehead, Somerset, about the return of a captive/privateer from Algiers and from Islam, emphasizing the danger of apostasy.85 Soon after, in June, twenty-seven Englishmen were ransomed out of “Barbary,”86 after which John Harrison ransomed eighty-eight out of Salé.87 But there were other captives who had been left behind and in February 1628, women petitioned on behalf of 500 kinsmen in Algerian and Tunisian captivity – but it is not clear whether these 500 were new captives, or part of the “2000” who had not been ransomed.88 Nor is it clear what happened to the remaining 1500: Sir Kenelm Digby reported in 1628 having ransomed “all the English captiues that remained here [Algiers] (which were near 50)” – although he qualified his statement by adding that some captives had been left behind.89 In the account Digby wrote about the year he and his ships spent in the Mediterranean (1627–28), he comes across as nothing less than a pirate, attacking French and Greek ships (but spending a wonderful time in Algiers where he was even able to chat with Muslim women), and then returning to England to glorious acclaim.90 While Digby was prudent enough 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90

Cenival and Brissac, Sources…Angleterre, 3:14 (18 April 1627). Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35, ed. Harris. Stuart Royal Proclamations, King Charles I, 1625–1646, ed. James F. Larkin (Oxford, 1983), 2:127–128 (2 February 1627). Privateers from Minehead were active during the war with Spain and France, 1625–1630. CSPD, Charles I, 1627–28, 2:229 (25 June 1627). Cenival and Brissac, Sources…Angleterre, 3:40 n. 2. Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I. Report and Appendix, 292. Sir Kenelm Digby, Journal of a Voyage into the Mediterranean by Sir Kenelm Digby, a.d. 1628, eds. William Watkin, E. Wynne and John Bruce (London, 1868), 19. In CSPD Charles II, 1661–1662, 2:170 (6 December 1661), there is mention of £1,650 that Digby paid in ransom. For Digby’s piracy, see Rhoads Murphy, “Merchants, Nations and Free-Agency: An Attempt at a Qualitative Characterization of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean 1620–1640,” in

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not attack Turkish ships, William Bundocke did, and Sultan Murad IV (reg. 1623–1640) complained to King Charles about him for seizing Turks and selling them in Malta, and stealing “merchandises…to the value of 34000 Dollars.”91 The rise in the number of captives was in retaliation to the rise in English piratical attacks on North African shipping. A letter from the Pasha of Algiers to King Charles in October 1627 described the anger of the Algerians at the losses incurred by English pirates, adding that he was sure the king had no knowledge of such deeds and would punish the miscreants; but nothing happened and another letter from the Pasha in April 1628 gave details of what had been stolen from Algerian ships by the English: “their goods, their armes, and provisions, with certain other Christian Slaves of other Nations, and particularly they have made a Prize of Sugar.”92 Meanwhile, and in the western side of the Mediterranean, large numbers of Andalusians arrived in Salé after their expulsion from Spain and organized themselves into a “republic.” Eager to break away from Mulay Zaydān (reg. 1608–1628), and his successor, Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik (reg. 1628–1631), they sought arms from English smugglers. To ensure that his subjects would not continue their cooperation with these rebels, King Charles issued on 22 October 1628 a proclamation warning that such breaches helped to arm the Saletians who then seized 200 captives “since May last.”93 The proclamation was to protect English Company traders sailing through the straits into the Mediterranean; in the following year, the king sent a letter to the Bey of Tunis assuring him of the English desire for increased trade94 Meanwhile, John Harrison, who was the most knowledgeable man about Morocco, having traveled there over seven times, secured the release of “approximately 200 persons” from there,95 while in March 1629, Frizell sent Friends and Rivals in the East, eds. Alastair Hamilton, et al. (Leiden, 2000), 40–41 in 25–58. It is possible that Digby knew Arabic: a letter from Samuel Hartlib of 1634 describes him as “A great student for the Arabick Language.” Hartlib Papers, “Ephemeredes,” 29/2/10A. 91 Knolles, Generall historie, appendix, 5 (November 1628). 92 TNA SP 102/vol. 1, part 1, 18 (16 April 1628). 93 TNA SP 71/12/167 (1628); Stuart Royal Proclamations, King Charles I, 1625–1646, ed. James F. Larkin, 2:209–210. See also the reference to the proclamation that warned the English merchants not to “molest or fight them [Tunis, Algiers, Oran, and Salé] at sea,” CSPM… Venice, 1628–1629, 21:395–396. As Jerome B. Bookin-Weiner stated, “Before 1635, the English were definitely more sinning than sinned against by the corsairs,” “The Moroccan Corsairs of Rabat-Sale [sic],” in Le Maroc et l’Atlantique, ed. Abdelmajid Kaddouri (Rabat, 1992), 179 in 163–191. 94 Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1628 July – 1629 April, 400. 95 Cited in Hebb, Piracy, 160.

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back to England forty-six captives from Algiers, having been captured on the Peter of London and the Delight of North Yarmouth, “in reprisal for the capture of Turkish ships.”96 Hebb stated that the British losses for the period from “the end of October 1627 to the beginning of April 1629” were 3228 captives.97 King Charles could have reduced the number of captives taken by the Saletians had he been willing to sign an agreement with them. In revenge against Spain, the thousands of Andalusians in Salé had begun naval attacks against their former compatriots. In need of military equipment, they turned to England and through John Harrison repeatedly sought to sign a treaty of cooperation with King Charles – to the point of sending to London two envoys in 1628.98 Harrison was very much in favor of such a treaty: residing in Morocco, he saw how effective the Saletians were in capturing ships at sea, how dangerous they could be for British traders in both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and importantly for him, how anti-Catholic they were. Harrison stoutly believed that a treaty would encourage them to convert to Protestantism and fight with England against Spain, the “anti-Christ.” But Charles refused to go along, seeing the danger in cooperating with “rebels” against the central Marrakesh authority of Mulay ‘Abd al-Malik – at a time when his own authority was being challenged at home by Parliament (which he dissolved in 1629, beginning his “personal rule”). Although there were some North African captives in England who were to be exchanged with English captives,99 the matter of captivity became quite dire after the successful June 1631 attack by an Algerian ship on Baltimore in Ireland and the kidnapping of “237 persons, men, women, and children, even those in the cradle.”100 Frizell reported in a letter from Algiers on 10 August 1631 96

TNA FO 113/1/155 (11 March 1629); Documents relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea, ed. Marsden, 1:457. 97 Hebb, Piracy, 138. 98 See the reference by Harrison to the “two Agents sent from Barbarie who have been here a Long tyme,” TNA SP 71/12/165 (21 October 1628) and their letter (in Italian with a signature in Arabic) TNA SP 71/12/121 (6 May 1627). See my study of Harrison in “The English Merchant and the Moroccan Sufi: Messianism and Mahdism in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64 (2013): 47–65, and the entry in the ODNB. 99 BL ADD MS 21993, fo. 284 v (1 December 1630). 100 Quoted from Pierrre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie in R.L. Playfair, The Scourge of Christendom (London, 1884), 52. In March, 1634, the figure was different: “Turks having carried away 120 persons from Baltimore, and made them slaves at Algiers,” CSPD Charles I, 1633–34, 6:535 (March 1634). For a study of this episode, see Henry Barnby, “The Sack of Baltimore,” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archeological Society 74 (1969), 101–129.

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that the number was “340 persons remaining heare, of wch 89 of them are Women & Children taken lately from Baltamore wth 20 men only.” He complained to the Privy Council of the “negligence” of the “Turquey comp” regarding the captives and expressed hope that an emissary would be sent with enough money to pay the captives’ ransoms.101 But such money was never sent – very likely because the captives were Irish, a discrimination that will appear in many later ransom payments. Also captured by the Algerians in that year on the high seas were Francis Knight and thirteen other Englishmen (some of whom escaped in 1638).102 Late in 1631, the English pirates John Maddock and Edward Wye seized a Saletian ship and sold fifty-six men into slavery in Spain.103 In retaliation, those “of Sallee not only gave order for taking all the English they could master at sea, but imprisoned all the English merchants that were in that town.”104 To liberate them, John Harrison traveled again to Morocco, after money had been raised by “collection” for the “many Englishmen [who] are slaves there.”105 Harrison was quite successful in his negotiations and by 1632, there were thirty-nine captives left in Morocco,106 and eight in Safi.107 Frizell wrote at the beginning of the following year that since 1629, 708 captives had been seized to Algiers, of whom twenty-four had been ransomed.108 While some may have died, converted, or escaped, what was the fate of the above-mentioned 3,228 captives, or were the numbers exaggerated? Or had they been captured by pirates operating from Italy, as the captivity account of William Davies in 1614 and Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, Part II (1630) showed?109 In June 1632, “Henry Abby, Richard Jones, and William Maydman together with sixtie two more pooore Captives in Tunnys and Argyr” petitioned King Charles for help, asking that he issue letters patent to “Charitable people within yor Majties whole kingdome of England” thereby raising the “fiftie pounds a head” needed for their ransom. The petition was obviously 101 TNA SP 71/1/99. 102 Francis Knight, A relation of seaven yeares slaverie (London, 1640). For the role of charity in ransoming captives, see Hebb, Piracy, 157–158 and n. 6. 103 TNA SP 71/12/200 (1631). 104 CSPD Charles I, 1635, 8:608 (31 December 1635). 105 Bibliotheca Lindesiana: A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations, 1485–1714 (Oxford, 1910), vol. 5 (15 October 1631). 106 Cenival and Brissac, Sources…Angleterre, 3:180–81. 107 TNA SP 71/12/210 (28 July 1632). 108 TNA SP 71/1/119 (8 February 1633). 109 A True Relation of the Travailes and Most Miserable Captiuitie…of William Dauis, BarberSurgion of London, Vnder the Duke of Florence (London, 1614).

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prepared in London since captives in Tunis were unlikely to know about their brethren in Algiers or about the specifics of ransom. The king hesitated to act having been “informed that letters patents are already issued to make collection for the redeeming of these and other Captives of like condition, [and that he should] not graunt double letters for the same cause: wch may occasion his subiects to withhold their charitie.”110 Meanwhile, Britons were increasing their piracy and slave-trading, and letters by Algerian and Moroccan governors repeatedly complained about the selling of Muslims to European fleets in need of rowers.111 There were also complaints about Britons who lent their sea passes to the enemies of the North African rulers, transported enemy cargo and passengers, and trafficked in contraband.112 Sometime in 1632, a warrant was issued to Giles Penn to send munitions to Tetuan and Salé.113 When relations improved between Britain and Morocco, gifts were exchanged, and the Moroccan rulers praised God for enabling kings to cooperate, notwithstanding their differences in religion, and asked for 4000 rifles and a hundred quintals of fuses.114 In July 1633, twenty-nine men were “saved,”115 at the same time that Captain William Hawkeridge petitioned the king for compensation on behalf of thirtytwo men whom he had ransomed,116 as did Trinity House on behalf of seventytwo men “taken by the Turks.”117 By November 1634, many ships had been seized with sixty seamen taken “to increase the number of the western captives.”118 Meanwhile, the “Great Migration” to America had started and by the mid-1630s, the number of captives rose dramatically. Archbishop Laud put 110 TNA SP 71/1/113 (28 June 1632). 111 Moulay Belhamissi, Les captifs algériens, 33. 112 See the order to “Barbary merchants to trade only to the ports in Barbary named in the articles offered to the King of Morocco,” CSPD Charles I, 1635, 8:533 (4 December 1635). Passes were always a matter of contestation because they were changed periodically, without informing authorities, and they were easily forged: see Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, 40–41, and the template reproduced in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 370. 113 TNA SP 71/12/217 (no date, 1632?). 114 See the three letters at the Bodleian, MS Arch Seld 72.6, dated 3 December 1631, 26 May 1637, and April 1638. In 1635, “Friezland mares” arrived in Morocco from England, after some horses, hawks and mares had been sent by ‘Abdallah al-Naqsīs (“Abdala Nicazis”), the governor of Tetuan, TNA SP 71/12/231 (1635); see also the reference to the delivery of three mares on 30 September 1637, CSPD Charles I, 1637, 11:449. 115 Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35, ed. Harris, 124–125. 116 CSPD Charles I, 1633–34, 6:357 (no date). 117 Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I, 245. 118 CSPD Charles I, 1635, 8:398 (26 September 1635).

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“a temporary stop to emigration,”119 because Britons were being lost to North American colonization and, en route, to North African corsairs. After a ship carrying passengers from Minehead to Ireland was captured by Saletians in 1635 and all its “passengers” taken,120 a “Petition” was presented urging that a mechanism be put in place for redeeming captives lest they “be enticed upon any assault by the Turks to abandon theyr ships, and not stand out wth that danger and generousness, wth wch they had hitherto prevented theyr ships from being taken, except it were very rarely.” The fear in London was not for Britons sent into captivity but for loss of ships and cargo: company merchants wanted the sailors to resist, but if the sailors fought (and killed some of their attackers) and were later defeated, they were taken captive so that their ransoms could compensate for the lost income that would have been generated by the dead. The increase in the number of lost ships was credited to the unwillingness on the part of the merchant companies or the crown to reward seamen should they risk their lives in fighting off attackers. By the end of 1634, and with no royal intervention, donations were collected from dignitaries, including £100 from Sir George Sandys on 29 December, to purchase presents for the “King of Morocco” to facilitate the redemption of the captives.121 In early January 1635, the Privy Council sent Harrison to Morocco for “the redemption of English captives” – on condition that he make sure the captives had not been pirates or smugglers but honest seamen.122 Before leaving, Harrison requested that ships be sent to carry captives back (and that their captains be paid in advance) and, importantly, he tried to make sure the king issued a proclamation that “neither powder, shott, Bumes, Iron, lead or any other ammunition” be sold to Salé. In confirmation of his earlier proclamation, King Charles ordered the “Barbary merchants to trade only to the ports in Barbary named in the articles offered to the King of Morocco,” Mulay al-Walīd ibn Zaydān (reg. 1631–1636) – ports not under control of the Andalusians/Moriscos in Salé/Rabat.123 But English traders continued trading with the Saletians, indifferent to the captives’ relatives who had raised money to ransom them but were “destitute of shipping to bring them [captives] home.”124 Ironically, and as the king was trying to curb his subjects’ illicit dealings and piracy, he was not above taking the 10% of the profit which the pirate 119 Andrew Delbanco, “Looking Homeward, Going Home: The Lure of England for the Founders of New England,” New England Quarterly 59 (1986), 370 in 358–380. 120 CSPD Charles I, 1634–1635, 7:423 (no date). 121 Reported in TNA SP 71/12/223 (12 June 1635). 122 TNA SP 71/12/220 (10 January 1635). 123 See also TNA SP 71/12/233 (1635). 124 CSPD Charles I, 1635, 8:476 (12 November 1635).

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“Mr. Marriot” made after capturing and selling eleven Turks.125 At the same time, and while he opposed his subjects’ piracy in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, he encouraged it in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. There had been English pirates in those seas since the Elizabethan period: in 1583, James Lancaster plundered “every vessel that he came across, native and Portuguese alike” that sailed through the Straits of Malacca; as did Sir Benjamin Wood in 1596; while Sir Edward Michelborne, who sailed from Sumatra to Bantam in 1604–1605, went “pilfering and plundering along the way and generally making the English name hated in those waters.”126 Such was their danger that when English ships appeared near the coast of Aden/Yemen, the local populations fled in fear, and only after some of “our people attired themselves like Turks with turbans and long coats” did they succeed in getting fresh supplies.127 In his account of a journey up the coast of east Africa toward the Red Sea in 1607, Robert Coverte reported that his ship seized “some fourty and odde” Moors who were sold as slaves.128 It is no wonder that on 18 July 1613, the Venetian ambassador in Istanbul reported to the Doge that “the timber which they [Turks] ordered to be cut in the Red Sea has arrived here, to be sent to Cairo, to make ten galleys to sail the Red Sea against the English and Flemish bertons.”129 In December 1617, Sir Thomas Roe warned Thomas Kerridge at the Surat factory that the English were “suspected of being confederates of the pirates and robbing the Begum’s junk.”130 Feeling the financial pinch after having dissolved Parliament in 1629, King Charles was not unwilling to accept booty seized by his subjects and so he gave Captain Richard Quail a commission “for his ranginge the seas all the world over.”131 “A smale English shipp,” stated a report from a ship at Mauritius to the London headquarters of the East India Company in 1632, “hathe been ransacking and pilligening the traders in the Redd Sea.” In October of that year, Quail captured a “Malabar junk and put seven 125 CSPD Charles I, 1639, 14:315 (15 June 1639). 126 Boies Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, 1420–1620 (New York, 1971, originally publ. 1952), 250, 252, 256. See also “A Relation in two papers of my time spent since the second of April 1612…till the 16th of August, when we disembarked out of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,” esp. 178–179 in Letters received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East, 1602–1613, ed. Frederick Charles Danvers (London, 1896). 127 Ibid., 216–217. 128 A true and almost incredible report of an Englishman (London, 1612), 16. 129 CSPM…Venice, 1610–1613, 13:13; see also 12:528 (26 April 1613). 130 CSP Colonial Series, East India, China and Japan, 1617–1621, 86 (18 December 1617). 131 The English Factories in India, 1630–1633, ed. William Foster (Oxford, 1910), 219 (8 May 1652); 226 (22 August 1632).

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Englishmen in her.”132 Three years later, in 1635, King Charles licensed Samuel Bonnell to fit out an expedition “to range the seas all the world over,” and “to make prize of all such the treasures, merchandizes, goods and commodities, which to his best abilities he shall be able to take of infidels.” Flying the colors of the Royal Navy, his ships sailed to Aden and captured two Indian junks and on one occasion, They took the nakhuda (master), and bound both his hands and tied match to his fingers, which burnt them unto the bones; and then he confessed where the money lay…Then they burnt the nakhuda, the boatswain, the merchants and the carpenters until they were near dead.133 In another commission in April of that year, the king urged Captain William Cobb To range the seas all the world over, especially from Cape Bone Esperance alongst the cost of Mallindia, the island of St. Laurence, and the coast of Ethiopia, the Red Seas, the cost of Arabia Felix, with the Gulf of Persia and the East Indies, otherwise called the cost of Cormandell, with the island of Sumatria, with the Straits of Sundy, and the iland of Java Major, with the Molucco islands, and the cost of China and Japan, with all other ilands and continents, bayes, harbors, havens, and creeks…and to make purchase and prise of all such the treasures, merchandises, goods, and commodities, which to his best ability hee shall be able to take of infidels.134 Meanwhile, captives were being held in the Mediterranean and the east Atlantic, and numerous petitions on behalf of captives were presented by their kindred, one of which was by “a thousand poor women.”135 Again, the names of the petitioners or the captives have not survived, but the fact that there were so many women petitioners was a result of the absence of governmental commitment to the liberation of captives. Across the Channel in France, king and church cooperated to bring back captives, which is why women did not have to 132 Ibid., 236. 133 The above information is taken from H.G. Rawlinson, British Beginnings in Western India, 1579–1657 (Oxford, 1920), 101–102. 134 Marsden, ed., Documents Relating to Law and Custom of the Sea, 1:493. 135 TNA SP 16/306/134 (1635). In March 1635, just under a thousand pounds were designated “for the Redeeming of the Captiues in Marocos,” TNA SP 71/12/205 or 222.

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assume such persistent roles.136 But in England, women realized that perhaps only with their petitions and clamor could they get something done for their kinsmen – although they could not but have been distressed to learn in December that an English ship was carrying “powder to sell” to the “heathenish pirates” of Algiers, where their kinsmen lay in bondage.137 This and other sales show that English traders and sea captains ignored the kings’ proclamations and were continuing to trade in ports that the Moroccan king did not want them to use. In retaliation for their cooperation with rebels, a “great number” of Britons were seized in March 1636 to Morocco.138 It is very likely that the “36 sail of English, Scottish, and Irish ships” which were taken, with “400 captives of English, Scots, and Irish,” included smugglers.139 In July, the Algerian “Turks” landed twelve miles “of Bristol, and carried away many poor Xtian men, women, and children,”140 and by August, altogether 1000 men, women and children had been seized to Salé by “the heathen.”141 These captives, villagers in small and undefended ports, were in dire need of help, and in January 1637, thirty-six men were ransomed, “all the English captives at Morocco,”142 leaving unaccounted for that “great number” that supposedly had been seized earlier. In April, money that had been raised fifteen years earlier to support the Prince Palatine in Germany, but which had not been then dispensed, was used to ransom forty Bristol captives in Algiers.143 But by May, 500 captives had been seized to Salé,144 at the same time that “more than 500 [women whose] husbands, sons, friends were in bondage to the Turks and 136 Cf. the study by Gillian Weiss of French women petitioners: “Humble Petitioners and Able Contractors: French Women as Intermediaries in the Redemption of Captives,” Les Commerce des Captifs, ed. Wolfgang Kaiser (Rome, 2008), 333–344. 137 CSPD Charles I, 1635, 8:570 (16 December 1635). 138 CSPD Charles I, 1635–36, 9:288 (11 March 1636). 139 CSPD Charles I, 1635–36, 9:303 (18 March 1636). For the names of the ships, see Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I, Report and Appendix, 575: the Dorothy of Dartmouth; “divers fishermen were taken in the western parts…40 persons”; the Larke of Topsham with 15 men and a boy; the Patience of Topsham; and the Rose garden of Topsham. 140 Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I, Report and Appendix, 291. 141 TNA SP 16/330/16 (4 August 1636). Hebb cites a letter from Edmond Percivall to his brother in October 1636 in which there is reference to “a multitude of passengers taken this summer,” Piracy 144. 142 CSPD Charles I, 1636–37, 10:440 (12 February 1637). 143 CSPD Charles I, 1637, 11:48 (no date). 144 Cenival and Brissac, Sources…Angleterre, 3:296 (19 May 1637).

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Moors of Algier and Tunis” presented a petition on their behalf.145 From 1633– 1637, Consul Frizell reported, sixty-four ships and 1524 captives had been seized by the Algerians – but it is not clear if he meant English rather than a mix of European nationals. He added, however, that his life in Algiers was in danger because of the “wrongs done to these Corsairs of Argier” by the English.146 Although William Brissenden reported 700 English captives in Algiers,147 King Charles decided to effect the release of captives in Salé and dispatched Captain William Rainsborough who liberated 302 men and women from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Muḥammad al-Aṣghar (reg. 1636–55) assured Charles that his officers had “gathered all of them [captives] that they could find and did not leave even one of those they found.”148 Rainsborough returned to England in the company of a Moroccan ambassador and his “Associate, Mr. Robert Blake.”149 The liberation followed the intervention of the fleet and of a number of British gunners who were hired to assist the rebel al-ʿAyyāshi – making it the first time that British firepower changed the course of events in a North African Atlantic region.150 The procession of the returned captives through London to meet the king was the first in English annals as “Thousands, and ten Thousand of Spectators” watched the return of their captured kinsmen.151 Why the captives had been redeemed and made to participate in a public procession may be explained by the rivalry between Charles I and Louis XIII. French processions of ransomed captives often stretched from Marseilles to Paris, with captives marching in chains to elicit sympathy, and with the religious orders that had negotiated their redemption asking spectators and relatives for money to redeem future captives.152 In the English case, a list of the names of captives was published in London, the first in the Stuart period, which included the prices paid for each 145 Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical manuscripts, Part I, Report and Appendix (London, 1874), 292. 146 TNA SP 71/1/156 (18 October 1637). 147 CSPD Charles I, 1637, 11:431 (21 September 1637). 148 TNA SP 102/1/63 reproduced in J.F.P. Hopkins, Letters from Barbary 1576–1774 (Oxford, 1982), 14 (23 September 1637). 149 TNA SP 71/13/31(20 November 1637). 150 For a thorough discussion of the “Sallee expedition,” see ch. 11 in Hebb, Piracy. 151 The Arrival and Intertainements of the Embassador, Alkaid Jaurar Ben Abdella, with his Associate, Mr. Robert Blake (London, 1637), 9. For the place of origin of the ransomed captives, see the discussion and map in the Introduction above. 152 As Weiss points out, there were “at least forty-three slave processions organized from the seventeenth century until 1785” in France, Captives and Corsairs, 254, n. 62. There were also processions in Salamanca and Valencia, 254, n. 64.

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captive – as proof of the king’s generosity. Again, printing the names was in direct imitation of the redemptionists in France who had printed lists of names of ransomed captives a few years earlier.153 Such was the celebration of this unprecedented group of captives, the largest in one transaction, that Edmund Waller composed a poem in which he drew on classical (Jason and Theseus) and biblical (the Prophet Samuel) images to praise the king, who had “Poor captives manumize’d” (“Of Salley”).154 Soon after, the aforementioned Robert Blake freed thirteen captives, followed by “40 Christian captives,” “180 Christians” and then seventy-three more.155 In November 1637, King Charles decided to “call unto his subjects for [Ship]money” to support his effort on behalf of the captives.156 Having found that the release of captives from Salé had brought him popularity, he ordered his Privy Council to consult with the Turkey Company or members of Trinity House and advise him in regard to the best way to reduce the danger of English piracy and to bring back the captives who were being seized in retaliation.157 Charles was eager to find a way of funding the ransoms from money raised by the merchants, and not from his own coffers. In May 1638, twelve men were captured from the Mary, at the same time that a petition on behalf of distressed wives of “many” captives in Algiers and Tunis was presented to the king and to the Privy Council.158 The situation seemed so dire that preachers, giving up on royal intervention, turned directly to their congregations: “[H]ave pittie,” preached William Gouge in October 1638, “have pitty on those that are in bondage under adversaries…taken captive by Turkes. Among other evidences of your pitty affoord some helpe to redeeme them.”159 Finding that he had to act, the king issued a proclamation on 25 November 1638 “providing for the relief of Maimed, Shipwreckt, and other distressed Sea-Men, their Widows, and Children.” Trinity House and ship captains, aware of the unwillingness of seamen to serve on ships that were in danger of captivity, urged that money be collected from “every owner and master of a ship trading from the Thames (except the East 153 See Les Noms et qualitez de quatre-vingt-dix-sept chrestiens captifs, racheptez cette année par les Religieux de l’ordre de Nostre Dame de la Merci (Paris, 1634); La Rédemption des captifs faite par les religieux de l’ordre de la Sainte-Trinité dit les Mathurins. Ensemble l’ordre de la processions d’iceux captifs faite à Paris le 20 mai 1635 (Paris, 1635). 154 Edmund Waller, Poems (London, 1645), 68. 155 CSPD Charles I, 1637, 11:475 (13 October 1637). 156 Report on the Manuscripts of the Family of Gawdy, formerly of Norfolk (London, 1885), 166. 157 CSPD Charles I, 1637–1638, 12:15 (10 December 1637). 158 CSPD Charles I, 1637–38, 12:477–478 (31 May 1638) for references to other women’s petitions. 159 A Recovery from Apostacy (London, 1639), 62.

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India who have a scheme of their own),” from every man who worked on a ship, from the carpenter to the master’s mate and from the surgeon to the gunner. On returning from a journey, and within six days, each was to contribute to a fund that would be “secured in a chest with five lock” and which could be distributed by members of Trinity House to the “Poor distressed women and children dependent on sailors lost.”160 The king issued the proclamation knowing that the money to be spent on seamen was not his own – as he prepared to confront the army from the north in the first of the Bishops’ War. Sometime that year, merchants in Bristol and Exeter petitioned the king for protection of their ships and the redemption of their seamen who had been captured in “great numbers.” The king passed the petition to a committee consisting of Sir Thomas Roe, Sir Paul Pindar, Sir Kenelm Digby and the “brethren of the Trinity house” and asked them to consider the best manner in which to confront piracy. It was also sent to James Frizell in Algiers. This petition, along with two sequel texts, is valuable in showing the difficulties in ransoming captives.161 A few options were suggested for confronting pirates. First was to pay the £40,000 needed for ransoming all the captives; it was rejected on the ground that such a solution would encourage the seizure of more captives in the future. The second option was to consolidate commercial treaties, but, as one proviso noted, many capitulations had been signed and none had been honored, for “to theyr fayth nothing can be trusted.” A treaty with the Muslims, therefore, was not, and should not be proposed because the Grand Signior did not have full control over Algiers or Tunis. The two remaining options showed the serious conflict of interest that deterred ransoming. The third option was for the Royal Navy to intervene and attack Alexandria When the Turks’ ships were there laden, and shold make prize of all men and goods; and should afterwards range the coast of Barbary, land among the villages, and make prisoners of all men, women, and children, and then return to Algiers and Tunis, and there exchange the prisoners taken, and so redeem English captives, if they refuse to exchange, then to go over to Majorca, Sardinia, and Spain, and to sell the turks for money. Such a solution was doomed to failure, it was argued, because of the kind of ships which the North Africans used, “light, always cleane and fitted as well to 160 Bibliotheca Lindesiana, vol. 5, 25 November 1638. 161 TNA SP 71/1/105 ff., 115 ff., and 135 ff. No dates are written, but the same texts appear also in SP Domestic with January 1638 as date: see CSPD Charles I, 1637–1638, 12: 192 (25 and 26 January 1638).

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fly as to fight…they could (except surprised in a straight) choose theyr Party.” The fourth option urged sending a fleet for three years in the Mediterranean which would attack North African outposts, kidnap inhabitants, sell them in Spain, and continue doing so until the inhabitants finally begged for peace. This option too was rejected on the ground that it was too expensive and “full of hazard,” unless the king agreed (quite unlikely) to use some of his own ships, and unless “all the Maritime Cittyes, Towns and Countryes will contribute in such a measure.” Trying to keep the king out of any solution that entailed royal expenditure, the author urged instead that British privateers be granted “letters of mark” to attack the Ottomans and “seeke their owne revenge at theyr owne charge. For neither the East nor the West Indyes doe yeeld richer bootys then the Mediterranian.” In due course, the writer continued, notable Turks would be captured who would then be exchanged with the British captives. The Grand Turk would be in such desperate need of victuals that he would not be able to last for more than forty days, after which he would sue for peace and invite English traders back. This last option, which might have been agreeable to the king, worried the traders, especially those in the West Country who would subsequently be attacked by the “Turkish” pirates often cruising near their southern and western shores. So another option was advanced for traders to boycott the Turks and no longer trade with them. Such a boycott might force the Grand Signior to control his pirates (and those of the regencies) more effectively. But the trading companies complained saying that should trade be discontinued, a large amount of money that accrued to the national/royal treasury from customs would be lost. At this point, the earl of Portland, the Lord Treasurer, insisted that other aldermen and merchants of the Levant Company be apprised of the options since the proposed courses of action would “interrupt the trade and…abate the Customes.” A disagreement ensued in which Roe gave an ultimatum stating that he was not “an expert in matters of the Customes,” and that the “burthen would be too heauie” on the merchants. Despite interventions from some of the aldermen, differences remained, as a result of which the “business fell, and the Deputyes of the West Countrye departed.” The king, the merchant companies, and the “western” traders could not agree: their interests clashed. No strategy was thus proposed for confronting piracy or for ransoming captives. On 11 August 1639, William Okeley was captured by Algerians (from where he and four others escaped five years later).162 A petition by captives presented 162 William Okeley, Eben-Ezer: or, a Small Monument of Great Mercy (London, 1676). In the account, he mentions that there were “three or fourscore” compatriots, Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 159.

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sometime early in the Restoration period mentioned that in the fourteenth year of “his late Majties Reigne” (1639), there were “many thousand of his Majties good & loving subjects” in captivity who had been skilful mariners – and were thus “imployed” by the Algerians “against other his good Subjects,” proving thereby “very prejudiciall…& hurtfull to the Trade & merchandising of his Majties dominions.”163 Evidently, many of the English seamen had joined the pirates and in February 1640, they seized “Several English ships” sailing to Virginia.164 At this juncture, the king went ahead and levied ship-money, much to the displeasure of many members of Parliament who felt that he had not been providing adequate “defence of the coast” (Proclamation 20 August 1640): as an anonymous reporter wrote on 20 September, from April 1629 “to the day,” 2,843 captives and 149 ships had been seized by the Barbary Corsairs.165 The writer had very precise information, which, he explained, he had received from one “Mr. Tho: Ramsy,” who listed some of the names of the ships, when they were seized, and the number of men on board each ship (the list has not survived). Whether these were the only ships that had been seized in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic is not clear, but the number suggests that over a period of eleven years, an average of 258 men had been captured annually. Trinity House records do not mention these numbers, although they do mention seizure of Britons by European enemies.166 With the start of the Bishops’ Wars, and with the navy assisting the Parliamentary coalition in laying siege to royal seaports,167 there was little protection of merchants at sea or on land. In late July, sixty men, women and children were seized from the shore near Penzance by Algerian pirates,168 but in August, two “Turkish” ships were burnt by the English and the third seized by the Dunkikers.169 An October document listed the “names of the shipmates and the number of their men who have been taken prisoners since May 18, 1639, Total 957” (but there were no names).170 This high number may explain the 1 May 1641 “Suppression of Pirates Bill” which enacted 163 Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C 366, fos 283r–284r. 164 CSPM…Venice, 1640–42, 25:18. 165 The Manuscripts of the Duke of Northumberland, microfilm 285 at the British Library, 219v. Reproduced with permission of the Northumberland Estate. 166 See for instance William Appleby and “3 others,” Trinity House of Deptford, ed. Harris, 40. 167 Julian S. Corbett, England in the Mediterranean (New York, 1904), 1:183. 168 Playfair, Scourge of Christendom, 54. 169 CSPD Charles I, 1640, 16:654 (31 August 1640). In September, there were captured “Turks” in Dover “that had taken an English ship and were afterwards taken again by a Dunkirk one,” CSPD Charles I, 1640–1641, 17:38 (10 September 1640). 170 TNA SP 16/469/44 (3 October 1640).

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“that all & every of his Maiesties Subiectes by virtue of this Act…take and surprise by all meanes whatsoever, all Turkish, Moorish, and other Pyrates, whatsoever, theire Shippes Goodes Prizes and persons, and to Convert and freelie to dispose to theire best advantage and profit, all the said Turkes, Moores, and Other Pyrates.”171 Parliament, having been recalled but then dissolved by the king (the Short Parliament), included members with large investments in sea trade, and they took action: in November, a bill was drawn to appropriate “£70,000 or £80,000 of Customs, per annum…to be employed against the Algerine pirates.”172 This sum was the largest on record that had ever been budgeted against the North African pirates, but it was, again, an attempt to remove the burden of ransom from the king – which is why it was “intituled,” and the Commons “engrossed” the “Act for the Redemption of Captives” (3 December 1641).173 Throughout November and December, the Commons debated the “Grand Remonstrance,” expressing concern about the “Turkish” pirates and the insecurity of the seas (clauses 18, 19, 20, and 24) – and about the failure of the king to protect the merchantships of the Levant trade.174 And so finally, and for the first time in Britain, an Act of Parliament was published which conceded that “many thousands of [his] Majesties good and loving subjects with theire Ships and Goods have of late time beene surprised and taken at Sea (as they were in theire lawfull trading) by Turkish Moorish and other Pirats and some of them to free themselves of the cruell and barbarous usage of those Pirats have renounced the Christian Religion and turned turks.”175 Ransoming captives was no longer to depend on the generosity of church goers or the whim of donors: it was to be a responsibility of Parliament. How many “thousands” is not clear. Henry Robinson mentioned three thousand, Edmund Waller mentioned four to five thousand, while an anonymous writer gave the figure of 1160 “able seamen taken” along with “almost 2000 others.”176 There is no doubt that the number was high, which is why 171 The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, Addenda, 1514–1714, ed. Maurice F. Bond (London, 1962), 11:248. 172 CSPD Charles I, 1641–1643, 18: 159 (5 November 1641). 173 The Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. Willson Havelock Coates (New Haven, 1942), 227. 174 John Forster, The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, November and December, 1641 (London, 1860), 226–228. 175 The Statutes of the Realm (London, 1819, rep. 1963), 5:134–135. The text is reproduced in Matar, Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainesville, Fl., 2005), appendix 1. For a study of Parliament’s dealing with the crisis of captivity, see chapter 2 in idem. 176 Henry Robinson, Libertas or Reliefe to the English Captives in Algier (London, 1642), 4. Robinson was a member of the Levant Company and therefore had firsthand

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Parliament needed to act. It may well be that the French decision to build up the fleet against the North Africans a few years earlier embarrassed the English Parliament into action.177 And there was fear at the growing might of the Ottomans on the Continent. In the face of all this danger, and with anger expressed by merchants about economic decline, the king sent a letter to the Great Turk in 1642 expressing hope that trade would not be disrupted.178 A pamphlet describing how the Turks had overrun Poland “with an almost invincible Army” was also published that year.179 Busy with wars at home, and having removed from London to Oxford, the king had other concerns than the captives. But the merchants were not satisfied with a mere letter and wanted firmer action, which they believed Parliament could undertake. Henry Robinson summarized the discussions in the petition above (had he been involved?) and published in that same year, Libertas, or Reliefe to the English Captives in Algier, in which he urged Parliament to take naval action against the pirates. Force would prove more effective than paying ransom.180 But nothing was implemented, and in October 1642, Moroccan pirates seized four English ships (four sailors later escaped),181 and in April 1643, “Turkish Pirates” carried off the husbands of seven women petitioners.182 After the Civil Wars started (the battle of Edgehill in October 1642), no military or naval action against the North Africans was possible since efforts were concentrated on the home front. But captives continued to be seized, and the Lords and Commons quickly passed an ordinance on 24 January 1645 “for the Raising of Moneys for Redemption of Distressed Captives.”183 The only option for Parliament was to pay the ransoms of the captives who were badly needed

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information; Edmund Waller, Works, 271, quoted in Charles Sumner, White Slavery in the Barbary States (Boston, 1847), 17 n; TNA SP 16/36/97, sometime at the end of the 1630s. See the Déclaration royale justifiant par le danger barbaresque l’etablissement d’une nouvelle escadre de galères (Paris, 1637). King Charles His Letter to the Great Turk (London, 1642). News Certain and Terrible from the Kingdom of Poland Being the Copie of a Letter, sent by Jerome Nicholas to a friend of his, dwelling at Gravesend (London, 1642). The full title continues: Briefly discoursing how such as are in slavery may be soonest set at Liberty, others preserved therein, and the Great Turke reduc’d to renue and keepe the Peace inviolate, to a great enlargement of Trade and Priviledges than ever the English Nation hitherto enjoy’d in Turkie (London, 1642). Newes from Sally: of A Strange Delivery of Foure English Captives (London, 1642) in Vitkus, ed. Piracy, 121–124. Journal of the House of Commons (London, 1785), 3:55 (21 April 1643). An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons (London, 1644/45). See also the Journal of the House of Lords, 3: 718, 9 December 1644 when discussions were held about it.

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for the fleet.184 But the Levant Company, which kept the money, delayed giving it to the navy.185 So ransoming captives was assumed by individual initiative: in April 1645, Captain William Hodges sailed to Algiers and brought back over thirty captives – many of whom borrowed money from him to pay their ransom.186 Three of the captives were women. In August, “Barbary” pirates took “prisoners, including about 200 women” from Cornwall.187 This action should have raised alarm and anger since the victims were women – with all the anxiety about their honor and chastity. Strangely, there was no public reaction and no momentum toward ransoming them. Perhaps at times of war, and with the elation over the June 1645 victory at Naseby, there was much more at stake than the plight of captured women; or else, the number was highly exaggerated. No petition by men was presented on behalf of the Cornwall women, but men were important, and a year later, in July 1646, “divers” women petitioned on behalf of twenty-seven of their kinsmen in captivity in Morocco.188 To show the “sincerity of the intentions of a State” through “publick actions,” Parliament finally agreed to appoint Edmond Cason to negotiate ransom.189 He succeeded, bringing back 246 men, women, and children from Algiers and Tunis,190 but leaving behind two men who petitioned (and had their petitions printed, unlike the women) in September of that year. In his report, however, Cason mentioned “650 and upwards, besides above an 100 in the ships of this place, now at Candia.”191 Cason presented to Parliament a list of the names of the captives and their ransom prices; he also explained that he had sought to liberate more the “Masters of ships and Carpenters, Caulkers, Coopers, Sailemakers, Chirugions, and others” than the “many women and children.”192 Again, the usefulness of the captives was 184 Thus the numerous ordinances “for the continuing of the Argier Duty, for the Releasing of distressed Captives” (12 November 1646; 22 April 1647): Journal of the House of Commons, 4:719 and 5:152. 185 CSPD Charles I, 1644, 19:115 (13 April 1644). 186 BL MS ADD 5489, fos 87v–88r. 187 Nehemiah Wallington, Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in the Reign of Charles I (London, 1869), 2:266; see also CSPM…Venice, 1643–1647, 27:209 (5 September 1645). 188 Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I. Report and Appendix, 38. 189 “From ye Committee of ye Nauy and Customes,” BL ADD MS 4191, fo. 20. See also Journal of the House of Commons, 4:243 (15 August 1645). 190 A Relation of the whole proceedings concerning the Redemption of Captives in Argier and Tunis (London, 1647). 191 Ibid., 11. 192 Ibid., 12.

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instrumental in effecting their liberation – at a time, Cason complained, when other countries such as Spain and France, had “their protections performed, when they come to clear slaves from this place.”193 England was lagging behind, and although Cason was pleased at his success, he was eager to alert the “High Court of Parliament of England” (as in the Pasha’s letter) about the need for more ransom missions. In the following year, the Charles seized an Algerian ship, despite the peace between England and Algiers – as a result of which the Algerians captured a number of Britons from a mooring ship, the Talbot, and kept them until they were ransomed.194 With the peace broken by the English, the Algerians captured T.S. and eighteen other Englishmen in 1648.195 In his twenty-four years of rule, King Charles failed to resolve the crisis of captives. Like his father, he did not wish his treasury to be responsible for ransoming captives, for he saw them as the financial responsibility of the trading companies that hired them, not the royal coffers. While King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu were expending money, sometimes their own, to ransom French captives and thereby appearing as the liberators of their subjects, Charles I assumed no such role, except perhaps in 1637.196 Neither he nor his church of which he was head showed the kind of public concern for captives that the French monarch and his religious orders did across the Channel and that translated into direct financial commitment. Nor did he, like his French counterpart, employ foreigners to help in the ransoming of his subjects, as in the case of David Pallache, a Moroccan Jew, who assisted in the release of French captives. Rather, when Charles did use the services of Samuel Pallache, David’s brother, they were for trade, not liberation.197 The best evidence of the difference in the French from the English attitude towards captives appears in the difference in the extensive reporting by the redemptionist priest, Father Pierre Dan, and the slim account by Cason. Dan’s account was first published in 1637, then 1642, 1646, and the last in 1649, by which time it had reached just under 500 pages serving as a compendium of information about captives and captors.198 There was nothing like it in Caroline England in regard to details 193 194 195 196

Ibid., 13. Documents relating to the Law and Custom of the Sea, ed. Marsden, 1:532. The Adventures of (Mr. T.S.) (London, 1670). But according to Weiss, Richelieu bluffed in 1630 about distributing 20,000 livres for the ransom effort, Captives and Corsairs, 45. 197 See the study of Pallache in García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe, trans. Martin Beagles (Baltimore, 2003). 198 For names in the 1649 edition, see 150–151, and 225–226.

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about names, numbers, conditions, and ransom negotiations. In this respect, King Charles’s fall from power can partly be credited to his failure to recognize the magnitude of the crisis of captives. With no protection from the Royal fleet, and with the rise in English piracy and North African counterattacks, British seamen were seized with impunity, leaving in their wake devastated families, bankrupt investors, and angry Parliamentarians. And despite the control over the printing press, which prevented the publication of captivity accounts (until 1640), stories must have circulated widely, projecting to families and parishes an image of an irresolute and uncaring king – a far cry from the image of Queen Elizabeth decades earlier who had been thanked in published accounts for effecting the liberation of her subjects. It may well be that as King Charles climbed the scaffold, there were men and women among the crowds who still blamed him for ignoring their kin in the bagnios of North Africa.199

The Interregnum Period, 1649–1660

Soon after the execution of the king, captives in Salé petitioned the Commons for help as a result of which, on 23 May 1649, a collection was “ordered to be made” for the redemption of “English prisoners” there.200 The following year, “An Act for the redemption of captives” was passed by (what was left of a purged) Parliament, confirming government’s responsibility by re-imposing and increasing the “duty on Goods and Merchandizes,”201 and in November 1651, the Committee of the Navy designated “Ten or Fifteen thousand Pounds” for the redemption of English captives in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli.202 Whether the money was raised is not clear as there is no reference to high numbers of returning captives in the existing records. In July 1652, forty captives were seized near the Dardanelles, an unusual occurrence but attesting to the expanding range of English piracy,203 and in December 1652, there was some 199 For a discussion of the political implication of the captivity crisis on the fate of the king, see my “The Barbary Corsairs, King Charles I and the Civil War,” The Seventeenth Century, 16 (2001): 239–259. 200 TNA SP 25/62 – the first volume has no pagination, see entry under “Sallee.” See the second volume, fo. 348. 201 An Act for the redemption of captives. Whereas the Parliament formerly taking into consideration the redemption of captives, taken by Turkish, Moorish, and other Pirates…(London, 1650). 202 Journal of the House of Commons, 7:45. 203 CSPM…Venice, 1647–1652, 23:259 (16 July 1652). See also the reference to English slaves in the sea voyage of The Travel Diary of Robert Balgrave, Levant Merchant (1647–1656), ed. Michael G. Brennan (London, 1999), 69.

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haggling over payments for the “50 or 60” captives in Tripoli and Tunis.204 Earlier that year, “The petition of Captain Edward Curtis, commander of the guinea frigate, and of the wives of the captives at Tripoli and Algiers, [was] referred to the Admiralty,” followed by other petitions.205 The petitions made no impact. As in previous decades, the seizure of captives did not reduce the brisk trade between Britons and the ports of “Barbary.” With many European and Atlantic seaports banning the English because of the execution of the king, London merchants intensified their trade with North Africa and the Levant. After the Navigation Act passed in 1651, which restricted the transport of goods from North America, North Africa or Asia exclusively to English ships, and with the “doubling of the merchant as well as the naval fleet between 1649 and 1653,”206 Britons saw an opportunity for increased profit. From June 1652 to April 1653, three shipments of military hardware, “birding pieces,” and one of “staves for lances” were sent to Algiers.207 In January 1653, the Committee for the Redemption of Captives decided to ransom all the captives, but only if threequarters of the required ransom sum was paid in “good cloth.”208 Export of merchandise and ransom went together: both Cromwell and his Lord Admiral Robert Blake recognized the importance of linking trade with the North African region to diplomatic overtures, backed by strong naval presence. Notwithstanding the growth in British naval power, captives continued to be taken, sometimes because of the duplicity of sea captains. In 1653, an English ship sailing from Tunis was seized by the Maltese who took the Turkish passengers on board captive. But the Tunisians believed that the English captain had planned earlier to sell the Turks to the Maltese, and so repercussions ensued: the resident English factor in the city was “incompased in the Streets, with (the rest) crying Justice, stone the Dogs, who have sold our Fathers, Brothers, Kindred, and Friends.” Samuel Boothouse, who sought to defuse the 204 CSPD Commonweath, 1652–53, 5:44 (20 December 1652). 205 CSPD Commonwealth, 1651–1652, 4:484 (9 November 1652). See also CSPD Commonwealth 1652–1653, 5:342 (21 May 1653) and the women’s petitions of 7 September 1653, CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–1653, 5:136 and 31 December 1653, CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–1654, 6:319 about forty captives in Salé. The response of the Council of State was to urge the ransoming of captives because there was money that had been generated by the “Custom House” for that purpose. 206 Jonathan Scott, When the Waves Ruled Britannia: Geography and Political identities, 1500– 1800 (Cambridge, 2011), 75. 207 CSPD Commonwealth, 1651–52, 4:301, 548 (6 January 1652), 552 (19 February 1652), 557 (9 April 1652). 208 CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–53, 5:119 (24 January 1653).

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crisis, found himself having to negotiate not only with the Tunisians but also with the Maltese “By reason of the Captivity of an English Ship by the Friers Hospitalers, commonly called Cavaliers of Malta.”209 Also, the wives of captives in Tripoli petitioned Cromwell: The Captives in Tripoli Petition To his Excellency the Lord General Cromwell and the Humble Councell The humble petition of diverse poore women whose husbands and children are slaves in Tripoly. Sheweth That the petitioners have been humble Supplicants to the Parliament for the space of 2 years and upwards for the release of their husbands and children out of that Turkish thraldome, in which tyme it pleased their honors to appoint a duty of one per cent should be raised out of the custome house London for their Redemption. Yet soe it is that the petitioners husbands e children still remaines slaves in that place although there be sufficient quantitie of money long since gathered for that use which is hietherto imployed therein howbeit their Honors were pleased in the yeare 1651 to order that the ship Worcester should goe upon that design and carry the said money for their Redemption which was accordingly put on board her and in the Downs 5 months with ye Mony in her. But the differences with the Hollanders falling out at that instance of tyme, the said ship was stayed by their honors’ demand and the moneys taken out again and put into the Castles of Deale, and she imployed in the service against the Enemy. Soe that your petitioners have not other hopes to free their husbands and children out of the great and unspeakable miserys, but to have recourse to your honors. They therefore most humbly beseach your honors out of tender compassion to the soules and bodyes of these poore captives to take this charitable worke into your pious consideration, and to take some course by the way of Leghorn, to your Agent there for the speedy releasment of those poore Soules and your poore petitioners And they shall prayer.210 Unfortunately, there are no names or numbers on the petition (nor signatories at the bottom), only frustration at the failure of government to fulfill its 209 Samuel Boothouse, A Brief Remonstrance of Several National Injuries and Indignities (London, 1653), 2. 210 TNA SP 18/36/84 (16 May 1653).

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promises because of the war with Holland. But, as the petitioners noted, the money had been made available a year before the beginning of the war (July 1652); ransoming captives had not been a priority and the ship, like many others after the Navigation Act, was sent to fight against the Dutch. The captives languished and the English agent in Livorno, without money, was unable to help them. In August 1653, twenty-two captives were ransomed by Robert Blackborne from “Sally,” leaving sixty behind, as he reported.211 Although Parliament’s Rump had been dissolved in April, Cromwell and the new Barebones Parliament insisted on controlling the ransom process because of fraudulent collections that were sometimes made in the name of captives.212 In September, and perhaps hopeful that the new administration would be active on behalf of captives, women petitioned “for their relations, now slaves in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli,” the same captives who had petitioned earlier in the year.213 Because of the need for money, the Barebones Parliament renewed the Act for the Redemption of Captives.214 But it may be that because the captives were not English (Irish and Scottish), there was little interest in ransoming them – at the same time that trade and other business transactions were briskly continuing.215 At this point, Cromwell decided to deploy his navy, strengthened by ships that had been built as part of his new Mediterranean (and soon Atlantic) strategy. He sent Admiral Robert Blake in a show of force against the North African regencies of Algiers and Tunis, at the head of the “most powerful English force which had sailed into the Mediterranean since the Crusades.”216 After attacking Tunis and destroying nine of its ships, Blake continued to Algiers where his fleet of twenty-six ships forced the Diwan to agree to peace with Cromwell, now Lord Protector. Blake, a very religious man as his letters to the admiralty and to John Thurloe show, complained that his instructions had not been very clear, and that he had not been given sufficient provisions (bread especially) to enable him to lay siege to the port city.217 Still, he managed to negotiate a treaty with the 211 TNA SP 18/39/92 (12 August 1653). 212 CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–54, 6:86 (12 August 1653). As early as 21 March 1633, King Charles I had issued a “Proclamation against the making Collections without License under the Great Seale” precisely because of “forged certificates.” 213 CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–54, 6:137 (7 September 1653). 214 Ordinance of 24 December 1653: Acts and Ordinances, 2:824. 215 CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–1653, 5:387 (6 June 1653). 216 Sumner, White Slavery in the Barbary States, 18. 217 The Letters of Robert Blake, 293 (14/24 March 1655).

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Diwan that also included non-English captives.218 The published version of the treaty, with numerous references to God and His divine will, included the message from Cromwell to “the Turks” in which he demanded the “Restauration of the English Captives,” after which the Algerians would become “Associates with the English, and would not permit a man of our Nation to be carryed captive into thraldome.”219 In the course of negotiations, a complication had arisen in regard to “national” identifies: the Algerians thought that the Irish and the Scots were not included in any treaties signed with the English, since in his letters Blake spoke exclusively of “the English that they have slaves.”220 So, and reversing an earlier attitude, an article was added to explain “That all English men, scotch, or Irish, seruing for wages in any strangers ships, were to be slaues” but “That Irish, & Scotch were to bee understood to inioy ye benefit of these articles, equally wth ye English.”221 A letter from Algiers to Edmond Cason on 17 February 1655 reported that all English captives seized on non-English ships had been released because the Algerians “have a firm league with the English, and do hope to enjoy it to the world’s end.”222 Blake sailed back to England and up the Thames with sixteen ships he had captured, “richly laden with the Effects he had received for Satisfaction and Damages, from the Princes and Powers on each Side the Mediterranean…to make a grateful Spectacle to the People, who were told such Ships were coming, and with rich Freight.”223 There was elation at the sea victories and at the role that England was beginning to assume in the commercial and naval preeminence in the Mediterranean. The English fleets under Blake (and the Dutch under de Ruyter) were more powerful than anything the North Africans had encountered, until Colbert’s French fleet joined the fray. From the mid-1650s on, the North Africans did not score a single victory against a European fleet, and although they continued to overcome small 218 See the entry on 10 April 1654: “The Turks in Algiers do consent to deliver up all the English that they have slaves,” The Letters of Robert Blake, together with Supplementary Documents, ed. J.R. Powell (London, 1937), 318. But in November 1654, the Venetian resident in Florence reported that the reason why the English had been able to liberate their captives was because they had also sent a shipload of munitions to Algiers, CSPM…Venice, 1653–1654, 29:280 (28 November 1654). 219 A Message sent from His Highness the Lord Protector, to the Great Turke, with His Demands and Proposals; and the releasing of the English Captives (London, 1654). 220 The Letters of Robert Blake, 318. 221 TNA SP 103 (2 May 1655). Pagination is irregular. 222 A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq. ed. Thomas Birch, 7 vols. (London, 1742), 3:157. 223 The History and Life of Robert Blake, Esq; of Bridgewater (1740?), 85.

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ships, both of pirates and merchants, they could neither fight off the new superior fleets nor defend their coastal towns from bombardment. In April, 1655, George Castle and other captives in Algiers wrote to the Committee for the Redemption of Captives petitioning for help.224 By 1656, customs revenues from trade became closely tied to ransom payment as the designation of the “Committee for Preservation of Customs and Redemption of Captives” shows.225 In February 1656, John Weale mentioned seventy captives who were to be ransomed,226 and so, fresh from victory in the Mediterranean, Blake turned to the Atlantic and prepared to attack Salé. But the beginning of the war with Spain in that same month forced him back and since the captives were needed to serve on the British fleet, money was sent to ransom all “English, Scotch, and Irish.”227 In August, Blake returned to Salé and effected the release of twenty-two captives, paying in merchandize instead of hard currency. There was only one complication: the Saletian governor, ‘Abdullah al-Dallā’ī, refused to release two babies “born of English parents here” and insisted on keeping them.228 Perhaps recalling how the children of his Andalusian/Morisco forebears who had been expelled from Spain in 1609– 1614 were kept to be raised as Christians, the Saletians decided to treat the children of European captives as their own and to raise them as Muslims.229 Cromwell took personal interest in the plight of captives, and when a Venetian envoy arrived in London in December 1656, he asked him to exchange 150 British captives with Turkish captives in Venetian hands.230 The Venetian refused because English sea captains were openly helping the Algerians who were sending military supplies to the Ottoman forces laying siege to Crete. As early as December 1649, one “Capt. Hughes” had received “pay from the Turks to go with his English ships to Canea in Candia.”231 In 1653, the Venetians hoped that Cromwell would lead a “Protestant crusade against the ‘Turk’,” and in late 224 225 226 227

228 229

230 231

CSPD Commonwealth, 1655, 8:138 (24 April 1655). See the reference to it in 1654, CSPD Commonwealth, 1656–57, 10:165 (20 November 1656). J.R. Powell, ed., The Journal of John Weale, 1654–1656 (London, 1894), 156. CSPD Commonwealth, 1655–56, 9:129 (22 January 1656); CSPD Commonwealth, 1656–57, 10:49. A letter of 27 February 1658 mentions the figure of 213 1/3 dollars “a head,” CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:307. Cenival and Brissac, Sources…Angleterre, 3:572 (18 August 1656). By the eighteenth century, children born to British parents in foreign territory were regarded as subjects of the crown, and if they were captured, the crown would seek to liberate them. Thus was the case of the “subjects of his Britannick Majesty born in Luxenburg” who were released on 13 October 1731 (TNA SP 71/7/199). CSPM…Venice, 1655–1656, 30:292 (15 December 1656). CSPD Commonwealth, 1649–1650, 1:425 (4 December 1649).

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1655, they appealed to him in their war against the Ottomans.232 But much as they pleaded, the Lord Protector prevaricated since he could benefit from the revenue generated by assisting the Algerians. This cooperation may well explain why in fifteen Ottoman galleys captured by the Maltese in the eastern Mediterranean between 1652 and 1661, only one English captive was found – among 2,483.233 In the context of this close cooperation between the Ottomans and Cromwell, William Davenant wrote the first opera in England which showed the Ottoman Sultan in favorable light: The Siege of Rhodes (part I).234 The Mediterranean setting of the opera reflected current British military and commercial activity there. In April 1656, just a few months before Davenant finished writing, Cromwell had sent a cordial letter to the “Councel of State & war in the city of Algiers” (most likely in the person of Ahmed VI, the Dey). He thanked the members for the “honourable respect” they had shown, and rejoiced “that we have a league with just men.” So cordial had relations become since Blake’s threats that Cromwell thanked them for “the kinde reception & refreshment which you have given to our fleet & ships sayling to & fro, or trading in your ports.” He concluded by promising to “be usefull to you we offer in like manner on our part, & recommend you to god.”235 That a Puritan should express such warmth to a Muslim is noteworthy: it could well be that he admired Islamic religiosity, sobriety, and indeed, “Puritanism.” It is not known whether Cromwell had read the Qur’ān which had been translated into English in 1649; in a letter written in June 1656, he praised the Algerians for being “in all things…men loving righteousnesse, hating wrong, & observing faithfulnesse in covenant.”236 The words recall a verse describing Muslims (Qur’ān: 3:110). Still, even if this was a fortuitous echo, it shows an open spirit towards his counterparts. After the defeat of the Ottoman fleet by the Venetians on 26 June 1656, Cromwell realized that the Ottomans would have to rely heavily on English ships. Despite their losses, the Turks still held control of the eastern Mediterranean, and Cromwell was fully aware that there was “too much English 232 Daniel Goffman, Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 1642–1660 (Seattle and London, 1998), 191, 192. 233 See the table in Michel Fontenay, “Les Galères de l’Islam,” in Quand voguaient les galères (Madrid, 1990), 249 in 234–251. 234 For a study of this play, see Matthew Birchwood, “Turning to the Turk: Collaboration and conversion in William Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes,” in Staging Islam in England: Drama and culture, 1640–1685 (Cambridge, 2007), 96–128. 235 Wilber Cortez Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1937–47), 4:149–150 (? April 1656). 236 Ibid., 4:184–85.

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capital in the Mediterranean [that would be] vulnerable to Turkish attack.”237 In late August 1656, just about the time The Siege was performed, he met with the Venetian envoy who again implored him to discontinue cooperation with the “Turks.” But no change in English policy was announced,238 since Cromwell’s cooperation was paying off. But in March 1657, “divers English, including Geo. Davies” were seized by “Turkish galleys”239 – although a September report mentioned that they had been seized by “Turkish and Spanish pirates” – very likely Spaniards disguised as “Turks.”240 In May 1657, Cromwell received in London a “Turk from Algiers” who confirmed “good relations and trade,” especially after it was known that he had facilitated the escape of “Some English slaves.”241 Soon after in June, money to be collected from customs for ransoming captives was raised from one fourth to one half per cent (“two shillings in every twenty shillings”).242 The “Tonnage and Poundage” Act of that month confirmed the need for money to redeem “Captives of this Common-wealth, taken at Sea, by Turkish, Moorish, or other Pirates,” particularly the Spanish who had attacked English ships after Cromwell’s 1656 seizure of Jamaica.243 By now, Cromwell had determined that the best way to circumvent captivity and to increase trade with the North Africans lay in signing peace treaties. Although such treaties could only be reached after captives had been ransomed, and although the expenses for ransoming the captives were high, it was apparent that the amount of trade with the North African regencies and with Moroccan ports would offset all money spent. Given the internecine conflict and decentralization of power in Morocco, in August 1657, a treaty was signed with the governor of Tetuan which ensured the safety of all Britons who might find themselves “cast away” upon the North African shore; it also stated that Muslim sailors and merchants could have, in the same way that Britons had had for decades, “free liberty to buy and ship whatever provision or other necessaryes they shall have occasion of, from any part belonging to the said dominions.”244 Although Robert Blake died in August 1657, who “Sometimes to make the 237 Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman, quoted by Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (New York, 1998), 154. 238 Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4:347. 239 CSPD Commonwealth, 1656–1657, 10:313 (17 March 1657). 240 CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–1658, 11:95 (10 September 1657). 241 Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4:515 and n. 51. 242 Acts and Ordinances, 2:129. 243 Acts and Ordinances, 2:1129–1130 (26 June 1657). In August, five captives were ransomed with money from “the Algiers duty,” CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–1658, 11:58. 244 Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4:919.

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Turkish Pyrates know/By Fire and Sword what ‘tis to be thy fo’,”245 the initiatives that he had launched under Cromwell resulted in the treaty of February 1658 with Tunis and the immediate release of seventy-two captives (including three women).246 The treaty included the same articles as the treaty with Tetuan.247 But, soon after the Tunisians returned to piracy and in March 1658, they captured five ships and sold their captives as follows: “[T]hose Turks that haue English captiues In Tunis Mahomet Cheleby The Bey The Kings ? Seede Yones Hamett Cheleby Hasan Rice Moratt ? Two Andaluses hath each of the one Stamerat Hamett ? Seede Aley Haxta Hogee

7 Men, 3 Women 1 Man, 2 Women 4 Men 2 4 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 ----------26 Men 5 Women

Since the William Arrived at Tunis from England, there are five Boyes, and two women wch are turned Turkes, who to our knowledge haue solicited theyr redemption severall times with weeping teares.”248 The ships which the Tunisians had captured were small; that they had women suggests they were on their way either to New England or to the Caribbean 245 “An Elegie on the Death of the Right Honourable and most Noble Here, Robert Blake, Late Generall of the English Fleet at Sea” (London, 1657). 246 CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:308 (27 February 1658). After much haggling, the price was brought down from 30,000 to 11,250 dollars. Edward Coxere, who was one of the ransomed, mentioned “seventy-two men and boys, only two women,” The Adventures by Sea of Edward Coxere, ed. E.H.W. Meyerstein (New York and London, 1946), 100. 247 Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4:920–921. 248 Bendysh Family Archive, Section 2, folder 8, 1642 f Be – University of Minnesota.

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(with indentured servants?) – which might explain why no one bothered about ransoming them or ransoming the boys, despite their “weeping teares.” During the interregnum, Cromwell began building the merchant and naval fleets, inaugurating thereby the English “maritime state.”249 Having built the New Model Army, he, according to Jonathan Scott, also “created the New Model Navy.”250 He also pursued a policy of establishing commercial agreements with the North African potentates and intimidating them when they broke agreements. He realized that the best protection for his adventurous seamen was to follow the example of Queen Elizabeth and negotiate with the Deys and Beys of the regencies – while building a strong fleet. And since he found himself at enmity with Spain, the Low Countries, and France, he was not unwilling to turn to the North Africans for trading and logistical agreements. As W.C. Abbott observed, no English ruler since Elizabeth had paid as much attention to the success of Mediterranean trade as Cromwell had.251 Such attention included captives – and Cromwell tried his best to bring back to the fleet as many sailors and soldiers as he could. But his death in September 1658 loosened control over English pirates who now resumed their seizure of Muslim captives and their sale in Valletta, Cadiz, Genoa and elsewhere. Economic conditions were dire with payments to soldiers and sailors much in arrears. There was confusion as Richard Cromwell replaced his father but was unable to hold the reins of power. English sailors quickly took to their ships and resumed piracy so much so that in December 1658, the Dey of Algiers complained to Richard Cromwell, “the strong and Great Christian prince in England,” how English ships were selling “Mussulmans” to the Venetians as slaves.252 His complaint was futile not only because of Cromwell’s weakness, but also because pillaging the Muslims was financially rewarding. In 1659, a song celebrated English piracy on the North Africans, listing all the rewards of “Tunis and Argiers”: “The Sea-Song”  Capt. To Tunis and to Argiers Boyes, Great is our want, small be our joyes; 249 Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000), 145. 250 Scott, When the Waves Ruled Britannia, 84. 251 Abbott, The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4:592. 252 A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1742), 7 vols., 7:566–567.

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Let’s then some voyage take in hand To get us means by Sea or Land.  Come follow me my boyes, come follow me,  And if thou dye, I’le dye with thee. Hast thou a Wife? I have one too, And Children some as well as thou, Yet who can see his Brats to starve, So long as he has strength to serve?  Come follow me my cubbs, come follow me,  And if thou dye, I’le dye with thee. Methinks, my boyes, I see the store Of precious Gems and golden Ore; Arabian Silks and Sables pure Would make an Haggard stoop to th’lure.  Come follow me, &c. No worthless minde e’re honour fought, Let’s fight as if we feared nought, If Bullets fly about our ears Let’s laugh at death and banish fears.  Come follow me, &c. And if thou canst not live so stench But thou must needs enjoy thy Wench, If thou my Boy such pleasure crave A dainty Doxie thou shalt have.  Come follow me, &c. Courage my Sparks, my Knights oth’ Sun, Let Sivil fame what we have done, Wee’d better ten times fight a Foe Then once for all to Tyburn go, Come follow me, &c.253 English piracy was in full swing. 253 Lady Alimony; or, The Alimony Lady. An Excellent Pleasant New Comedy Duly Authorized, daily Acted, and frequently Followed (London, 1659).

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The Restoration Period, 1660–1688

In June 1660, soon after the Restoration of King Charles II, “divers persons” presented a petition to Parliament on behalf of 100 captives suffering “in miserable bondage, & cruell slavery under the Turks.” The petitioners reminded Parliament of the Acts that had been passed since 1640 regarding the ransoming of captives, and complained that captives were not being ransomed because of “want of moneyes which were & should be raysed upon the sd duty Enacted in 1656.” Evidently, money was not always being paid back to merchants returning from North Africa with freed countrymen.254 The petitioners also warned that the ransomed men did not have money to repay the merchants and were thus in “danger of Imprisonment.” There was need to help resettle returning captives, but there was also outright embezzlement of funds – which was why 100 captives still languished in Algiers.255 Soon after, the petition was “enlarged,” printed, and sent to the newly restored king. Details about money were added: the sum of £62,396-04-03 had been collected from 1651 until October 1659 – but the money had not been used for captives.256 Since state money was not being spent on captives, Captain Thomas Gardiner petitioned the restored king to “hold a lottery in England and Wales” for the purpose of ransoming “English slaves at Tunis, Algiers, or in the Turkish galleys.”257 Embarrassed, the king tried to show active concern and in December 1660 he ordered that £10,000 be used to “go towards the redemption of English seamen taken by the Turks and Moors.”258 The Restoration was to restore faith in the king as a ransomer of the captives and a fighter against the North African Corsairs (especially after the captivity and release of the king’s “wellbeloved Cousin,” the earl of Inchiquin).259 The Commons ordered that the £10,000 promised by the king be distributed “for redemption of captives taken from the Turk since 1642.”260 But by 15 September of the following year, discussions were 254 Sometimes the money which was paid in ransom by factors or agents was not paid back to them; at other times, payment was duly made: CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:44 (28 July 1657), and 66 (14 August 1657), and 293 (18 February 1658). 255 Bodleian Library Rawl. C 366, fos 283r–284r. 256 A Copy of the Captives Petition as it was presented to the Kings most Excellent Majesty (n.d.). 257 CSPD Charles II, 1660–61, 1:182 (7 August 1660). 258 CSPD Charles II, 1660–61, 1:405 (6 December 1660). 259 He had been captured in November 1659 and ransomed within a year (for 7500 dollars). See the king’s personal intervention, TNA SP 71/1/Pt 4, 199 (20 July 1660). Compare his ransom to that of two “Venetian Noblemen” at the end of the century in Algiers for 45,000 crowns, TNA SP 71/3/208 (3 July 1692). 260 CSPD Charles II, 1661–1662, 2:226 (1661?).

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still ongoing in regard to securing the money via “goldsmiths,” and sending it with two clergymen, Bargrave and Selleck.261 In October, three captives were ransomed from Algiers, but there were still “divers persons” who were suffering “most miserable bondage and cruel slavery in Algier, and other places under the Turks,”262 and so kinswomen petitioned the king: A Coppy of the Captives petition as it was presented to the Kings most excellent Majesty (London, 1661). There is no evidence that the money which the king had ordered was spent on captives or that Britons were returned from captivity; had that been done, celebrations could not but have been held in honor of the restored king and his ransoming of suffering subjects. Actually, as Samuel Pepys noted on 30 September 1661, the navy had no money and the king did not take “care to bring in any money, but thinks of new designs to lay out money.”263 Meanwhile, English pirates were still active, and in January 1662, the Algerians captured three ships after which a petition from 300 captives was presented to the king asking, not for help from him, but for “a collection in the English churches to raise a fund for their ransom.”264 If there had been a project to ransom Britons, it had not been effected and captives now realized that the king would not help as much as parishioners. The church was bestirring itself on behalf of captives and an undated (but probably in that year or thereabouts) petition was presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, from “Edward Foster of the City of Exon and Anna his Wife in behalf of themselves and great Numbers of miserable Parents Wives and children of the sd. City and Parts adjacent” regarding captives in “Salle and Meqnes,” one fifth of whom had already died, while the others were being tempted to convert to Islam.265 The bishops began to raise subscriptions in the captives’ villages to pay the Algerian captors,266 and in September 1662, just weeks after the St. Bartholomew expulsion of over 2000 non-conformist preach­ ers,  “Dr. Jo. Bargrave [canon of Canterbury Cathedral] and Jo. Selleck, B.D. Archdeacon of Bath,” sailed to ransom the captives in Algiers.267 In due course, peace treaties were signed with Algiers in 1662, and with Tunis and Tripoli two years later. Corsair activity declined,268 especially after Salé fell under the 261 Ibid., 2:488 (15 September 1661). 262 CSPD Charles II, 1661–62, 2:113 (16 October 1661). 263 Pepys, Diary, eds. Latham and Matthews, 2:189. 264 CSPM…Venice, 1661–1664, 33:100; CSPD Charles II, 1661–62, 2:285 (26 February 1662). 265 TNA SP 71/21/27-28 (no date). 266 Basil Lubbock, ed., Barlow’s Journal, 2 vols. (London, 1934), 1:153. 267 CSPD Charles II, 1661–1662, 2:490 (16 September 1662). 268 Jerome B. Bookin-Weiner, “The Moroccan Corsairs of Rabat-Sale [sic],” in Le Maroc et l’Atlantique, 188.

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control of a rebel, al-Khadr Ghaylān, whom the British forces in Tangier were militarily assisting.269 But there is no record of celebratory processions of returning captives. Two years later, an anonymous poem about “The Great Turke” (1664) reminded readers of …those poore Captives, that for many yeares, His [sic] serv’d him ‘gainst their will with sighs and teares, And in his Gallyes taken uncessant pains, Rowing along their coasts in Iron Chaines. Rome for the Great Turke

The poem continued by condemning public indifference to the plight of the captives and warning those who “drinke Wine boules” and “lie upon your beds of down” that England should “not be too secure.” Although King Charles II may have wanted to ransom captives, he discovered, like his predecessors, that North African attacks were sometimes carried out in retaliation for treacheries committed by his subjects who delivered Muslim passengers on British ships to Spanish and Maltese enslavement. Just after his Restoration, he had received a letter from the Dey of Algiers addressed to him as “Prop of Christian Kings, the Best of the Princes of the Messias.” The Dey explained that he had given permission for British ships to sail into “Our Coast & Marketts, where they used to victual, And had the freedome to passe to and fro wth what they desired.” But they defrauded his subjects of booty by carrying enemy cargo and passengers under British flags, “wearing English Colours pretending them to be English.”270 Three years later, in July 1663, eleven captives were ransomed,271 but another communication from the Algerian Dey was blunt: “Now from henceforth, if that we find any of Our Enemies goods and men in your Ships, wee shall take the men & goods.”272 In January 1664, the king issued a proclamation condemning such breaches in order to uphold the treaties with the North Africans, but after a British naval attack on Algiers, seventeen English ships were captured by the Algerians,273 whereupon the British 269 See the treaty that was signed in 1666, Articles of Peace…Bellasyse…Tangier (London, 1666), Article X, promising continued support to him. 270 TNA SP 71/1/193. (10 November 1660). See also the 1669 letter from the Dey to Charles complaining about an English attack that resulted in the seizure of “one of our prize, in which was many of our Peoples,” TNA SP 71/1/473. 271 CSPD Charles II, 1663–64, 3:218 (27 July 1663). 272 SP 71/102/vol. 1, part 1, 25 (18 September 1663). 273 Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, ed. F.J. Routledge (Oxford, 1970), 5:346, 393.

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fleet seized “5 or 6 ttuns of wheat” from the Algerian shore in December 1664 and soon after another Algerian ship of “30 tuns” of wheat on its way to Marseilles.274 British ships also attacked Tunisian ships and so in 1665, the English consul in Tunis reported that the Dey was intent on “takeing English… because his Matie hath seized & made prizes of severall mrchtmen of their bound from Mars[eilles] to Amsterdam.”275 At a time of wheat abundance in Tunisia, there was much demand for it in England.276 For English seamen, North Africa was an important source of food supplies and slaves who were sold in the European shores of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The second war with Holland (March 1665–July 1667) extended into the Mediterranean, but on June 3 1665, just a few months after the war began (and ten days before England’s victory at Lowestoft), Edmund Waller celebrated how Britain made “the Moors before the English bend.”277 The war had a devastating effect on trade: the Dutch reduced activity in the Cinque Ports, Bristol, and other towns, thereby opening the door for “the great hazard and difficulties of the sea pirates and the foreign men of war,” as the mayor of King’s Lynn wrote.278 The outbreak of the plague and the Dutch blockade of the Thames for three weeks in October 1665 distracted the king from the crisis of captives – unlike in France where in November of 1665, “about 350” French captives were ransomed.279 In December 1665, wives and friends of eighty captives petitioned the king for “assistance,”280 but it is unlikely that the king paid any attention to them because the plague had sent him and his court away to Salisbury and then to Oxford. As John Evelyn shows in his diary during the war, all attention was focused on raising money for disabled sailors and widows, and for arranging prisoner exchange. The June 1666 sea battle with the Dutch left 5000 British sailors dead and around 3000 prisoners, and a large number of ships damaged.281 At the same time, the number of attacks on British ships in the Mediterranean was growing, not only from “Turks,” 274 TNA SP 71/1/275 (5 December 1664). 275 TNA SP 71/26/137 (17 October 1665). 276 See the references in Erlisman’s letters to the Secretary of State (Sir Henry Bennet, later Lord Arlington) on 2 March 1666 and 27 January 1667, TNA SP 71/26/148, 173. 277 “Introduction to a painter for the drawing of the posture & progress of His Majesties forces at sea…victory obtained over the Dutch June 3, 1665” (1666). 278 Quoted in Steven Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the making of English foreign policy, 1650–1668 (Cambridge, 1996), 296 and all of ch. 19. 279 TNA SP 71/26/139 (9 November 1665). 280 CSPD Charles II, 1665–66, 5:88 (5 December 1665). 281 See the list of damaged ships and sick men in The Rupert and Monck Letter Book 1666, eds. J.R. Powell and E.K. Timings (London, 1969), 166–174 (3 October 1666).

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but also from “French galleys” that seized in August “three English ships laden, from Algiers, Tunis, and Gallipoli.”282 With money going to redeem prisoners from among the Dutch, desperately needed for the fleet, there were no funds to redeem the Mediterranean captives, so much so that for the next two years, and especially after the Great Fire in London, the only money that could be earmarked for captives was from church collections authorized by Westminster “for the redemption of English subjects, captives in Algiers, Sally, and Other parts.”283 Such were the economic straits that Samuel Pepys wrote in January and then in April of 1668 about the “fleet going out, and no money to maintain it or set it out. Seamen yet unpaid, and mutinous when pressed to go out again.”284 Against the backdrop of intense and indiscriminate impressment, many men preferred to sail out as pirates/privateers than to endure the severity of service on the Royal fleet.285 And so, they ignored agreements with Algiers, and from Tangier, which had become a British outpost as of 1661, small ships and “embarkations” sailed out with “two or three English & twenty or twenty five Spaniards and other nations” intent on piracy. The king was worried about retaliation and wrote to the Dey of Algiers that he would do his best to “prevent that now of Our subjects doe violate or contravene them [agreements] in any thing, and that the Offenders (if any such bee found) bee duly punished.” The reply came (in Turkish) demanding “Reparation for ye Spoils & Dipredations of late committed upon Our good Subjects in their Persons Shipps & Goods.”286 What made matters worse was that the ships were deceiving the Algerians by carrying “two or three severall flags” and by manning British ships with sailors in enmity to the North Africans.287 After one such Tangier ship captured an Algerian ship, the Algerians retaliated and captured thirty-five Englishmen but did not sell them into slavery, keeping them “in Deposite until answer comes” 282 CSPD Charles II, August 1666 to March 1667, 6:60 (22 August 1666). Paul Reyner, who had been a slave for two and a quarter years, was freed. 283 CSPD Charles II, November 1667 to September 1668, 8:161 (9 January 1668). See the “petition authorizing a collection to be made in all churches and chapels for two years.” In May 1668, eleven Englishmen were seized to Algiers, TNA CO 279/10/no foliation (14 May 1668). 284 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds. Robert Latham and William Matthews (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), 9:180 (30 April 1668); 9:44 (31 January 1668). 285 For widespread impressment, see the instructions to the captain of the Colchester on 28 June 1666 to board the ships of the Dover privateers and “take all the able seamen out of them.” The privateers were “well supplied with men, whilst the King’s fleet is in want enough,” The Rupert and Monck Letter Book, 1666, 78. 286 TNA SP 71/1/310–312 (17 January 1668). 287 TNA SP 71/102/vol. 1, part 1, 33 (June 1668).

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regarding the Muslim captives seized by the English.288 Commiserating with the captives, in January 1669, the Duchess of Dudley bequeathed 100 pounds “for ever for the redemption of Christian captives out of the hands of the Turks” – at the same time that she donated “a Turkey carpet to lay before the altar” in her church.289 Her gift may have contributed to the return of “45 inglish captives by sea from Sally.”290 In August 1669, there were “200 English” slaves dispersed in Salé,291 and in November, Consul Erlisman ransomed seventeen “of our English slaves” in Tunis, “with my owne monie”; had he had more money, he wrote, he would have ransomed others.292 In a list of captives compiled on 6 September 1669, there were 348 names belonging to thirty ships, with fifty-two “old Slaves”: in regard to “old” captives, either they had been left behind when ransom negotiations were completed, or they had been captured anew.293 But there is no evidence that they were ransomed: information, however, was being collected to ascertain numbers and names. In November “17 of our English slaves” were brought to Tunis whereupon Erlisman asked the secretary of state for “small charity” in order to ransom them.294 In July 1670, a “Catalogue of ye Seamens names taken in English ships by ye Argerins since ye beginning of ye Warr untill January Last: Argiers Anno 1669”/1670 listed 203 captives from twenty ships. This list referred to most of the ships and crew numbers as the one above – but the difference is significant: 203 in this list, 400 in the earlier one. The earlier list had included names and so it is not clear why the compiler of this list missed out on nearly 200 captives: Argier Aug 1669 17 October 21 October 29 October 1 November 3 November 3 November

The Charity The Ruth Hanna Dolphin Tunis merchant Bilbao Mercht

7 men 8 men 5 men Capt. Beck 23 men 8 men

288 TNA SP 71/26/208 (25 June 1668). Captives were released in November, TNA SP 71/26/323 (7 November 1668). 289 CSPD Charles II, October 1668 to December 1669, 9:176 (January? 1669). 290 TNA SP 71/14/37 (March 1669). 291 CSPD Charles II, October 1668 to December 1669, 9:444 (8 August 1669). 292 TNA SP 71/26/263 (24 November 1669). 293 TNA SP 71/1/427–428. See another reference to the number in CSPD Charles II 1670, 10:186. 294 TNA SP 71/26/262 (24 November 1669).

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12 November 19 November 6 December 7 December 12 December 18 December 24 December 25 December 4 January 1670 23 January 27 January 31 January

Nich. Of Galloway James of London Nich. Of London 5 taken in a Hamburgher Jane and Mary Christ Mary Francis of Plymouth Deptford Hopewell of London Elizabeth of Dartmouth George Ann [illegible] The Brother

12 men 11 men 8 men 10 men 16 men 10 men 7 men 7 men 11 men 10 men 4 men 8 men version; 13 men 20 men295

The list shows how steady the capture of ships was, sometimes separated by only one or two days. The vast majority of the ships carried less than a dozen men (one carrying as few as four): the ship to Tunis had the highest number of crew, but because many of the ships were carrying more foreigners than Britons on board, the Algerians felt justified in seizing them and taking captives. None of the ships were remotely close in size or manpower to the ships of the fleet, all of which carried more than one hundred men per ship, and scores of guns.296 Every treaty with Algiers repeated that the English should not carry a high number of non-Britons on their ships nor trade in Muslim captives. But the Duke of York told Sir Thomas Allin to “cavil” about this matter during negotiations to liberate captured Britons in Algiers:297 Allin was to exchange his slaves with the captured Britons, and then “sell” the remaining slaves “to the best advantage you can for his Majesty’s use.”298 In summer 1670, Admiral Allin 295 TNA SP 71/1/450–453; and CSPD Charles II, 1670. With Addenda, 1660 to 1670, 10:595–596 (26 December 1670) where Spragge frees nine Englishmen and twenty-four Christians. 296 See the list compiled on 21 May 1666 in The Rupert and Monck Letter Book, 1666, 196–198. There were ninety-three ships, rates 1 to 5; only the ten other fireships had men under fifty and no guns. 297 Sir Thomas Allin, The Journals of Sir Thomas Allin, 1660–1678, ed. R.C. Anderson, 2 vols. (London, 1939), 2:228 (28 January 1669) and the agreement between the government in Algiers and Allin, Journals, 2:227 (12 February 1669). 298 Allin, Journals, 2:232 (29 June 1669).

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attacked the Algerian fleet and inflicted heavy damages (“by Sea [Algiers] is much weakened”), after which he freed sixty-two Englishmen and sixteen Dutchmen, and in December nine more by money raised from the sale of Muslim slaves.299 A List of the English Captives…the Pyrates of Argier, made Publick for the Benefit of those that have Relations there was printed in that year and included 434 names, constituting the longest document with named British captives in the Stuart period. This large one-page publication was in celebration of the victories in Algiers which helps to explain the numerous manuscript versions that have survived.300 Evidnetly a few more Britons had been captured since the list of 400 names. A brief affidavit told of the escape of one Gilbert Young from Moroccan captivity,301 but as Adam Elliot was sailing from Lisbon in that year, his ketch was captured to Salé, from where he managed to escape six months later – leaving behind “near 100 English slaves.”302 In the Ottoman Levant, only a few Britons involved in piracy were taken captive because the Turks supported the English by providing them with intelligence about the movements of Dutch ships.303 Since the British helped them against the Venetians, they in turn helped them against the Dutch. Still, in the 1670s, Thomas Smith found “several English Sea-men which were in the Galleys.” He explained why he had no sympathy for them: “they were to thank themselves for their slavery” since “these foolish men enticed with hope of prey and good pay, deserted the [English] Merchant Ships of their own Countrey, and served under the banners of the Venetians and Malteses, or else privateering Pyrats.”304 Meanwhile, the Royal Navy was growing stronger in its 299 See TNA SP 71/1/466 (17 August 1670); Playfair, Scourge of Christendom, 108, 109; Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, A.D. 1613–1680, 1:546 (15 July 1670); Historical Manuscripts Commission. Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part V. The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth (London, 1887), 10; A True Relation of the Victory and Happy Success of a Squadron of His Majesties Fleet in the Mediterranean against the Pirates of Algiers (Savoy, 1670), 11. 300 A comparison with one manuscript version of the list (“Algiers the 6th of 7 ber 1669”), however, reveals interesting differences: 1. The printer misread some names in the manuscript resulting in differences in spelling; 2. There are names that appear in the manuscript that do not appear in the printed version and vice versa; 3. It is not clear from the manuscript whether or not the captives constituted all the seamen on board the ships. Did the Dolphin only have one sailor on board? 301 TNA SP 29/441/213. See also CSPD Charles II, Addenda, 28:243. 302 Adam Elliot, A Modest Vindication…A Narrative of My Travails, Captivity and Escape from Salle (London, 1682); CSPD Charles II, January 1671 to November 1671, 11:389 (19 July 1671), reported by a returned captive who had been in Salé since August 1668. 303 CSPD Charles II, December 1671 to May 17th 1672, 12:268 (2 April 1672). 304 Remarks upon the Manners, Religion and Government of the Turks, Together with a Survey of the Seven Churches of Asia, as they now lye in their Ruines (London, 1678), 159–164.

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protection of the merchantmen: a proclamation was issued forbidding ships to sail without a convoy, lest they fall “prey to Turks and Moors”:305 But many seamen who wanted to continue trading on their own, or as Smith noted, were “Pyrats,” fell into captivity and then sought redemption from London. In March 1671, Nathaniel Loddington and other merchants went to Salé to ransom captives. The instructions they were given urged them to act as if they were traders but secretively to spy out the number of captives. Then You are in the first place to redeem the cheapest able seamen taken under English Colours (and so go on by degrees) and such those who made the stoutest and gallantist resistance at the tyme of their capture, are to have preferrence in redemption.…You shall redeem none without order from his Majty most honrble Privy Council. Most importantly, they were instructed to resist the Jews who bought Britons and put them to hard labor, knowing that their dire condition would put pressure on the ransomers during negotiations. And, if a captive had already contracted to ransom himself, he should be ignored – to save on expenses.306 A year later, the Saletians seized Susanna and Judith and Mary and Anne and sold the masters and seamen to slavery.307 “A true List of Captives” written in that year included thirty-nine names, the first having been “discharged” in February 1670, and the last in June 1672.308 This list is the first that shows the exact duration of captivity of each captive: evidently, captivity could be a short ordeal if ransom money was made available quickly. Another “List” of 7 September 1672 mentioned sixty-one Englishmen “lately redeemed out of Captivity by order of the Right Honble Committee of Lords.”309 Other lists of captives ransomed via Tangier on 11 October 1672 mentioned eighteen,310 fourteen (traveling on a different ship),311 ten, and another ten.312 In that year,

305 CSPD Charles II, January to November 1671, 11: 231 (12 May 1671). See also the details about passes, CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1676, to February 28th, 1677, 18:21 (10 March 1676). 306 “Instructions for Nathaniel Lodington & Thomas Oneby of London merchants,” BL Stowe 212, fo. 9r. 307 CSPD Charles II, December 1671 to May 1672, 12:223 (22 March 1672), per the petition to Whitehall. 308 BL Sloane 3511, fo. 137. 309 Ibid., 154, see also fo. 156. 310 Ibid., fo. 162. 311 Ibid., fo. 163. 312 Ibid., fos 166, 167.

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“R.D. an English Merchant” published a short treatise about his captivity in Algiers, and his liberation by Sir Edward Spragge. Whether “R.D.” stood for a real person is not clear, since the account includes material that is lifted directly from the captivity account of T.S, published a few years earlier.313 Interestingly, while the majority of lists and records remained in manuscript, captivity accounts that included the exotic and the heroic were plagiarized and printed. Few printers assumed that London readers were interested in mere names and figures about captives: buyers wanted adventure and if there were not enough English writers, then continental writers could be translated. In October 1673, Consul Samuel Martin stated that there were “285 poore Captives here [Algiers] in Miserable Condition,”314 but by the following September, there were only fifteen left, most of whom he managed to ransom.315 In November 1675, a Dartmouth ship was taken and all its crew enslaved by the Algerians,316 and thirty men by the Libyans (although Henry Teonge gave the number as fourteen).317 In order to put an end to maritime danger, the fleet sailed against Tripoli, bombarded it, and in January 1676, Admiral John Narbrough ransomed 189 “English men of Algiers, & Tunis,” 150 of whom returned to England in March, “stout and lusty.”318 No “English slaves” were left behind, he firmly stated, except “runagadoes.” Narbrough wrote an account of his Mediterranean campaign that included the names of the captives who had been ransomed, the ships on which they had been sailing, when they were captured, and the expenses incurred in ransoming them. As a commander having to report back to the admiralty, especially in regard to monies spent, Narbrough was meticulous and detailed. Much bargaining had taken place and although the first three dozen captives were ransomed at the same rate, the rest of the men varied in their value, from as low as Edward Crosse’s ransom at 313 A True Relation of the Adventures of Mr. R.D. an English Merchant, Taken by the Turks of Argeir in 1666 (London, 1672), 3. 314 Bodleian Library Rawl. MS A 191, fo. 194. In November of the year before, there had been 300 for whom £4441 had been collected – and most likely used for their ransom, TNA SP 71/2/13 (28 November 1672). 315 TNA SP 71/2/27 (19 September 1674). 316 CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1675, to February 29th, 1676, 17: 418 (26 November 1675). Earlier, in March, an Englishman was taken by a Salé man-of-war and in September two more: ibid., 17: 13 (8 March 1675), 291 (12 September 1675). 317 CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1675, to February 29th, 1676, 17: 460 (25 December 1675); see also Henry Teonge, The Diary of Henry Teonge, ed. G.E. Manwaring (London, 1927), 96 (24 November 1675). 318 CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1675, to February 29th, 1676, 17: 12 (8 March 1675). The Algerian Dey gave the number as 178 captives: TNA SP 102/vol. 1, part 1, 54 (10 February 1675/6).

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171 pieces of eight to Richard Dior who was ransomed at 1756.70.22. The total sum that Narbrough paid to the two regencies was 56,248.70. By March 1676, he was back in Tripoli where he ransomed forty-nine Bristol and London captives, as well as men from Marseilles, Greece, Naples, Genoa, Flushing, Lisbon, Scotland, a “Jews boy,” and six Armenians. He also ransomed eighty-nine “strangers Christian slaves” from Malta, France, and Portugal, who proved very expensive, paying for them 50,000 pieces of eight. The reason why he was willing to spend so much money to ransom compatriots and foreigners alike was because of the professions of the captives: they were seamen, caulkers, stonecutters, gunsmiths, sail-makers, and surgeons, all going at an average rate of 460 pieces of eight but with a few rising to 2200, 3010 and 4700.319 Such men, unlike the 700 French captives (presumably Catholic) who were left behind, were much needed on the fleet.320 Generally, captives with professions, regardless of their nationality, were expeditiously ransomed,321 but captives without use were left behind, as were captives “of poor Relations” or “orffin” (orphan) not entitled to “ye fforty pounds Publique M [oney].”322 Given that boy sailors and crew hands came from poor families sometimes with little information about their paternity and background, the number of such captives left behind must have been high. These captives did not even appear on the lists that were drawn up of the names to be ransomed. One petition to the king (undated, but sometime c. 1684) pleaded that the names of “poore” captives be “Inserted in the List for the Redemption of Captives” because they “are not in a Capacity of themselves nor the money Charitably given in Jersey of sufficiency to pay their Ransomers.”323 Narbrough was instructed to ransom Britons who had been seized to the ports with whose rulers he was negotiating. Any captive brought from another region could not be included: such a captive had to ransom himself by borrowing money from ship captains and masters.324 But sometimes the captains 319 Narbrough explained that he ransomed the Maltese captives because “they had showed much kindness to our fleet,” CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1675, to February 28th, 1677, 18:99 (4 May 1676). 320 Bodleian, Rawl. 194 A, fos 117–126. 321 They may well have been needed in Tangier: see the discussion by Alan Jamieson of the difficulties in finding sailors for ships that were built in Livorno for the Tangier outpost in the 1670s: “The Tangier Galleys and the Wars against the Mediterranean Corsairs,” American Neptune 23 (1965): 95–112. 322 TNA SP 71/2/352 (2 December 1682). 323 TNA SP 71/2/441. Pagination is irregular as the block numbers are discontinued but there is continuous pagination at the bottom. 324 Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I, 255–256.

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themselves were captured and needed help:325 at other times, they ransomed themselves – but not their crew. In June 1676, Captain Alexander Makenye of Tangier promised to ransom himself from the Moroccans in exchange for 400 guns, and so did the master of a ship out of Algier in 1682.326 Personal wealth always ensured a speedy liberation and to the captors it did not matter that the captive had been a soldier fighting against them, “taken last September [1675] in an engagement against the Moors,” rather than a harmless traveler.327 In April 1677, eleven captives were freed by the English consul in Tripoli, Nathaniel Bradley,328 and a report on 30 July 1677 mentioned “ye shipps Brought in, & Destroyed by ye Algerins Corsairs” to be forty-one ships with 456 men eleven of whom escaped.329 In October, several “masters, mariners and others” were taken by the Turks of Algiers, but then Consul Martin freed 160 of “his Majties Subjects.”330 In 1678, Joseph Pitts was seized to Algiers in the small ship he was sailing, as were four other English ships, bringing the number of captives to “near Thirty new-taken Slaves, besides there were between Twenty or Thirty Old Slaves brought with the Pyrate out of Algier.”331 This spate of captivetaking was a result of dire conditions in North Africa, following the plague: as Consul Erlisman reported from Tunis in 1676, “soe severely has the distemper fallen on the slaves that they are well neere all swept away.”332 Captives (those who survived) and their ransoms brought hard currency. That is why the Algerians, particularly at this juncture, were eager to return British captives for cash – and were confused when they discovered the British king’s unwillingness to expedite transactions. Earlier Consul Martin had explained how “they alledge it hath allwayes been the Custome when any Christian Prince makes Peace with them that they forthwith Redeemed the Captives, and they affirme that it was the promise of Sr. Edw. Spragg, on whose word they depended more than the Articles themselves.” Actually, the Algerians, continued Martin, were so angry that captives had not been ransomed that they started threatening him, and the “Dey & Governour hath runn great hazards of their lives in defending Mee from the fury of the souldiers.”333 A month later, members of 325 326 327 328 329 330 331

TNA SP 71/22/19 (2 March 1663). TNA SP 71/2/338r (15 October 1682). CSPD Charles II, 1 March 1676 to 28 February 1677, 18: 162. TNA SP 71/22/I, 4r (10 April 1677). TNA SP 71/2/202r (10 June 1677), a copy by Consul Martin of an earlier letter. CSPD Charles II, 1 March 1677–28 Feb 1678, 19: 414 (22 October 1677). Joseph Pitts, A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans (London, 1704), 4. 332 TNA SP 71/26/320 (3 July 1676) Irregular pagination. 333 TNA SP 71/2/24 (22 July 1674).

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the Diwan in Algiers wrote to King Charles complaining that the English were not ransoming their own, and reminded the king that the peace treaty which had just been signed between the two countries stipulated that all captives should be ransomed. But, they continued, three years had passed and “no ship of yours yet come so that you have not been careful & diligent to redeeme Your men, which are Captives here.” The British king’s neglect of his subjects was perplexing and was causing the rulers a “head ake” as owners of the captives, who wanted money not men, clamored asking: “What is this? Is this ye English?”334 A few years later, in 1679, the governors of Algiers praised the Dutch/“the Flemings for being good and Faithful People, who go the right way” and ransom their compatriots, unlike the English who were a people “without Faith, not observing their Promise…[having] made War with Us without Cause, [and having]…taken Vessels, and made Slaves of our People.” There were good EuroChristians and bad Euro-Christians, and the Maghariba knew who was who.335 In June of that year, 1679, Seth Southall, on his way to Carolina to serve as governor, was seized by Algerian pirates and remained in captivity for two years,336 whereupon Governor Bradstreet complained that many of the colony’s “inhabitants [who had been sailing on “five or six of our vessels”] continue in miserable captivity” in Algiers.337 In a report that William Bowtell submitted some­time in 1680, he wrote that there were “above 900 English Captives in Algier, and about 200 in Markiness and Sally,”338 but he only listed a total of 147 ships and the number of the ransomed as 390. This report demonstrates the difficulties that ransomers encountered not only from captors but also from their own government. After the 390 names were written down, there followed an explanation stating that the “Bounty [of] £40 was not paid” for fifty-six 334 TNA SP 102/vol. 1, part1, 1 (3 August 1674). The writers were “Ismael Basha, Hajj Muhammad Dey, and Baba Hassan.” A similar frustration was expressed in regard to the French in a letter from Hajj Shaʿbān to King Louis XIV (23 July 1691): “Nous n’avons pas grand plaisir à retinir ici des esclaves,” Eugène Plantet, Correspondance des Deys d’Alger avec la Cour de France, 1579–1833, 2 vols. (Paris, 1889), 1: 309. See also the letter to William III with a similar request to ransom captives, TNA SP 102/vol. 1, part 1, 92v (13 June 1691). 335 A Letter Written by the Governour of Algier to the States-General of the United Provinces (London, 1680). 336 Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, A.D. 1613–1680 1: 838. He was ransomed in September 1681, CSPD Charles II, 1 September 1680–31 December 1681, 22: 458 (19 September 1681) after an exchange with two Turks, Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, 1613–1680, 1: 848 (2 July 1679). 337 CSP Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1677–1680, 549. 338 TNA SP 71/3/185v (1690).

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captives, for neither Bowtell nor his agent had received “any Moneyes on Acct. of their Ransomes.” The report provides a unique perspective on the ransom process. A fund had been established by the Lords of the Privy Council of £2000 “or thereabouts” for redeeming captives. In a “General Briefe,” the Lords had designated forty pounds for each captive, but only if the captive’s friends had subscribed to the fund. The result was that only half the captives had been freed. Merchants then contributed to the fund, along with William Bowtell who wanted to ransom the captives the majority of whom belonged to the “Westerne Ports of Bristoll Plymouth etc..” Bowtell and his factor started the process of ransom, and spent seven years in Algiers, incurring “many losses,” but Bowtell never shirked his responsibility, and pursued the service of his country with “all the Diligence & Integrity that was possible.” Unfortunately, the “last Warr” raised the prices of the captives to seventy-five and one hundred pounds “for Common Seamen, and to others more,” and therefore only half the captives would be ransomed. But the Algerians were so eager to get cash for the captives that they refused to allow the ransom of only half of the Englishmen. The Dey of Algiers, who had two captives, wrote Bowtell, refused to allow one of them to be ransomed without the other: neither the governor nor other owners wanted to keep the captives. They wanted money instead. Bowtell’s factor thus had to pay the governor 500 pieces of eight for the two Englishman, John Cave and Joseph Gill, but the factor “never received any Satisfaction for it, more then £40 for each out of the Publick Fond.” Some captives gave Bowtell promissory notes but died soon after, “whereby severall great Summes of Money was lost without any manner of Reparation.” Bowtell wrote down all the individual debts, as low as one pound and as high as £250; from 106 captives whom he had ransomed, he was still owed £4158.339 The captives, for whom payment had been made, the report continued, were “now in England” and would make their appearance before the Committee. Meanwhile, there were twelve captives for whom payment had been made, but who had not been sent back. And then there were the “Names of those who remaine in Algier, and were paid the £40 upon Certificate” (but no list is included of those names). Captives’ kin may have made their voice heard to Canterbury for sometime in 1680, Archbishop Sancroft called for “a Collection for the Captiues in Algiers.”340 A ballad about an English “Slave” was published in London, sometime in the 1680s: “The Algerian Slaves Releasement or, The Unchangeable Boat-Swain” described the steadfast love of the captive for “Betty.” Captivity 339 TNA SP 71/3/181–190v (no exact date, c. 1689–1690). 340 BL Stowe 124, fo. 10.

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was now a subject of popular song and ballad (“To the tune of, ‘Awake, Oh my Cloris’”), showing the resilience of the English seaman and his commitment to his beloved even in the midst of the worst conditions. In February 1681, eightytwo men on eight ships were seized,341 and towards the end of April, there were numerous confrontations between British and Algerian ships that resulted in the liberation of thirty-seven “English Captives,” along with some Dutchmen and Spaniards.342 In June 1681, the Committee of Council on captives declared that forty pounds should be paid for ransoming each captive in Algiers, “and what is wanting is to be supplied by their friends” – not a very promising prospect since the “friends” of the captives would have been as poor as the captives themselves.343 In September, Captain Cloudesly Shovell seized an Algerian ship, “The halfe moone” which had on it twenty English men, of whom one was a convert to Islam, who was executed, and one was a woman who had been captured by the Algerians on her way to “bermooda.”344 In November, a petition was presented to Parliament on behalf of “upwards of 1500” captives in Algiers, not including those who had died of the plague,345 with the number given as 2500, according to a document of 1 December.346 Where that number came from is unclear – unless it reflected the belief of the government and of the trading companies that Britons were surrendering to the pirates without putting up a fight. In 1682–1683, “An Act to prevent the delivery up of Merchants Ships” stated in article II that “No master shall deliver up any ship of 200 tons and 16 guns to any pirates, & c., without fighting.”347 Admiral Herbert had not ransomed captives from Algiers for that reason, as Consul Lionel Croft wrote in a letter to the secretary of state. But Croft had some money from “Publicke Collection” and was able to redeem “a hundred English Captives.”348 341 TNA SP 71/2/233r (18 February 1681). The lowest number/ship was five; the highest was eighteen. 342 The London Gazette (from Monday 9 May to Thursday 12 May, 1681). 343 CSPD Charles II, 1 September 1680 to 31 December 1681, 22: 303 (2 June 1681). Earlier in April, the Committee had also appealed to “Relations or Friends of the said Captives, what they will be content to add of their own to the publick stock,” The London Gazette (18 April 1681). But, as the Gazette of September 1684 showed, people “failed” to do so: 25–29 September. 344 TNA SP 71/2/268 (September 1681): “Narrative of Captain Showell, Algiers.” 345 The Case of the many Hundreds of Poor English-Captives, in Algier (np. nd.). 346 CSPD Charles II, 1 September 1680 to 31 December 1681, 22:598 (1 December 1681). 347 Entry 5 in Piracy & Privateering: National Maritime Museum (London, 1972). For the sea battles, see entries 15, 16, and 17. 348 TNA SP 71/2/352v (2 December 1682).

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Meanwhile, the situation was calm on the Moroccan front. The 1678 Articles of Peace between England (Thomas Warren) and Salé stipulated that “all the Ports of his Maties Dominions shall be free and open, for the subjects, shipps and goods of the said Townes, & Castles of Saly, reciprocally.” In as much as Britons needed to trade in the Atlantic ports of North Africa, so did they need the business which Saletians brought to their port cities. Mulay Ismāʿīl wrote to King Charles telling him that the English were the best people among all Christians because they did not worship the cross nor did their religion permit them to keep Muslim slaves (?).349 The visit of the Moroccan ambassador to London in late 1681-early 1682 improved relations between Morocco and England: during his stay, a Moor and his wife, and two Jews, were sent on board a British ship gratis back to Tangier, along with 107 Muslims who had been captured, 1000 guns, and 1600 quintals of gunpowder.350 But the negotiations had not resulted in freeing all British captives in Morocco: which is why later in 1682, a group of women petitioned King Charles II on behalf of their husbands in Meknes. They reported that Sir James Leslie had agreed to undertake the redemption of their husbands but needed a letter to the King of Morocco from King Charles to expedite the matter – a letter that was granted a few weeks later.351 But the exchange was delayed because, as Mulay Ismāʿīl explained to Captain Kirke in Tangier, he was not willing to release British captives while Moroccans were still held captive: “how can we,” he wrote on 25 March 1682, “with a quiet mind consent to the going in of a hundred and fiftie Christians to Tanger…and at the same time see four hundred captive Moors working at the Gates of Tanger and carrying stone and morter to the Mole.”352 Given the high number of North African captives, Admiral Herbert begged King Charles for “an order to be delivered to me out of his Majties slaves of Tanger belonging to ye Mole so many Turkes as I may happen to want.”353 In January 1683, three English ships were taken to Salé,354 as was Daniel Defoe, too;355 a month later, thirty-eight Britons were ransomed from among the “Moors.” 349 350 351 352

TNA SP 71/17/120 (1 April 1681). CSPD Charles II, January 1 to June 30, 1683, 24:19 (18 January 1683). CSPD Charles II, 1682, 23:578 (December 1682). TNA CO 279/33/268. As Moroccan captives were put to hard labor so were the English: on 28 October 1699, Mulay Ismāʿīl described the English captives: “some cutt marble, having none that cutt it but them, and they set up the pillars which none but them understand, and they serve in all the great works we have,” TNA SP 71/14/305. 353 TNA SP 71/2/305 (11 April 1682). 354 BL ADD 46412, 21v. 355 Or so he claimed in Review, viii, 496, quoted in Captain Singleton, ed. Shiv K. Kumar (Oxford, 1990), 278: “I myself [Daniel Defoe] had an adventure in a ship bound to

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George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement, was unique among his contemporaries in his approach to the North African pirates. After Quakers were held captive in Algiers, he wrote a letter to the Grand Turk in which he expostulated with him that the vile treatment of the captives went against the teachings of the Qur’ān, which the Turk was supposed to follow.356 In England, the Quakers had suffered much during the persecution of the 1660s (and in the early 1680s), with over 15,000 of them imprisoned, 450 dying in gaol, and 200 banished.357 Conditions for all Dissenters in England were dire: they were “terrorised by the Hilton gang” which King Charles had personally encour­ aged,  and by the “holy violence” that was inflicted on them and other nonconformist conventicles;358 in North Africa, at least, the Quakers and others could continue to worship according to their own belief, and actually impressed their captors by their honesty. In England, even Anglican Latitudinarian divines such as Samuel Parker had turned persecution into a theological duty of the state: to “punish them [Dissenters] with the severest inflictions” because they were “enemies and outlaws to human society” – ironically, using the same phrases to describe Dissenters that were used to describe pirates.359 It may well be that when John Milton described Samson, “Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves/Himself in bonds” (1671), and when John Bunyan described the persecution of Christian in Vanity Fair in The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), they were reflecting on sufferings in England and in North Africa. Captive John Gwillym wrote from Algier how he was “being made daily to grind in a Mill as a horse with a chain upon both legges.” For Dissenters, England was as bad as Algiers, as John Locke feared in his 1667 treatise on toleration.360 In summer of 1682, the French bombarded Algiers. The attack, the most devastating ever, was carefully reported in England,361 as was the September 1683 Rotterdam, that was taken by an Algerine man of war in the mouth of the River Thames and in sight of Harwich.” 356 See my “Some Notes on George Fox and Islam,” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, 55 (1989): 271–276, and Justin Meggitt’s Early Quakers and Islam: Slavery, Apocalyptic and Christian-Muslim Encounters in the Seventeenth Century (Uppsala, 2013). I am grateful to Dr. Meggitt for sending me a pdf version of his study. 357 Coffey, Persecution and Toleration, 170. 358 Ibid., 173, 178. 359 Samuel Parker, A Defence and Continuation of the Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1671), 541 and vi. 360 TNA SP 71/2/429; Carlo Augusto Viano, ed., Scritti Editi e Inediti sulla Toleranza (Torino, 1961), 98. 361 The Present State of Algier: Being a faithful and true account of the most considerable occurrences that happened in that place, during the lying of the French fleet before it (London, 1682).

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victory of Vienna over the Ottoman army. The victory gave rise to strong anti”Turkish” sentiments in numerous ballads, but soon after, in 1684, the Algerians, wrote a captive “destroyed many of our ships & brought in 100 men & women bound for Virginia,” including “several Dutch women.”362 Meanwhile, Tangier was being evacuated (starting in early November 1683 and ending in March 1684),363 after which relations improved between London and Meknes: presumably, Moroccan/Muslim captives were released and there were no more reasons for hostility. Perhaps in the light of the “defeat” in Tangier – and Moroccan chroniclers celebrated the victory over the inglīz/English – there was need in London for some heroics: Thomas Phelps’s ship was taken by the Saletians (who were not always under the complete control of Mulay Ismāʿīl) who also captured an English ship and a ketch with thirty-seven Christians.364 But Phelps escaped with seven other Britons and in the process burned two enemy ships. After his return to England, King Charles listened to his adventure, which was promptly published and addressed to Samuel Pepys, secretary of the admiralty: A True Account of the Captivity of Thomas Phelps at Machaness in Barbary and His Strange Escape in Company of Edmund Baxter and Others; as Aslo of the Burning Two of the Greatest Pirate Ships Belonging to That Kingdom, in the River of Mamora, Upon the Thirteenth Day of June 1685. A good story of English victory over the “Mahometans” was needed – and sure to have readership and to be sweetly remembered, as the opening quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid stated: Hac olim meminisse juvabit. A letter from Mulay Ismā’īl to Charles II, written in the penultimate year of the latter’s reign, shows the change in attitude towards the English after their departure from Tangier. Ismā’īl explained that the English are the best among all Christians and that had they wanted to remain in Tangier to trade rather than to listen to the stupidity of those who encouraged them to settle there and seize slaves for labor, they would have been most welcome: “even if only one Christian woman had remained there on her own, we would have protected her.” Now that you have left the land of the Muslims, continued Ismā’īl, and since your religion prohibits you from capturing Muslims [?], we are 362 TNA SP 71/2/436r (December 1684). See the “List of ships carried into Sally by Argeyroons” (eleven ships), TNA SP 71/2/435r; and on 436r-v “A list of what ships have beene taken & destroyed by the Argeyrons” which includes twenty-three ships, mostly sailing from London, down the coast of Spain to Tangier. Three ships had been sailing toward Virginia and Newfoundland. Pagination is irregular as the block numbers are discontinued but there is continuous pagination at the bottom of the folios. 363 Pepys, Tangier Papers, ed. Chappell, 286, 287. 364 An Account of the Captivity of Thomas Phelps (London, 1685), reproduced in Vitkus, ed. Piracy, 193–217.

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willing to have a truce that would protect your ships at sea.365 With the death of Charles II and the accession to the throne of King James II, attacks flared up and in November 1685, the Quaker J. Ellis reported “400 men, women, and children of English, and 1000 of other nations, all captives” in Algiers.366 Consul Croft ransomed “between thirty and forty English men” from that city, but he grew “desperate” because he was unable to support them without financial assistance from London, which nobody sent him, as Consul Erlisman complained, too, from Tunis.367 With the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the expulsion of the Huguenots from France, the churches in England directed their attention to their fellow Protestants, and collected money to relieve them “from the unheard cruelties of the King” of France, as John Evelyn noted (29 March 1686; also 25 August). Captured seamen in North Africa now had to compete for charitable funds with the persecuted Protestants: Sir William Coventry left £2000 in his will for the French refugees and £3000 for “captives in Algiers.”368 In that year, the Dey of Algiers complained to King James II how the inhabitants of Guernsey robbed one of his ships that had sought shelter there, and when the ship sailed, they followed her, along with a “small Danes Vessel” to try and capture it.369 Ibrahim Aga, an emissary from the Bey of Tripoli, presented in London a petition to the Duke of Newcastle/secretary of state in which he mentioned how “the Subjects of the Ottoman Empire have been so ill used by the English Men of War Privateers and Letter of Marque ships.” He stated that the rulers in Istanbul, Algiers, and Tripoli were eager to see “Justice done soon to their subjects here in England who ware claiming their own property.” The sooner justice was done, the better it would be for building confidence between this Court and the Mahometans. And at the same time the English Court will be sooner free of the Expences in keeping the Petitioner and the Turkish [Muslim] merchants here, who are all willing to return home as soon as possible. For tho’ they are in part supported here by this Court, at the same time their Families are starving at Home. The names on the petition included Osman Bashaw, Ahmad Bashaw, and “Turkish Merchants” all “Taken from on Board the Saint Frances”; Ahmad Ben 365 366 367 368 369

TNA SP 71/17/120 (1 April 1684). Samuel Tuke, Account of the Slavery of Friends in the Barbary States (London, 1848), 11. TNA SP 71/3/65 (25 August 1686). CSPD James II, January, 1686 – May, 1687, 2: 191 (29 June 1686). TNA SP 71/3/73 (October 1686).

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Sarty, a number of Libyan merchants, Sidy Aly, and a “Tripoli merchant” who had been taken “From on Board the Saint Joseph” by “the Constantine Galley a Letter of Marque ship.”370 There was also “Bostangi,” captured by the English and kept in Cadiz.371 From the Atlantic end, Saletian corsairs seized two small ships and seven “Scotch men.”372

William and Mary, and Queen Anne, 1688–1714

The beginning of what became the Nine Years War led to French seizure of British ships, and in June 1689, King William alerted the “Illustrious Lords” of Tunis that the French had seized the English Swan with all “the men money and goods which were laden on board.”373 At the beginning, the Continental theater of war diverted attention from North Africa: “The Marshal de Schomberg went now,” wrote John Evelyn on 19 July 1689, “as General toward Ireland, to the relief of Londonderry. Our fleet lay before Brest. The Confederates passing the Rhine, besiege Bonn and Mayence, to obtain passage into France. A great victory gotten by the Muscovites, taking and burning Perecop. A new rebel against the Turks threatens the destruction of that tyranny. All Europe in arms against France, and hardly to be found in history so universal a face of war.” With evidence of Britain’s growing naval and commercial might at sea, the Dey of Algiers wrote with awe to King William: the honorific titles and the rhetorical flourish he used would only be expressed to a mighty monarch with whom the Algerian Dey was eager to cooperate, “the glory of the great princes of the Christians, and the greatest of the great in the religion of Christianity, William the Second, the sultan and king of Great Britain, meaning England, Scotland, France, Ireland and others.”374 Subsequent letters repeated “Dear friend” or “Dear and very much esteemed William the 2nd [sic]…we are very frequent in our Supplycations to the Almighty to bless you.” Observing the change in European alliances during the war, Mulay Ismāʿīl sent in October an English captive with a letter to King William asking for an exchange of Moroccan with British captives, at the same time that he sought 370 TNA SP 71/23/90–91 (no date). 371 De Castries, Sources…Filalienne, 3:69 (12 May 1687). 372 TNA SP 71/3/90 (May? 1687): “Demands of the Duke of Grafton to the Dey of Algiers and his answers upon these.” 373 A.M. Broadley, The Last Punic War, 1:64 (3 June 1689). 374 TNA SP 102/vol. 1, part 1, 84 (1690). See also 92 for a lengthy preamble of honorific titles.

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an alliance with him.375 In a letter by the Dutch ambassador to King William, mention is made of 400 captives,376 but the war with France diverted attention from captives in Algiers: “cinq mille deux cents Anglais” was the number that the Dey of Algiers mentioned to the French secretary of state, Pontchartrain, on 29 October 1691.377 Such a number is difficult to corroborate: the Algerians were so eager to have Britons ransomed that they pressed Consul Baker who, in 1 May 1692, ransomed five captives from Salé just to “give some assurance to the Government [of Algiers] that redeeming English slaves was truly intended, according to the Treaty.”378 To add to Baker’s worries, just about that time, the French and the Spanish ransomed “above Twelve hundred” of their own, which created “much inquietude unto me from the Reproaches of strangers and ye Loud Cryes of the small Residue of our poor Countrymen.”379 But without money from London, he could not initiate ransom negotiations, and in a letter of January 1692, he pleaded for 400 dollars to pay the ransom of a carpenter, set at 800.380 From May 1692 until December 1694, he managed to ransom 109 men (and one woman):381 Along with their names and the amount of money that he had spent in offering “Reliefe to the poor Gally slaves and other oar sick and miserable countrymen,” Baker included their professions: shipmates, masters, carpenters, gunsmiths, gunners, coopers, sail makers and surgeons. But neither he, nor King William who now intervened in the matter of captives,382 mentioned anywhere that there were thousands of Britons held in Algiers. Where the Dey got his 5200 number is unclear – unless he thought that such exaggerating the total number of European slaves whom he lumped as “English.” In July money was collected in New York and sent to ransom the captives of Algiers.383 Again, because of the long delay, some of the captives had died, 375 TNA SP 71/14/223 (10 August 1689). 376 TNA SP 71/14/231 (30 September 1689). 377 Eugène Plantet. Correspondance des Deys d’Alger avec la Cour de France, 1579–1833, 2 vols. (Paris, 1889), 1:356. 378 TNA FO 113/3/32 (1 May 1692). 379 TNA SP 71/3/239 (16 May 1692). 380 TNA SP 71/3/216v (17 October 1692). 381 “Names of Captives Redeem’d out of Algiers by Thomas Baker from may 1692 to 10th December 1694,” TNA SP 71/3/303–304 (15 January 1695); but the list did not include John Robson who had carved his name in a house in Algiers on 3 January 1692, TNA FO 113/3/33. 382 TNA SP 71/14/234, 236 (2 & 8 March 1694): “The King’s most Excellent Majesty in Council, the Court at Whitehall & the Committee of Trade and Plantations at the Council Chamber in Whitehall.” The sum to be paid for each captive was 270 pieces of eight. 383 TNA CO 5/1183/539 (19 July 1694).

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while others had converted, but the crisis of captives was already affecting the immigrants to North America.384 Captivity and ransom were now transatlantic matters, and New Englanders who ransomed their kin from Indian and French captivity found that they also had to ransom travelers and would-be colonists from North Africa. Captivity among Indians had been ongoing for decades, but captivity in North Africa was viewed with grave anxiety, as the sermons of Cotton Mather show: for captives were exposed to the allure of Islam – in the manner that there had been the danger of English colonists being seduced by a philo-Indianism that had attracted Thomas Morton,385 and/or by Catholicism in Canada. By February 1695, all captives had been released from Tripoli, Tunis, or Algiers, except one who “refused his liberty.”386 A few months later, in March, Consul Baker left Algiers with his family, along with “45 redeemed English­ men.”387 Improved relations with the regencies were necessary at a time of war when the British fleet needed to revictual and shelter in the North African ports. Diplomacy and ransoming captives with hard currency or with naval materiel were effective in winning over allies against France. But not so fortunate were the captives in Morocco, where Mulay Ismāʿīl was set on building commercial and diplomatic ties with France. In 1693, a former captive, Francis Brooks, pleaded with the “Sacred Majesties, William and Mary” to have a care for the captives in Morocco.388 There were, he explained, 340 “English-men, Subjects of our Gracious King, in this sore Captivity” who had been slaves for over a decade.389 His plea fell on deaf ears because of the devastating French attack on the Anglo-Dutch Smyrna convoy in Lagos which resulted in the loss of about a hundred ships and in huge financial strain in London. A squadron was sent into the Mediterranean in 1695 to protect merchantmen, and perhaps because of Brooks’ plea, a list of the “number and names” of the captives was prepared, but it did not include their nationality (possibly because it was known that King William favored ransoming Dutch and German captives, too).390 The order by the Duke of Shrewsbury emphasized that the captives should be ransomed with “merchandize” and British 384 TNA CO 5/1184/19–20 (26 March 1695). 385 New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637). 386 TNA FO 113/3/68; TNA SP 71/3/301. 387 TNA SP 71/3/315 (19 March 1695). 388 Barbarian Cruelty (London, 1693), ix. 389 Ibid, 58. In a letter of 10 October 1693, the Quaker Joseph Bealing reported 260 captives, Tuke, Account of the Slavery of Friends in the Barbary States, 17. 390 The list is mentioned in the Maritime Museum catalogue, but the curators informed me that it was lost.

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products, “for it is necessary we should be eased as much as possible in the exportation of money for any foreign payments.”391 As the war dragged on, without a decisive victory on either side, there was need to preserve hard currency at home. The only value the captives had was that they could be exchanged for British goods – one commodity for another. With a Royal Fleet of 234 ships and 45,906 men and officers,392 there was little money to spare for captives in Salé or anywhere else. John Whitehead, who was a captive from 1691 (and returned to England in 1698) stated the number of English slaves in Morocco was 220, at a time when brisk export of cloth from England to “Barbary, at Tetuan” was flourishing, as was the import of “wax, dates, cuchaneal, estridge [ostrich] feathers, and hides; but the greatest thing we trade in is wax” from Morocco.393 Unfortunately, when negotiations were initiated for ransoming the captives, Mulay Ismāʿīl asked not for cloth in exchange of captives, but for what Britons exactly feared – hard currency; by September 1698, he not only demanded that all captives be ransomed together, but he raised the price of each captive to £150, for which, it was reported, “we are beholding to the Jews and I know not what other informing rascals.”394 A year later in September, it was reported that there were still “poor people” enslaved in Morocco, but a month later, an agreement was reached to ransom 300 of them.395 After the war had ended (Treaty of Ryswick in May 1697), King William turned his attention to captives and convened the “Commissioners for the Redemption of Captives,” headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Commissioners were to collect money from churches and pursue ransom negotiations for captives in Morocco. When in 1700, Francis Brooks re-published his plea on behalf of the captives, he may have set in motion a momentum towards a national collection of ransom. In June of that year, a list of 276 captives (along with “divers French Protestants”) was prepared for Mulay Ismāʿīl, which the envoy, Captain George Delaval, took with him, along with instructions from the Commissioners on what gun-locks and powder to exchange for each captive, “10,000 pieces of eight to be employed in 391 TNA SP 44/205/186 (4 January 1696); CSPD William III, 1 January-31 December, 1696, 2: 7 (4 January 1696). 392 Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 155. 393 See the edition of Whitehead’s account in my Britain and Barbary, appendix  3; Fifth Report of the Royal Commission, Part I, 372. 394 CSPD William III, 1 January-31 December, 1696 2:84–85 (8 September 1698). 395 A Letter from a Gentleman to the Right Reverend Father in God, Henry Lord Bishop of London (London, 1701), 5. In January 1700, the bishop of London ransomed one Peter Emes, who had been a captive for fourteen years, CSPD William III, 1 January 1699–31 March 1700 5: 387.

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England in what the emperor likes most.”396 The Moroccan ruler also demanded that one Muslim captive be exchanged for every two English slaves as a result of which thirty-two Britons were freed.397 Of the above sum, £1000 was paid to gunsmiths, and £1016 was used to ransom four captives. Delaval negotiated on behalf of the remaining 224 captives, and by February 1701, he had ransomed all but “30 English [who] remain stile in Barbary.”398 The captives were still there as a letter of 11 September 1702 confirmed, “detain’d only for about One hundred & sixty Barrels of Powder, some Gunlocks & some Moors, wch are bought up in Italy.”399 Back in England, the general London public was getting tired of the appeals to their generosity on behalf of captives.400 In A letter from a Gentleman to the Right Reverend Father in God Henry, Lord Bishop of London (1701), an anonymous writer, who had been involved in the negotiations for ransoming captives, mentioned how rumors were constantly spreading about the return of captives – who were still in captivity. Such rumors were intended to stop the collections but it was incumbent on the London community to help ransom their own, he urged, because the king had issued a “Brief for a Collection through the whole Kingdom [but it did not have] the good effect to raise sufficiently to Redeem all the Captives.”401 The captives, as the translated letter from Mulay Ismāʿīl stated, were in Tetuan “imployed continually in our Building,” which is why, noted the Gentleman author, it was feared that many would turn “Mahometan.” Meanwhile, rather embarrassingly, all the Dutch captives had been ransomed (in 1698) – King William having shown special favor to them.402 There was a growing sense of malaise among the general public at the repeated calls to raise funds to ransom unknown sailors in faraway lands – which may help to explain why it is that by the beginning of the new century, only accounts about escaped captives had been published in England, 396 CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700–8 March, 1702, 6:57 (11 June 1700). Rogers puts the sum as £15,000, Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 72. 397 TNA SP 71/4/23 (18 October 1700). 398 TNA SP 71/15/5 (28 February 1701); CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700–8 March, 1702, 6: 435, 467 (31 October – 3 November 1701 and 12 December 1701). 399 TNA SP 71/15/11(11 September 1702). 400 And more eager, perhaps, to read about heroic escapes: John Watts, The Captivity and Deliverance of John Watts an Englishman, from Slavery under the King of Buckamores, and the King of Calanach, near Old Malabar in Guinea in R.B., The English acquisitions in Guinea (London, 1700). 401 A Letter (London, 1701), 7. See also the manuscript version in BL 1434.i.5. 17 October 1701, Hampton Court; CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700–8 March, 1702, 6: 450 (30 November 1701). 402 A Letter, 4.

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showing an explicit preference for deviousness over devotion, and the heroic escapees over the ransomed. Captives who returned found that their readers/ audiences wanted to be entertained about the exotic, the savage and the erotic, rather than to be told about Christian perseverance and miraculous spiritual fortitude. There was demand for information rather than autobiography, facts and data about the fauna and flora of the regions of captivity, rather than spiritual reflections. Sir Hans Sloane “commanded” John Whitehead, who had spent years in Moroccan captivity, to write him a detailed account soon after he returned to England. Whitehead did, although he begged Sloane to remember “the heavy Pressures of Servitude” which he had endured.403 That is why nothing could have been more exciting, or shocking, to readers than the account about conversion to Islam that Joseph Pitts wrote, including his pilgrimage to Mecca. Published in 1704, the account was oft-republished (and pirated), for as the title shows, the account furnished new information about Muslims, firmly based on personal knowledge: A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammedans, with an Account of the Author’s Being Taken Captive (1704). Captivity was now a means to an end. Notwithstanding the laxity in the reimbursement of ransomers, Sir George Rooke ransomed twenty-nine captives from Morocco,404 and in July 1701, Jezreel Jones ransomed twenty captives, and in July, fifty-three more, perhaps after sending an “engine” which the Moroccan agents had seen in the Tower, and which they requested for Mulay Ismāʿīl.405 On 10 October, the English captive, “Daniel Beezy” (?), was released gratis to carry a letter from Mulay Ismāʿīl to King William.406 At the end of that month, “an English merchantship,” reported Captain Delaval, passed by Cadiz, carrying “300 barrels of gunpowder to be delivered me at Tangier as part of the redemption of captives.”407 By December, “Thos. Warren, John Hickman, Rob. Golden, Will. Painter, and Thos. Johnson,” who had been soldiers in Tangier and had been taken prisoners by the Moors: they were “redeemed and are returned to their native country.” They had been in captivity for twenty-four years and it was hoped they would be sheltered in the “Hospital at Chelsea,” which had been designated for wounded soldiers.408 403 Whitehead’s account is reproduced in my Britain and Barbary, 177–191. 404 TNA SP 71/15/55 (not dated): “The Commissioners for the redemption of the Captives in the Kingdome of Morocco (signed Houbon, Peter Joye and Willoiam Haiokanez(?)).” 405 CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700–8 March, 1702, 370–371 (23 June 1701). The engine was “useless.” 406 TNA SP 102/4/122 in Hopkins, Letters from Barbary, 36. Hopkins gives the date as 5 October. 407 CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700–8 March, 1702, 6:435–436 (29 October 1701). 408 Ibid., 470–471 (20 December 1701).

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Why they had spent so much time in captivity is unclear: either they had been sent to the hinterlands (although often consuls tried to keep track of their faraway compatriots) or nobody had really bothered to pay their ransom – perhaps “wandering souldiers” (per Coke) who had been impressed in the army or sent to Tangier as punishment. In the second half of 1702, 109 captives were released from Morocco,409 and later, twenty-nine captives were redeemed by Sir George Rooke.410 After the return of the captives to England, the Dean of St. Paul’s, William Sherlock, delivered an earnest sermon to them after they had marched in procession to the cathedral. Deeply apprehensive about what the men would do, now that they were free, having been denied the pleasures of life for years in arduous captivity, he warned them against sins and iniquities – which were worse captors than the North Africans. Like earlier preachers in the Caroline period (strangely, there are no sermons about captives in the Restoration period), he pleaded with the rest of the congregation to donate to the welfare of the ransomed men seated in the front pews, (An Exhortation to those Redeemed Slaves, London, 1702). In July 1705, sixteen “Moreish slaves” were exchanged for “32 English Captives” in Morocco, and to ransom 190 others, a long list of demands was set: “Barrrells of Powder 168 Gun Locks 2800 Moorish Slaves 14.”411 Again, in January 1706, money and ammunition were given to Mulay Ismā’īl in payment for thirty-four captives in Meknes: “Thirty four hundred Gunlocks being 100 for each Captive; Two hundred & four Barrells of Powder at 6 p/Captive,”412 and then, in May, Jezreel Jones negotiated the exchange of forty-four captured Moors for twenty-two Britons and “2200 gunlocks.” Also in tht year, an ambassador from Morocco arrived in London in order to improve relations, but after two years in the city, not much was achieved.413 A key item in the negotiations with Ismāʿīl was in regard to the English request for “horses from Barbary” for the war on the continent.414 As early as 1705, Ismāʿīl had assured Jones that if Queen Anne “desired ten thousand of his best horses and their riders, he would send them against Her Enemys.”415 Ransoming captives went hand in hand with procuring supplies at 409 410 411 412 413

TNA SP 71/15/10 (1702). TNA SP 71/15/55, leaving thirty-six French captives. TNA SP 71/15/151 (26 July 1705). TNA SP 71/21/7 (4 January 1706). See the detailed study of Aḥmad Qardanash’s visit in J.A.O.C. Brown, “Anglo-Moroccan Relations and the Embassy of Aḥmad Qardanash, 1706–1708,” The Historical Journal, 51 (2008): 599–620. 414 Horses were discussed as early as 16 September 1704, TNA SP 89/18/146r. 415 TNA SP 71/15/128r (27 June 1705). See my discussion of British acquisition of horses in “Islam in Britain, 1689–1750,” Journal of British Studies, 47 (2008): 284–301.

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the same time that, for Ismāʿīl, it was a means of keeping communication channels open with the European superpowers. Having broken relations with France, he desired some kind of alliance with the queen of England: thus his (unfulfilled) offer of sending 10,000 of his “riders” to fight on the continent. Notwithstanding this cooperation, the English were still not releasing all the captives in their hold, which is why “Alcaid Aly Ben Abdallah” chided the Moroccan ambassador who had been sent to London: while the English succeed in redeeming “their Captives,” he wrote him, “you cannot obtain the like we may repent & our Captives still remain in the Gallys working & must die in slavery whilst the English are rejoyceing & getting of children, whilst they are increasing and multiplying.” In the margin of the letter: “These very words the Ambassador Cardenas said to Jezreel Jones at Tangier.”416 For Mulay Ismā’īl, captives served as presents that his ambassadors took with them during their visits to European capitals or as means for acquiring munitions: there was no interest in keeping them or converting them. They served political and diplomatic, not religious, ends. That is why John Freville could live and trade in Morocco for twenty years, and then return to England – still a Christian.417 On 13 February 1707, fifty-four men and boys, along with Robert Helliard, were captured on their way to the Canary Islands.418 In that year, Consul Cole recalled in Algiers the depredations committed at sea during the Nine Years War: “about One Hundred and Thirty ships, and other vessels, and above Three Thousand brave men made slaves many of which layd their bones here, some renounced their Baptisme, and others redeemed to my knowledge ruining some families in the West.”419 While the war did result in extensive naval confrontations and in British captivity by the French and their Algerian allies, the number of ransomed men was a fraction of the alleged figure given by Cole. In his correspondence, Cole had not mentioned such numbers of captives because his concern had been not with ransoming captives but with ensuring steady food supplies for the army in Spain, “Wheat, Barley, and Beans for Powder.”420 Nor had he mentioned the anger of the Algerians who repeatedly discovered that British ships carried more than one pass, or that a ship flying the British flag had more Spanish than English sailors – a legitimate reason for 416 BL ADD 61542, fo. 136v. 417 TNA SP 71/15/69–71. (1703). See also the reference to Patrick Morgan in TNA SP 71/16/264r (29 May 1717). 418 BL ADD 61542, fo. 11. 419 BL ADD 61535, fo. 94 v (17 October 1707). 420 BL ADD 61535, fo. 84 (24 March 1707).

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Algerians to seize large British and other European captives. In 1709, Consul Baker reported that Britain’s confrontation with Algiers over the previous five years had led to the capture of 157 ships “and neer Four Thousand Seamen.”421 Like Consul Cole’s earlier claim, this number is difficult to substantiate because the Algerians were rarely capable of attacking British ships; actually, by that year, they had been pleading with Queen Anne to curb her fleet which was constantly attacking their ships; only in May 1709 did she promise to look into the matter.422 The Algerian fleet had been so weekend that it would have been impossible for it to carry out any attack on the Royal Navy. Not only are Cole’s and Baker’s numbers difficult to accept: how could such thousands of seamen be lost when in 1708, there was fear in London after the Moroccan ambassador, Joseph Diaz, “hired severall watermen at 3 month to goe along with him, which if soe will be looseing so many serviceable seamen.”423 An “Account of money received for and towards the Redemption of The Captives at Machanes,” written in October 1707, records the names of counties around the kingdom and the amounts donated. Evidently, there were enough records left that a clear and systematic register could be prepared anew. It showed that in 1700, King William III had sent out collectors and commissioners to the “Great Towne” of each county, the Universities, and the surrounding country.424 The names of the counties were entered alphabetically, starting with Berkshire and ending with Yorkshire. Cumberland offered the smallest amount and Kent the largest, but every county chipped in, along with “Private Charities.” Another “Account” follows, showing how the money was spent: starting on 13 June 1700, sixteen pounds were “Given severall Captives upon their deliverance from Slavery for their Subsistance and Charged home.” Other monies went in payment for gunlocks that the Moroccans always needed; £2500 went for buying presents for Mulay Ismāʿīl; £1245 for buying “Moorish” slaves, probably from Spain, to meet one of the requirements of exchanging Moors for Britons; and then numerous payments for “Bills of exchange” and £14-9-6 to Samuel Nassis/al-Naqsīs of Tetuan for “bringing up the Captives to the Procession.” The total amount that was spent over a period of five years (ending in December 1705) was £16,822-17-8.425 421 BL ADD 61536, fo. 66v (11 June 1709). 422 BL ADD 61493, fo. 9 (31 May 1709). 423 BL ADD 61542, fo. 107. Similar anxiety continued to be expressed as rivalry with France grew: see the letter Captain Paddon sent to Secretary of State Stanhope on 26 December 1715, TNA SP 71/16/205, about the need for men on “ships for our foreign Trade.” 424 See the instructions by the king to Henry, bishop of London, on 20 November 1701, CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700–8 March, 1702, 6:450. 425 All the information is derived from BL ADD 61544, 1–20.

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Another “Account,” attached to the previous one, listed the amounts that were collected from individual donors, from May 1700 until November 1705. The list was long and included money from bishops and cathedral deans, parishes, anonymous donors, and “ye Colledges & Parishes of Cambridge.” The sums ranged from as little as one pound and a few shillings to £500. Although the majority of the donors came from London and its parishes, there was money offered from faraway Durham and Chester. The total sum raised was £16,591-12-2½. Interestingly, this and the previous account had the same date of 25 October 1707. This latter account was followed by a report on the “moneys paid out…for ye Redempcon of Captives at Machanes” and showed that the sum that was paid out had been exactly the same as the sum that had been collected. The date of this report was 11 July 1708. Both accounts reveal how much people from all walks of life had participated in raising money for their captured coreligionists, and how every parish and village had contributed what it could to help those in need. But, after the money was collected, there was a scandal: “one Informer” reported how some individuals “converted to their own use diverse sums of [the] money” that had been raised in charity, as a result of which an investigation was conducted and a report submitted on 30 April 1708. But no further information was furnished. The general populace cared for captives, and many donated money, but the agents were not always honest, and the money did not always reach the captives.

The Periods of George I, 1714–1727, and George II, 1727–1760

If a line can be drawn in terms of British record-keeping of names and numbers of captives, it is between the Stuarts and the Hanoverians. Although there were examples from the Stuart period of precise and accurate accounts, it was from 1714 on that records and names of captives were systematically kept. This difference was chiefly a result of the institutionalization of sea trade and rigorous control by the admiralty. The vast majority of captives from this period on were men serving on the Royal Navy. Numbers and names were therefore well kept. There were no more British captives in Morocco, as a French count of 1708 shows (unless there were some among the twenty “autres”), but in 1714, “severall Families” implored Queen Anne to redeem their relatives in Tangier,426 by which time other captives were seized to Salé. Perhaps this captivity 426 On 4 January 1706, “the State of the Captiues Account” attested that all captives in Morocco had been redeemed: TNA 71/21/7; the list is in Leïla Maziane, Salé et ses corsairs (1666–1727), 272; TNA SP 71/16/130 (4 March 1714).

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motivated Arabist Simon Ockley to publish an anonymous account of captivity in “South-West Barbary” which he stated, “fell into my Hands accidentally some Years ago.”427 After the treaty of Utrecht was signed in April 1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession, Captain George Paddon went to Morocco in order to ransom captives, taking with him money, cloth, tea, and other consumer goods that Mulay Ismāʿīl wanted. But he encountered great difficulty, because of the Jewish merchants who had “the handling of the Emperor’s Money & pay him yearly use for the same.” Only if pressure was applied on the Jews, Paddon recommended, would they be willing to “help in procuring a lasting Peace.”428 Paddon had a rough time among the Moroccans, once finding himself in confinement, but he confirmed what he had written earlier to the secretary of state: in order to maintain peace “with such a Precarious People, it would be very necessary to be always Just to them, which hitherto have not been so punctually observed on our part.”429 From Salé to Tripoli, the North Africans had always emphasized the need for Britons to abide by agreements, which sailors and merchants repeatedly broke. Still, for Paddon, it was they who were “Thieves and Pyrats” undermining the trade of “our British Empire.”430 Paddon conveniently forgot about the Armenian-Moroccan ambassador who had visited London only to find himself kept under house arrest in his rented residence near the houses of Parliament in retaliation for the seizure by Moroccan pirates of an English ship – an arrest that the ambassador reminded his English Christian hosts went against “the Law of Nations and of Custom.”431 Be that as it may, Paddon persevered in his mission, and on 27 July 1714, he signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce in Tetuan which included an important article: that all residents of Gibraltar and Minorca be considered British and granted protection.432 Captives were dispersed in various parts of Ismāʿīl’s kingdom, and in October 1715, 12,000 dollars were earmarked to ransom sixty-nine of them,433 a large sum for such few men, unless it included all the presents and bribes that would 427 As Ockley mentions in the preface, the captive had been released on 21 November 1698 – a decade and a half before Ockley saw fit to publish An Account of South-West Barbary (London, 1713), xii. 428 TNA SP 71/16/204 (26 December 1715). See also an undated letter by him: “Nothing but Money and settling an Envoy in their Country will keep Peace with them” 71/16/203r. 429 TNA SP 71/16/155 (30 November 1714). 430 TNA SP 71/16/204v (26 December 1715). In an undated letter, Paddon had been told to “look on the Moors as people that have no other design but to cheat,” TNA SP 71/16/184r. 431 For the history of the ambassador’s stay in England, see my “The Last Moors.” 432 Rogers, Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 93. 433 TNA SP 71/16/198 (26 December 1715).

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be presented to members of the Moroccan court. In December 1715, Paddon reported that there were eighty-eight captives, along with five who had turned Moors. He then added that the “Emperor” was “a little impatient till some body comes” to ransom them;434 as on many occasions, captives could be quickly freed if money was made available – and as in previous negotiations, Ismā‘īl wanted Moroccan captives in exchange, too. Delays followed and more captives were seized on the high seas, reaching 125 in number. On 18 July 1716, the father of John Stocker wrote to the secretary of state about his son in Meknes, along with other “Distressed Creatures.”435 Under a year later, in March 1717, a letter sent by a captive mentioned 153 captives alive, forty-one dead (among whom were “6 Masters”), and four converts to Islam in that city.436 Perhaps because nothing was being done on behalf of captives, a few of them were allowed by their captors to write letters from Meknes to their relatives asking them to mobilize support. One letter is revealing of how slow, undetermined, and indifferent the attitude back in London was in regard to their liberation. Mr. Meggison wrote to his wife on 18 September 1716: I have been very bad a long time but I bless God I’m indifferent well now. My Dear I’m sadly afraid we shall not be cleard very soon for our Ambassador makes no hast to come to clear us, but sends Secretarys, and that signifies as much as nothing. for without somebody comes here to the King we never shall be clear.437 In May, Jezreel Jones was forced to petition the secretary of state on behalf of women whose husbands were in captivity: “The clamors of the Wifes and other Relations of the poore slaves in Barbary still oblige me to trouble you with this letter on their behalfes.” Evidently, the women had petitioned the king frequently, “by repeated Applications set forth in Petition to your Sacred Majesty the grievances that the Captives Groan under.” Having been ignored, as had happened to women frequently in the previous century, these women not only approached the secretary of state for support, but also decided to see him in person, to “wait on you tomorrow, To send for their Husbands.”438 There was no way of liberating captives except by money: suspension of trade with Morocco 434 TNA SP 71/16/202–203 (no date). 435 TNA SP 71/16/233. Nothing was done for them, as the later letter by Jones shows on 21 May 1717, TNA SP 71/16/249. 436 TNA SP 71/16/254 (4 March 1717). 437 TNA SP 71/16/256 (18 September and 14 November 1717). 438 TNA SP 71/16/249, 251, 259 (21 May 1717).

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would have a disastrous effect on Gibraltar since Ismāʿīl would retaliate by preventing the export of food supplies to the bastion.439 But there was no money. In September 1717, eleven men were captured on board the Biddiford,440 who were quickly released after the consul’s intervention, and sometime between 1717 and 1718, the wives and kinsmen of 174 captives in Salé petitioned the king again for assistance.441 Women continued to assume active roles towards their captured kin, both in the submission of petitions as well as in public mobilization: but much as they kept the captives in the forefront of their concerns, there was not as much commitment from the secretary of state or others in position of power. On 25 July 1719, twelve English captives were taken to Algiers,442 and in September 1719, Robert Keene prepared “A List of English Captives in Mequinez,” seized to Salé from 8 February 1714 until 7 October 1719. There were “Living 188. Dead 53. Turnd Moors 16” (altogether 267 names).443 Notwithstanding the danger of captivity, fishermen and enterprising traders persisted in going out to see, often in contravention of treaty terms, and in July 1720, seventeen Britons were seized to Tetuan off the ship Experiment, then another thirty-six;444 Consul Hatfield reported from Tetuan that a “woman that was taken out of the Irish ship has been tortured almost to death to make her turn she says she will not but during her tortures she fainted & then they said she had turn’d, she is in the Selaglio & so lost.”445 In reaction to a general indifference among his London congregations, Thomas Pocock, chaplain at the Royal Hospital for Seamen in Greenwich, preached a sermon in which he pleaded for the “great Number of our Countrymen who groan under an insupportable Slavery in Barbary; some of them have endured in several Years, and some of them have very lately enter’d into it.” He lamented that in the past few years, fifty-eight captives had died, and sixteen had converted to Islam, and that it was only the liberality of individuals, rather than of the government, that effected the release of compatriots. Still, there remained “above two hundred of our Countreymen” in Meknes: and “If there is an Hell upon Earth, it is not in Aetna, Vesuvius, or Indian Vulcanos, but in Macquenes.”446 There was no 439 See the letter of 6 May 1717, TNA SP 71/16/247. 440 TNA SP 71/16/276 (6 September 1717). 441 “Petition of the Wives Mothers and Children of Persons in Captivity in Sally,” TNA SP 71/16/251r (no date). 442 TNA FO 113/3/183 (25 July 1719). 443 TNA SP 71/16/305–306 (29 September 1719). The figures were used by Thomas Pocock in his sermon, The Relief of Captives (London, 1720), 30, although he rounded the 188 to 200. 444 TNA SP 71/16/348 (1 July 1720); 71/16/310 (31 July 1720), which adds “17 french.” 445 TNA SP 71/16/309 (21 July 1720). 446 Pocock, The Relief of Captives, 12, 19, 30, 29.

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immediate response to his call most probably because from February 1720 on, Londoners were in the grip of the South-Sea Bubble hysteria, buying and selling stocks, and until the collapse of all the Ponzi schemes in November of that year, it was unlikely that the men and women in Exchange Alley would turn from “stockjobbing” to the captives of “Barbary.” In 1721, John Windus went to ransom captives in Morocco. He found “three hundred” in “Mequinez not including nineteen who had turned Moors.”447 Windus was able to ransom them, although by the time they were ready to leave, their number had fallen to “296 English, being what were left alive, (and had not turned Moors).”448 Earlier, upon entering the palace of Mulay Ismāʿīl, he had seen “English boys falling prostrate, and giving him the usual Salutation, Allah ibarik phi amrik Sidi; (i.e.) God bless thy Power.”449 Windus returned with the captives, knowing full well that he had left behind a few, including “an english boy,” “an enlighsman,” and Randle/Randal Brereton “in an obscure place to the Southward” in Morocco.450 Information about captives had been made available, but there had not been enough funds to ransom all. On the return of the captives to England, one wrote an account about his experience, Description of the Nature of Slavery among the Moors (1721), which included a list of “the Men carry’d Captives to Maaquinez, from Oct. 5, 1714, to July 14, 1721.”451 His figures are slightly different from those by Windus: of the 411 British captives who were known to have been held in Meknes, 101 had died, 19 had converted to Islam, and 291 were alive on 14 July 1721, but only 280 reached England since some died either during the course of the negotiations or in their passage home. The information included by the anonymous author is the most detailed that had appeared in the English archive to that date, indicating the exact date when each man (and one woman) was captured, aboard which ship, sailing from and to which ports, with the names of the ships’ captains and the first mates. Most probably, the author-captive gathered these data by consulting the captives themselves. What is noticeable is the high percentage of the dead (one out of every four captives) and the high percentage of captains among the 447 A Journey to Mequinez; The Residence of the Present Emperor of Fez and Morocco (London, 1725), 195. 448 Ibid. 449 Ibid., 104. 450 TNA SP 71/16/325 (8 October 1721). The report was given by Anthony Hatfield in Tetuan. Half a century later, the Moroccan historian, Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Qādirī recalled the number of released captives as 100, Nashr al-Mathānī, eds. Muḥammad Ḥajjī and Aḥmad Tawfīq (Rabat, 1977), 3:252. 451 Description of the Nature of Slavery among the Moors, 13.

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dead.452 The ships were all small, each, having under ten men on deck; on one occasion there was a woman, who “was forc’d to turn Moor” (the same who was mentioned above by Hatfield, confirming accuracy of information). Oddly, her name was not recorded while all the names of the men were. There were a few names that were designated as “passengers,” suggesting that the vast majority of the captives were those of sailors. All in all, thirty-eight ships were seized from the following ports: Topsham 6; Lisbon 2; Bristol 6; Newfoundland 3; London 10; New England 3; Plymouth 2; Falmouth; Hull 2; and 1 from Lime, Weymouth, Inverness, Foy, and Cork.453 The range reflects the expansion of British trade even on board small ships: the ships had sailed from England, Wales, Ireland and New England, but many from Portugal, too. To these captives whom Windus brought back, and to a large London congregation, William Berriman delivered a sermon on 4 December 1721 in which he congratulated the captives on their safe “Return from Slavery under the Yoke of Infidels, to enjoy the Liberty of your Native Country, and the Exercise of your Religion.” The preacher dramatically compared their captivity with the Babylonian captivity, and their return with the happy biblical precedent. For Berriman, the return of the captives was not just a return to liberty, but also a return from the danger of apostasy: the captives had been saved not just physically but spiritually, and for their salvation, the captives should offer thanks to the king who had made “their Englargement a Part of his Concern.” Berriman then turned to the congregation and urged them to add their “Alms and charitable Contributions, for their immediate Relief and Sustenance, ‘till such time as they shall be able to look out and make Provisions for themselves.”454 Money was not only needed to ransom captives, but also, after the return of captives, to provide them with start-up funds so they could begin their lives anew. But it is likely people preferred to spend their money not on the captives but on romances about captivity. A year after the return of the captives, Penelope Aubin published The Life and Amorous Adventures of Lucinda (London, 1722), the story of a woman who was captured by a “rover of Barbary, and sold a slave at Constantinople.” This romance was the first text in early modern England to depict an “English lady” in captivity – after over a century and a half of male 452 Captains were “fashionable landsmen sent from Court,” often with no interest in navigation or the sea and sailed in order to make an income, Trevelyan, Illustrated History, 67. Michel Fontenay, “Le Maghreb barbaresque et l’esclavage méditerranéan aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” argues for seventeen to twenty percent annual deaths among the captives, Les Cahiers de Tunisie 44 (1991): 22 in 7–43. 453 For a detailed study of this episode, see my “British Captives in Salé, 1721: A Case Study,” in a collection edited by Stefan Hanß and Juliane Schiel (forthcoming, Chronos, 2014). 454 William Berriman, The Great Blessing of Redemption from Captivity (London, 1722), 3, 8, 25.

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captivity literature, the vast majority of which had been “factual.”455 Meanwhile, in June of that year, “7 English & Portuguese men & 2 women” were captured to Salé,456 but by the following year, only eight Britons were left in Morocco, as a French source reveals.457 By now, Britain was in possession of a strong fleet and had established good relations with Mulay Ismāʿīl so much so that Tangier became the haven for British captives who escaped from Spanish Melilla and Ceuta.458 We know, wrote Mulay Ismāʿīl to King George I, that the English have many virtues, one of which is that they do not enslave Muslims – a point that had been made in previous letters.459 Perhaps under the influence of the Windus report which was published in 1725, another romance by William Rufus Chetwood appeared in London in 1726: The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle. It depicted captivity in Morocco in a heroic light: not only did the captive escape, deceiving the Irish renegade who was in charge of him, but he fell in love with an English woman who was a slave, and together they fled to freedom and marriage. But this exotic world of the romance, recalling The Fair Maid of the West over a century earlier, foundered after the death of Ismāʿīl in 1727 and the internecine wars that followed (1727–1757). The arrival of King George II to the throne in that same year, who was as eager to buy “Barbary horses” as he was to ransom captives, made negotiations with the feuding successors of Ismāʿīl difficult. In 1729, Ambassador John Russell went to Fez and negotiated with the new ruler, Mulay ‘Abdallah, for the release of twenty-three captives.460 In 1731, all captives, British and other, were released from Tangier,461 but in June of that year, Spanish warships seized an English ship and took captive the Moroccans who were passengers on board and sold them into slavery. Angry, the governor of Tetuan, “Haggi Homar Lucas,” wrote to Consul Edward Blake complaining about English perfidy at the same time that Saletians retaliated by capturing  Britons. Lucas’s letter is strong-worded and shows the frustration of the Moroccans at British lack of cooperation: 455 For an extensive study of captivity romances, see Joe Snader, Caught between Worlds: British Captivity Narratives in Fact and Fiction (Lexington, Kentucky, 2000). Of all the published accounts, the one by T.S. in 1670 is most likely to have been fictionalized if not totally fictional in the seventeenth century. 456 TNA SP 71/16/332 (5 June 1722). 457 Maziane, Salé et ses corsairs (1666–1727), 273. 458 TNA SP 71/17/11 (5 January 1725). 459 TNA SP 102/2/96 (28 July 1723). 460 Magali Morsy, “Le Journal de l’Ambassadeur Russell,” Cahiers de Tunisie 24 (1976), 43 in 15–43. The captives were “Redeem’d” on 15 April 1730. 461 TNA SP 71/17/199 (5 April 1731).

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The English ought in justice to spend their Treasures and forces to redeem even one single person out of captivity, with his Effects if they have been taken under their Colours in time of Peace…Things being thus, the English ought to have declared in our Ports that all Moors that should go Passengers in their ships would not be safe…I should have proclaimed it in this Town & the Country round, & I should have sent word to the King to order the proclaiming of it in his Dominions to prevent any Moors from embarking on board an English ship.462 Two years later, the Saletians took “Forty English Seamen, and a Woman,”463 and later, four other ships with thirty-nine crew. When the Royal fleet destroyed two Moroccan ships, more Britons were seized, reaching a total of 142 captives. Unfortunately, the new consul in Morocco, John Leonard Sollicoffre, handled negotiations so badly (he also agreed to pay too high a price in ransom) that the secretary of state felt certain that “there has been great misconduct on your part in the transaction of this affair.” Consuls had been corrupt often, colluding with the captors to increase their own profit, or not ransoming captives in order to pocket the money.464 As a result, he was dismissed and a new consul appointed. Meanwhile, there were also captives in Algiers, and in February 1734, and in order to facilitate the ransom of thirty-eight Britons taken in the previous November, the following gifts were sent to the Dey of Algiers: “20 pieces of broadcloth, 2 pieces of brocade, 2 pieces of silver tabby, 1 piece of green damask, 20 pounds of tea, 300 of loaf-sugar, 5 pair of pistols, 2 clocks, and a box of toys.”465 The presents proved effective and on 12 November 1734, “This Day they landed at Whitehall Stairs, walked to St. James’s to return their Thanks to His Majesty, and were admitted into His Presence in the Garden of that Palace, the Queen and Royal Family being there.”466 Just about a hundred years after the first procession of captives had taken place in London in 1637, Britons were now paraded in the streets as they marched to thank the benevolent monarch: captives formed an exciting spectacle for the general public, and confirmed royal largesse.467 In 1735, 462 TNA SP 71/17/210 (2 June 1731). 463 TNA SP 71/17/308 (11 December 1733); ten days later, Consul Hatfield mentioned thirtynine men but no woman, TNA SP 71/7/312 (21 December 1733). 464 See the discussion of this episode, based on TNA SP 71/18/98 (3 December 1734), in Rogers, Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 91. 465 Gentleman’s Magazine, 14 (1734): 104–105. 466 The London Gazette, 1. 467 See an earlier reference to the “English Slaves” who “came in person to Whitehall a few dayes since to make their humble and thankfull acknowledgements to him” for

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“A List of the Masters and Ships Names” along with 131 “Commanders” and “Mates and Sailors” was published in praise of the king’s ransoming of them – just as captivity accounts under Queen Elizabeth had praised her for her ransoming her subjects. But while Elizabethan captives had written and published descriptions of their ordeals, only one captive (who had escaped on his own) published an account during the whole reigns of George I and George II.468 Joseph Morgan, formerly vice-consul in Algiers, explained that although Britain did not have “Trinitarian Fathers of Redemption, to roam up and down, and beg Money for the Relief of our Captive Brethren among Infidels,” the “happy Islands” boasted of “their Royal Fathers Redemption.”469 In celebration of the king’s intervention and of the captives’ return the year before, Mary Barber published a poem “On Seeing The Captives, Lately Redeem’d From Barbary By His Majesty” that inspired the famous “Rule Britannia” refrain by Thomson and Mallet: No more in Iron Bonds the Wretched groan; Secur’d, Britannia, by thy Guardian Throne. Say, Mighty PRINCE! Can Empire boast a Bliss, Amidst its radiant Pomp, that equals this?470 But captives continued to be taken, not always because of pirate attacks. In 1737, an act of Parliament authorized collections in Livorno of “certain small Sums of Money” to be used for relieving British “Shipwrecked mariners, Captives, and other distressed Persons.”471 Two years later, Rear-Admiral Nicholas Haddock arrived in Algiers to “demand the Release of His Majesty’s Subjects,” offering presents that included “Musical Clock,” a “Writing Desk,” and “a Tortoise Shell Snuff Box.”472 Indirectly, the ransoming of captives was introducing new consumer goods and industries to North Africa, sometimes also with the aim of promoting their import by the ruler and his court. Trade and the possibility of new markets went hand in hand with ransom.

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ransoming them, Morrice, The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, eds. Tim Harris et al., 7 vols. (Woodbridge, 2007–2009), 3: 285. Thomas Pellow had not been ransomed by the king (George II). His account plagiarized material from other accounts about Morocco, but as soon as it was published in 1739, it became popular. A Voyage to Barbary…With Lists of more than 400 Slaves ransomed (by the Royal Bounty of their late and present Majesties) from Mequeniz (London, 1735), 142–47. “Of Seeing the Captives, lately redeem’d from Barbary by His MAJESTY,” in Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1734), 271–273. The London Gazette, no. 7611 (Saturday June 18 to Tuesday June 21, 1737). Over and above the ships and cargoes that had been lost, BL MS Egerton 2528, fos 81–85.

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After captives had been ransomed, Mulay ‘Abdallah (son of Ismāʿīl) felt that he had not been fully paid for them, and in January 1746, tribesmen captured eighty-seven crewmen on board the Inspector which was wrecked near Tangier and sent them to the royal court in Fez. Interestingly, as the chronicler of this episode, Thomas Troughton, noted, seven men made their escape, and although it is not clear how they escaped or where to, it is significant that five of them were men of rank and therefore of money.473 Of a crew of 204 men who had left England, ninety-six went down with the ship, eighty-seven escaped or were enslaved, and twenty-one had deserted or had died on board. Prompt attempts were made to ransom the captives.474 A year later, in January 1748, an Irish Regiment was captured to Algiers, with eighteen officers, forty soldiers, and “3 ladies.” But not much was done for them as they had been pursuing the “romantick zeal in the cause of the Pretender, inflamed with the Quixotism they have learned in Spain.”475 In order to expedite the ransoming of the English captives, a plea was entered in The Gentleman’s Magazine on 18 September 1748 for collections to help the “64 poor Englishmen, now in slavery, in the kingdom of Morocco in Barbary.” The anonymous author, b.c., lamented the total indifference to the captives’ plight among his compatriots, and called for the formation of “a society to carry on this truly charitable design.” In the absence of religious societies/orders similar to those in France and Spain, there was need in England for an organization, overseen by “some persons of eminence,” with a treasurer “appointed to receive such sums as shall be contributed.” Although it would not have either royal or ecclesiastical patronage, it would have the support of “charitable persons” from among the community who were urged to send their “subscriptions to St. John’s Gate.” For the first time in England’s history, a society for ransoming the captives of North Africa was being conceived.476 After the release of the above captives from Morocco in December 1750 and their return to England, Thomas Troughton wrote an extensive account about their ordeal: Barbarian Cruelty; or, an Accurate and Impartial Narrative of the 473 “Richard Veale, Captain, Wm. Johnson Lieut., Wm. Mallet ditto, John Stott, ditto, Michael Todd, Lieut. of the Marines, John Clarke, Sailor, Philip Obrion, ditto,” Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty; or, an Accurate and Impartial Narrative of the Unparallel’d Sufferings (London, 1751), 14. 474 One captive wrote about the dire conditions: “our skins are tann’d nearly to the colour of the Ethiopians, and instead of breeches, we are obliged, many of us, to wrap a piece of blanket round our privates,” TNA SP 71/18/401 (February 1747), quoted in Rogers, AngloMoroccan Relations, 93. 475 TNA SP 71/8/335–337 (15 December 1748). 476 The Gentleman’s Magazine, 413 (18 September 1748).

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Unparallel’d Sufferings (London, 1751). He emphasized that all his information was accurate, and he furnished the names of all who had died or been killed, those who had escaped, those who were enslaved, those who were released at an early stage, and those who had been in captivity in Morocco before 1746. He followed this account with a short sequel describing his experience after being left with a handful of men before their final return to England. Evidently, some men were released before others, while others remained as hostages until all payments were made. In the light of the romances and fictional accounts about captivity that had been appearing in print (Penelope Aubin’s 1739 The Noble Slaves, a re-edition of her 1722 romance of the same title, and The True History of Henrietta de Bellgrave (London, 1744), the latter set between Madagascar and India among French pirates), Troughton and two others had to sign before the Mayor that the account was accurate. A sharp line was now to divide the accounts with valuable information from entertainment. Although the Treaty of Peace and Commerce was renewed between Britain and Morocco in March 1751,477 captives were taken in January 1754 because they were trading with rebels in Asilah – but they were released soon after with a warning to Britons to desist from helping anti-government forces. Others were taken captive but only because of bad luck: five had been shipwrecked and subsequently enslaved by the “Mountaineers”; three had been “Taken by the Spaniards in the West Indies & banished to Ceuta, from whence they fled to the Moors who condemned them to slavery”; only John Solliveset and six mariners were “taken by a Cruiser of Tanger” – the reason being that they were sailing in a small “Polacra” – about the only catch for the once-formidable “Barbary Corsairs” whose “fleet” in 1756 consisted of eight ships only.478 Meanwhile, the British fleet continued to cruise Moroccan waters in search of prizes, and arms smugglers continued to sell munitions to rebels in Asilah. On 2 January 1756, Sidi Muḥammad ibn ‘Abdallah, grandson of Mulay Ismāʿīl (he assumed the throne in November 1757), complained to King George about his subjects, lecturing him about the need for Britons to abide by the terms of the treaties and to respect international agreements: Consider yourself – if some foreigner came to one of your lands and talked with one whom you had appointed your deputy there and came to an agreement with him without your being aware of it, there is no doubt but that there would fall upon him by your hand that which would send 477 Rogers, Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 95. 478 TNA SP 71/20/13–14 (no date). William Petticrew mentions that twenty-two men had been captured in “1752, 1753 and 1754.”

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him to perdition. You would not tolerate that because it would frustrate your action in your own country and bequeath evil to your companions. Given such disrespect, continued Sidi Muḥammad, British actions appeared to be quite threatening: “I fear that the land of Islam might be taken unawares.” He concluded by denouncing the English “for they are the origin of all shame and calamity in the ports of Islam. They have manifested much disparagement and contempt of the Caliphate whereas everything emanating from us to them has been in conformity with the established Shari’a and they have brought it upon themselves through the vileness of their conduct.”479 Where his grandfather had admired the British, Sidi Muḥammad declared war on Britain and in July 1756, the Moroccans captured a ship with eighteen British subjects (the majority from Minorca before the island was occupied by France later that year) including Elizabeth Marsh – who subsequently wrote the first account by an English woman of captivity in North Africa. The emissary who was sent to negotiate their release, Captain Hyde Parker, behaved so disrespectfully during his meeting with Prince Muḥammad that the captivity of the Britons, including Marsh who commented about his “insolent Behaviour,” lasted longer than necessary. By November, however, Marsh and all the sailors, including her future husband, one “Mr. [James] Crisp,” had been released.480 It is very likely that agreements were reached quickly because Britain needed Moroccan cooperation as the war with France (Seven Years War, 1756–1763) loomed. The last episode of captivity occurred in 1758 when three ships sank near the Moroccan coast with thirty-four officers and 334 sailors on board (222 from the Litchfiled, ninety-nine from the Somerset, and thirteen from the Lydia). Those who were captured were not seized by “Moors” sailing formidable ships, but were seized after swimming to the shore and falling prey to local tribesmen. Captivity was no longer a result of defeat in battle but of disaster at sea. By 14 May 1760, and after much haggling between Captain Mark Milbanke and Sidi Muḥammad over the ransom (both in hard currency and in military hardware), the captives were freed. A Treaty of Peace and Commerce was concluded and signed on 28 July in Fez, and ratified by King George III on 5 August 1761.481 Sidi Muḥammad was eager to open up his kingdom to European traders and entrepreneurs, from Russia to Britain to Spain, and to abolish slavery 479 TNA SP 102/4/104 (2 January 1756) in Hopkins, Letters from Barbary, 78, 79. 480 For a description of Parker’s failure, see Rogers, Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 97–98. 481 For a study of this episode, see Ramon Lourido Diaz, “El Rescate de varios centenares de cautivos ingleses y el tratado de paz Anglo-Marroqui de 1760,” in Biblioteca Espanõla de Tetuan 13–14 (1976): 99–140.

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completely, both in North Africa as in Europe.482 And in Milbanke, he had found a capable negotiator, “a man of great sense, more than any other ambassador I had before.”483 *** As the survey above shows, there is a vast range of information about captives, ransoms, and numbers, but fact and exaggeration were mixed together. Up till the last decades of the seventeenth century, most information was general simply because England did not yet have the mechanisms to list and record all the names of men (and women) on board all its ships. By the eighteenth century, and as the Royal Navy and merchantmen became structured, names and numbers were carefully recorded. By then, however, the captivity of Britons was sporadic, and the number of captives quite small. With the right envoys (and the correct sums of money and supplies of military hardware), captives were released quickly. During the Stuart period, and unless captives were needed to man ships at home, there was no governmental advantage in spending large sums of money on sailors, indentured servants, convicts, non-conformists, or “small” men from the “Western country.” Although thousands of captives were ransomed, unknown others were not. That is why, and throughout the Stuart age and even into the first years of the reign of George I, captives and their families and parish communities had to petition and plead for help. Knowing that in the eyes of government officials, the captives were not worth the sums needed for ransoming them, petitioners insistently warned against the danger of conversion to Islam. Such appeal to religion was the only way they could draw attention to the captives’ plight and generate sympathy and support. In every petition that women presented or that captives sent to London, the emphasis was on the “allure” of Islam that led to apostasy and on the numerous men and women and boys who “turned Turk” or “Moor.” But traders and consuls and resident factors in the North African cities knew very well that the captors did not as much seek to convert as to exchange captives for hard currency or military supplies or consumer goods (the last especially 482 For all the treaties that he signed with European and American governments, see Jacques Caillé, Les Accords internationaux du Sultan Sīdī Mohammed Ben Abdallah (1757–1790) (Paris, 1960). 483 TNA SP 71/20/578, in Rogers, Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 103. See for later captives, “the Redemption of Capt. Barton and all the Brittish subjects in Barbary,” TNA SP 71/20/441 (9 April 1760), and TNA SP 71/20/697 (25 September 1772).

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to the men in power).484 Consuls on the ground, in Algiers or Salé, repeatedly recorded how the North Africans viewed captivity as a means of renegotiating peace treaties and of consolidating commercial agreements:485 their reports concentrate more on ransom negotiations and financial needs than on religious conversion. It is the accounts written by captives or their ghostwriters, eager to promote their heroism to their compatriots, and the reports by austere priests in Spain and France who needed financial support from monarchy and public alike (and whose works were translated into English), that framed captivity in a deeply religious language. In some English accounts, the fear of the allure to Islam was combined with the fear of Catholicism – since Britons were captured by both religious communities of pirates. But for captors and consuls in North Africa, and for British agents and naval commanders, at Whitehall or at Westminster, conversion was less worrisome than financial loss of ships and cargos. Actually, in all the period under study, the published sermons that focused on captives and the danger of their apostasy were a mere handful in comparison to the thousands of captives in “Mahometan” hands. The tension over captives in early modern England was in regard to who was to pay their ransom. Under Elizabeth, the queen assumed responsibility for negotiating, but not for paying ransoms – which she left to charitable collections and to trading companies. The number of captives was small, much less than in later decades, but the cooperation of monarch and merchant (and Ottoman sultan and Moroccan ruler) proved successful: captives who wrote (and published) about their ordeals praised both the queen and the company investor for their freedom. Under the first two Stuarts, the situation changed because neither monarch wanted to pay ransom or deploy the fleet to protect merchants. Charles I levied ship money to build up the Royal Navy, but resentful sea captains and trading company subscribers believed that they paid for protection of their seamen by customs duty – and got no fleet protection in return. And while the Anglican Church was willing to continue its charitable collections, and ever worry about the apostasy of sailors and soldiers, it did not have the organizational structure to maintain a consistent momentum in 484 But this does not mean that there were not occasions when sailors/captives were forced or “tricked” into conversion (usually while drunk) after which they could not leave: see the letter by William Bennet TNA SP 71/12/211 (July 1632) about forcible conversion and the account about Will[ia]m Sampson in Tunis, TNA SP 71/7/647–649 (13 December 1732). 485 In March 1678, Consul Martin observed that the Algerians “will not permit of any [British captives] to goe off, hopeing that for their sakes much may be done toward ye accomodacõn of ye peace which they seeme to Covet very much,” TNA SP 71/2/227 (3/13 March 1678).

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ransoming captives. Archbishop Laud was concerned about the danger of Britons’ converting to Islam, so much so that he instituted a rite in the church for returning “renegades.” But he did not turn his attention to the financial role that the church could play to help captives – at a time of increased North African attacks on Mediterranean ships carrying the indigent, the condemned, the spirited, the emigrant, and the indentured to North America.486 With the fall of Laud and his execution in January 1645, his rite was forgotten. It was with Parliament in the 1640s and later with Cromwell that the situation changed. In no other period were there so many Parliamentary Acts and Ordinances on behalf of captives – demonstrating the Commons’ and Lords’ (until the latter’s abolition) assumption of responsibility. Parliament collected money through customs for the express purpose of paying the ransom of captives, but with the Navigation Act of 1651, merchant ships were protected by the fleet thereby reducing the captivity of sailors and the loss of cargos. Having enlarged the fleet, Cromwell was able to negotiate with, or to threaten, the North Africans into cooperation. Charitable contributions and individual initiatives at liberation continued, but from 1640 till his death in 1658, the government constantly tried to take over responsibility for the captives – although sometimes it spent money raised for captives on other necessities.487 Charles II renewed Cromwell’s Navigation Act, thus ensuring the growth of the navy, but he reverted to his father’s position of generally looking to the trading companies, charities, and the destitute consuls in North Africa to pay the ransoms – or urging that money raised from the sale of Muslim captives be used to liberate his subjects. He also maintained the English-Irish divide: when money was raised by the letters patent of 10 August 1670 and used to ransom Irish captives, the king insisted that money be raised in Ireland.488 English money went to English captives – but only those deserving of ransom, which excluded the large number of nonconformists and prisoners condemned to America. 486 For spiriting of children, see the discussion by David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450–1700 (Berkeley, 1991), part 3. Spiriting was not just a Bristol concern: see the 9 May 1644 Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament, For the Apprehending and bringing to condigne punishment, all such lewd persons as shall steale, sell, buy, inveigle, or purloyne, convey, or receive any little Children (London, 1644); and CSPD Charles II, 1670, with Addenda, 1660 to 1670, 10:541 (19 November 1670). 487 See for instance TNA SP 25/69/146 (24 May 1653). 488 CSPD Charles II, December 1671 to May 17th 1672, 12:254 (29 March 1672). The king wanted separate collections in Ireland. See the letters patent for Ireland to collect money for Irish captives, ibid., 12:241 (26 March 1672).

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His successor continued in these policies but William III established a body of “Commissioners” to handle the affairs of captives. New complications arose with his accession to the throne and with the two wars against Catholic France. First, and during times of war and financial constraints, ransomers were ordered to pay for the liberation of captives in merchandise and not in hard currency – a payment that was not always acceptable to the cash-strapped captors. Secondly, ransoms were to be paid not only for Britons but also for the Dutch, the continental Protestants, the Gibraltarians (after 1704), the Minorcans (after 1708), and after the accession of George I, the Germans, too. The British occupation of Mediterranean outposts with local populations meant that British ships carried sailors and passengers from among those populations who were not English but who were British subjects, or who were under British protection (as in the case of North African travelers). The flag was Britain’s but the men and women were Spanish/Catholic, Moorish/Muslim, Jewish, Armenian, French Protestants or others. When such multi-religious captives were seized by Britain’s enemies, France and Spain chiefly, North African rulers and British consuls wrote to London for assistance in ransoming them, or for compensation for losses of cargo. Many “Moors” arrived in London seeking redress,489 at the same time that the question of who was “British” and what to do about those non-English “Britons” became both complicated and contentions. As Hyde Parker wondered in May 1756: the captives who had been redeemed were natives “Of Minorca or Spaniards I shall be glad to know whether they are to be brought to England or landed where it may be much convenient for them to return to their several Countrys.”490 Until the beginning of the eighteenth century, the number of repatriated captives was by far less than what scholars have “estimated.” Two explanations are possible: a.

That large numbers of British captives drowned during naval battles, died during captivity, escaped (and returned to England?), or remained in North Africa where they converted, lived, married, worked, raised families, and died. Some lists show that death was high among captives; others mention healthy and vigorous returnees. Various lists present evidence of high numbers of sailors meeting their death by drowning after shipwreck: “Hugh Moulfra – Master of the Thomas & James of St. Ives in Cornwall wracked near to Tanger, and enslaved by the

489 See my “The Last Moors: Maghariba in Britain, 1700–1750,” Journal of Islamic Studies, 14 (2003): 37–58. 490 TNA SP 71/20/56 (11 May 1756).

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Mountaineers, he the only surviving person.”491 Men like him who could swim survived and were probably seized into captivity. But in reports prepared in London and presented to families and ransomers, it was not possible to know who had drowned and who had been enslaved, until the return of a survivor, if he returned, and therefore the numbers of “captives” that were bandied about included many who might well have been dead, or had escaped to the hinterland, never to be heard from again. Very few seamen on small trading ships could swim, and given the relentless impressments of men by the navy, many of the crew on board the Royal fleet could not swim either, or anticipating the cruelty of life at sea, preferred to convert and start life anew in North Africa. That there was not the high number of captives that was so often alleged and that numbers were widely exaggerated. This answer helps to explain why, on various occasions, ransomers were given money to liberate captives, only to return to England having spent only part of that money492 – not having found enough captives, or captives worthy of ransom. In 1621, when Mansell asked for the 800 English captives in Algiers, he found eighteen only. What happened to the rest – or to the 2000 men who had been allegedly captured in a report of October 1621?493 Furthermore, that 200 mothers/wives/sisters could have been seized by “Barbary Corsairs” in 1644 without any subsequent action on the part of their families and communities is inexplicable unless there was exaggeration. A list survives (in multiple copies) of ships and their masters with the number of men on board (456), who had been captured by Algerians – but not one name of the masters appears in any list of ransomed men.494 Such omission may not have been deliberate: British factors and consuls resident in North Africa could not but report on captives differently, given the difference in terrain, accessibility to the court of the ruler, and political relations between London and the North African capitals. A consul in Tunis, for instance, had a better chance of knowing exactly whether or not the captives who had been brought were English, how many they were, and on what ship, simply because he lived in the city, had access to the harbor, could see the captives, and then could negotiate on their behalf with the Bey, whose palace was not too far from where he lived or where the captives were confined. But when captives were quickly whisked into the TNA SP 71/20/I, 13 (no date but c. 1754). See for instance CSPD Charles I, 1637, 11: 449 (30 September 1637). CSPM…Venice 1621–1623, 17: 155. I have included their names below under “1677.” See appendix.

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hinterland, and sold into various households, then the British representative had no reliable information about them. If captives were marched from Salé or Tetuan or Safi to Meknes or Marrakesh, where no Briton was officially based, then gleaning information about captives would have been highly difficult: ambassadors had to await permission to travel to Meknes and on numerous occasions, emissaries were so afraid of seizure that they refused to leave their ships and conducted negotiations without going on land. Captives were “small” men. In the period that saw the transformation of Britain into a formidable sea power, large numbers of sailors and soldiers, spirited boys, travelers, traders and impressed men, emigrants and prisoners were captured to North Africa. Some of them were innocents not deserving of the horrific fate that awaited them. But others were pirates who attacked North African ports and ships, smuggled contraband, broke treaty terms, and undermined international agreements: in captivity, they met their punishment. Others were soldiers who were captured from the Tangier colony, at the same time that there were seamen who, desperate for work, hired themselves to foreign ships, and if/when captured were treated as prisoners deserving of their punishment. The families of captives cared for their kin, and womenfolk actively tried to effect their ransoms, lamenting their suffering among the “Turkes” and the danger they faced from the allure of conversion; and port mayors wrote to warn London officials about North African incursions and the subsequent seizure of local ships and cargoes. But overall, not enough was done for the captives: the majority of them languished, some managed to escape, others converted and started new lives away from their country; some remained nameless and were forgotten, others were ransomed, and with the proper connections and wealth, quite quickly. Unknown numbers died, the “underbelly of empir” as Linda Colley correctly described them. But to the North Africans whose fleets were destroyed and ports bombarded, the captives were the spearhead of empire. From the second half of seventeenth century on, British (and French) fleets pushed their commercial and maritime expansion into the Mediterranean and the Atlantic where they met with North Africans eager to develop their own shipping and to participate in the lucrative trade of the sea. Did captivity of the multitudes of “small” men serve as a convenient casus belli against the North African rivals? The argument that Gillian Weiss makes about France is helpful: in Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the early Modern Mediterranean, she showed that the French attacks on the North African ports, under the pretext of fighting slavery

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and liberating captives, were part of the progress toward Mediterranean and Atlantic domination. Was there a similar British goal? After all, and as Joseph Pitts admitted after his captivity in 1678, the North Africans could only seize small ships with a handful of men – but not the large merchantships or ships of the Royal Fleet. Did the Royal Navy bombard North African ports because that was, as Julian Corbett observed, “the stock diplomatic formula for covering some ulterior and sinister design”?495 495 Corbett, England in the Mediterranean, 1:52.

Chapter 3

The Northern Invasion The beginning of British domination of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic is what Braudel has called the “Northern Invasion,” a phrase I readily borrow.1 The phrase has not been without its critics, especially those who claim that the British and the French attacks on North Africa were not really invasions, but retaliations against the “pirates” who took Europeans captive.2 But as Daniel Goffman observed, Europeans first “burst into the Mediterranean world not as merchants, but as pirates.”3 And as colonists: although Britain was far behind Spain and Portugal in the conquest of North Africa, with the 1661 occupation of its first territory in the Islamic World, Tangier, King Charles II hoped to “expand into the comparatively fertile region beyond the sandhills,”4 intent on building an empire that was to last “a thousand years.”5 The 1678 treaty with Salé confirmed that Britons were planning to extend themselves into “Europe, Asia, Africa & America.”6 It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the highest number of European captives in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic in the period under study came from among the peoples of imperial trade and expansion: French, British, and Spanish all of whom established colonial outposts in North Africa. And while England under Elizabeth had no colonies except in Ireland, a century later, not only had it dominated Ireland, established an “Empire” in America,7 but it also had acquired “Guinea & East-India…from Sally in South Barbary, to the Cape of Good Hope in Africa [and] the forts and factories of the Honourable East-India Company in Persia, India, Sumatra, 1 See Molly Greene, however, who qualifies Braudel, “Beyond the Northern Invasion: The Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Century,” in Past and Present, 174 (2002): 42–71. And see the essay by Maria Fusaro, “After Braudel: a Reassessment of Mediterranean History between the Northern Invasion and the Caravan Maritime,” and Colin Heywood, “The English in the Mediterranean, 1600–1630: A Post-Braudelian Perspective on the “Northern Invasion’,” in Trade and Cultural Exchange, eds. Fusaro et al., 1–23 and 23–45 respectively. 2 See the discussion below. 3 Daniel Goffman, Izmir and the Levantine World, 1550–1650, quoted in Mehmet Bulut, OttomanDutch economic relations in the early modern period, 1571–1699 (Hilversum, 2001), 137. 4 The Straights Voyage or St Davids Poem by John Baltharpe, ed. and introd. J.S. Bromley, xxvii. 5 As the 1663 Charter for the Company of Royal Adventurers into Africa by Charles II stated: Select Charters of Trading Companies, a.d. 1530–1707, ed. Cecil T. Carr (London, 1913), 179. 6 Articles of peace proposed by Thomas Warren, SP 71/14/158r (1678). 7 See Blome, The English empire in America.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004264502_005

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China, & c.”8 As it conquered and colonized those regions, and as it imposed its commercial and maritime hegemony, it met with resistance from local populations who, unable to defeat its Royal fleets and large merchantmen, captured the “small” men for ransom, labor, or exchange. From the beginning of the eighteenth century on, the captives were part of the Royal Navy that cruised the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, and so while the term “captives” continued to be used in official and popular writings, the naval officers and crew who were captured, sometimes with their passengers, were not harmless men intent on trade or “exploration” (as per Hakluyt), but part of a formidable military machine that was helping Britain establish factories and colonies from the Mediterranean basin (Gibraltar and Minorca) to West Africa and India, at the same time that it was transporting thousands of slaves across the Atlantic. The piracy of the North Africans and their seizure of “Christian” captives have been invoked by historians of the early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic as the casus belli for British and French attacks. As Daniel Panzac stated: The regencies suffered the consequences of their activities in the almost total demise of their maritime trade, in reprisals that took the form of attacks against their coastal populations and naval bombardments of their ports and especially their capitals.9 For Panzac, the decline of the region, from Salé to Tripoli, was brought about by the Maghariba after Europeans retaliated against them. Although he recognized that the attacks by the Maghariba were a result of the capture, abduction, and enslavement of Muslims by Euro-Christians, this factor was less significant than the “djehad…against the infidels” that the Muslims waged.10 The decline of the Maghrib might not have happened had not the British and the French (and other Europeans) been forced to launch “reprisals” against the heinous captors. The North Africans were, as Linda Colley put it, the “stinging insects” against which the Royal Navy could do little except “sporadically bombard the coastal cities from which the corsairs came.”11 8 R.B., The English acquisitions in Guinea & East-India (London, 1700). 9 Daniel Panzac, Barbary Corsairs, The End of a Legend 1800–1820, trans. Victoria Hobson and John. E. Hawkes (Leiden, 2005), 21. Molly Greene had anticipated this position: “The French, for example, bombarded Algiers no less than three times in the 1680s, as part of an ultimately successful campaign to force the Algerians to sign and respect peace and commercial treaties” (italics mine), “Beyond the Northern Invasion,” Past & Present, 64. 10 Panzac, Barbary Corsairs, 21. For an alternative view, see my discussion of “retaliation” in chapter 4 of Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainesville, 2005). 11 Colley, Captives, 67.

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There were several causes of demise in North Africa such as plagues, locust infestations, famines, and earthquakes.12 But Panzac’s view that the demise of maritime activity was caused by British and French destruction of North African fleets and port cities is the most decisive.13 What Panzac ignored, however, was that the British and the French attacks were not “reprisals” that the European superpowers were compelled to undertake. After all, the Swedes, who entered the Mediterranean at the end of the seventeenth century in search of cheap salt, and whose sailors were also seized by North Africans, “never participated in any bombings of harbors.”14 For the British, and from the middle of the seventeenth century on, attacks were part of a strategy aimed at disabling North African seafaring in order to monopolize Mediterranean and Atlantic trade. Ports such as Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli traded heavily with Marseilles, Livorno, and Toulon: they exported natural resources including grain, animal hides, and olive oil, much needed during times of inter-European wars at the same time that they also traded with the Ottoman Levant.15 The North African ports, which to English writers were ‘nests of piracy,’ were, and had been, thriving centers of trade for centuries. Salé which was often decried as the worst outpost of Muslim pirates was “Morocco’s most important coastal trading center for Mediterranean merchants as well as those from Flanders and England.”16 Such was the export from France to Salé alone that “during one year at the end of the seventeenth century” it reached one-half million francs, 12

13

14 15

16

For a discussion of the internal causes of decline, see my “Confronting Decline in Early Modern Arabic Thought,” Journal of Early Modern History, 9 (2005): 51–78, and a more detailed discussion in the conclusion of my Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727. For a study of one earthquake and its consequences, see Colin Heywood, ‘A “forgotten frontier”? Algiers and the Ottoman maritime frontier from the French bombardment (1682) to the Algiers earthquake (1716)’, in Revue d’Histoire Maghrébine 31 (Jan. 2004), 35–50. For an extensive study of the natural disasters in the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Morocco and other parts of North Africa, see Muḥammad Astiyyū, Al-Faqr wa-l-fuqarā’ fī Maghrib al-qarnayn 16 wa 17 m (Wujda, 2004). Leïla Maziane has added that the decline of the Saletian “flotte” was a result of political instability and drought, as well as of the “interventions des puissance européennes qui se soldérent par la capture ou la perte d’un bon nombre de bâtiments,” Salé et ses corsairs (1666–1727), 137–138 and the whole section, 131–138. Östlund, “Swedes in Barbary Captivity,” 153. See Boubaker Sadok, La Régence de Tunis au XVIIe siècle : ses relations commerciales avec les ports de l’Europe méditerraneéenne, Marseille et Livourne (Zaghouan, 1987), the charts on pp.111 and 117. Exports of wheat from Tunisia to Marseille, Livorno, and Toulon between 1609 and 1704 exceeded 15,000,000 kgs. Kenneth Brown, “An urban view of moroccan [sic]history, Salé, 1000–1800.” Hespéris Tamuda 12 (1971): 39 in 5–106.

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necessitating thereby the establishment of a Salé Company.17 The Maghariba wanted to participate in maritime commerce, which one English official called “free Trade,”18 but the British and the French wanted to dominate this two-way trade and exclude “Muslims from the commercial and maritime life of the sea.”19 The 1651 and 1660 Navigation Acts ensured that all exports and imports from Britain were to be carried on English bottoms. The Acts were to increase English shipping profit, but at the same time, they were tantamount to a declaration of war because they denied the Maghariba (and the Dutch) participation in the lucrative transportation of cargo. The colonization of Tangier in 1661 aggravated the situation as British pirates threatened the trade of the Maghariba at the same time that the fleet began to control the western Mediterranean and the northeastern Atlantic waterways.20 As British naval ambitions grew, and as the rivalry with France threatened trade and revenue, it became crucial for Britons to prevail over the North African ports because they furnished supplies needed for the fleet at a much cheaper rate than in England.21 The seizure of captives became the British justification for subduing those ports and denying European rivals access to them. The strategy for excluding North Africans from the growing maritime trade was already being discussed a few months after the Restoration of Charles II to the British throne. In December 1660, and with a navy that had grown powerful under Cromwell, Lord Winchelsea advised the king: If a fleet of [English] ships taking advantage of a southerly wind fire their broad sides on the Forts, they may quickly make their deffendants retire, at which time boats well manned may fire their [Algerian] ships wch wil be so great a damage to that City that 40 yeares will scarce repaire.22 17 18

Ibid., 54–55. “If the Moors or Jews have the Liberty of a free Trade…” in TNA SP 89/90/37v, Charles Stewart to James Craggs (10 February 1721). 19 Greene, ‘Beyond the Northern Invasion’, 46. 20 See also the impact of Spanish attacks on Morocco in Eloy Martin Corrales, “Les repercussions de la course espagnole sur l’économie maritime marocaine (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles,” in Revue Maroc – Europe 11 (1997–1998), 227–248. Special attention is paid in the article to the depredations committed by the Spanish outpost of Ceuta. For Majorcan piracy, see G. Lopez Nadal, El Corsarismo mallorqui a le Mediterrania occidental, 1562–1698 (Palma de Mallorca, 1986). 21 See CSPD Commonwealth, 1656–1657, 10:274 (10 February 1657): “buy oxen [in Tetuan] half as cheap again as in England.” 22 TNA SP 71/1/188.

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Lord Winchelsea was correct: neither Algiers nor the other port cities of North Africa were able to “repaire” the damage inflicted on their commercial and naval infrastructures in the next “40 yeares.” In another letter, Winchelsea explained that Algiers was so densely populated that “no Shot can be made into it but will take place and do execution.”23 Although the king signed numerous treaties with the North African rulers, often broken by English pirates as well as Saletians and Algerians, the king was intent, as the Dutch ambassador reported, to “destroy Barbary Corsairs.”24 The subsequent bombardment of the North African ports from the 1660s on was continual; the British fleet attacked Algiers in 1664 and 1669 and Tripoli in 1675; in 1682, the French fleet bombarded Tripoli for “fowre howers, much disabling them, shattering many of the houses, and killing diverse inhabitants of the Towne.” Consul Francis Baker in Tunis wrote to the secretary of state “That it may be noe unserviceable Precedent for his Majtys ships of War on ye like occasion agst those of Algiers.”25 The destruction of North African ships, dockyards, and depots brought navigation to a standstill. “They have already done such prejudice,” wrote Consul Robert Cole about the Algerians after the second French bombardment of Algiers in 1688, “that it is said twenty years won’t make the town as beautiful as before the French coming […] Three-quarters of the town is defaced, and I believe it will never be rebuilt in its former splendor.”26 As Ann Thomson succinctly put it, “The main colonial themes of the Nineteenth Century are present” already in the seventeenth century. In an excellent study of European strategies, F. Robert Hunter has shown how bombardments and forced treaties in the early modern period prepared for the nineteenth-century domination of the region.27 A close examination of two North African ports will corroborate Thomson’s and Hunter’s views: Tripoli, which possessed the smallest fleets, and Algiers, which possessed the largest fleets. The strategy pursued by Britain (and France) was to carry out naval bombardments, thereby destroying Muslim participation in Mediterranean and Atlantic trade. And given the higher tonnage of English ships, and the improvements in English artillery, no North African ships could defy them.28 At no time in the period under study were North 23 24 25 26 27

28

TNA SP 71/1/192r (3/13 December 1660). TNA SP 84/164/204 (31 December 1661). TNA SP 71/26/411 (September 1682). Quoted in R.L. Playfair, The Scourge of Christendom (London, 1884), 157, 158. Ann Thomson, Barbary and Enlightenment (Leiden, 1987), 132. F. Robert Hunter, “Rethinking Europe’s Conquest of North Africa and the Middle East: The Opening of the Maghreb, 1660–1814,” Journal of North African Studies 4 (1999): 1–26. Nor, actually, the Dutch. Already in 1654, the English had superseded the Dutch. As the Venetian ambassador in France observed about the naval battles between the English and

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Africans able to reach the shores of France or England and Wales and bombard Brest or Bristol or Portsmouth. As Lucette Valensi correctly pointed out, it was “the Europeans [who] prevented such [North African maritime] developments by blocking efforts to create commercial fleets or establish direct Muslim trade with Christian countries”.29 The majority of treaties signed between the North African rulers and the British monarchy were negotiated by naval commanders and admirals: from the second half of the seventeenth century, the commanders, like their French and Dutch counterparts, had become the ‘lords of the sea,’30 testifying to the power of the navy in foreign policy. British admirals dominated the seas from Tripoli to Tangier and Salé, so much so that English diplomat Sir William Temple (d. 1699) noted how unlike “their former Greatness at Sea,” Muslims “for many Years . . . hardly pretend to any Successes on that Element, but commonly say, That God has given the Earth to the Mussulmans, and the Sea to the Christians”.31 And when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the North Africans, Tunisians in particular, tried to re-enter Mediterranean commerce, they were blocked by Western powers.32 Tripoli The Ottoman iyala/regency of Tripoli/Ṭarablus al-Gharb, poor and not very fertile, possessed the smallest fleet in North Africa (in August 1661, it had eight ships).33 Like other North Africans, and along with the Maltese, the Neapolitans, the English, the French, and other Euro-Christians, the Libyans were involved both in pillage and honest exchange, fully aware that their most important source of national income came via the sea. In the summer of 1674, the Libyans seized an English ship, the Hunter, on its way to Smyrna, and discovered that its crewmen were largely from countries

29

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31 32 33

the Dutch: “the English ships have owed their advantage to superior tonnage, which allowed them to carry heave brass guns of such range that they hit the Dutch ships at a distance unattainable by their iron cannon,” CSPM…Venice, 1653–1654, 29:176 (27 January 1654). Lucette Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism: North Africa before the French Conquest (New York, 1977), chapter 5, although her study focuses on the period after the middle of the 18th century. For a study of Dutch-North African relations, see Alexander H. de Groot, “Ottoman North Africa and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Revue de l’Occident Musluman et de la Méditerranée 39 (1985), 131–147. William Temple, The Works of Sir William Temple (London, 1740), 226. As argued by Hunter, Rethinking Europe’s Conquest. TNA SP 71/22/I, 12 (22 August 1661).

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with which Tripoli was at war. The Libyans confiscated the non-Britons’ cargo and returned the ship and the rest of the cargo to the Levant Company.34 Angered at the seizure, the Levant Company merchants decided to punish the Libyans, and a year later, July 1675, Sir John Narbrough, admiral of the English fleet in the Mediterranean, seized a Libyan ship near Tripoli and took “98 negroes, men, women, and children, and 24 Greeks”, all of whom he proceeded to sell as slaves.35 On 23 July, he continued to attack the port of Tripoli and burned three ships: “This is a great losse unto Tripoly, they depending much on these three vessels to defend their Port”, he reported (possibly) to Samuel Pepys, secretary of the affairs for the navy since 1673. Narbrough was eager to continue his attack: “Wth God’s assistance I am of the ye opinion wee should burne most of their ships”, but he did not have enough “Small Vessells”.36 A week later, 31 July, Narbrough conveyed to the “Dey of Tripoly & Bassa” his demands that the perpetrators who had seized the English ship be punished by cutting “off their heads”. When the Dey replied that some of the perpetrators had since fled to “Turkey” while the rest had died, Narbrough demanded “restitution” for the seized cargo: “eighty thousand Dollars, fourty thousand to be payd onto mee […] & ye other fourty thousand to be pay’d to ye King”.37 He also demanded that all English captives in Tripoli be released. The Dey and the diwan deliberated on these matters: the sum Narbrough demanded was by far higher than the cargo they had taken, while English captives were a totally separate matter since Narbrough had sold his Muslim captives into slavery and had not offered to exchange them with the English captives. On 7 August, the Dey and members of the diwan informed Narbrough that they had no money but would be willing to give him “salt in lieu of restitution of ye wrongs”.38 Narbrough knew that the Dey was leaning towards “compliance” and was indeed short of money, and so he informed Samuel Pepys in London that an alternative to money would be for the Dey to send to Narbrough a number of non-English Christian captives whom he would subsequently sell in Europe. The money from the sale would compensate for the cargo. Narbrough asked 34 35 36 37

38

See the description of this episode in Sonia Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut in Smyrna, 1667–1678 (Oxford, 1989), 191–92. A Descriptive Catalogue of The Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, ed. J.R. Tanner, 4 vols. (London, 1923), 4:219. TNA SP 71/22/I, 111v and 112r; the letter was written later, on 5 August 1675. Ibid. Panzac states that the restitution was of “vessels that had been captured by Tripolitan corsairs who refused to return them”, Barbary Corsairs, 33. Panzac does not corroborate his statement. TNA SP 71/22/I, 115 (9 August 1675), to Samuel Pepys.

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Pepys to find out what the king’s wishes were,39 again repeating that the Libyans had no money (“For money I doubt I shall get none of them”). He concluded his letter by expressing his personal preference to finish off the negotiations by bombarding the whole port: “I wish I had small fire vessels now wth mee, & wth God’s assistance, I am of ye Opinion I should burne their ships as now they ly in Port. These Galleys being burnt they have lost halfe the strength of their Port.”40 By 24 September, Narbrough’s message had reached London and had been passed on to the members of the admiralty who, with the king, agreed that money did not matter. They decided that the bombardment of Tripoli would project Britain’s naval power and bring “honour to his majesty.”41 On 14 January 1676, Narbrough received his much-desired orders to bombard the port. A pious man, Narbrough felt that in obeying the admiralty, he fulfilled God’s will, for the destruction of Tripoli, as he later described the attack, was part of the divine vengeance over the infidels: […] being resolved by Gods permission that Night to Attaque ye Enemy’s ships in their Port […] [he] seized ye Guard-Boat, boarded ye Ships, fired them, & utterly destroyed them all [the four ships were of 50, 34, 24, and 20 guns] […] to ye great Astonishment of ye Turkes that endeavoured to Impede Our Designe, by plying several Great, & innumerable small Shot att our Boats & Men […] Such was ye Wonderfull Mercy of Almighty God towards us that not One Man of Ours was killed, wounded or touched, nor a Boat was disabled. Our Men employed in ye Boates, in this particular Action were (157) they All behaveing themselves as becometh English Men. To God alone be ye Glory. Two days later, 16 January, Narbrough continued: I fired about (100) Shot into ye City of Tripoly amongst the Inhabitants. The 1st & 3rd of February I tooke & destroyed five Corne-Boats on ye Coast, to ye Eastward of Tripoly 20 Leagues: & Landed & burnt a Stacke of Wood & Timber, wch was for their building their New Ship, & some small Masts & Yards, & some Bags of Bread brought off, & two Guns spiked up.42 39 40 41 42

In another letter addressed to the Privy Council, he explained that the salt offer was “not worth his Majesty’s taking,” A Descriptive Catalogue, 4:225. TNA SP 71/22/I, 116 (9 August 1675). A Descriptive Catalogue, 4:225. TNA SP 71/22/I, 131 r and v, and 131A (8/18 February 1676). The report continues, “On the 10th of February,” we “tooke a Samberkeen in her Ballace 30 Leagues to ye Eastward of Tripoly, belonging to that Government.”

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The English fleet did not only attack ships in harbor, but also food supplies, docks and anything that floated. The goal was to disable the city from functioning – and its inhabitants from eating, as the burning of the corn shows (very much like the burning of food supplies of native Americans in what was to become in that same year, King Philip’s War). The technology used by the English fleet ensured complete safety: there was not a single casualty among the English crew, perhaps because the Libyans, and their Ottoman masters, used “small shott,” not the kind that could be effective against the fleet. The Libyans were completely disabled so much so that the reverend Henry Teonge, sailing with the fleet, declared on 23 February 1676: “We are all for Tripoli, and resolved for mischief. And if those gallants of Malta do so much admire us, certainly we shall much terrify the Turks”.43 After bombarding them, there was nothing more to fear from the “Turks”. Narbrough followed his military victory with commercial restrictions. He forced the Dey to sign a treaty in favor of English traders over the French. The “Articles of Peace & Commerce” of 5 March 1676 ensured the complete safety of English ships, prohibited Libyan ships from sailing too close to Tangier, permitted Englishmen to export or import merchandize in Tripoli without paying customs, and prohibited Libyans to trade in booty or captives taken from English ships. Further, Narbrough forced a change on the earlier 1662 treaty that had been signed with Libya. In the 1662 treaty, article XI read as follows That in case any slave in the Kingdom of Tripoli, of any nation whatsoever, shall make his escape, and get on board any ship belonging to His said Majesty, the Consul shall not be liable to pay his ransom, unless timely notice hath been given him to give order that no such be entertained; and then, if it appear that any slave hath so gotten away, the said Consul is to pay the patron the price for which he was sold in the market; and if no price be cut, then to pay 300 dollars, and no more. The post-victory treaty changed the article in favor of Britain: That when any of His Majesties Ships of War shall appear before Tripoli, upon notice thereof given to the English Consul, or by the Commander of the said Ships to the chief Governors of Tripoli, publick Proclamation shall be immediately made to secure the Christian captives; and if after that any Christians whatsoever make their escape on board any of the said Ships of War, they shall not be required back again, nor shall the said 43 Teonge, The Diary, ed. Manwaring, 129.

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Consul, or Commander, or any other His said Majesties Subjects be obliged to pay anything for the said Christians.44 The new treaty also ensured the English fleet to “freely pass the Seas, and Traffique where they please, without any search, hindrance, or molestation” (III). And, the treaty prohibited the Libyans from capturing Britons even if the latter were serving on enemy ships. Two months later, another treaty was signed that added an official statement by the Pasha of Tripoli, promising to cut off the heads of all those who broke any of the articles of the treaty, ensure that English merchants “not Pay so much Custom by one per Cent. for whatever Goods or Merchandise,” and not interfere with the consul after he puts “up His said Seren Majesties Flagg on the Flagg-staff on the Top of his House.”45 By forcing the treaty on the Libyans, Narbrough made them not only agree to weaken their own economy but also to concede that they had caused injury to the English which is why the English had been forced to retaliate with Narbrough’s bombardment. The English were ensuring themselves of the moral high ground as well as the commercial advantage – viewing North Africa in the same manner that they viewed North America, although they could not yet secure the kind of total domination they achieved in the treaty with the Indians signed on 29 May 1677. In that treaty, the “Indians Kings and Queens” owed “all Subjection to the Great King of England” (I) in return for which they were to be given “sufficient” land so they can “Plant upon” (III), and were promised that “no Indian King or Queen be imprisoned without a special Warrant from His Majesties Government” (VI). While such terms were not applicable to Tripoli, others were – like returning captives (XX), resolving conflicts between the English and the Indians by the English governor/consul in Tripoli, paying tribute to the governor, reducing the custom rate, and redressing all “Wrongs and Injuries” they had caused to the colonists of his “Most Serene and Mighty Prince Charles II.”46 In North America as in North Africa, Britain was establishing its dominance by justifying conquest as retaliation against native populations far inferior to them militarily. 44

45

46

Articles of Peace & Commerce between the most Serene and Mighty Prince Charles II.…And the most Illustrious Lords, Halil Bashaw, Ibrahim Dey, Divan, and Governours of the Noble City and Kingdom of Tripoli in Barbary (London, 1676), Article XI. Articles of Peace & Commerce Between the Most Serene and Mighty Prince Charles II….And the Most Illustrious Lords, The Bashaw, Dey, Aga, Divan, And Governors of the City and Kingdom of Tripoli (London, 1677), 21–22. Articles of Peace between the Most Serene and Mighty Prince Charles II…And Several Indian Kings and Queens (London, 1677).

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In August 1679, Consul Thomas Baker listed thirteen vessels (including a “sitea”) with 297 guns and 3,000 men belonging to the Libyans.47 Evidently, the Libyans recalled some of their ships from the eastern Mediterranean, but the bombardment and economic restrictions had taken their toll on the port city so much so that on 10 January 1682, he wrote: “This is a place scituate in a Barren blind comfortlesse corner of Barbary […] and the commerce here founded on Sea Reprisals wholly enjoyed by French Pedlers and sorry Jewes”;48 in November, he repeated his view that Libya was “a poor barren country, an empty Treasury.”49 Baker then turned to advise the admiralty how the natives should be dealt with: the Libyans were “Proud and haughty People, That without the sight of the Rod doe quickly forget they ever were, or can be brought to correction.”50 Fearing the ‘Rod,’ the Libyans sent their remaining squadron of “16 ships from 14 to 42 guns” back to the Levant.51 Meanwhile, they labored to resume their ship-building and two years later, in October 1684, Baker was surprised at their resilience: “Here was lately launched a ship that been above Ten Yeares a building, shee’s a compleat thing, has sixty Ports and will bee mounted wth fifty six Guns.”52 But then, the French took their turn at bombardment and in April 1685, their fleet attacked Tripoli at a time when Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir, a Moroccan Sufi who was on his way to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, was there. He left behind a rare eye-witness account. Whatever the Libyans had rebuilt after Narbrough’s attack was now, ten years later, completely destroyed by the French: After the evening prayer on Saturday, the infidels, may God destroy them, began hurling their bombs from their canons. We saw what we had never seen, and heard what we had never heard… First you saw the powder lighting up from the mouth of the cursed cannon – then a flaming ball, brighter than a shooting star, rose in the air. Immediately, they would fire another which would rise even higher than the first. As it turned and swooped down, it produced a deafening sound and then exploded, spreading [shrapnel] all around. If the bomb fell on a building, it demolished it; on level ground, it dug a crater; on a [water] tank or an upper room, it pulverized it; on a tree, it uprooted or burned it. Sometimes the 47 48 49 50 51 52

Pennell, ed., Piracy and Diplomacy in Seventeenth-Century North Africa, 106. TNA SP 71/22/ 33r. TNA SP 71/22/II, 41v (30 November 1682). TNA SP 71/22/II, 44r (15 January 1683). TNA SP 71/22/II, 26v (15 May 1681). TNA SP 71/22/II, 54r (October 1684).

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bomb remained in the ground for a while and then exploded, producing a sound more terrifying than the first. Whenever their cannons fired a bomb, we thought it was going to hit us. Sometimes the bomb fell near us, sometimes it passed above us; more often it fell inside the city or in the sea outside the city walls. All that night, we raised our helpless hands in despair to God almighty, our eyes unable to sleep.…They continued firing bombs all through the night until dawn of the following day. They did not halt for a single hour. Some jurists told me that they had fired a thousand bombs.53 Defeated, Dey Hajj ‘Abdallah agreed to pay 60,000 piasters in the form of “bled [blé], orge, et autres merchandises”54 to the French. In December of the following year, he sent to France two ships laden with wheat along with a present: “cinq quntr de dates que nous vous prions d’accepter de notre part et de excuser la franchise avec la quelle nous vous faisons un present de si peu de consequence”. He also reported that the diwan had agreed on selling all Libyan property in Tunis – their foreign reserve – consisting of “Jardins, maisons, et oliviers a fin d’en paier nos debtes.”55 The Libyans were being bankrupted, and without adequate munitions, they remained exposed to further attacks. As Consul Nathaniel Loddington reported in September 1686, “their present Sea fforces is onely five shippes of forty to fifty six Guns.”56 And as their ships were declining in number, so was the quality of their guns. Explaining why the Libyans lost 100 men fighting the Venetians in August 1689, he wrote to Secretary of State Lord Shrewsbury that their “shippes could not reach them [Venetians] with their guns.”57 Two years later, in May 1691, and hoping that a change of allegiance might bring some respite, the Libyan Dey turned away from the French and asked the English consul for “Powder, shott, masts, yards, Cables, anchors att an Easy rate.”58 The English were willing to provide supplies, but only if he broke off with France. Consul Loddington worked on the Dey and on 5 March 1692 wrote to Secretary Nottingham: “We have prevailed with the Dey who is now the Supreme 53

54 55 56 57 58

Aḥmad ibn Khālid al-Nāṣirī, Ṭalʿat al-Mushtarī fī-l-nasab al-Jaʿfarī/The Ascendancy of [the planet] Jupiter in the Ja’fari Genealogy, 2 vols. (Fez, A.H.1310/1892), 2: 29. For a full English translation, see my Europe through Arab Eyes, 210–213 and a French translation in “Le bombardement de Tripoli de Barbarie par le Maréchal d’Estrées en 1685,” in Revue Tunisienne 128 (1918): 204–209. Archives Nationales, Marine, B/7/210, 119. Archives Nationales, Marine B/7/213, 3–4. TNA SP 71/22/II, 64 (19 September 1686). TNA SP 71/22/II, 74 (15/25 August 1689). TNA SP 71/22/II, 98, (4 May 1691).

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Governour to break the peace with france, which was performed the 21 day of January.”59 In reprisal for this change of allegiance, in September 1692, the French fleet bombarded Tripoli again, “fireing two thousand Bombs, but doeing Little damage”, as Loddington reported.60 His report was accurate, because within a month, on 28 October, he wrote to the secretary of state that the Libyans “have found out the way to make Bumbs”: against all odds, the Libyans were trying to improve their technology of naval warfare. Loddington continued that the Libyans gathered “up those [cannons] the French sent ashore [and] doe melt the pieces & new molde them but how to continue a mortar they know not.” That is why they begged him to bring them from London “2 mortars that will throw a bumb of thirty inches circumference.”61 The Libyans knew that they could not develop sophisticated cannons similar to those manufactured in Europe, and having grown politically distant from the central Ottoman administration in Istanbul, they did not own any of the heavy cannons that were cast there and that could have readily helped them in defense. So they sought to purchase the weapons from the English, only to find that they were sold munitions with limited use in naval defense but that would be useful for local conflicts. The continued need for money forced them to seize captives and in May 1693, they negotiated with the French the price of 150 pieces of eight per captive.62 Over a quarter of a century later, by 1721, the Libyan fleet included “seven Ships from 40 to 60 guns each, besides some small vessels & Gallies”63 – one ship less than in 1661; by 1728, they had two ships, half a galley, nine or ten galiots and fifteen or sixteen “seteas.”64 While the European fleets had been expanding, the Libyan fleet had declined and would never recover. Algiers Algiers was the strongest naval power in North Africa.65 But it had few natural resources which forced it to rely more heavily than the other regencies on 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

TNA SP 71/22/II, 112 (5 March 1692). TNA SP 71/22/II, 126r (8 September 1692). TNA SP 71/22/II, 132r (28 October 1682). TNA SP 71/22/II, 136 (20 May 1693). TNA SP 71/22/III, 103 (25 August 1721). TNA SP 71/22/III, 108 (13 August 1728). For studies of the Algerian navy see L. Lacoste, ‘La marine algèrienne sous les Turcs,’ Revue maritime, 1931:471–514; and Moulay Belhamissi, Marine et Marins d’Alger (1518–1830), 3 vols. (Alger, 1996). Belhamissi relies completely on the French archive with no reference to the British one.

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revenues generated by pirates. In 1659, a report about the Algerian fleet stated that it consisted of sixteen ships, with 408 guns/cannons.66 By December of the following year, 1660, the Earl of Winchelsea counted “28 to 30 saile, their biggest gunne carrying not above ten pound Bullet.”67 The Algerians maintained amicable commercial dealings with England, and permitted English “Men of Warre and Merchant Ships […] Libertie of our Port and Marketts.” But the English deceived them by breaking agreements and bringing to harbor Ships of Enimies (wearinge English Colours) pretending them to be English, and belonginge to them whereas indeed they were the ships of such wth whom we have no peace. But this meanes they have manie times caused the ships, together wth the goods of Enimies to escape out of our hands, for wch our minds have beene much troubled.68 As Pepys reported, the Algerian “Duan” wrote to King Charles to “demand again the searching of our ships and taking out of strangers and their goods.”69 There was often laxity in enforcing passes by the British Admiralty, at the same time that ships carried more foreigners than English on board. The Algerians objected to English ships being freighted by nationals with whom they were at war – especially from Portugal and Spain. As a result, they seized British ships after which the Royal fleet attacked them. This is how a late-eighteenth century Algerian historian remembered his compatriots (and exaggerated the victory): In the year 1071, during the reign of Ramadan Bulkbashi [reg. 1660–1661], the English fleet came with twenty-three large ships. The English [Admiral] wanted to renew the peace treaty with Algiers and demanded that when Algerian ships meet English ships, the former ships should sail under the English wind, and if the English showed their pass, the Algerians would not search but release them. The Algerian reply was that such demands were unacceptable, and that if the English wanted peace with the Algerians, they would have to sue for it on the same terms as before. Otherwise, there would be no peace and the English could do what they wanted. The Algerians then expelled the English [Admiral]. 66

Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, A 185, fo. 77, reproduced in FO 113/1/366. The report by the captive Emanuel D’Aranda that Ali Pichtin, the general of the Algerian galleys, had 65 vessels in 1641; and by Father Dan that the fleet consisted of 70 ships in 1649, could well be exaggerations: Stanley Lane-Poole, The Barbary Corsairs, 195. 67 TNA SP 71/1/191v ( 3/13 December 1660). 68 TNA SP 71/1/193 (17 Rabīʿ al-Thāni/20 December 1660). 69 Pepys, Diary, eds. Latham and Matthews, 4:369 (9 November 1663).

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For twenty-three days, the cursed [infidels] lurked awaiting the answer they wanted. When they realized the futility of their demands, they lined the ships across from Algiers and started bombing the turrets and the rest of the town. The people of Algiers fired back from the turrets and the city wall. Fighting continued until the evening of that day. Then, the infidel ships weighed anchor and spread their sails and left back to their land, with loss and despair. Only one [Algerian] man was killed in that battle; another was wounded and died after twenty-three days. As for the cursed Christians, more than a hundred died. At that time, there were in Algiers forty-two ships of war. So [the Algerians] prepared their ships and sent them out to sea and started seizing English ships. After six months, there were sixty-two English ships in the Algiers harbor. Upon seizing the Christians and their possessions, the Algerians distributed most of the booty to the people. The war continued between the Algerians and the English until the latter came to Algiers suing for peace. The Algerians did not accept the terms, so the English gave the Algerians fifteen quintals of gunpowder, and 12,000 musketballs. In this war, until there was peace between the infidels and the Algerians, the former destroyed seventeen ships that belonged to the Algerians, while the Algerians destroyed more than 500 English ships.70 The Algerians lost many ships in the encounter and by April 1662, the Dutch commander De Ruyter counted fifteen frigates and three galleys, with seven more frigates and six galleys in port;71 in October 1663, there were twenty-three “shipps Sattees, Brigantines and Gallies” ships with 656 guns.72 Still, the Algerians were strong enough to repel a French invasion of Jijel in Algeria and the establishment of a French naval base (October 1664). The Algerians seized “35 brass guns,”73 and began building up their land and sea forces so much so that in May 1666, the London Gazette reported two “Turks Men of War in

70

71 72

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Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Jīlānī al-Tlimsānī , “Al-Zahra alnayyira,” Revue d’Histoire et de Civilisation du Maghreb, 3 (1967): 19–23. A French translation of the whole text was made by Alphonse Rousseau, Chroniques de la Régence d’Alger (Alger, 1841). Quoted by Bromley in his introduction to The Straights Voyage or St Davids Poem by John Baltharpe, xiii. TNA SP 71/1/242 and another copy 244r–246r. See also the dispatch in the Venetian records: “Thus in spite of the English and Dutch fleets in the Mediterranean the Barbary corsairs are constantly making booty and become powerful” (27 January 1662); CSPM… Venice, 1661–1664, 33:100. CSPD Charles II, 1664–65, 4:54 (4 November 1654).

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the channel, which we find contribute much to the security of these Seas at present”.74 Three years later, in 1669, the “List of the shipes of Warr belonging to Algier” included twenty-five ships with two galleys and two satties; and six ships “upon the Stockes” along with two tartans and one galley – “Totall is 40 Sayle”. The number of cannons was 758.75 But the Algerians knew their limitations and were apprehensive of further British or French attacks, which is why the letter Sha’bān Bey addressed King Charles as the “Greatest Prince under the Messiah King of Great Brittain & to whom the Almightie grant long life and grace.” Knowing of “your designs against Algiers,” the Bey swore “on Our Faith to maintain the Articles of Peace made betwixt Us, which on Our side without just occasion shall neuer be transgressed.”76 Notwithstanding such assurance, and perhaps to fulfill the king’s “design,” from 5 September to 21 November 1669, the English fleet under Sir Thomas Allin attacked the Algerians, inflicting heavy damage.77 The Algerians recouped and launched in April 1670 their fleet of “28 ships abroad, and are fitting out a new ship of 54 guns and 600 men”.78 On 17 August 1670, however, the Dutch fleet under Van Ghent and in collaboration with English ships destroyed six Algerian ships with 222 guns; one “of considerable force and bulk” was boarded and sent back to England.79 Nine more ships with 132 guns were also destroyed by the Genoese and the Spaniards,80 in which 2,200 Algerians were killed, a number, if accurate, never matched by any attack waged by North Africans on Europeans. The Algerians blamed the destruction of their ships and their ignominious defeat on their pasha (the representative from Istanbul) because he had sent the ships with heavy guns to protect his own possessions81 – leaving the rest of the fleet vulnerable to English firepower. As a result, there was a revolt and a change of government: the agha who had led the diwan (1659–71) was ousted and the rule of the Deys began – the Dey being a naval officer from among the other officers.

74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81

London Gazette, Milford, May 21 (May 28 to May 31, 1666). TNA SP 71/1/360. On 26 November 1669, Admiral Allin learned that the Algerians had twenty-six men-of-war at sea, Journals, 2:125. TNA SP 102/1/vol. 1, part 1, 41 (15 October 1669). CSPD Charles II, October 1668 to December 1669, 9:632–633. See “A Memoriall of what damage done to the Algerines since the break of the 6th of September, 1669,” TNA SP 71/1/427. CSPD Charles II, 1670. With addenda, 1660–1670, 10:186 (26 April 1670). CSPD Charles II, January to November 1671, 11:170. See also A True Relation of the victory and Happy Success of a Squadron of His Majesties Fleet in the Mediterranean against the Pyrates of Algiers (Savoy, 1670), 15, for a list of the destroyed ships. TNA SP 71/1/466 (17 August 1670); Panzac, Barbary Corsairs, 32. TNA SP 71/1/470 (19 September 1670?).

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A year later in May, Sir Edward Spragge attacked Algiers again, destroying the “castles and town […] with an infinite number of the inhabitants killed and wounded, and that which fell out very luckily to send this success was, that all their chirurgeons’ chests were burnt on board their ships, that they have not the least medicine to dress a wound with”.82 He also destroyed seven ships in harbor and forced a peace treaty on the “Most Illustrious Lords the Bashaw, Dai, Aga and Governours of the Famous City and Kingdom of Algiers” that prohibited navigation into the Atlantic: they could not sail to Salé “or any other part that is in Enmity with the said King of Great Britain.”83 It also prohibited the Algerians from capturing Britons serving on “board any ship or vessel in enmity with Algiers” (XVIII). The issue was always contentious because such enemy ships could be chiefly manned by Britons, and yet the Algerians could do nothing to stop them. The treaty was exactly the same as the one signed later with Tripoli: only the place names were changed. Many prints of the treaty were issued and circulated in London to assure merchants of the favorable terms that governed their trade in the Mediterranean. Despite the restrictions and the devastation that had been visited on their city, the Algerians tried to rally and in June 1674, Consul Martin reported the following to the secretary of state, Joseph Williamson: Their Navall forces 4 yeares since was the greatest part destroy’d by ye English at Cape Spartell & Bugia but they have since built above 25 sayle of ship & good men of warre from 20 to 40 Gunns & have at present 32 Men of Warr three Galleyes…the manner of maintaining them is different to any that I have either seen, or heard of, for of all these shipps & galleys, not one of them belong’s to the Publick, but all to private Persons, armed out as our Privateers are in England or rather in Jamaica.84 He then added the “List of the shipps in Algeirs”: thirty-five ships with 1,006 guns and 8080 men.85 The Algerians were fully aware that they could not match British firepower and so they eagerly tried to maintain the peace. But as the Dey complained (in a letter prepared by three English agents), the Algerians were at war with other Europeans and needed to pillage their ships. The problem was that the English did not abide by the treaties and used enemy ships for 82 83 84 85

CSPD Charles II, January to November 1671, 11:235 (13 May 1671). Articles of Peace and commerce, between the most Serene and Mighty Prince Charles II…and the Most Illustrious Lords the Bashaw, Dai, Aga… of Algiers (Savoy 1672), article VII. TNA SP 71/2/67r–67v (10 June 1674). TNA SP 71/2/72r-v.

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trade and transport, and so when the Algerians attacked those ships, they killed or captured Englishmen – which they truly did not want to do, “whose blood,” as the Algerians told him, “we esteeme as our own.”86 Another list about the Algerian fleet which Consul Martin sent to London on 10 June 1675 mentioned thirty-three ships, one “Saittia,” seven brigantines and three galleys;87 a year later, the traveler A. Helstein mentioned thirty-seven ships with one “Sithea,” “seven Brigantins,” and three galleys.88 By February 1676, the number was still thirty-three ships with 952 guns and 7,790 men.89 In that year, the Algerians were able to capture some British ships carrying oil, timber, and linen.90 Perhaps with financial assistance from Istanbul that had sought the regency’s help during the twenty-five-year long siege of Crete (1645–1669), the Algerians were again rebuilding and attacking British ships. A list, c. 1676, of English “shipps brought in, and Distroyed by ye Argeriens” mentioned forty-one ships (although there is no indication over what period of time those ships were seized). What is significant is that the vast majority of the ships were small, with few guns: of the forty-one ships listed, twenty had under ten guns, fifteen had between ten to twenty guns, and only one ship had twenty-nine guns and one other with forty.91 The Algerians could overpower small ships, but could not confront the English fleet with its heavy guns. While the English ships that could carry eighty to 100 guns could destroy the biggest ships in the Algerian fleet, and destroy the moorings in the harbor, the Algerians could only capture/destroy small ships, and could never envisage attacking Plymouth or Portsmouth in the manner that the British (and the French) were bombarding them. To circumvent further North African piracy, King Charles II turned to Istanbul, just as his grandfather had done over half a century earlier, and in the treaty signed in 1679, article XLVIII specifically recorded the Ottoman imperial commands “for the entire restitution of all Goods and Merchandise to the English Nation so taken away: And that all such English as have been taken and made Slaves, or imprisoned by the said Pyrates shall be immediately set free.”92 86 87 88 89

90 91 92

TNA SP 102/Vol. 1. Part 1, 50 (18 November 1674). TNA SP 71/2/61–72v for the full report by Martin (10 June 1675). BL MS Sloan 2755, fo. 52. TNA SP 71/2/137 and 167. This list, along with all following ones, is reproduced in Colin Heywood, ‘What’s in a Name? Some Algerine Fleet Lists (1686–1714) From British Libraries and Archives,’ The Maghreb Review 31 (2006): 103–127. TNA SP 71/2/146 (16/26 August 1676). TNA SP 21/174 and 202, the two lists are the same. The Capitulations and Articles of Peace between the Majesty of the King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, &c. and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1679).

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Although the sultan had limited power in North Africa, the English were eager for him to assume responsibility over the actions of his distant subjects. With a powerful fleet, British negotiators felt confident in dictating their terms to faroff potentates. Without cannons similar to those on the English and French fleets, the Algerians knew they would be at a disadvantage – which is why they turned to the Dutch, and signed a peace agreement with them that included the request of “an hundred pieces of Brass Cannon.”93 Interestingly, in that same year, the “List of ye ships of Warr belonging to Algiers” consisted of thirtyseven ships, including two new ships of fifty guns each, quite a few of which were commanded by European converts, including one “Mustaffa RS Engl. Reneg.”94 But by 1 July 1680, “ye Algerin ships wch were left in all [were] 19” (italics added). Of these ships, only three had more than forty guns on board (fortyfour, fifty-two, and forty-two).95 In December 1681, King Charles II authorized attacks on Algiers by granting letters of marque to privateers,96 at the same time that Admiral Herbert (who, according to Pepys, was a man who had no “one virtue to compound for all his vices” of brutality, debauchery and immorality) bombarded the Algerian “coastal towns” and “increased addition of terror and multiplied horror.”97 So powerless were the Algerians that they signed a peace treaty on 10 April 1682 (which lasted until the next British bombardment of Algiers in 1816).98 Fearing further attacks, the Algerians hastened to fortify their port, sending “for engineers to view their mole, and order[ing] all workmen to work on it, till it be made a very regular fortification”.99 But the preparations did not anticipate the new technology of bombardment that the French introduced: the long-range cannon. These cannons were carried on the new “galiote[s] à bombes”,100 and enabled the French to bombard enemy 93

A Letter written by the governour of Algiers, to the States-General of the United Provinces (London, 1679), 2. 94 BL MS Sloan 2755, fo. 52. 95 BL MS Sloan 2755, fo. 54. 96 CSPD Charles II, 1 September 1680 to 31 December 1681, 617–618 (14 December 1681). 97 Quoted by Peter Le Fevre, “‘It will be a charge to the king to no effect’: The Failed Attempt to Burn the Algerine Fleet in 1679’, The Mariner’s Mirror 89 (2003): 278 in 272–280. 98 Peter Le Fevre, “Arthur Herbert, Earl of Torringotn, 1648–1716,” in Precursors of Nelson, British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century, eds. Peter Le Fevre and Richard Harding (London, 2000), 24–25 in 19–42. 99 CSPD Charles II, January 1 to June 30, 1683, 24:41 (February. 1683). 100 Belhamissi, Marine et Marins, 2:102, n. 62: “bâtiment d’une longueur de 23 m et d’une largeur de 8. Très solide d’échantillon, ayant deux massifs formeé de fascines recouvertes de terre bien battues, au-dessus desquels reposent des plates-formes destines à recevoir les deux mortiers qui composent l’armement”.

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ships in harbor with impunity. As Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde Sismondi (1773–1842) wrote in his Histoire des Français, King Louis XIV was the first to put in practice the atrocious method, newly invented, of bombarding towns, – of burning them, not to take them, but to destroy them, – of attacking, not fortifications, but private houses, – not soldiers, but peaceable inhabitants, women and children – and of confounding thousands of private crimes, each one of which would cause horror, in one great public crime.101 With that attack began a method of European destruction that had been unprecedented, and that the Maghariba did not and could not replicate. An illustration of the attack, based on a Dutch account, shows the trajectory of bombs from the French ships onto the city, but nothing in return.102 An extract from a memorandum of Sieur de Bellislerard about Algiers, written on 2 January 1682, emphasized how safe it was for the big ships to draw up to the harbor and “faire lavie leur canon” whereupon “aucune boulet ne sera perdu.” The French would easily destroy the front Algerian cannons, and whatever remained, “les autres sont de peu d’importance […] La ville manquant de poudre ne poura pas tirer longtemps.”103 A French letter written at the end of July 1683 stated that the Turks “tirerent environs trois cent coupe de canon sans blesser personne.”104 Another letter repeated that the “Turks” were not able to inflict any “dommage que quelques arbres de galiottes sans blesser personne […] ils ne nous ont fait aucun dommage.”105 English Consul Philip Rycaut wrote from Algiers on 16 August 1683: By the best Computation I can make the French have spent 4000 Bombas out of ye 6000 they first brought with them and ye damage to this towne 101 Tom. XXV, p. 452, translated in Sumner, White Slavery in The Barbary States, 20–21, n. As Panzac commented, with this attack the French turned sea warfare into land warfare: instead of just attacking and burning ships and naval supplies, they also attacked and destroyed cities, in ‘Course et diplomatie: Les provinces ottomane du maghreb et de l’Europe (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles),’ Revue Maroc-Europe, Course et jihad maritime 11 (1997–1998): 139–153, 148. Playfair commented: “These actions are celebrated in history as being the first occasion on which shells were used on board vessels of war,” The Scourge of Christendom, 142. 102 Gabriel Esquer, Iconographie historique de l’Algerie depuis le XVIe siècle jusaq’á 1871 (Paris, 1929), vol. I, illustration XVII.45. 103 Archives Nationales (Paris), Marine, B/7/210/6. 104 BnF (Paris), Clairambault, MS 501, fo. 409. 105 The letter continued: “…les bombes [of the Turks] allant dru et sans tomber a faux tout le monde estait en ioie dans notre armée,” BnF (Paris), Fonds Français, MS 5561, fos. 44, 45.

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is about 800 houses & shops beat downe besides 4 ships 3 fettezes & one gally sunk, and two half Galleys upon ye Rockes.106 The devastation was so extensive that in revenge, the Algerians “fired to death” sixteen Frenchmen, and ransacked the consulate, thereby destroying all the archive of Franco-Algerian relations for the previous century.107 But such a desperate act could not hide the fact that the Algerians had been soundly defeated. The illustration of the Algerian delegation to Paris, led by Hajj Jaʿfar Pasha, shows turbaned Moors on their knees with their hands on their heads in submission before the French king, seated on his throne, with his left leg forward, and French courtiers gazing at the humbled delegation. There was such elation over this victory that commemorative medallions were issued showing “Louis XIV divinisé recevant les tribus d’un More” (with the king standing like a Roman god); another medallion showed “un More agenouillé devant Louis XIV”, accompanied by the following legend: “Africa supplex.”108 Before the power and destructiveness of the French, the Algerians could do nothing but prostrate themselves in supplication. The bombardment of “Algiers,” as Sir Godfrey Fisher stated, “was, like Guérnica…intended to illustrate to the world at large the power and resources of a superior [military] civilization.”109 Neither Britain nor France “discerned,” let alone feared, the “enduring shadow of Ottoman grandeur,” which is supposed to have restricted their overwhelming use of bombardment.110 The defeat of the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna a few months earlier was celebrated in song and ballad in England, and since the English had played a small part in the battle, they compensated by singing about their victories over the Algerians. A ballad of 1683 described the “Algerines” being “confin’d/To pay for all their Thieving Arts.”111 By June 1685, the Algerians had seventeen ships 106 TNA SP 71/2/391v (no date). See another account of the bombardment that appeared in print: “Multitudes of People dayly Flocking out to the Gardens, for fear of the Bombs crying out with a General Voice, that the World must needs be now at an end, that never such things as these were seen, that they certainly were not of mans Invention, but sent by the Devil from Hell, and that Algiers is now Ruined,” The Present State of Algeir: Being A Faithful and True Account of the most Considerable Occurrences That happened in that Place, during the lying of the French Fleet before it (London, n.d.). 107 Albert Devoulx, Les Archives du Consulat Général de France à Alger (Algiers, 1865), 7. 108 Esquer, Iconographie historique de l’Algérie, plates 62–66. See also the description of the Algerian ambassador at Versailles presenting himself on 4 July 1684 with “pleine de soumission,” Plantet , ed., Correspondance des Deys d’Alger avec la Cour de France, 1579–1833, 1:90. 109 Fisher, Barbary Legend, 274. 110 Colley, Captives, 66. 111 “The Bloody Siege of Vienna: A Song” (London, c. 1683/84).

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with 460 guns left in their fleet, along with four “siteas” of twenty guns. On the docks, there were three ships and “Fifteen Rowe Friggts that doe mischiefe to Xias in the summer.”112 The naval weakness was now apparent to the Dey and members of the diwan, and in April of 1686, they confirmed the “peace and commerce” treaty with England. Such cooperation was made possible after King James came to the throne and was eager to fight the Dutch. And to do so, he was perfectly willing to permit Algerian pirates to operate from his shores. The case of the famous Algerian corsair, known as Cannary (Canary, Canari), shows the full cooperation of the British monarchy with a pirate who attacked the Dutch. Although British trade with the Ottoman Mediterranean had exceeded the French, the Dutch were still powerful rivals.113 Cannary also shows the ease of movement between Christendom and Dar al-Islam: in piracy and pillage, neither religion nor nationality mattered. Reputed to be a Christian convert to Islam, Cannary started his privateering career by seizing captives. (It is not clear whether his name suggests his place of origin, Canary Islands). A petition by a father in Plymouth in 1688 mentions that his son had been on a ship sailing back from Newfoundland to Portugal in 1680 when he “was taken by One Canary, belonging to Algier, and Carried into Algier…a Galley Slave.”114 Two years later, Admiral Herbert chased Cannary, who “was standing in for ye Town” (Algiers), but he failed to capture him.115 He complained that Cannary was “sufficiently encouraged by such of his Majty subjects, as drive a subtle trade in redeeming captives, and possibly at some time, in supplying him with contraband goods.”116 Already, Cannary had established contacts with British smugglers in the Mediterranean, and by 1684, he had so improved his navigational ability that he moved out to the Atlantic, and began “cruising in our Channell so high as the Isle of Wight.”117 He established his base on the Isle and began to harass the Dutch; by 1686, he was on good terms with King James II and employed men who knew a smattering of 112 TNA SP 71/3/18 (June 1685). 113 See the study by Michel Fontenay, “Le commerce des occidentaux dans les échelles du levant vers la fin du XVIIe siècle,” in Conversions islamiques, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Paris, 2001), 344–370. 114 Devon, QS 128/99/6. He may have been active as early as 1676: in the names of the ships and their captains published in The Present State of Algiers (London, 1676), there is mention of “Mustapha Raise Canary,” captain of the “Flower Pot,” 133, but in Helstein’s Journal, there is mention of “Aly rais Canary” in 1676 on a ship called the “two Lyons” with 400 men, and in 1680, there is reference to “Canary Admirall,” MS BL Sloan 2755, fos 52, 54. 115 TNA SP 71/2/297 (18 February 1682). 116 TNA SP 71/2/299 (18 February 1682). 117 TNA SP 71/2/436r (December 1684).

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English.118 King James was not unwilling to abet Cannary, hoping he would cause damage to Dutch trade. And he did: on 19 June 1686, he captured a Dutch vessel, and ten days later, another “dutch bye boat laden with wine and brandy” and anchored her “off the Isle of Wightt.”119 On 10 July, he brought four ships into Spithead on the south coast, and then “put some Turkish runugadoes and some Moors on board went to sea again immediately”;120 a month later, he and his brother captured “26 Dutch ships” and took them to Algiers.121 The diarist Roger Morrice described the open dealings between Cannary and the British authorities: “the Algerine Pirat” Cannary (whom Morrice sometimes spelled as Cannady) brought in one Dutch prize its said into Plymouth, and five other Dutch prizes into other Ports of Ours to Expose them to Sale here.…It is said he [Cannary] ha’s Writ a letter to his Majestie to let him know…and he doubts not [but] there is so good an understanding between his Majestie and his Master the Dye that he may so doe.122 Just over a week later, Cannary, now “Admirall Cannady,” was “honourably received at the Camp…and did greatly magnifie the Exercise thereof, and particularly the mannage and bravery of the Emblematicall fight that was then in Commemoration of the Rout of Monmouths Rebellion that day twelve months.”123 Cannary had become part of the naval and military British establishment in the same manner that King James had become a protector of the pirates operating out of his realm against the Dutch; actually, the Algerians relied on the English for information about the “Hollanders” in the Channel.124 Such cooperation was mutually beneficial: weakening Holland at the same time as bringing booty to the Algerians (and the English). In an address he made to sea commanders, King James announced that “if you take any Sally man, or any belonging to Barbary, those that take them Shall have Ship and men &c, and those that take it may sell and dispose it as they please, and at your return a further reward if you approve your Selves faithfull &c.”125 118 See the reference to the English speaker in Thomas Phelps, A True Account in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 200. 119 CSPD James II, January, 1686 – May, 1687, 2:176 (19 June 1686), and 2:191 (29 June 1686). 120 Ibid., 2:204 (10 July 1686). 121 Ibid., 2:234 (12 August 1686). 122 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, ed. Harris, 3:158 (July 1686). 123 Ibid., 171. 124 CSPD James II, January, 1686 – May, 1687, 2: 143 (25 May 1686). 125 The Entring Book of Robert Morrice, ed. Harris, 3:195.

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Since he was cooperating with an Algerian pirate, he did not mind his own subjects turning pirates. In October 1686, Cannary, “Captain and Lieutenant of the Pirates ship,” sailed into the port of Harwich and went to meet King James, to whom he offered five British captives in return for “Masts, and all kinde of Tackling”;126 the pirate and the king were openly cooperating.127 In the following month, and seeking “his Majesties further direction in his proceedings,” Cannary requested permission from the governors of the seaports to “sell the Dutch prizes.” When he was refused permission, Cannary protested on the ground that the 1682 treaty between England and Algiers stipulated that the English could sell their wares in Algiers; Cannary demanded reciprocity – which he got. His support was instrumental in effecting the release of captives in November 1686, and eager to show his international clout, King James had them come “in person to Whitehall a few dayes since to make their humble and thankfull acknowledgements to him.”128 In June 1687, Cannary captured a Dutch ship with “40 English persons, many of them of good condition, particularly, the only daughter of Mr. Neale a Wealthy inhabitant of Westminster.”129 But when he brought a ship with “Counterbond goods” to Falmouth, the locals, ever fearful of “Turks,” captured the “Turks and Moors on board her [and had them] secured and [took] several barrels of powder and others things…out of her.” Cannary immediately “sent up from Falmouth its said to desire his Majesties further direction in their proceedings about it.”130 Promptly, instructions were sent to the Governor of Pendennis Castle (in Falmouth) “to set the ship, Turks and Moors at full liberty…[and] take care they be well used.”131 In September, the Dey wrote to King James addressing him as “our friend” and asked him to “permitt” Algerian ships “to sell such a Quality of goods as shall supply them with Prouisions and Necessaryes for the Enabling them to proceed on their Voyages.”132 Cooperation continued in the Channel until the Glorious Revolu­ tion  and  the  advent of a Dutch monarch to the Stuart throne. Can­ nary  then  left  the Isle of Wight and returned to Algiers from where he resumed  his  Mediterranean and Atlantic privateering until his death soon 126 Ibid., 3:167, ed. Harris. On 15 February 1687, John Erlisman wrote from Algiers to the earl of Sunderland about “the man of Warr of this Place [Algiers] that was at Harwich,” TNA SP 71/3/82. 127 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, ed. Harris, 3:267. Morrice added that “his Majestie hath redeemed them,” suggesting payment and negotiation. 128 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, ed. Harris, 3:285. 129 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, ed. Stephen Taylor, 4:92–93. 130 Ibid., 4:96. 131 TNA SP 44/337/283 (5 June 1687). 132 TNA SP 71/3/100 (September 1687).

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after. His son, “Young Canary,” took over his father’s piracy and moved east in the Mediterranean to serve the Ottoman sultan.133 But he retained his father’s memory of cooperation with the English. In January 1692, Consul Baker reported from Algiers that “Our Admiral Young Canary, mett lately with an English Pinke bound for Lisbon just ready to founder and he very kindly saved the People Eleaven in Number.”134 The memory of Anglo-Algerian cooperation in piracy was still alive in the Mediterranean. Algerian cooperation with London brought upon it the wrath of Paris. Between 1 and 16 July 1688, the French fleet bombarded Algiers again, hurling 10,420 bombs that destroyed “les mosques, les maison du Dey, le fort Maifou, les casernes, les bagnes et le mole s’écroulèment sous les ruines ou furent gravement denommagés. 800 maisons seulement resterent habitables sur 10,000.”135 The commander of the French expedition, Vice-Admiral d’Estrées, had been instructed to “ruiner la ville, pénétrer dans le mole, y brûler les vaisseaux.”136 The Algerian defenses were ineffective, as an English eyewitness reported,137 which is why the Algerians submitted to a peace treaty (May 1689), promising not only to suspend all actions against French ships, but also to provide protection for any French ship that docked in Algiers – from the English with whom the French were at war (The Nine Years War had started in September 1688).138 Protected from further attacks, the Algerians seized the opportunity to rebuild their navy, and by May 1690, the “Present force of Algier By Sea” had risen to nineteen ships and caravels with 520 guns, along with three ships on the docks, two galleys and “Severall Rowed boates armed but in Summer.”139 In August 1690, Mustapha Rais commanded twelve ships with 228 guns, and four caravels with fifty guns, along with five other ships of 134 guns. On the docks were two ships, two galleys and two row boats.140 The Algerians could not afford not to venture out to sea, but felt safer sailing east rather than west.141 By September 133 CSPD William and Mary, May 1690-October 1691, 2:171 (25 November 1690). 134 TNA SP 71/3/227v (7 January 1692). 135 Plantet, Correspondance des Deys d’Alger, 1:158, n. 1. 136 Quoted in Belhamissi, Marine et Marins, 2:106. See the documents reproduced about this attack in Pierre Grandchamp, “Le Maréchal d’Estrées devant Alger: Documents inédits de 1687 et 1688,” Revue Tunisienne 25 (1918): 285–299. 137 Robert Cole quoted in Playfair, The Scourge of Christendom, 156: “The Pasha, seeing how little injury his cannon did the bomb-vessels, was very sparing in the discharging of them”. 138 Adrien Berbrugger, “1689 – Traité de Paix”, Revue Africaine 7 (1863): 433–445. 139 TNA SP 71/3/162 (May 1690). 140 TNA SP 71/3/166 (4 August 1690). 141 A report from Algiers in November 1690 stated that seven ships had sailed to the Levant “to the Grand Seignior’s service,” CSPD William and Mary, May 1690-October 1691

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1694, they had fifteen ships with 398 guns,142 and a year later, in September 1695, Consul Cole reported that the Algerians had succeeded in building “two very good ships, and a Gally.”143 Still, the Algerians knew that with changing alliances in the Mediterranean, they needed the protection of Britain against further attacks by the French – in the same manner that the British wanted to ensure Algerian cooperation: thus the numerous gifts that were sent to the Dey and his diwan in 1691 and 1692.144 The letters sent to William III are striking in the extensive list of honorific titles that the Algerian governors showered on him, indicating not only their fear but also their recognition of his power. They also extended the titles to the fleet commanders: in 1694, the “Vice Governor and Duan of Algier” wrote to the “most valiant Generall, our dearly well Beloved true ffrind the Renowned Mr. Russell [admiral of the Mediterranean fleet], & highly esteemed by that great Christian King whose Kingdom is wisely governed” to assure him how “joyfull” they were “at the appearance of there Shipps, and as often as you can we desire to see more of them, which will be very pleasing to us.” In return, the Algerians would show “ffavour to the English.”145 By 7 April 1698, Algiers had twenty ships and vessels with 568 guns, along with three new ships on the stocks, one galley, and “Divers Row frigatts which in summer time pick Christians off the Coast of Spaine”.146 But these ships were no match for the French threat, and so further agreements with the British were needed, which is why the language of the Algerian Dey was obsequiously conciliatory, promising to furnish guards to every ship that arrived in Algiers, expedite the issuance of passes and “We do sincerely promise & declare that such orders shall for the future be given to all our Commanders that under a severe penalty and our Utmost displeasure, they shall not enter into the Channel of England.”147 In an earlier letter, the Dey had complained that the English ships were continuing

142 143 144 145 146 147

2:171. The report added that there were “19 sail of ships belonging to that place [Algiers].” It is unclear why Consul Baker still thought that the Algerians ranged “from the Islands of Cape de Verd near the Coast of Guiny Even as far as Norway,” TNA SP 71/3/260 (2 October 1692). They did not. The list is reproduced in Heywood, ‘What’s in a Name?,’ 122–123. TNA SP 71/3/315 (10 September 1695). TNA SP 71/3/221 (31 May 1691); 71/3/220 (25 August 1692). TNA SP 71/4/24–25 (5 September 1694). TNA SP 71/3/343 (7 April 1698). TNA SP 71/4/5 (9 April 1699); 71/4/19 (17 August 1700). In a document of this same period, the Algerians concede that all English, Irish, and Scottish ships, as well as those from “New England and the colonies in America,” will no longer need a pass (TNA SP 71/4/21) (17 August 1700).

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to carry passengers whose countries were at enmity with Algiers, and rather coyly, hoped that if Algerians found foreigners on board English ships, which was in contravention of the peace treaty, King William would “not take it unkindly if we take advantage of the Goods belonging to our Enemies.”148 The Dey was asking permission of the king to commit pillage. When three Britons were captured by a Portuguese ship, which later was captured by the Algerians, the latter promptly released the Britons.149 In all the renewed agreements, nothing was promised the Algerians; rather, they were prohibited from sailing “near or in Sight of any of the Roads, Havens or Ports, Towns or Places belonging to the said King of Great Britain.”150 But as war with France loomed (War of the Spanish Succession), the British realized that they had to secure Algerian support. In 1702, and after the death of King William (March 1702), the Algerians renewed agreements with the “sultana” (in the Turkish, not the English version) “of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith of Jesus Christ” (in the English version).151 Meanwhile, and in a letter dated 5 October 1702, the British resident consul was advised of the strategy he should use to provoke war between Algiers and France: the “Measures to bee taken for Engaging the Government of Algier to enter into a War against France.”152 Ten years earlier, Algerian peace with the Dutch was subverted by the English consul;153 now open warfare was to be declared by the Algerians on the French – in accordance with British instructions. As was now customary, to ensure cooperation and that the Algerians would declare war, multiple bribes were sent to the Dey and his entourage, as well as “six main masts for a ship of 60 guns,” the largest in their fleet.154 It was necessary to arm the Algerians now that they had become allies. In return, Secretary of State Nottingham instructed the consul in Algiers to assure the Algerians that the British fleet would protect their ships.155 Such protection would make Algiers an exclusive market for British goods – nothing French (or Dutch) would be imported – at the same time that its port furnished 148 TNA SP 102/Part 1, vol. 1, 105v (1 May 1699). 149 TNA SP 71/4/69 (2 October 1703). 150 Extracts from the Several Treaties subsisting between Great-Britain and other Kingdoms and States (London, 1751), 237. 151 TNA SP 71/4/39, Confirmation of the peace by Robert Cole. There are three different paginations on this entry: 35 (in print blocks, crossed out), 39 (replacing the crossed out entry), and 71 (in the top right-hand corner). 152 TNA 71/4/45–46 (5 October 1702). 153 TNA SP 71/3/205 (3 July 1692). 154 TNA SP 71/4/46 (5 October 1702), Consul Baker’s list. 155 TNA SP 71/4/56 (4 May 1703).

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Britain with a well-fortified Mediterranean harbor for re-supplies. And it was a market where custom duties were to be less than those paid by other nations. In a confirmation of the 1682 peace treaty, the 28 October 1703 treaty stated that Britons will not pay 10% customs, as had been the case in 1682, but only 6%.156 Consul Cole found his task easy because of the military victories of the British forces at the battle of Viga, humbling thereby “the pride of the common  Disturber of Europe”/France.157 The Algerians, recognizing how much they were dependent on the English, seized the opportunity to celebrate the victory of their naval masters “Publickely”: the English victory over the French was now ‘their’ victory, and to show further allegiance to England, the Dey promised Consul Cole to try and convince Tunis to break off relations with France.158 Algiers was now to act as a proxy for England in the latter’s Mediterranean strategy. Agreements with England were signed again in 1705,159 and the Algerians continued to help the English in the war against France. A letter by Queen Anne to the Dey thanked him for “assisting Our Ships of War when they have been constrained to put into your Ports.”160 Notwithstanding such cooperation, and with a growing sense of power, the English attitude toward the Algerians became dismissive and haughty: Consul Cole, became angry that the English treatment of Algerians was supercilious and insulting. Weak and dependent, the Algerians had limited options, which is why Cole felt he needed to write to the Secretary of State: I am now humbly to offer to your Wisdome [wrote Cole], whether it can be thought reasonable, that after so kind treatment, as Her Majesties ships meet withal here, such returns ought to be made to these People, as Robbing them of their Substance, or Estates, as in their Slaves, and whether when the ships are gone into Her Maejsties Ports, as sometimes they have done, and assume to themselves, so foule an Act, as that Commited by the Newport to consider the Effect.161 Three years later, in 1709, and importantly for all the British traders waiting to monopolize the Algerian market, the custom duty on British imports was 156 157 158 159 160 161

TNA SP 103/1/221v (28 October 1703). TNA SP 71/4/60 (16 July 1703). TNA SP 71/4/60 (16 July 1703; 29 October 1703, unclear date). TNA SP 71/4/78 (6 November 1705). TNA SP 102/Vol. 1, part 1, 121v (c. 1706). TNA SP 71/4/88v (20 June 1706).

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dropped to “five per Cent.”162 Still, the Algerians were being derided and Consul Cole again reported in 1711 how Algerian traders in Gibraltar “had stones cast on them…and were otherwise spitefully used by being spitt upon”;163 but a year later, he complained that he had been stationed “amongst a greedy vexatious people.”164 Cole died in November of that year (1712); nevertheless, “the Pasha and Dey hath upon this occasion shewed the family the utmost Civility that could be expected,” wrote Cole’s chaplain, Richard Harrison.165 In 1715, the Dutch cartographer Herman Moll produced a map of “The Turkish Empire in Europe, Asia and Africa” in which he described Tripoli in the following words: “Sr John Narborough [sic] burnt all the men of war in this port in 1674”. Although the date was not precise, the event was memorable because it had brought an end to Libyan commercial rivalry and naval activity. And about Algiers he wrote: “In 1671 Sr Ed. Spragg destroyed and Burnt under ye Guns of this Place 9 of the best Algerian men of war”.166 The date was correct. The Algerians were now banned from the western Mediterranean and the Atlantic littoral as well as from the English Channel. And since their maritime activity was being restricted, the number of their ships could not but decline. The lists for the years 1710 and 1712 show seventeen and sixteen ships respectively.167 The Algerian naval force was shrinking, while a New List of all the Ships and Vessels of Her Majesties Royal Navy (1710) shows seven First, thirteen Second, forty-five Third, sixty-three Fourth, forty-seven Fifth, and thirty-seven Sixth Rates in the British fleet. As Colin Heywood succinctly stated: at the end of the seventeenth century, the Algerian and other North African frontiers were vulnerable “to attacks from the sea”168 by the English and the French who had become so powerful that they reshaped “the contours of Mediterranean commerce” in their own favor.169 162 163 164 165 166

TNA SP 71/4/61 (16 July 1703; and see also 29 October 1703, unclear date). TNA SP 71/4/126 v (14 April 1711). TNA SP 71/4/199 (10 July and 8 October 1712). TNA SP 71/4/229 (16 November 1712). Herman Moll, The Turkish Empire in Europe, Asia and Africa, Divided into all its Governments (London, 1720). 167 As Heywood shows, “What’s in a Name?,” 124–125, although on 3 September 1712, it was reported that “There are Nine Algereen Men of Warr cruising off this Coast [Salé] & they expect to be joined by six more. I suppose they have an eye upon the Bahia fleet that is expected,” TNA SP 89/22/129r. 168 Colin Heywood, “An English merchant and Consul-General in Algiers, c. 1676–1712: Robert Cole and his Circle,” in Abdeljelil Temimi and Mohamed-Salah Omri eds., The Movement of People and Ideas between Britain and the Maghreb, 65. 169 Greene, ‘Beyond the Northern Invasion,’ 64.

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With no access to the hard currency that was pouring into the English and French national coffers from trade and colonization, and with the ever-present difficulty of procuring wood for ship-building – the North African regions did not have the tall trees that were especially needed for masts170 – and with their maritime infrastructures coming under repeated bombardment, the Maghariba could not keep pace with European advancement. In 1703, they had had but “few ships in their country,” wrote Sir Cloudesley Shovell;171 by 1731, the Algerian fleet consisted of “Ships 8” that were active, four on the docks, and fifteen brigantines and “satias”; by 1734, there were ten ships.172 With decline came the North African total dependence on European ships for their trade, travel, and commerce. Willingly or unwillingly, they had to submit to European mercantilism with all the negative consequences that submission had on economic and social transformation.173 *** Britain and France did not as much “retaliate” against the seizure of their seamen as pursue a strategy of eliminating Morocco and the Ottoman regencies as maritime commercial powers. The result was the growing awareness on the part of the North Africans that they could never have control over the sea and its trade: all they could do was fortify their ports defensively. The fleets of those two European countries had systematically destroyed their naval infrastructures, and so the rulers could not but confess to their defeat and loss of the sea. After the attack by Admiral Blake on Tunis in April 1655, the Bey wrote the following: “We have our subsistence from the land, without needing ought from the sea, neither do we except anything from sea.”174 In a letter dated in 1699, 170 When Narbrough attacked Tripoli in 1675, the Libyans took “all their Masts out of their ships” in order to preserve them, as he reported, TNA SP 71/22/111v (5 August 1675). The absence of wood was serious. Unfortunately, the Ottoman-controlled regencies did not turn to Morocco which had resources that were being utilized by the British in Gibraltar: in 1711, the British wanted to “cutt down Timbers near Larache [where there were] […] great quantities of Timber which they make no manner of use,” TNA SP 41/34/86. 171 CSPD Anne, 1703–1704, 2:125 (24 September 1703). 172 TNA SP 71/7/703 (1 January 1734). 173 See the study of Tunis by ‘Abd al-Ḥamid Haniyya, “Wathīqa ḥawl madīnat Tunis fī nihayat al-qarn as-sābiʿ ‘ashar,” in La vie économique des provinces arabes et leurs sources documentaries à l’époque ottomane, ed. Abdeljelil Temimi (Zaghouan, 1986):568–577. 174 The Letters of Robert Blake, ed. Powell, 319. As the Tunisian historian, Al-Wazīr al-Sarrāj, noted c. 1718, it was the British bombardment of Ghār al-Milḥ in 1655 that drove the Tunisians to build defensive towers and walls, al-Ḥulal al-sundusiyya, ed., al-Hīla, 2:243.

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Mulay Ismāʿīl of Morocco wrote to the exiled James II in Paris that had he not been an “an Arab”, belonging to “a people who knew nothing of the sea, or had he had someone [under him] who did know something about the sea”, he would have sent him a fleet to help in invading Britain and regaining his throne.175 Although Morocco had a long coastline, and although there was a history of Moroccan seaborne commercial and naval activity, Ismāʿīl no longer viewed his country as a maritime power. The commercial and naval goals of Britain in the Mediterranean necessitated the destruction of rivals. In the period under study, the North Africans were active at sea in licit and illicit enterprises: thus Britain’s need to neutralize them while still relying on their resources in the larger wars against France. Neither Britain nor France launched an imperial conquest of North Africa as they would in the nineteenth century (except in the case of the colony of Tangier): still, the goal of empire and the preparation for such an empire were underway. By 1688, the French had increased the number of men in their “Colonnie du Bastion” in Algeria to 430,176 and by 1706, the English were working to “obtain” “the Fortress of Marsa al Kebier under which is a very good port,”177 at exactly the same time that the French were viewing “Port Soliman” in the Gulf of Certa/Sidra as a feasible (“pas difficille”) location for landing an army.178 Both powers were considering the establishment of permanent outposts in the regions they had bombarded, often using the excuse of captives and Muslim enslavement of Christians. But British (and French) eyes were less on captives and more on trade and seaports: as Consul Anthony Hatfield in Morocco observed, the whole region of Barbary was “a great vent for the worst sort of our woolen manufacture.”179 Poor as North Africa was, it became the dumping ground for bad products. As F. Robert Hunter correctly argued, to “exploit Maghreb markets, they [Britain and France] would have to open the region to their merchants and commercial enterprise.”180 With peace having been imposed by British and French fleets on Morocco and the regencies, an inter-European colonial imaginaire developed (to be 175 For the text and study of the letter, see Comte Henry de Castries, Moulay Ismail et Jacques II (Paris, 1903). 176 Archives Nationales (Paris), Marine, B/7/213/49. 177 TNA SP 71/15/218 (not dated). 178 Archives Nationales, Marine, B/7/224/29. 179 31 May 1717, from a letter quoted by Dominique Meunier, “Le Consulat Anglais à Tetouan sous Anthony Hatfeild [sic] (1717–1728) etude et edition de texts,” Revue d’Histoire Maghrebine 4 (1980), 23 in 13–93. 180 F. Robert Hunter, “Rethinking Europe’s Conquest of North Africa and the Middle East: The Opening of the Maghreb, 166-= 1814,” The Journal of North African Studies, 4 (1999), 5 in 1–26.

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implemented a century later in the French occupation of Algiers in 1730). In 1728, Daniel Defoe was blunt about the “Coast of Africa,” which is considerable as we find it to be, even now, under the Indolence and Sloth of the most barbarous People in the World, how may we suppose all those valuable things to be encreas’d in their Quantity, by the Industry and Application of the diligent Europeans, especially the French or Dutch, or English; all which nations joining in the Conquest, we might reasonably suppose should have their several and separate Allotments of Territory upon the Coast, and in the Country adjacent.181 Defoe did not have to appeal to the excuse of liberating Christian captives from Muslim hands. Conquest was based on the need to exploit natural resources, subdue native people, and open up markets for European products. But his jingoism fell on deaf ears: with a squadron permanently based in Gibraltar, Britons realized they did not need to conquer the North African coast, only dominate the waterways of trade and the ports of victual. And so, during and after the various wars with France, both on land and at sea, Britons opted for what historians have called “naval diplomacy” – or less euphemistically, gunboat diplomacy. The British archive in Gibraltar contains very little before the nineteenth century – but what it does have of the eighteenth century are records of British correspondence with Algerian and Moroccan potentates showing how Britain brandished its naval power and thereby ensured food supplies for rocky Gibraltar from Tangier, Tetuan, Algiers, Tunis or Tripoli. Along with the famous monkeys. In her study of French captives in North Africa, Gillian Weiss argued that the attacks on North Africa gave direction to French commercial and anti-British strategies, but from the eighteenth century on, the goal shifted from fighting to end captivity to making colonies in a kind of French “liberatory conquest.”182 A similar trajectory appears in Britain’s Mediterra­nean and Atlantic encounter with the “Barbary Corsairs.” The seizure of British captives, who were not always a priority for London administrators, became the excuse to begin the domination of the Islamic Mediterranean and Atlantic. 181 Daniel Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce Being a Compleat Prospect of the Trade of this Nation, as well the Home Trade as the Foreign (Oxford, 1928), 243. 182 I borrow the phrase from Gillian Weiss.

Conclusion The seizure of Britons to the bagnos of North Africa was grim and brutal. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Britons were exposed to numerous dangers both at sea and from the sea, as pirates landed on their shores and hauled kith and kin to captivity. The danger of the “Turks” and the “Moors” dominated coastal and seafaring populations for decades, while writers and captivesturned-oral narrators consolidated an image of alien, fearful, and hostile “Mahometans”. Relatives of captives, from Hull to London to Portsmouth, clamored for the return of their captured kinsmen, but church and state were not always willing, and sometimes were unable, to exert financial and diplomatic effort to liberate them. But, from the end of the seventeenth century on, the Royal Navy grew into a powerful instrument of conquest, aided by strident developments in the technologies of naval warfare. At the same time, British seaborne commerce was extending from India to Africa, and from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic; and the African slave trade boomed. Britain was assuming a dominant role on the world stage, both in national wealth and military capability, but the North Africans were declining in their naval and economic infrastructures, neither able to confront British or other European fleets nor to resist treaties that undermined their commerce and political autonomy. Poverty and corruption, instability and civil conflicts followed, especially in Morocco (until the accession of Sidi Muḥammad in 1757) to the point where, in the account about Consul John Russel’s ransoming of British captives in 1729, the Moroccans, from top officials to the queen’s slaves, are shown begging for money and presents, sometimes grabbing away at watches or pistols, and ever demanding bribes.1 As they continued capturing sailors and ships, they found that the British and the French treated their actions as a casus belli and proceeded to destroy their fleets and dockyards, and in treaty after treaty, they prohibited them from taking part in seaborne trade. In the face of this imbalance of power, the Algerians found a spokesman in Joseph Morgan. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, Morgan served as vice-consul in Algiers and became deeply involved in ransoming his countrymen at the same time that he could observe the dynamics of captive-taking by the North Africans. In his numerous writings about Algiers and the “piratical states,” Morgan gave voice to the Muslim responsa, asking the questions 1 A Second Journal of John Russel, Esq; Consul-General in Barbary (London, 1754).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004264502_006

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that Algerians (and others) must have raised when Europeans denounced them for piracy: “Does not the Order of Malta carry on a continual War against [us], and out of a religious Principle? Does not the Oath of the Order, at their Initiation, oblige them never to be at Peace with the Mahometans?” Algerian and other Muslim piracy was undoubtedly nefarious, but so should Maltese and Spanish piracy be viewed. Deliberately, Morgan did not mention his own countrymen, but he added that Euro-Christian violence did not only consist in piratical attacks on North African shipping and ports, but also in subduing North African populations. As Europeans had conquered in the “East and West Indies” and had dispossessed the “Natives” of land and freedom,2 so had they conquered Tangier and Oran, Tunis and Algiers, Ceuta and Melilla, Asilah and Agadir, leaving behind them a trail of destruction and slavery. For the first time, an English writer was articulating the colonial ideology that was emerging at the same time that he was denouncing the deeds of early modern Europeans. Morgan knew the 1713 account of captivity in Meknes, published by Simon Ockley. In that account, blame was put on the “CHRISTIAN MERCHANTS” in Meknes and other parts of North Africa who “deal in Gold, Silver and Brimstone, and all manner of Contrabands, viz. Brass, iron, Marble, Cinamon and Frankincense, Slaves, nay, even the Souls of other Men (as well as their own;) who being detained by their means in Bondage, have desperately given themselves to the Devil by turning Moors. It is through the Artifices of these Wretches that they [the captives] are hedged in, and cannot come out.”3 But while Morgan lamented the plight of British and other European captives who were often left to fend for themselves, he recognized that the imbalance in naval power resulted in a very high number of “Mahometan” captives in Christian hands. Captivity was not only carried out by the ‘Muslims,’ but also, and more so, by the ‘Christians’: when Mulay Ismāʿīl sent his ambassador to Spain in 1690 to negotiate the exchange of Spanish with Moroccan captives, he proposed that each Spaniard be exchanged for ten Moroccans;4 in 1712, each Dutchman was exchanged for one hundred Moors.5 Morgan recognized how his compatriots, along with other Europeans, turned conquest into alleged self-preservation against religiously and racially different natives: how desire for saltpeter, natural resources, and markets for their commodities was explained in terms of protecting “free” trade from the predatory corsairs. 2 3 4 5

A Compleat History of the Piratical States of Barbary (London, 1750), 264. Simon Ockley, An Account of South-West Barbary (London, 1713), 121. Letter quoted in full in Muḥammad Dawūd, Tarīkh Tiṭwān (Tetuan, 1959), Part I, 2:27 TNA SP 89/22/182r (8 August 1712).

194

Conclusion

The seizure of British captives, be they innocent travelers or soldiers or pirates, was motivated largely by financial goals, at the same time that it was a way of retaliating against the colonization of North African port cities and the captivity of kinsmen and kinswomen to the various European slave markets. Religious difference was not the sole reason that drove ‘Muslims’ to capture and humiliate ‘Christians’. As Morgan noted, in the midst of all conflicts, captivities, and bombardments, the Muslims remained tolerant of Christians. “All the Attempts of the Christians to extirpate Mahometanism have not set them upon repealing this Toleration” which is enjoined in “several Passages in the Alcoran, the Substance whereof is, That every one, whether Christian, or Jew, who worships God, and leads a good Life, will certainly be blessed by God”.6 Muslims, he added, gloried “that whereas all other Nations oppress their Subjects on account of religious Differences, they allow of an universal Toleration”.7 It was not a glory of which the Christian population of England could boast: in 1751, English society vehemently rejected the naturalization of the Jews who had been living in England for nearly a century; and the Gordon Riots against Catholics were not far behind. London readers of Morgan’s book retorted: “It is nothing to us, Lord! Half a Dozen of our small Ships would blow all those Scrubs to the Devil”.8 Jingoistic and assured, they were uninterested in learning about Algiers and North Africa, and refused to subsidize Morgan’s proposed sequel to the first book. He published an angry letter: “Among the last Class of thriving Men, nothing in nature would set a float this Book of mine but a War with the Algerines.”9 Britons were in power and no longer feared the “Barbary Corsairs”. A few years later, a report from Algiers by Consul Shaw confirmed further decline among the North Africans: “Their Shipping which renders their Place so famous to Christendom, so courted by some Powers and dreaded by others, has been for some Years in a decline Condition”.10 With the French and English translations of the Arabian Nights in the early decades of the eighteenth century, English captivity narratives reflected this sense of power as they moved toward the fictionally romantic, and started telling of labyrinthine palaces and courts, glamorous love affairs, and dangerous liaisons. “Turks” and “Moors” no longer frightened Britons or wielded influence 6 Morgan, A Compleat History of the Piratical States, 267. 7 Ibid., 170. 8 Morgan, A Complete History of Algiers (London, 1728), xi. 9 Mr. Morgan’s Letters to one of his earliest Subscribers (London, 1728), 5. 10 TNA SP 71/7/21 (10 October 1729), letter to the Duke of Newcastle.

Conclusion

195

on English social life and thought – except in the world of fiction.11 In 1769, Elizabeth Marsh published (anonymously) her account of captivity in Morocco, but Londoners did not show as much interest in her story of suffering as they did in the operatic captives, unafraid of their captors, and rather enjoying themselves in song: Ah, how sweet the rural scene! Circled by those charming groves, Slavery its labour loves And the captive hugs his chain.12 11

12

For the role of captivity writings in the development of English fiction, see G.A. Starr, “Escape from Barbary: A Seventeenth-Century Genre,” HLQ 29 (1965):35–52; Joe Snader, “The Oriental Captivity Narrative and Early English Fiction,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 9 (1997): 267–298 and his more extensive study, Caught between Worlds. The Captive, A Comic Opera; As it is Perform’d at the theatre-Royal in the Hay-Market (London, 1769), 1.

Captives What follows are the names of captives: their own names or names by association (son of, father of, husband of etc.). 1563 John Fox William Wickney Robert Moore John Fox, The Worthy Enterprise of John Fox in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 61 ( from Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1589).

31 August 1566

Robert Bendham Landsowne vol. 9, f. 186.

c. 1576 – 1582

Harmon Ponde James Ogle Robert Warner John Laude (Son of) Clemence Collyns Robert Dryver (converted?) William Ivett Richard Burke William Phoenix William the boy Masters (Remembrancia), 2–5 1584 Thomas Sanders © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004264502_007

198

Captives

Richared Burges James Smith Master Blonket Master Blonket’s boy. The Voyage made to Tripoli in Barbary, in the year 1583 in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1589), 184–191. 1584 Nomina hominum mancipatorum & viventium tunc temporis, quando Caesar illustrissimus, & dominus Orator Chauseum Mahumetem miserunt Algiram

  In nave Peter de Bristow John Winter Robert Barton.   In nave Swallow de London Rich. Crawford Anthony Elvers Wil. Rainolds.   In nave Britona James Yoong   In nave Rabnet de Hampton Thomas Lisney   In nave Salomon John Tracie Wil. Griffith Wil. Cocke   In nave Elizabeth John Woodward Giles Naper Leonard James Oliver Dallimore Richard Maunsell.   In nave Maria Martin Thomas Moore Wil. White

Wil. Palmer Nich. Long Peter March Rich. Haslewood Wil. Dewly Wil. Cowel John Franke Henry Parker John Cavendish Moises Robinson James Sotherich Henry Howel Nich. Smith Henry Ragster Rich. Davison Rich. Palmer   In nave Elizabeth Stokes David Fillie Walter Street Laurence Wilkins Morgan Davis John Quinte Ambrose Harison John Peterson

199

Captives

Tristram Vois Roger Ribbe.   In nave Nicholas

Thomas Forster Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 5:281–2 (the 1598–1600 edition, 2:180).

1585 William Moore Robert Rawlin CSP Foreign, Queen Elizabeth August 1584 – August 1585, 19:269.

May 1588–1595

Richard Hasleton 1583 Thomas Morgan 1588 William Hulls 1595 Roslyn L. Knutson, “Elizabethan Documents, Captivity Narratives, and the Market for Foreign History Plays,” English Literary History 26 (1996), 102–110. See also Richard Hasleton’s account, reproduced in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 71–95. 1610 Thomas Harres Randall Jesson Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 447–48; and CSP…Venice, 1610–1613, 12:77 where the second name is Randolph. 1612 Robert Ellyatt Les Cahiers de Tunisie, 33 (1961): 119–63.

February 1619

Richard Doves with fourteen English captains, captives in Algiers. CSP Colonial Series, East India, China and Japan, 1617–1621, 252.

200

Captives

1622 Richard Clarke/Jafar George Cooke/Ramadan William Winter/Mustapha John Browne/Memme Henry Chandler, borne in Southwarke, an English Renegado Rawlins’ boy and the ship owner’s servant, forcibly converted Five Englishmen and one boy Nine English slaues which they tooke with them from Argier. In all 24.men and a boy. Which were all safely landed at Plimmoth, the 13. of February 1621. John Rawlins James Roe John Davies TheFamous and Wonderfull Recoverie of a ship of Bristoll called the Exchange, from the Turkish Pirates of Argier (London, 1622), E4r. See also Vikus, ed., Piracy, 104.

1624 ?

William Rankin CSPD James I, 1623–1625, 11:464.

21 September 1624

“Names of such captives as are in Algier and Tunis”. Algiers John Hawkins Thomas Newman William Pierce Henry Shorte Henry Keyes William Pierce, junior Lawrance Bewley Roger Dunn Arthur Cradell

John Cumber Richard Heale William Webber Edward Lambert James Beriman Richard Noble Jonas Downing Josiah Rider James Burges

201

Captives

William Wye James Nedry, a Scottishman Thomas Vivine Jeffery Dixon James Juatt John Daniell and Robert, a carpenter taken with the said Daniell1 John Davis Daniell Davis Henry Davis William Rice James Blundell ---- Hewenson Richard Barnes John Farewell Griffin Morris Richard Halls Mathew Reynolds Thomas William

John Browne John Smith, having but one eye Nicholas Piscan Richard Prosser Thomas Church George Wilson Henry Lewes John Bowling Arnold Mason John Roberts Thomas Punt John Kilbie John Wilson Reynold Edmonds Thomas Madacke Richard Blundell Richard Waterman Bartholomew Kibie Henry Kibie

Tunis Richard Morris Robert Golsen Robert Thomson William Pekham John Compton Edward Cragge John Hulston John Littlewood Acts of the Privy Council 1623–25, 335–36.

April 1625

Pethericke Honicombe De Castries, Sources…Angleterre, 2:559.

1 See the reference to John Daniell in October 1626 in the petition by his sister, Acts of the Privy Council, 1626 June – December, 335.

202

Captives

May 1625

William Court and “four other Englishmen” William Legg “and seventeen others” Depositions, Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 357–58.

1625 Wm. Wood CSPD Charles I,1625–1626, 1:210.



3 February 1626

John Johnson 13li. 15s. 00 John Willis 19-05-00 John Palmer 12-07-06 Walter Powell 09-12-6 Michaell Stevens 09-12-06” Acts of the Privy Council, 1625–1626, 336.



October 1626

Algiers William Russell Jeffery Dixon Robert Tuckey Abraham Darkin Henry Short Richard Heale John James Thomas Dilicott William Martin Nicholas Browne. Acts of the Privy Council, 1626 June-December, 341.

Captives



203

November 1626

Robert Adams Vitkus, ed., Piracy, 349.

1626 –

“The names of the Englishe Captiues under the kinge of Morocus [but there are others] in other places wee knowe not how manye”. Thomas Lambe2 William Shilton John Shilton William Bradley Samuell Roffe Josias Martine John Tapley Robert Weekes Watsen Downe Robert Cabott George Pepperell William Tobie Owin Watsen Richard Burrell Thomas Dieson David Oliver John Barryman Thomas Merrick James Saunderson Richard Griffin

Richard Martin John Thomas, Rening Shorte Hercules Cooshine Christopher Willson Andrew Tape Lewis Smith Teige Osroillisant Garrett Barrye William White Morris Bryan Nicholas Whitmore Edmund Lord Thomas Tobie Nathaniell ffultsowne [Fullthorne] John Wright Laurence Pessett [Pessettgarnse] William Collye John Daniell TNA SP 71/12/115.

The same captives petitioned the king sometimes between November 1631 and February 1632: see Cenival and Brissac, Sources.…Angleterre, 3: 180–81 (entries in square brackets). John Daniell was ransomed by Sir Thomas Roe, Acts of the Privy Council, 1626, June – December, 335. See also the reference to him in Fourth Report 2 Was he still in captivity in 1637? See below.

204

Captives

of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I, Report and Appendix (London, 1874), 14. 1628 James Wadsworth The English Spanish Pilgrime (London, 1629).

June 1631

“List of the Baltimore people carried away by the Turks on 20th June 1631” William Mould and his boy Old Osborne and maid Alexander Pumery’s wife John Rider, wife and two children Mrs. Robert Hunt Abraham Roberts, wife and three children Covent Groffin, wife, daughter, and three manservants John Harris’ wife, mother, three children, and maid Dermot Meregey’s two children and maid Richard Meade, wife and three children Richard Kerpe, wife, sister, and four children Stephen Broadbrooke, wife and two children (she great with child) Old Hamkin, wife and daughter Evans and boy, his cook, his cook’s wife and maid Bessie Flood and her son William Arnold, wife and three children Michael Amble, his wife and son Stephen Price, wife, mother and three children William Symons, his wife and two children Christopher Norway, wife and child Sampson Rogers and his son Bessie Peter’s daughter Thomas Payne, wife and two children Richard Watts, wife, and two children William Gunter’s wife, maid and seven sons John Amble Edward Cheney

Captives

205

Robert Chimor’s wife and four children Mrs. Timothy Corlew John Slyman, wife and two children Mrs. Morris Power. Total from Baltimore      107 Killed – Timothy Corlew and John Davys. Sent ashore – Ould Osburne and Alice Heard, Sent ashore – Two of Dungarvan and one of Dartmouth Portingales 9 Pallicians 3 Frenchmen 17 Englishmen of Dartmouth 9 From boats of Dungarvan 9 This total      47 From the Council Book of Kinsale, in Des Ekin, The Stolen Village (Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 2006), appendix, and State Papers Ireland, Charles I, 621–22 (10 July 1631). In March 1634, CSPD Charles I 1633–1634, 6:535, the number is 120.



Algiers 1632

William Ayles Schen, “Breaching ‘Community’,” 232.



20 April 1632

The humble Petition of Henry Abby, Richard Jones, and William Maydman together with sixtie two more poore Captives in Tunnys and Agryr. [No other names]. TNA SP 71/1/I, 117.

1632? Thomas Banister “and others” TNA SP 71/1/121.

206

Captives

Tunis 1633

Captain William Hawkeridge who redeemed “his 32 men” CSPD Charles I, 1633–34, 6:357.

2 October 1634

Richard Hunt, mariner. Edmund Berryman CSPD Charles I, 1634–35, 7:223.

6 June 1634

Thomas Ramsay TNA SP 71/1/140.

10 September 1635

John Newman (twice taken) CSPD Charles I, 1635, 8:375.

18 March 1635

Christopher Pige CSPD Charles I, 1635–1636, 9:302. A “Marryner” who “had liued long a Captiue in Argire” made a deposition after his return to England about captives there: TNA SP 16/316/100, 102. 1609–1635 Thomas Nichols (ransomed 7 August 1610) Robert Rippon and “the rest of the crew” Samuel Harres and his companions (16 July 1610) William Nelme and his crew(1611) The crew of “Peter”, one of whom died, John Temple, another murdered, the boy converted, and the rest enslaved (before 10 February 1614)

Captives

207

Moses Mason (31 August 1616) William Rudes (21 January 1617) Henry Cooke, Martine Cooke (1 March 1617) James Carter and a crew of 8 (19 March 1620) Clement White (28 March 1620) Matthew Clarke and “the rest of the crew” (27 May 1620) Two of Robert Ewens’ servants (12 September 1621) Henry Hammon; Mr. Biges, Peter Rowe, and Thomas Griffen (15 September 1621) Thomas Haines and a mariner (30 April 1623) Richard Noble, Matthew Micho and crew (14 May 1623) Peter Mathew (7 January 1624) John Browne and the crew of the “Mathew and Judeth” (27 March 1624) John Dodson and his crew (17 April 1624) Richard Morris and his crew (17 April 1624) Henry Short (17 April 1624) Robert Ensome (7 January 1626) Michael Fletcher and his ship (3 January 1626) Captain William Hockerage (24 September 1631) John Croft and his crew (June 1632) William Kempster and his crew of 15 (10 May 1633) [Richard] Harris, [William]Wyldes, ---- Duckmanton, and “70 men” (July 1633) Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35, ed. G.G. Harris (London, 1983). The husband of Mary Temple James Carter Clement White William Locke Thomas Haines Richard Noble Matthew Micks Peter Mathew [sic] Thomas Melvin, a Scotchman, being one of nine Christians John Brown, mariner John Dodson Henry Short Thomas Gataker John Croft Peter Talbott’s son Michael Fletcher. Eighth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I (London, 1881), 237–245.

208

Captives

1635 Petition of Clara Bowyer, Margaret Hall, Elizabeth Ensam, Elizabeth Newland, with a thousand poor women. CSPD Charles I, 1635–1636, 9:15. 1636 John Hogg “wth ffiftie men and boyes & seven woemen bound for Virginia” including the son of John Duton”. TNA SP 16/332/30.V. Compare with the entry below (26 September 1636).

20 May 1636

John Davie Historical Manuscripts commission. Twlefth Report, Appendix, Part I. The Manuscripts of the Earl Cowper, 2:116.

26 September 1636

John Rickles “with 23 men” captured in 1630 Jacob Cornelius, of Dort CSPD Charles I, 1636–1637, 10:140; Simon Buskman, of “Breamour [Bremen?]”captured in 1621 Cornelius Tanys of Edam. John Dunton…with 50 men and boys and 7 women, bound for Virginia John Hay CSPD Charles I, 1636–1637, 10:141. 1637 The Names of all those Captives both English and others that were Redeemed from Salley and Saphia in the yeare of our Lord God, 1637. London Thomas King, Charles Holleday, Edward Barnes, John Grister, Ralphe Wester, Michael Downe, Ellias Fox, Thomas Grimston, Edward Whithorne, Edward

Captives

209

Tindall, John Lambe, Robert Bowyear, John Pitcher, Abraham Harris, John Cornish, Peter Bayland, Valentine Godwine, John Leckes, James Jagger, Peter Clarke, Richard Katherine, Henry Legge. Gravesend William Smith. Chatham James Taylor. Gosper John Marten, William Mirrit,, boy. Lymenton Richard Cooper. Southampton William Snelling, John Bartram, William Lambe, Richard Fisher. Larpen John Winfield. Jersey Richard Beeson, William Rubie, John Noviger, Abraham Gennet, Robert Blake, Edward Cartwright. Garnsey Peter Raye, Isack Phickett, John Mogiere, John Lerrey, Nicholas Mogier. Poole Thomas Gardner, William Garret, William Freeman. Waymoth William Nichols, Edward Bomefield, Edward Pope. Aposome William Cooke, William Finche, Richard Skutt, William Helvert, John Piddium, John Richards, Richard Shappin, Ttrustrum Sherpin, George Stone, William Webber, Nicholas Grey, Edmond Adams, William Pitcher, Steven Ellet, John Helman, James Dunscomb, Robert Weekes, George Coyne.

210

Captives

Exeter Benjamin Foard, Thomas Man, Richard Barrett. Tinmouth Richard Waymoth. Nutonbushell Avery Mugg. Tarr John Fitterey, Andrew Fitterey. A borne Henry Wootton. Denberie Peter Pearce. Salcombe Roger Blancke, John Pollard, boy. Dartmouth Philip Lucey, William Hardaye, Richard Daye, William Frost, John Fighter, Edward Quoite, William Crapp, Thomas Webber, Thomas Butcher, William Harris, Christopher Wells, Robert Buckland, Henry Pearce, George Halley, John Primston, Abraham Clarke, John Cock, William Crabbert, John Hunt, Richard Boone, George Poperell, John Boden, John Comes the runagatha Antol. Plimmouth John Joppe, Samspon Derrey, John Boone, John Wright, Matthew Adams, John Baker, Philip Dorey, Pascoe Jelley, Humphrey Bates, Nicholas Rider, Adrian Scannell, William Treuer, Borne Rancke, John Challenge, James Kember, Josias Spicer, Henry Goarde, Hugh Henson, Henry Jenkins, Richard Hooper, Edward Ogell, Thomas Elliot, Peter Randoll, Hugh Sanders, Edward Brust, William Lange, John Manwood, Tippet Collecock, Andrew Roades, John Stevens, Thomas Browne, Richard Helford, Henry Ange, Walter Loude, Richard Sutt, Walter Winchell, Robert Mirvey. Stonehouse Hugh Morgan.

Captives

211

Salt-Ash Nicholas Lovell, Richard Griffen. Milbrocke Steven Bartlet, Richard Maddock, Walter Waight, William Fosse, Walter Merchant, Richard Wood, John Myle, John Howe, Richard Willis. Looe Philip Semans, Edwards Semans, Thomas Tresise, John Butler, John Harris, Thomas Leekes, William Colleens, Nicholas Baker. Dublin George Hagon. Tredathe Patrcike Gardland, Christopher Fitz simmons. Dongervin Richard Tobie, Daniel Griffen, John Hugh, John Conworth, Cormoth Fitz moris, Doll Miskell, John Harre, Edward Tobie, Tige Drescall, Edmond Drurie, Edmond Lingwell, Thomas Durgion, Nichals Quayne, Morrice Tobie, Edmond Tobie, Richard Poore, John Waight, Daniel Mursen, William Meskell, Thomas Corsey, Garret Fitcham, Darby Lone, Richard Muche, John Mirsew, Edward Hawar. Yohall James Browne, William Morley, Peter Ferry, Cornelius Fitz morrice, Adam Hodd, John Walker, Tige Coniere, James Morris, Michael Maglin, Nicholas Griffen, Walter Noble, William Griffen. Kingsaile George Ricket, John Mearce, Steven Cotton, Walter Prout, John Blake, boy. Water-ford Robert Poore, Thomas White, William Langworth. Larpoole John Morris, Christopher Galleway. Galleway James Linch, Matthew Kerrick.

212

Captives

Washford Thomas Devorex, Richard Greene, Steven Thicknes, Nicholas Skinner. Cardisse Thomas Mirrick. Carmarthen William Bradshaw, William Bynnion. Ayre Andrew Bryann. St. Tooe John Carey. Oterton Richard Divellin, Gregory Warden. Chillingham Richard Burroll. Clissen William Shelton, John Shelton. Foye John Honever. Famothe Trustrum Rose. Hellford Nicholas Tharthone, John Thomas, William Kelley, Richard Wills, John Christopher. Saint Germans John Harris. Sille Hannibal Thomas, George Phillips. Bastable Richard Knollman, Phillip Strange, Augustin Trickes, Thomas Davie.

Captives

213

Mynyeard Thomas Kerrey, Peter Pyle, Thomat[sic] Vahan, George Stone. Shafsborough Thomas Dardoe. Strood water Thomas Eggles. Tantonne Thomas Leane, John Langdonn. Bristol John Sanders, John Browne, Josuah Homes, Thomas Browne, Robert Burfield, John Byford, John Baxter, John Jones. Wells Thomas Isack. Tisburie William Davis. Worster Thomas Poulter, Thomas Eggles. Gloster Richard Lighton, John Wright. Abington William West. Westchester Robert Miller, Thomas Coventry, Christopher Page. Ipswich William King, Samuel Greenwich. Lynn Charles Edwards.

214

Captives

Hull Thomas: Thomas Smith. Aberdath Thomas Walter. Scotland Robert Stevenson, James Law, John Cowen, James Smell, David Gardner, William Walket, Peter Dickey, John Clum, Robert Moberey, William Norris, Robert Hogge, John Browne.   The names of the woemen that were redeemed: London: Mary Russell, Anne Bedford, Joan Gillions. Dorchester: Jane Dawe. Exeter: Rebecca Man. Bristoll: Grace Greenfield. Bantry: Grace Marten. Yo-hall: Margaret Bowles, Katharine Richards, Mary Batten. Kingsaile: Elizabeth Renordan.   Those that made escape, some by boats and some by swimming: French men 25 Spaniards 7 Dutch-men 8 Lyme Walter Passrey, Jonas Thomas, Robert Davie, Richard Scroch, Charitie Lidd. Tuksbury William Tovie.   The number of all Captives that came out of Salley and Saphia is in all, three hundred thirty nine, men, woemen, and boyes, as doth appeare by a true Copie. September the 30th. Anno 1637. John Dunton, Master. John Dunton, A True Iournal of the Sally Fleet (1637). See also TNA SP 71/13/31 where the date is 27 September 1637; CSPD Charles I, 1637, where the reference is to “about 400” captives 11:431.

February 1637

Captain Thomas Dirdo TNA SP 16/348/128.

Captives



215

18 April 1637

Thomas llambe TNA SP 71/1/158v.

20 October 1637

Thomas Norton CSPD Charles I, 1637, 11:487. 1638 William Wright (captive since May 1636) TNA SP 16/406/118. Vincent Jukes William Gouge, A Recovery from Apostacy (1638).

31 May 1638

James Bearblock (“and eleven others”) in Algiers CSPD Charles I, 1638–39, 13:478. 1639 John Randal, with wife and child Devereux Spratt Sampson Baker Robert Lake John Anthony William Adams John Jephs John [Carpenter] William Okeley, Ebenezer; or, A Small Monument of Great Mercy (1675). In March 1641, Spratt and “about six score passengers” petitioned the House of Commons

216

Captives

to liberate them, Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I. Report and Appendix, 56.3

20 February 1640

John Butler TNA CO 124/2/372.

May 1640

George Penticost John Butler & others…There were fifteene of us captives. “A True Relation of an Escape made out of Argier,” BL MS Sloane 3317, fo. 8. 1640 Francis Knight (along with a Welshman, and a man from Jersey). A Relation of Seaven Yeares slaverie under the Turkes of Argeire (1640),

29 March 1641

Robt. Woodfall TNA CO 124/1/168.

21 April 1643

(The husbands of) Elizabeth Chickley Susan Robinson Mary Savage Katharine Swanton Mary Taylor Julian Morris 3 See T. A. B. Spratt, Travels and Researches in Crete (Amsterdam, rep. 1984), 1: 384–387. Spratt was later ransomed but chose to stay and serve the other captives in their religious needs, Okeley, Ebenezer, in Piracy, ed. Vitkus, 159.

Captives

Lucy Mitchell Journals of the House of Commons (London, 1785), 3:55. 1644 Jeffrey Hudson Nick Page, Lord Minimus (2001).

29 April 1645

  “The following are their names and the sums paid for their ransom”. Ellynor Wright £ 34.15.0 Jonas Bonnar 52.12.6 Nicholas Dennis 68.15.0 Elias Lydfford 40.0.0 Wyllyam Rookes 34.5.0 John Babbs 220.20.6 Robert Clarcke 42.0.0 Edward Roads 70.0.0 Ditto for his brother 50.0.0 Ditto for his kinsman 60.0.0 Richard Steevens 180.0.0 Symon Bowdon 200.0.0 Richard Davy 67.10.0 Thomas Weyneman 77.10.0 Nicholas Dennis 5.0.0 [twice?] Richard Day and Robert Byffen 164.13.9 John Petherbridge, Richard Day & R. Byffen 26 [Repetition? In the BL record, the name is Bysson.] Wyllyam Haynes 9.0.0 John Tomlinson & Wyllyam ? 161.0.0 Ann Prowes & her 2 chylldren 157.6.3 [In the BL record, it is Parsons] Edward Sanderson 130.10.0 Sampson Baker 40.0.0 Wyllfred Nollards for her ransom 86.0.0 Edward Waddomes 30.0.0 Total   2107.17.9 FO 113/1/256–257 and BL MS ADD 5489, fos 87v-88r.

217

218

Captives

21 May 1645

John Savage The First Order Book of the Hull Trinity House, 1632–1665 ed. Brooks, 71. 1646 Thomas Sweet Richard Robinson Deare Friends (London: Published by Authority, 1647). “Argier. Anno Domini 1646. The names of the men, women, and children, freed out of slavery”. Dobles

Thomas Goodier of Poole, Stephen Carter of London, William Thomas of Dover, Thomas Webber of Watchet, Bartholmew Goddin of Foulston, Stephen Marshall of Plymouth, Thomas Stebben of Southampton, Henrie Scot of North Yarmouth, Hugh Brooking of Plymouth, Richard King of Plymouth, Hugh Wilson of Bristoll, Thomas Babbe of London, Thomas Wharton of Lond., Richrad Smith of London, Edmond Daniel of Yahall, John Bull of Lyme, Jonas Turrance of Barnstable, Ralph Ellet of London, Edmond Haymond of London, Richard Eynon of Dartmouth, William Leach of Dartmouth, Edmond Francis of Dorcet-shire, Edmond Flockden of Dover,

372 535 480 535 330 500 530 504 464 550 525 400 600 350 460 250 464 600 650 148 464

Dollers

080 115 ¼ 103 120 115 120 071 107 ½ 114 109 100 120 114 086 129 075 099 054 100 129 140 031 100 (Continued)

219

Captives Dobles

Robert Pine of Plymouth, Simon Clare of Worcester, Thomas French of Low., Richard Hurle of Plymouth, Walter Slyman of Foy, Thomas Branch of London, Samuel Hearing of London, Stephen Heling of Apson, John Singler of London, Thomas Tiler of Bristoll, Thomas Songe of London, John Sharp of Edinborough John Hambling of Plymouth, John Rich of Saltash, Edward Benifield of Poole, Thomas Grout of Weymouth, John Mockham of Sandwich, Thomas Colliner of Foy, Roger Augner of Plymouth, John Philip of Plymouth, Richard East-brook of Southampton, John Griffing of Barnstable, Ellen Hawkins of Baltamore, Nathaniel Corne of Low, Elizabeth Score of London, Thomas Burrasse of London, William Wilcock of Swansy in Wales, Roger Codner of Darmouth, Richard Vincent of London, Jeffrey Bowden of Darmouth, Richard Hooper of Barnstable, Peter Stribling of Barnstable, John Jenking of Bristoll, William Dashwood of London, William Martin of Plimoth, Henrie White of Plimouth, Robert Porey of London, Edmond Pelman of Barnstable,

464 300 400 486

464 300 655 635 600 500 464 450 650 580 480 420 535 700 400 200 550 650 440 464 655 400 464 660 464 820 700 650 700 640

Dollers

100 064 86 ½ 104 ½ 250 250 250 250 100 064 ½ 140 7/8 135 ¾ 129 107 ¾ 100 097 140 125 103 090 ½ 115 150 086 043 120 140 095 100 141 086 100 141 ¼ 100 177 150 140 150 137 ½ (Continued)

220

Matthew Riches of Bristoll, Daniel Piper of Plimouth, Philip Fabian of Poole, Thomas Beard of London, Ursula Corlion of Falmouth, William Helley of Apson, Henrie Light of Plimouth, Robert Hawkins of Rye, John Bateman of Apson, Thomas Marwood of Cidmouth, Nicholas Kilcoyt of Foy, Matthew Mitchell of Warom, Thomas James of Foy, John Tucker of Southampton, Thomas Hance of London, Thomas Sharpham of Dartmouth, Henrie Finch of London, John Lamset of Darmouth, Lawrence Searle of Plimouth, William Hand of London, Lawrence Rantree of Dover, Christopher Morris of London, Abel Hearne of London, Richard Downe of London, Jeffrie Hicks of Darmouth, Stephen Soure of Apson, William Browne of London, Thomas Foster of Pencehance, William Merrick of Low, Nicholas Robert of Plymouth, Christopher Shut of Dartmouth, William Rogers of Barnstable, Jennings Atwoll of Weymouth, John Willes of London, Henrie Widnam of Yahall, William Matthew of Pencchance, William Dunster of Dover, Joan West of Yahall, Nicholas Williams of Weymouth,

Captives Dobles

Dollers

500 646 400 600 500 250 472 700 585 340 800 350 405 440 500 760 646 360 275 500 371 390 535 609 562 500

107 ½ 100 086 130 107 ½ 053 103 ½ 123 126 066 180 075 ½ 087 095 109 164 140 077 ¾ 059 ½ 107 ½ 080 084 115 ¾ 131 ¾ 120 107 ½ 105 129 100 125 107 ½ 106 129 048 140 108 ½ 125 ½ 161 ½ 118 ½

600 464 582 500 490 600 186 650 505 582 750 550

(Continued)

221

Captives Dobles

Richard Jackson of Dartmouth, Elizabeth Escot of Yahall, Joane Bradbrook of Baltamore, Sarah Leeds of Chatham, William Poewll of Barnstable, George Purnell of London, John Sallop of Christchurch, John Guest of London, William Willes of Barnstable, John Rochford of Yahall, Christopher Deane of London, Robert Cockson of London, Robert Batson of Bristoll, Michael Orley of North-Yarmouth, Thomas Mudle of London, John Dymon of Dover, Matthew Candy of Plymouth, Philip Batten of Plimouth, Thomas Crosey of Plymouth, Gabriel Wats of London, Philip Winnard of London, Thomas Parker of Weymouth, John Small of Barnstable, George Chappell of Dartmouth, Joseph Sother of London, John Williams of Pencehance, James Peet of Dartmouth, Daniel Hurwell of Plimouth, Walter Crabbe of Dartmouth, John Teague of Barnstable, John Cole of Dartmouth, William Faireweather of Plimouth, Peter Vitre of Darmouth, George Sachell of Lime, Henrie Oesgood of Southampton, John Millard of Dartmouth, Thomas Gates of London, Joseph Green of North-Yarmouth, William Wilson of London,

430 405 700 750 464 700 700 1000 700 555 643 559 464 400 350 300 440 350 460 626 280 464 770 424 350 400 464 300 300 500 580 465 700 575 600 800 760

Dollers

092 ¾ 087 ¼ 150 160 100 150 150 215 ½ 150 150 119 ½ 138 ½ 120 ½ 100 086 075 064 ½ 095 075 ½ 099 135 060 100 136 166 091 075 086 100 064 ½ 064 ½ 108 081 ½ 103 150 123 ¼ 129 172 ¼ 163 (Continued)

222

Captives Dobles

William Roe of London, Alice Hayes of Edenborough, Thomas Underhill of London, John Rogers of London, John Case of Bristoll, Thomas Dawson of London, Robert Lake of London, George Harding of Apson, Robert Randall of Dover, Nicholas Roberts of Yahall, Thomas Riches of Dover, Humphrey Bridges of London, Robert Cloke of Plimouth, William Davis of Bristoll, William Welman of London, William Collings of London, James Rainstock of Bristoll, Christopher Loverridge of Weymouth, Zacharie Popleston of Plimouth, Ralph Melling of Liverpoole, John Lot of Apson, John Walters of Dover, Richard Chapling of London, Sarah Ripley of London, Richard Hatch of Plimouth, William Dallen of Barnstable, Thomas White of Plimouth, Francis Lus of London, Daniel Shafnes of London, John Turner of Barnstable, Lewis Cole of Dartmouth, Edward Lowes of New-castle, Elizabeth Mancor of Dundee in Scotland, John Weeks of Weymouth, John Eads of London, David Batcot of Barnstable, John Beare of Barnstable, James Vore of Bristoll,

505 1100 785 350 600 775 740 700 475 500 450 770 750 659 515 500 450 400

800 800 450 464 450 515 410 600 500 600 900 539 464 900

Dollers

108 ¾ 258 ½ 169 075 229 166 106 ½ 250 102 107 ¾ 097 240 166 160 149 112 107 ¾ 097 086 200 200 200 172 172 097 100 097 112 088 129 110 107 ½ 200 129 ½ 194 116 100 193 ¾ (Continued)

223

Captives

Nicholas Jesson of Lime, Henrie Herne of Lime, Robert Monroe of Barnstable, Valentine Weymouth of Ipswich, John Reynolds of Weymouth, Walter Tucker of Bristoll, Robert Powell of London, John Draper of ---, John Ivey of Plimouth, Sydrack Randoll of ----, Humphrey Tayler of London, John Burras of London, Mary Weymouth, and her two children, James and John, Thomas Purchase of Apson, Anthony Palmer of London, Richard Mattock of Weymouth, John Perrie of London, Henrie Gray of Weymouth, Robert Sayer of London, William Tunick of London, Christopher Newland of Dartmouth, Simon Flew of Weymouth, William Bernard of Hull, Thomas Tomson of London, Katherine Ockley of London, John Young of Bristoll, Peter Benson of Barnstable, Edward Hele of Bristoll, Mark Houlden of Seborne in Suffolke, William Adams of Apson, Thomas Oulton of London, William Church of London, Richard Atwoll of Weymouth, Thomas Penwarden of Foy, John Hill of Plymouth, Bridget Randall and her son of London, John Randall of London,

Dobles

Dollers

464 464 645 700 1450 480

100 100 139 150 312 ½ 103 ¼ 120 100 112 122 187 ½ 166 215

464 520 568 870 774 1000 1000 1100 900 900 750 1000 500 850 900 850 1300 600 464 775 700 650 900 520 500 435 570 404 1050 500

215 258 193 193 161 ½ 215 107 ½ 183 193 183 280 129 100 167 150 140 194 112 107 ¾ 093 122 ¾ 087 225 ¾ 107 ½ (Continued)

224

Captives

Thomas Catrier of Chatham, Francis Tincke of Plimouth, Anthony Simpson of London, Peter Swanton of London, Richard Moore of Dartmouth, Elizabeth Alwin of London, Alexander Ruddock of Edenborough, Thomas Russell of Barnstable, William Gaskar of London, Nicholas Hobbe of London, George Dungate of Yahall, James Palmer of Dartmouth, Anna Fen of ----, Humphrey Legge of Barnstable, John Trickey of Exeter, John Mayes of London, Abraham Stint of London, Peter Goodheart of Plimouth, Stephen Stevenson of Plimouth, Henry Raine of Milbrook, Thomas Guill of London, Richard Cockle of Plimouth, Mary Bruster of Yahall, William Tayler of London, Benjamin Flint of London, Anna Wright of Yahall, Elizabeth Wright of Yahall, Katharine Wright,

Dobles

Dollers

335 470 780 550 700 1655 800 495 700 585 364 500

072 101 168 118 ½ 150 356 ¾ 172 107 150 126 079 107 ½ 310 107 ½ 130 ½ 076 ¾ 054 ¾ 200 131 131 207 ¾ 043 300 199 ¾ 182 ¼ 215 215 160 ¼

500 604 355 255 928 610 610 965 200 1392 930 850 1000 1000 750

Edmond Cason, A Relation of the whole proceedings concerning the Redemption of the Captives in Argier and Tunis (1647).

27 December 1652

Matthew Hoult (with “60 English captives there [Tripoli], besides five or six masters and merchants of ships who…cut their own ransoms with the Turks”). CSP…Venice, 1647–1652, 27:58.

Captives



20 May 1653

“Mr. Skinn” CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–1653, 5:587.

11 June 1653

Petition of Elizabeth and Margaret Waight on behalf of “kin” CSPD Commonwealth, 1652–1653, 5: 402.

21 July 1653

Mathew Holt CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–54, 6: 42.

1 September 1653

Son of Christ. Perken CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–1654,6:487.

7 September 1653

Susanna Vale and others, on behalf of their sons CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–1654, 6:137.

2 November 1653

Jas. Hales CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–54, 6:329.

21 November 1653

Abraham Rogers CSPD Commonwealth, 1653–54, 6:263.

225

226

Captives

24 April 1655

Petition of Geo. Castle and other captives CSPD Commonwealth, 1655, 8: 138. Geo. Davies (in slavery for three years) CSPD Commonwealth, 1656–57, 10:124, 313. 1657 Thomas Gallilee The Life Records of John Milton, 1655–1669, ed. French, 4:182.

Salé 14 August 1657

Mich. Howard, Nich Devereux, John Coleman CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:66. 1657? John Hawker CSPD Commonwealth, 1657–58, 11:496.

8 February 1658

  A Liste of ye Captiues Names redeemd at Tunis ye 8th of ffebruary 1657 [1658]. Edw:d Haward Sam: Warren Rich: Printon Robert Hutchens John Printon John Griffin John Morgan John Suller Phill: Joanes Wm: Urry Wm: J’non Ben: Johnson Edwd: Burt James Pollard

227

Captives

Thoms: Lorde Thoms: Collins Rich: Dowman Will: Gilbert Geo: Goodwin Tho: Weston Tho: Bellamy Robt: Newborne Robert Teale Wm: Prose John Scarelett (?), Jacob Peeters Robert ffebert Willa: Chapman Timo: Burt James Oliver ffrans: Sayers Willa: Law Thoms: Bretts Nicho: Rire David Maison Henry Carter Willa: Dyer Thoms: Collins Edwd: Sate John Caull Jacob Dambrell Thoms: Redwood

November 1659-November 1660

Earl of Inchiquin and his son TNA SP 71/1/IV, 199.

Henry Hudson Willa: White Edwrd: Coxere Thoms: Mungles Thoms: Ludley Thoms: Love Sam: Allen Rich: Bond Nicho: Emms Rich: Griffin Christo: Harris Math: Lambert John Cassell Thoms: Painter John Hodge Thoms: Wallis Thoms: Bradford Willa: Chapman Sydra: Clerber Thoms: Gurr Robt: Jacobs Arth: Howell Thos: Burhard Wm: Laughtner Wm: Scott Oliver Johnson Three Woomen. TNA SP 18/179/143r-v.

1 July 1660

Clement Cawley CSPD Charles II, 1660–1661, 1:159.

228

Captives

8 February 1661

Captain Mootham Mr. Dawes Pepys, Diary, 8 February 1661.

15 October 1661

Philip Major John Bolthorp [Baltharpe] (author of The Straights Voyage) Hugh Roydoen CSPD Charles II, 1661–1662, 2:113; TNA SP 71/1/210 and SP 38/20/103. 1663 Captain Galilee (seized in 1652). CSPD Charles II, 1667–68, 8:576.

November 1664

“Isaac Adams and another” Joseph Cook Marmaduke Woolters Allin, Journals, 1:175.

Waymouth 20 November 1665

James Pearth Masters Mate Thomas Fox John Edwards Jeremiah Hayward John white William Buyer John Ryall [?]

Robert Knight Lawrence Bartlett Henry Hartlib John Edward the Masters sonne is carried up into the Levant who hath disposed of him for three yeares. SP 29/138/59.

229

Captives



5 December 1665

The humble petition of the wives and freinds of severall poore distressed men taken and Remaying Captives in Algier Gregory Perry Rich: Lambe James Howard, Willyam Dade John Lucas Richard Horrill Mathew Spiller John Heayman John Wallis

Erasmerus Houper. Also of the towne of Plymouth, John Wanrer & his son, Moyses Paulstay Thom: Harmon. “about Eightie” TNA SP 29/138/58. See also TNA SP 29/138/57.

1666 Paul Reyner (“two and a quarter years”) CSPD Charles II, 1666–67, 6:60.

December 1669

George Gurnie Allin, Journals, 2:242.

2 December 1669

“Beck an Englishman” CSPD Charles II October 1668 to December 1669, 9:602–603. 1669? Husband of Katharine Harris James Peach Thomas Coxe

John Edwards Jeremiah Hayward John White

230

Captives

William Bryer John Ryall Robert Knight

Lawrence Bartlett Henry Hartlib TNA SP 29/441/143.

September 1670

John Dauny Allin, Journals, 2:194. 1670–1672 “A true List of Captives, and others, victualled on board his Majties ffrigott Rosebush, as Supernumeraryes with their Names, Times & Discharged” Discharged

Jan: ye 25th 1669/70

Jan: ye 30th 1669/70 March: 13th 1669/70

May: 4th 1670

May: 9th 1670

June: 9th 1670

August: 19th 1670

Math. Baudon John Sia[..]h John Simons Tho: Stotte Don Lowhan Robt. Arthur Willm. Wiggins John Simons Edward Cox= Thom:Hamblon John George Tho: Limes Edward Nowell Sen. Josephus Sen. Lazerea Sen. Lazera ffrancisco ffilchom John Muir Lowere: Leete Hamett: Lawes Law: Lee Robt: Glanfield

ffebr: 24th 1669/70

March: ye 7th 1669/70 March: 17th 1669/70

May: 8th 1670

May:22th 1670

June: 14th 1670

June: 17th 1670 August: 24th 1670 (Continued)

231

Captives

July: 30th 1671 Octobr: 6th 1671

Octobr:28th 1671 Decem: 30th 1671 Aprill: 8th 1672 May: 25th 1672

June: 8th 1672

George Geare Willm: Roach Laurentia Whan ffrancisco Pisones Petr: Obree Cloude: Obree Cornl: Reily Salom. Day Robt. Kendall Absolom Drake Lewis Lobo Sushena Turke Charls: Curreth Mina: ffrancis Hendrick Conow Casta: Lower Robert Tharker

August: 30th 1670 Octobr: 13: 1671

Decem:10th 1671 Jan: 6th 1671 Arp: 19th 1672 May: 27th 1672

June: 11th 1672

BL MS Sloane 3511, fo. 133 1669–70 “A LIST of the English Captives taken by the Pyrates of Argier, made Publick for the Benefit of those that have Relations there”. [Entries in square brackets are from the manuscript version and are not found in the printed version; italicized entries are from the printed version and not found in the manuscript: TNA SP 71/1/IV, 427r–428v; and 456r–457v dated August 1669. See also TNA SP 71/1/IV, 171–174.] Algiers the 6th 7ber 1669 An acc of severall ships & Captives taken   Charity 17th 8ber 1669 Gilbert Wakeham Mr. John Snells Tho. Hamch

Geo. Sweetland Will. Hendley Jo. Fox Walter Phillips   Ruth 21st ditto Will. Dunnings Stephen Bare [Biare]

232 Jo. Winstone Barth. Browne Sam. Bare [Biare] Jo. West Tho. Gilbert Nich. Poole   Hannah 29th ditto Jo. Wilson Mr. Jo. Hadder Jo. Keedle [Kedale] Rich. Pond [Pound] Dan. Lunder   Dolphin 9ber 1st Robert Beck Mr.   Tunis merchant 3rd ditto William Baker Mr. Rich. Wakeham Peter Spencer Jo. Danson Tho. Robinson Matth. Allin Jo. Emens [Evans] Jo. Harrison Roger Winkell Jo. Greene Rich. Maye Laur. Cornelyson [Cornelius] Peter Rowland Rob. Dawlinson Rob. Lambley Rich. Chymist [Comett] Will. Ramsdell Jo. Hart Tho. Harrison [Simpson] [Richard Hoare] Rich. Cornelyson Peter Gromer Jerem. an Italian [boy]   Bilboa Merchant 3rd 9ber Rob. Bristow Mr.

Captives

Jo. Couch Will. Harris Tho. Matthews Jo. Johnson Anth. Selbey Abra. Gould Tho. Persons   Nicholas 6th ditto Edw. Hughes Mr. Lewis [Lucas] Johnson Patrick Lawless Cornelius an Hamburger Rob. Rivers [Rutter] Jo Tyger Tho. Dalley [Dayley] Will Stanick [Seneg] Christoph. Lynch Tho. Harvey [Hardy] Jo. Cannon Pat. Mollin ux. [Mulnex?]   James 10 9ber Sam. Norman Sam. Girdling Humph. Griffin Gilb. Young Jo. Smith Jo. Crow Edw. Horton [George Conely] Will. Snelling Fra. Eastgate Hen. Furlong   Nicholas 11th ditto Rob. Calcote Mr. G. Harrell Jo. Foster Will. Wilcox Jo. Prat Jo. Watson Paulii [Patrick] Castaram [Costarine]

Captives

Jacob Wilson   Hamburger 12th ditto Rich Master Thom. Tayler Will Bushell Christoph. Hayward Tho. Hughes [Hewes]   Anne & Mary 19th ditto Phineas Hyde [Mr] Rob. Simmes Jo. Bushell Will. Booth [Beach] Will. Pettyman [Bettetombe] Edw. Andrews Rich. Blake Hen Arther Tho. Smith Symon Cloyce   Pieters? 20th 9ber Peter Lynt Jo. Cannada [Canedy] Jo. Cladon [Clagden] Jo. Merrell Christoph Thomson Nich. Lush Philip Comfort Rich. Gorling Jo. Day Tho. pettyman,[Pittman two boys servants] Andr. Bayes   Ambrose 22nd ditto Edw. Barrington [Bragginton] Jo. Robinson [Robertson] Tho. Batton Harralyia ? Preston Lyonell Day Geo: Gygir? Stephen Magnasse Thomas Daniell

233 Turnwill Scott Jo: Wright [John Parker]   King David 24th ditto Edw. Clemons [Edmund Clements] Jerem. Armiger Geo Speere [John Spry] Jo:Limbick Julio Spaldium [Arthur Spauldinge] Hen. Bushell Jo. Carridge [Carrell] [Nicholas Brooking] Will Foord Jo. Bunce Jo. Liwes [James Lucas] Tho. Marthe Hen. Bunticke [Stephen Boutink] Jos Bettyplace Will. Silbey Rob Mines Geo. Russel Geo. Belcher Owen Morgan Will Johnson [fleming] Jonah Scott [Samuel Carthar] [Arthur Goss] Simson Carre Anth. Joyce Jo. Humberstone Jo. Benson   Hopewell 24 Decembr Jonah Parker, Mr. Timio. Helberd [Thomas Stolard] Rob. Read Jo. Barton Nich. [Nathaniel] Oliver Tho. Butler

234 Alex. Upcoat [Abram Harris] [Joseph Hall ] Oliver Hall Will. Arthur Job Fousse   Elizabeth 25 ditto James Day, [Mr] Ben. Hix Hen Day Will. Waite [Wayett] Tho. Cocke [Rob] Rich. Fibbins [Fabine] Will. Hamford Will. Grimsbey Edw. Scobould [Scobale] Abr. Browne   Depford kitch 18th ditto Rob. Gleenfield [Mr] Cha. Thorlestone [Thurlston] Jo. Argent Will. Wight Will. Lawne [Lane] Tho. Darrent Peter Henderson Symon Whippey   [St ffrancis] Mich Parker [Nicholas] Arth. Feal Andr. Dennis Andr. Trust Peter Balley [Bayley] Anth. Chappell Cha. Prudence [Pruden]   [A Cittia] Angel Hardley Tho. Snellings Jo. Walters 4 Is this the same as the Hen. Mecham above?

Captives

Nich. Browne Abr. Winter [Canter] Will Carrelesse [Carlis] Nich. Wilkinson [Wiliamson] Barn. Johnson   [Submission] Mat. Rencher Kil’d Hen. Mecham Jasp. Goodman Peter Wallis [Wellis or Willis] Rob. Randall Rich. Miller Jam. Rogers Jo. Joanes [Jones] Rich. Edgerton [Agerton] Geo. Triplite Tho. Cogell [Ogils] Anth. Daslstan [John Dunstow] Matth. Sayer Hen. Marcham [Mecham]4   [Ann pink] [James Cable] [Jo. Sanders] Jno Liatt Jno Andrews Edw. Wood [Jno Rigbey] Joseph Casebey Tho. Lewes [Lucas?] Anth. Browne Will Grimstone Rich. Swadwell [ ]Jo. Dawmy [Dawney] Franc. Brewster Jo Vyall Bry.[Bryant] Clarke Will. Heyres [Hayes]

235

Captives

Tho. Parchfield Ben. Feake Jo. Cubitt Mar. Warner Rob. Sheafe [Sheale] Jam. Robinson Will. Scarrett [Scarrell] Tho. Dennis   [Liberty] Thomas Harvey Barnard Blye Abra. Masson Jo. Nowell Abra Harmon [Harman] Rob. Harvey Paul Dawkins Sam. Lawson Phill. Nimcome Jos. Marley [Morley] Tho. Fox Jam. Smithbourn [Smithburne] Joseph Thermer [Thurman] James Rice William Brase Samuel Dawkes Hen. Hance Thomas Richards Henry Chubb Long John [ali] John Long

John Gellner [in ms]   [Merchant Delight] Dan. Brown Kild Edw. Frith [Friath] Will. Winter Phill. Guppie Tho. Long Tho. Silverster Will. Cabell [Cowell] Thomas Palmer

William Heakes Edward Jones Richard Badwell [Badwen] Henry Dryer Henry Tyers Richard Hunsley [Hounsly] Richard Draper Thomas Watson [Waterson] Josph Tattue [Jo Tatney] Henry Webb Thomas Dunstone Leo. Bingey [Bingoi] Will. Whitcome [Whitecombe] Luke [Ratbaria] Arthur Sam. Hammon [Heymon] Robert Keale [Lett] Thomas Bodey Thomas [Jno] Milton James Barrett [Parrett] Jeremiah Lestock William Balley Austin Fountain Abra. Browne Benjam. Barefoot Hebker[Hilbert] Roberts Anth. Badingfiled Thomas Hewes [Huse]   [Loutord] Rob. Jacob Killd Nic. Churchwood [Richard Dyer] Jo. Dunridge Edw. Chatterton Thomas Coyles [Royle] Nicholas [Nathaniel] Browne Jos. Elberuce Isband] Henry Joyer Richard Masson Jos [Jno]. Haslewood Henry Symond [Simons]

236 Jo. Bradford Nicholas Bagges Thomas Burgey [Burgy] Thomas Wilcox Edward Castle [Castill] Matthew Jered [Wm Jerrod] Jo. Calvin James Well John Roberts David Clariboote Philip Gilbey [Gibbs] William Mitch Richard Brown [Broome] John Joanes David Baker Jos. Silver Thomas Balley [Bayley] [Jacobe] Alexander Onest Moses Harding John Major [Mayger] Bryan Denon William Dixon [Dixson] Tobias Holliday Jeremiah [George]Masson [Mason] Henry Buble [Bull]   [Christopher] John Cullin Mr Tho. Humphreys [Humphries] Samuel Huxstable Butler Oliver John Gudall [Goodale]

Captives

Edward Sards John Vaygahan Henry Benham [Denham] James Falkman [ffishman] Samuel Silklare [James Knights] William Cooke John Harley Jacob Leafe Thomas Parke [Sparke] Nicholas Coney Rob. Fetterstone   [Little Mar] Benjamin Ames Jos.[Jno] Underhill Samuel Little Tho. Merrifield Robert Forrest William Lumpton Emavi: [Emanuel] Keafe Henry a Hamburg Henry Petterson Jos. Cade [Read] [David]   [Talbert of Dartmoth] Christopher Pats [Putt mate]   [George Lond] Will: Robinson Thomas Risbey Andrew Hicton [Hutton] Philip Laster.

[Ships : 30 taken Men 348 brought here About   52 old slaves    400 (6 September 1669) A LIST of the English Captives taken by the Pyrates of Argier, made Publick for the Benefit of those that have Relations there (London 1670). See also CSPD Charles II, 1670. With Addenda, 1660 to 1670, 10:170 (19 April 1670).

237

Captives



24 June 1670

Sam. Daukes CSPD Charles II, 1670. With Addenda, 1660 to 1670, 10:293. The husbands, sons, and relatives of Joane Mosley Hanah Lawson Edith Smyth Anne Gyaul

Deborah Tonstall Alice Arbor Sarah Noell Juliana Griffin TNA SP 29/276/277.

May and November 1671

Thomas Stollard, Edward Clements CSPD Charles II, January to November, 1671 11:216, 568 and Historical Manuscript Commission…Earl of Dartmouth (London, 1887), 19 ( for the latter). Clements ransomed himself.

November 1671

Gilbert Young CSPD Charles II, Addenda, 343. 1671 Captain William Foster and his son, Sumner, White Slavery, 67–68.

25 May 1672 – 8 June 1672

Discharg’d May 25th 1672 May: 31th 1672 Robt Nappier; Lieut Robt Hodges; Sarjant Willm Ray

Willm Walldron Jm: Luther Nicho Hobson

238 Geor: Hix Sam Venetombs ? Stea: Stevens John: Marsh Jam: Watson Thom: Bar? Jon: Roisin Jon: Betty Leond: Pinder Thom: Baton [or Baron] Thom: Gibson

Captives

Jon: Peirse Willm Broadbelt Thom: Watson Saml: Kinman Hen: Foxx Hugh: Brian Geor: Jermin Dav: Williams Const: Murfey Nich: Finley Ffran: Gorman

May: 26th 1672 Tho: Morgan: Sarjeant Joseph Lewis Rich: Bartlett Jonat: Tisell [or Titell] Jon: Roberts Andr: Kenedy Willm: Ward Robt: Briggs Robt: Stevenson Robt: Harmon Georg: ffry John Westcott Petr: Petarr Jon: Shaw Davd: Tailor Tho: Thurston John Winston

May: 27th 1672 Jon: Langford Tho: Beacham Robt: Haydon Jon: Tisdell Bryan: McGrody Jam: Morris Chapple: Ensign

Willm: Painter John: Gossum Joseph Simpson ffa? Martin Conrl: Kenny John Davis Tho: Williams

May 31th 1672

Discharged June: 8th 1672 July: 7th 1672 *Robt: Nappier, Lieutt: *Robt Hodges: Sarjt Willm: Pirbin (?) Hen: Banister

*Jam: Luther *George Hix John: Paddison

239

Captives

*Saml: Kinman *Geor: Jerman Robt: Lauton Bryan: Kernan Willm: Todd ffran: Holdbank *ffra: Gorman Catsby: Enitts Thom: Craiton Tho: Johnson Isak ? Willm: Finshan Willm: Stotte Geor: Dillon Jon: Ingram Andr: Jones

Alex: Patrick James Hill Hen: Miles Danl: Huff Jos: Wilson Walt: Sennitt Teig: Tomar *Tho: Chapple *Petr: Petarr *John Shaw Willm: Helley Willm: Phillips Willm: Edmondston. BL MS Sloane 3511, fos 140–141. [Names with asterisk appeared in the May 25 and May 26 lists].

15 June 1672

William Morris Thomas Cork Nicholas Wotton Samuell Clarke Robert Dauy Thomas Moale TNA SP 29/311/210.

24 September 1672

A List of the names of sixty one English men lately redeemed out of Captivity at ye order of the Right Honble Comitee of Lords appointed for the redemption of Captives in Algeir who are Imbarked Passengers for Tanger on the Ship fortune Bartholo: Clements Master, vis Daniel Masterson John fyler John Hall Peter Stucely

Charles Hyett William Heydon Hezekiah Mullett Symon Gudgeing

240 Richard Fleech [Fleche] Henry Litle [John] Griffin[?] Skinner Lawrence Halton Stephen Hasewell John Towers Peter Towers John Crowe Abraham Mason Samuel Dawkes Thomas Richards James Smithborney Robert Ellison Richard May Henry Archer William Puddicomb Nathaniel Browne Thomas Seayly [Scoyles] John Evans Henry Simons Phillip Gibbs John Haselwood Thomas Willcox Richard Browne [Broome] Richard Mason James Wells John Roberts

Captives

Thomas Bayly Daniel Cleribott Henry Mecham [Macham] Richard Miler Matthew Sayer George Triplett Thomas Silvester Thomas Lange Jeremy Lestake [Lestoke] William Seeles? [Sookes] Thomas Boddy? Edmund Jones Leonard Binge Henry Dryer Dunkin Davis Peter Bennitt Benjamin Baerfoote John Milton Samuel Hamon [Harmon] Richard Hensell [Fensell] Richard Draper William Whitcombe Henry Meacham[missing from f. 156] Henry Tryers [missing from f. 154] John Day Thomas Pittman Daniell Coachman

I hereby acknowledge to have received on board the ship fortune the above mentioned sixty one Captives…27 September 1672 Algeir Will, Osborn Jon: Rollings – sick Jn: Snell Geo: Marting BL Slaone 3511, fo. 154. Names in brackets are from fo. 156 which is the same.

241

Captives



11 October 1672

Tangier Thomas Scoyles John Haselwood Thomas willcock Richard Broomes Nathaniel Browne Henry Meacham, Senior Henry Meacham, Junior John Towers Peter Towers

Lorance Wofle James Smithburn Daniell Masterson John Crow Steven Hasilwell Peeter Stukeley George Martin John Filos Thomas Waterson.

I do hereby acknowledge, to have Received on bord, the ship Nathan & Abigaill – by order of his Excellency the Lord, Midilton, Governor of Tanger, the above mentioned, eighteen Captives, with provistions [sic] for each, Six weekes, Sea allowances, in order to – there passidg, which I obleige, my selfe, to put on shore, in England, mortality, the danger of the seaes, and forceable escapes, excepted, witness my hand, Benj. Morley. Tanger, October 11th 1672. BL MS Sloane 3511, fo. 162. Edward Jones William Stokes Thomas Pody Simon Couchell Benjamin Bairfoot John Loyle Douncon Davis

Richard, Master Peeter, Penner Grifin, Skinner Richard; Rose Master Mosilley Master Cock Master Day.

I do hereby acknowiledg, to have Received, on bord the Ship Sameuell, and Gyles, by order ofhis Excellency, the Lord Midilton, Governor of Tanger, the above mentioned, fowerteen, Captives, with provistions [sic] for each, Six weekes, Sea allowances, in order to their passidg, which I obleige, my Selfe, to put on shore in England, mortality, the Danger of the Seaes, and forssable, escapes, excepted, witness my hand John Beverly. Tanger, October, 11th, 1672. BL MS Sloane 3511, fo. 163 [Written in the same hand, same spelling, but different signatures.]

242

Captives

11 October 1672

Tangier John Roberts Henry Archer Daniell Clarybutt Daniell Couchman Richard May

Robert Allison Thomas Richards Richard Feck Phillipp Gibs John Evans.

[Added: they had been on the “Samuell and Gyles”] Charles Hyatt Thomas Willcox    Captives [Ship: “Ressolution of Bristol”; Signed: R. Bollard] BL MS Sloane 3511, fo. 166

22 November 1672

Martin Call of Thetford CSPD Charles II, October, 1672, to February, 1673, 14:191. 1672 Twenty Captives ordered on bord the two bristol men John Roberts Henry Archer Daniell Clarybutt Daniell Couchman Richard May Robert Allison Thomas Richards Richard ffleck Phillipp Gibbs John Evans

William Osbrone John Snell Thomas Silvester Thomas Lange James Lostork Hercules Mullett James Wells Samuell Dawkes Leonard B[…] John Hall

243

Captives



Ten Left by order with Mr Emerson

Thomas Pittman George Fiplitt William Wittcum John day Richard Mason Thomas Bayly

Mathew Sawyer Henry Symonds William Puddrum Richard Hornsby John Collins in the hospitall

In all Thirty and one BL MS Sloane 3511, fo. 165. Some of the names had appeared on an earlier page.

May 1673

Mr. Foster of Charlestown Charles Sumner, White Slavery in the Barbary States (Boston: William D. Ticknor and Company, 1847),19 n.

Tripoli 23 June 1673

Edward Martin ? French TNA SP 71/22/II, 10.

1673 (?)

Richard Sessions TNA SP 29/338/187. 1673–1674 William Fyer Samuell Clarke John Hartly Thomas Locke

244

Captives

Theodore Hutchings “a Boy of 14 years old, slave [of] the Dye…$375 his father is sayd to bee a Man of some quality in Ireland,” TNA SP 71/2/30. See also the entry on 2 November 1674: “a Marchant, one Master, Two Carpenters, & Two Boyes,” 71/2/36r; and on 18 December 1674, three captives, Bodleian Library, Rawl. C 353, fo. 27r. 1673–1688 1673 Thomas Moale (128/69/2) 1682 Samuell Clarke (128/69/3) 1682 John Jope (128/69/3) 1682 John Moale (128/69/7) ? Son (128/69/8) 1683 Nicholas Wooten (69/10) 1679 William Temills (128/42/16) 1682 Richard Lee (128/42/17) 1684 James Silby (128/42/18) 1683 Husband of Susanna Pethybridge “with his servant”(128/42/19) 1683 Husband of Ann Phillmore (129/42/21) 1683 Eurling Stone (129/42/24) 1686 40 men (129/42/28); N.d. Joshua Woodmason (129/42/29); N.d. Son (129/42/30) 1683 Bonaventure Cowle (129/105/3) 1673 Andrew Hadder (129/126/1) 1673 William Farrant (129/126/2) 1682 Husband of petitioner (129/126/6) 1682 Husband of petitioner (129/126/7) 1692 Husband of petitioner (129/126/8) N.d. Thomas Green (129/126/9) N.d. No name (129/126/11) 1684 Husband (129/99/4) 1684 Husband (129/99/5) 1688 Son (129/99/6). Devon Public Record Office

245

Captives



19 September 1674

Algiers William Fryer Samuell Clarke John Hartly Thomas Lacke Theodory Hutchings, “a Boy of 14 years old his ffather is sayd to bee a Man of some quality in Irreland”. TNA SP 71/2/30.

December 1674

Thomas Carpenter John Spreen TNA SP 71/22/II, 12, 13. 1675 A liste of ye persons slaves in Tripoli Taken in ye “Grace”: Henry Capel Thos. Crumton Renato Burnes John Marmora Denis Constantin Henry Napla John Jonson John Baptesta Tho. Warner a boy Robert Bruce John Cole. Merchants taken in ye “Bristol” John Folio Tho. Laxton

Jacob Turner James Isam – merchants on board Taken in ye “Bristow” merchant Arthur Plumeras Richard Quinton Richard Waymouth Samuel Warden Thomas Rich John Jones Wm Frangmore Jonah George Tho. Browne John Sindall Edw. Gill David Prise

246

Captives

Thomas Silk Wm Sarman Marco Catena abord John Thomas Georgio Baptista a boy abord Richard Andras Domenica turnd Turk Tho Randell sick of the plague Six Armenians, Richard Robins 1 Armenian turned Turk Dan. Chaple Thomas Roult Frank ? James Jones John Beaven Thomas Bever Robert ? John Ruge Alex Samson ? Boa Wm Thomas John ? A Helstein, “A Journal kept after my return ye 6th of February out of Holland from ye year 1675. Until 1676,” BL MS Sloane 2755, fos 48–49. 1675 John Hart CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1675, to February 29th, 1676, 17:424. Benjamin Pelley Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part I, 255.

25 December 1675

The List of the Names of such Seamen as were taken on the Bristoll=& theyre Respectiue ffamilyes Mr. Thomas Rolfe Arthur Plomer Mr ffrancis his Sonn. John West chiefe mate haueing 8 in ffamily *Arthur Quinton second Mate, haueing an Aged ffather & Mother to maintain ? haueing a Wife & 5 Children: 6 in ffamily Thomas Gerard haueing 4 in ffamily John Jones haueing 5 in ffamily *John Braine haueing 5 in ffamily David Prire haueing 5 in ffamily Thomas Silke haueing 6 in ffamily *Edward Gibb haueing 3 in ffamily *John Sandell haueing 4 in ffamily

Captives

247

Jonathan George haueing 3 in ffamily Thomas Brinn haueing 3 in ffamily *William ffangmore haueing 3 in ffamily Simon Burton haueing 4 in ffamily John Beevan Willam Thomas Samuel Warin Thomas Browne John Thomas Richard Roberts ? Burton Edward ? James ? Richard Andrews James Jones John ? William Jarvis Alexander Thompson There are severall other persons belonging to the said ship whose names are unknowne. [Names in asterisk are very similar to names in BL MS Sloane 2755, fos 48–49]. TNA SP 29/376/87.

8 March 1676

Patrick Blake ADM 106/318/591.

14 June 1676

Alexander Makenye CSPD Charles II, March 1st, 1676 to February 28th, 1677, 18:162, 163.

22 June 1677

Confirmation of their release: Francis Blith James Gilbert

248

Captives

James Scot Francis Bowen TNA SP 71/22/II, 6, 8.

23 June 1677

Edward Martin, Peter French TNA SP 71/22/II, 10.

20/30 June 1677

Thomas Hudson TNA SP 71/2/II, 213. 1677 Pierce Smith5 Robert Williamson George Bues Christopher Howard John Podd Robert [Gilbert] Wakeham John Eaglestone John Brooke Samuell Martyn George Matthews Walter Davies Robert Harris John Spurrell Henry Cowell John Babbige William Helman William Teppard Thomas Gallant John Smith William Raxell [Raskwell] 5 The names belong to shipmasters. See below.

5 12 6 8 13 8 7 9 17 10 29 8 40 8 6 7 8 8 16 12

249

Captives

Anthony Phersgerld Henry Wickers John Langdon Thomas Rowse [Rouete] Michell [Richard] Barron Jacob Lester William Shaddock John Pey Beniamin Leneston John Hitchins John Daniell Joseph Wolstone Thomas Bray William Powell [Pool] Walter Elden Philipp Peepone [Peepan] Joseph Bumsted Henry King Bonefice Gifford

Men

10 7 19 14 8 10 20 11 7 7 8 9 15 15 7 17 16 12 9 456

The Prouince Marchant     The Bridge Water Marchant     Men escaped Charles Reeues [The Samuell of London George Lambe] TNA SP 71/2/202; in brackets 174.

3/13 March 1678

Benjamin Gauden “and some of the English captives” TNA SP 71/2/227.

11

250

Captives

June 1679

William Harris Captain William Condy Charles Sumner, White Slavery in the Barbary States, 20 n. 1679 John Ferne, “Mr Coles,” John Carman, Marmaduke Bowdon, Abraham Harris, James Gillery Peter Le Fevre, “‘It will be a charge to the king to no effect’: The Failed Attempt to Burn the Algerine Fleet in 1679,” The Mariner’s Mirror, 89 (2003): 272 in 272–280. 1678–1679 Captain James Ellson, Dr. Daniel Mason from Charlestown, Charles Sumner, White Slavery in the Barbary States, 19 n.

9 Jun 1679

Seth Southell Acts of the Privy Council of England: Colonial Series, 1613–1680,1:838.6

23 April 1680

Mr Chester CSP Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1677–1680, 519.

6 See below: “Seth Sothel”.

251

Captives



Algiers 1677–1679

A List of Ships Taken since July, 1677, from His Majesties Subjects by the Corsairs of Algier. With their Names, Masters Names, and places to which they belong’d, and time of taking: With a modest Estimate of the Loss (London, 1682). [Numbers in bold font appear in TNA SP 71/2/174, c. 1677,which lists the names of forty-two ships only, seven of which do not appear in the list below]. Ships Names

Case

Number of When Men on Board taken

The Ann and Jane Bristol The Isabella Monross

Dead Dead

 5 12

The Ark The George and Peter The Dorothy

Pierce Smith Robert Williamson Barnstable George Breas Christian Howard Yarmouth Gilbert Waksham London John Podd London Michael Baron Waterford Anthony Fitz-Gerald London Henry Vicars London John Eagleton

Dead  6 Redeemed  5  8

Topsham Bristol London

Robert Harris Walter Davis John Smith

Bristol

William Wraxell Samuel Martin Redeemed  8 17 Henry Cowel Dead  8 John Brooke 13  9 John Babeige Redeemed  8  6

The Richard The Jane The Fortune The Prosperous The John and Elizabeth St. George Ketch The Lyon The Pearl The The Tredegah The Katherine The Consent The Happy Return The John and Thomas Ketch The Priscilla

Of

London Bristol Margaret Apsham Plimouth

Masters Names

George Matthews

1677

Redeemed  6  8

Aug. 2

Dead

12 13  7 Redeemed 12

14 Sept. 7  8

Redeemed 12 Dead  8  8

10 17

Redeemed  9  8 29 Dead  8 16 10 Redeemed 16 12

17 17 17 20 22

Redeemed  7 10

23 23 25 26 27 (Continued)

252

Captives

Ships Names

Of

The Phoenix The Hopewell The Charles

London John Spurrall Dartmouth John Langdon London Thomas Gallant Bristol Henry Fowle Plimouth Thomas Rouse New York Jacob Leslear Topsham William Feppard London William Shaddoch Dartmouth William Hellman London John Pye

At Alg. 40 49 40 Dead  8 Redeemed  8

27 27 Oct. 7

Dead Redeemed Redeemed Redeemed

17 19 14 14  5  8

 8  8  8 10

Redeemed 10 20

12

Redeemed  6

29

At Algier

20  11

Plimouth

Benj. Leverton

At Algier

11  7

Nove. 24 Dec. 2

London

21 24

London

William Powell Dead 15  -Boniface Redeemed  9 Giffard Thomas Bray Redeemed 15  9

Falmouth

Henry King

12  8 George Law[?] Redeemed  9  11 Walter Elvin Escaped  7  7 John Hutchins  7 John Daniel  7  7

Jan. 1  5 Jan. 5  7  7 11

Philip Pepone Joseph At Algier Bonisted/ Bumsted Joseph Redeemed Woolstone Charles Beeves At Algier

16    17 10    16

24 16

 9  8

21

15

27

The Lion The Endeavour The Susanna The Desire The Madera Merchant The Robert The Trevela Merchant The Margaret and John The Endeavour The Submission Ketch The Canary Merchant The Hopewell The Samuel The Ann The John The Robert and John Jane The Golden Lion The Thomas and Matthew

London London Plimouth London

The Speedwell

Yarmouth

The Bridgwater Merchant

London

Jersey London

Masters Names

Case

Number of When Men on Board taken

At Algier

28

(Continued)

253

Captives Ships Names

Of

Masters Names

Case

Number of When Men on Board taken

The Adventure

Harwich

At Algier

 9

The George

Bristol

Redeemed 13

 6

The William and Ralph The Elizabeth

London

Edward Woodward Robert Alexander John Sheffield

Redeemed  7

17

Plimouth

John Darby

At Algier.

The Dragon The Providence The Charles

Bridgwater John Darchred Bristol Edward Patten Bristol Henry Trotterdale George Symonds Dartmouth Matthew Smith

11 1678/9 11 20

The Seth Dogger The Prudence

 8

Redeemed  9 At Algier  6 9 23  6

Feb. 3

Dec. 7

Redeemed 20 men Escaped Ab Canary

Dec. 9

Ab Canary with 19 Pipes Ab Madras Ab Virginia Drowned  9 Redeemed  3 18 At Algier 13  3 At Algier  6

Dec. 15

At Algier

June 19 1679

The Edward and Ann The Nightingale

London

Hen. Webster

London

John Turner

The Thomas The Henry

London London

The Endeavour The Friendship The Bonaventure The Adventure The Defence The Hope

London London London London Youghall Kingsale

The Amity

Kingsale

Robert Mile William Chalk William Fern John Atwood William Witty Andrew Browne James Leneza

The Mary and Ann The Hannah Ketch

Yarmouth

Richard Taylor

Redeemed 11

Stoke

William Heatham

At Algier

 6

 8

15

Jan. 5  7  8 16 24

22 (Continued)

254 Ships Names

Captives Of

The Two Brothers London The Centurion Yarmouth The William and Samuel

London

The St. Martin The Dover The Elizabeth The Robert and Hester The Nicholas The Fairfax The Conclusion

London London London Bristol

Masters Names

Case

Number of When Men on Board taken

John Carter Thomas Roberts James Pevenes

At Algier 14 Redeemed 22

25 25

At Algier

26

46: 25 killed, 21 saved, the ship blown up Edward Bursett Redeemed  8 John Harris At Algier 19 John Watts Redeemed  8 William Stokes Redeemed 32

Nicholas Ley George Ketch William Reading The Concord London Daniel Baker The Endeavour London Abraham Newham The Mary-flower London Robert Griffin The Mary Topsham Simon Mevis The Speedwell Topsham George Talear The Resolution Dartmouth Nicholas Lisson The Seafare Ketch Bristol Joseph Bowry The Hopewell Plimouth Francis Dyer The Olive Branch London Edward Barnes Ketch The St. Ann Plimouth Matthew Tilly

At Algier 12 At Algier 10 Redeemed 18

 2  3  9

At Algier

23 20

12 13

At Algier At Algier At Algier At Algier

 7 10  5  8 11  6

17 Sept. 7 12 13

15

The Angel Gabriel Bristol

At Algier

Some wanting 5 Some wanting 20  8 The rest wanting 2

28

The Simon and Peter The St. Mallows Merchant

Plimouth Hull London

28 30 July 2  2

John Stone

At Algier At Algier At Algier

Dartmouth Zachary Smith At Algier Peter Tapparell At Algier

13  8

18 21

(Continued)

255

Captives Ships Names

Of

Masters Names

Case

Number of When Men on Board taken

The Ann

Plimouth

James Harris

At Algier

 5

The Gambia Hoy

London

At Algier

 6

The Lewrell

New Yarmouth

Christopher Fogg Edward Hall

Octob. 3  6

Ag Algier

12

28

1678–94 Joseph Pitts James Grey John Milton James Goodridge A True and Fatifhul Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahommetans, with an Account of the Author’s being taken Captive (Exeter, 1704). Seth Southell George Matthews (exchanged for Hadg Omar and Buflo Bash” TNA SP 71/2/233v.

Morocco June 1679–1681

John Deane William Johnston Captain Peter Palmer Doctor John Atwood of London Captain Thomas Cheiney William Knight of Bristol Henry Bull William Phelps Arnold Showel of Bristol, Captain. Another a Carpenter, whose I name I know not. Further narrative of James Deane and others, in William Okeley, Eben-ezer (London, 1684).

256

Captives

1679–1701: Quaker Captives Morocco7 John Bealing + Joseph[ John] Wasey James Ellis Arthur Westcott +James Burgin Joseph Bigland Abraham/Terry Thomas Hurrill, + Levin Bufkin James Brain, Jr. [Braynes] Ephraim Gilbert John Harris Splenden Randt Richard Nevet + John Bound + Terry + John Caddy + Robert Finley, John King Thomas Walkenden [Walkenton] George Palmer Robert[Richard] Robertson Joseph Harbin. Kenneth L. Carroll, “Quaker Captives in Morocco, 1685–1701,” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, 55 (1983): 66–79. John Caddy Robert Finley Thomas Hurrill/Harrell Along with three unnamed Friends in Morbay Names kindly furnished by Dr. Justin Meggitt. Stephen Smith Bartholomew Cole Henry Tregony 7 The dead and the ransomed are italicized.

257

Captives

Thomas Tilby. Meggitt, Early Quakers.   Algiers Robert Barret[t] Samuel New Thomas Fletcher + Joseph Todderbell Henry Todderbell Ephraim Gilbert Richard Long John Legate James Hathaway James Goodridge John Ward Roger Rumney Francis Jackson Roger Udy Francis Jackson William Starks

William Howard Roger Rumney John Grimes Splandid Randt Thomas Tylbey Levin Bufkin Daniel and John Baker Richard Clare Nathan Stansbury James Goodridge William Howard Moses Finch John Grimes John Ward Moses Fuick Joseph Harbin.

Kenneth L. Carroll, “Quaker Slaves in Algiers, 1679–1688,” The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society, 54 (1982): 301–312. Thomas Baker John Claggett Bartholomew Coale/Cole Coker, Nicholas Francis Cooley John Harris James Hathaway John Lany Richard Long (?)

20 August 1680

William Harris TNA CO 1/45/76.

Gerard Serrenson Nathan Stanbury Thomas Swan Henry Tregenoe Richard Udy George Everden Names kindly furnished by Dr. Justin Meggitt.

258

Captives

c. 1680

“The List of Captives redeemed in Algiers by the Agent of Mr. William Bowtell of London Merchant” [The list is alphabetical, identifying captives with their ships, and the ships with the ports to which they belonged. Below I will reproduce the names of the captives and the ports to which their ships belonged. Names with asterisk appear twice. Names with + appear on fos 188v-189r “Debts owing to ye said Wm. Bowtell on ye Captives Accot”. Among the list of names there is a reference to “Dutchess Dudleys Charitie …190”. The following names appear on the debt sheet but not in the alphabetical list: Richard Browne, Josias Crow,Thomas Dye, William ffarmer, Thomas Grafton, Samuel Gold, Charles Hopkins, George Higgins, John Mould, John Robson,8 Seth Sothel (who owed £ 180),9 Thomas Wolcott, and John Withins (who owed £ 250).]   Of London +William Ackland +Edward Atherton James Arthball Thomas Alman Moses Ayers +Michael Andall   Of Plymouth Thomas Allen +John Alden Philip Adams John Axford,   Of Yarmouth +John Argent John Argier George Adrian,   Of Plymouth +James Burnes James Blake ffrancis Barkley,   Of Bristol

ffrancis ? +Joseph Bowry drownd Jacob Bowry Thomas Bodenham William Burton John Boothing,   Of London Abraham Barly Abraham Boone [Richard on debt sheet?] Jonathan Bolton John Barrett Thomas Banks Abraham Burry Thomas Blake ffrancis Blake Thomas Banks +Joshua Browne George Burrell +John Bayley William Blacklock

8 The same that wrote his name in 1692? See below. 9 The same as “Seth Southell” above?

259

Captives

+George Bromley +John Brookes +John Blissett +Robert Bell Joseph Baker George Breely +Dominik Bodkin +Morgan Battin +David Battin +James Bland, Peter Baker Peter Balling Tymothy Beery   Of Hull Xtopher Brockwell   Of Harwich John Bennett   Of Yarmouth Thomas Balding   Of New England John Bumstead   Of Dover Richard Clark   Of London Thomas Cheany Robert Clift Bonaventure Cowell Robert Cood Robert Clark +Richard Castle John Chivers +John Coad John Curtis Pierre (?) Cundy +John Carter Thomas Clark +Jeremy Conyers ffrancis Cooly 10

Philip Clark John Clark Robert Canter +Thomas Crow Daniel Carey Thomas Clements +*Joseph Dixon *Robert Dickenson *Samuel Dawson +*Edward Daniel10 *William Downs +*Benjamin Driver *Samuel Dowling,   Of Bristoll Richard Clear *Robert Davis,   Of Dublin + John Cave   Of Plymouth John Conning Peter Cudlip William Chapleman +George Champlin *John Danby   Of New England John Chapman Thomas Corbin   Of Topsham John Cobbold   Of Waterford +Peter Crosby   Of Yarmouth +Peter Christian Andrew Cason   Of Coltraine John Craford   Of Exeter Samuel Caldome

There were two men of the same name as there are two different debts incurred.

260   Of Rye Sampson Carteret   Of London +Joseph Dixon Robert Dickenson Samuel Dawson Edward Daniel +William Downs +Benjamin Driver Samuel Dowling   Of Weymouth Philip Davis   Of Bristoll +Robert Davis   Of Plymouth John Darby   Of Chester +Jonathan Dawson Thomas Dodes redeem’d out of an Algerine Man of War at Harwich   Of London John [torn page] Hugh [torn page] Peter Emans Robert Edgcomb George Everingham +John Evans John Evans [two different ships] [Hugh on debt sheet?]   Of Dartmouth John Full   Of Plymouth Joseph Fillis   Of Bristol Robert Fisher +Gerard ffitzgerard [Gerard Gerard on debt sheet?]   Of London Thomas Fletcher Charlot Friend

Captives

Thomas Felton Ann Fossett Richar Finch +John Frazier +Thomas Friend +James Fricket John Freeman Thomas Freere   Of Jersey Elias Grandin   Of Topsham +Joseph Gill [John on debt sheet?]   Of Bristol James Gladwin   Of Bermuda Ephraim Gilbert   Of Dartmouth Thomas Game +Robert Gettings   Of Yarmouth John Grimes   Of Portsmouth Gerrard Gerrard   Of Weymouth ffrancis Game   Of London Edward Grove James Goodridge George Gregory William Gill Nich. Gunners mate James Glass +Thomas Grantham [John on debt sheet?] +Philip Gurney   Of Bristol Gerard ffitzgerard Andrew Gibbs redeemed out of an Algerine Man of War at Harwich   Of Southampton

Captives

+Thomas Hopkins +William Hopkins   Of London Luke Herring +James Hathaway James Holding William Howard John Harris Peter Hart William Hooke Oliver Hare +Thomas Hurrell [Hurle on debt sheet?] Philip Herring Michael Hanning James Hill Thomas Hamond Oliver Hottd +Richard Hamond   Of Plymouth Thomas Hanniver Thomas Hatch   Of Topsham James Hilman   Of Barnstaple +Philip Howell   Of New York Peter Herman   Of Yarm. Joseph Hall Joseph Holland   Of Weym. Margarett Hoskins   Of Plym. John Hill David Huggy   Of Bristoll William Hanes John Hart Eben. Hooke

261 Howard John redeem’d out of an Algerine Man of War at Harwich & pd his Ransome at Algier.   Of London Nicholas Johnson James Jarsey +Evan Jones Judith Johnson Richard Jones   Of Stockton Joshua Jefferson   Of Boston Simon Johnson   Of Bristoll +Edward Jane John Jane Joseph Jones   Of New Engld Thomas Jenner   Of Plymouth Thomas Jackson Hugh Jane Mathew Jane   Of London Philip Kelly Oliver Knot Tymothy Knight   Of Waterford Thomas Knights +ffrancis Knowles   Of Falmouth Henry King   Of Plymouth Robert Knights   Of Kingsale Richard Lester +James Linsey   Of Yarmouth Richard Lovell   Of Bristoll

262 +Nicholas Long   Of London Joseph Long +Thomas Lawrence +Thomas Lathford John Lander Daniel Lathello   Of Plymouth John Lewis Benj. Leverton   Of Dartmouth Nicholas Lidston   Of Falmouth William Lamprey   Of Topsham Joseph Lorum   Of Exon Isaat Mountstephen   Of Plymouth Thomas Michael Pasth Moreshead   Of New England Thomas Mitchell   Of Barnstaple +John Manly [Also “John Manly Wm. Samuel” on debt sheet; two different persons]   Of London Edward Milbery Hugh Montross John Manly +Walter Miles John Monk Barnaby Morley +Solomon Mathews Robert Morris   Of Topsham Christopher Mathews   Of Bristoll Edward Morris

Captives

  Of Boston David Mighill   Of Biddiford John Miller   Of Exon +Robert Marsh Thomas Mills   Of Biddford Thomas Nicholas   Of London William Newham Bartholomew Neilder +John Nyles +Richard Nelson Samuel Nash +John Nurse   Of Plymouth Sampson Newett   Of London +John Oldman Robert Owen Richard Osborne   Of Bristoll +James Owen Humphrey Owen   Of Bristoll +Samuel Peach +James Prince +Hopkin Price John Parker   Of London Joseph Philmore Anthony Packer Barnard Peters James Peck Thomas Pratt William Powell John Peach Benj. Popplestone John Pearce

Captives

John Philips Richard Pix John Poole Andrew Peters Richard Pearce   Of Plymouth +Richard Puggy John Pennibridge   Of Dartmouth Richard Pounte Stephen Popplestone   Of Yarmouth John Potter   Of London Edward Payne   Of London ffrancis Pitts Thomas Parker John Potts James Provost   Of Penzance John Richards   Of Brighthon Elizabeth Rose   Of Bristoll +John Russell William Reed Roger Rumney   Of Plymouth +John Raynes Robert Rood   Of London Edmund Ravens Samuel Rymes Thom. Ramshaw William Rue Joseph Reynolds +John Richards +Nath. Rickward Charles Reeves

263 +Paul Rouse taken in a ffrench ship Ravenscroft John, redeemed out of an Algerine Man of War at Harwich and paid his Ransome at Algier.   Of Bristoll Philip Shrine (Skrine?) +John Simons   Of Dartm. John Stone James Straw +Thomas (?) Smith James Selby   Of Plym. +James Samuel William Scoon   Of Dover Thomas Sharpe Thomas Smithe   Of London Anthony Sheppeard Thomas Smith Robert Stoker Thomas Serrell +John Sergent +Samuel Sissell Robert Smith Henry Smith John Start Edward Sherley William Starkes John Smart +Robert Sidford   Of Colchester +Samuel Shelley   Of New Engl. Loveday Sampson +George Smith   Of Dover John Sole   Of Waterford

264 +Philip Story   Of Bermudas Benja. Stone   Of Bristoll +Henry Street   Of London +George Symons Robert Smith Walter Sonn   Of Plymouth Nath. Sheppard Abraham Streake Richard Smith   Of Exon Samuel Showers   Of Biddiford John Snapp   Of Dartm. Zachary Smith   Of New York Joseph Simons   Of London +John Smith Edward Stapler   Of Plymouth Jeremy Taylor Walter Treby   Of Penzance Thomas Tomkyn John Thomas Thomas Trinholm   Of Dartmouth +Stephen Tucker   Of Bristoll John Taylor   Of London Henry Tompson Moses Tennant John Trelyne John Tanner

Captives

+John Tanner +John Turner +Charles Trefry William Thompson +Tymothy Tayler +William Tayler Gertrude Thomas John Turner James Tremain Thomas Thomas redeem’d out of an Algerine Man of Warr at Harwich, and paid his Ransome money at Algier   Of Dublin Edward Vaughan   Of London George Vesey   Of Yarm. +Thomas Uring Valentine Utber   Of Dover Charles Underwood   Of Kingsale Thomas Watkins   Of Plymouth Thomas Winston   Of Plymouth Thomas Watkins +ffrancis Welth James Webb +John Wilkins   Of Yarmouth Jeffry Ward   Of Barnstaple John Ward John Wilky   Of Dartmouth William Winsor ffrancis Wakeman   Of Bristoll +Griffith White

265

Captives

Charles Wall   Of London +John Williams Abraham Watkins Philip Williams +Robert Walker Richard Webb Joshua Woodmason +John Wade Henry Wallis John Williams +Jacob Watkins +John Ward +Enoch Wilts +Thomas Watson Robert Weddall Lawrence Wormes   Of Plymouth

John Watkins   Of New England +John Watts   Of Bridgwater +Thomas Witheridge   Of London Thomas Wolrocks (Woolrocks ?) +Samuel Wells Richard Walker   Of Bristoll John Williams +Primus Williams   Of Bristoll Edward Yeamans   Of Plymouth John Yeabsly In all Three Hundred Ninety & Two? TNA SP 71/3/182–184v.

Tripoli 22 July 1682

William Young TNA SP 71/22/II 35v.

2 December 1682

Joseph Gills John Cave TNA SP 71/2/352r.

December (?) 1682

Husbands of Margaret Aymes, Jane Stenes, and Eleanor Sterman, held in Meknes. CO 279/30/314; CSPD Charles II, January 1st to December 31,1682, 24: 578.

266

Captives

Captain Wheeler (ransomed himself) TNA SP 71/2/338.

Early 1680s

An Accompt of the respective Slaves, Redeemed out of the hands of the Alcayde [in Morocco]. Names

Lt: Wilson Mr. Aneas Mcdonnell Mr. Mich. Chevers James Croft Wm. Fergeson Archebald Montgomery Seaman Michaell Holdgate Stephen Penn James Pett Robert Tirell Richard Penman John Clever George Harbough James Gillerd Francis Migillett Hugh Conneal James Robb Robert Gittar John Palmer Alexand:r Watson Luke Salter Michael Richardson David Berry 11

Quality

Lt in ye Old Regimt in Tanger Capt McDonnell’s Brother11 Volunteer Coxwaine Boatswaine’s Mate

Do [ditto] Do Coxwaine Seaman Do Do Do Do Soldier Old Regiment Do Old Regiment Seaman Boy of the ketch Soldier Seaman Boy in the ketch Seaman Do

How long in captivity years

mon

3

10

4

1½ 10 3 1 2 2

4

8

8 6 6 6 5½ 9 10 5 9 9 8

(Continued)

“McDonnell and Chiver and five other captives belong to the Greyhound, who were taken off Sallee,” CSPD 1 May 1684–5 Feb 1685, 28:8 (May 1684).

267

Captives Names

Robt Clerke Thomas Nicholl Mathew Baxter David Williams George Jones James Lock Abelle Maine George Porter Thomas Cooper Michael L [?] Thomas hatch Robert Hill Charles Carter George Teges John Whiteroe

Quality

Do Soldier Seaman Sold. Do Seaman Seaman Mate of the ketch Seaman Mate of ye Shipp Seaman Do Boy of the ketch Seaman Do

How long in captivity years

mon

1 12

6 7 4½ 6 6 6 4½ 3 6 4 6

5 5 1 5 1 1 4 18 3

9 5

Five more at Sally declared free by y Alcayd’s Obligation Eleven others sent for to Tetuan besides a greater Number promised by ye Alcayd. CO 279/33/98. 1683 Edward Payne John Burnet “forced to turn Turk; for which he heartily prays forgiveness”. Historical Manuscripts Commission. Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part V. The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, 107. Accompte of Moneys paid towards the Ransom, of the Seamen which were taken Captives in the Ruth of Dartmouth, of which George Miller Sen: was Master and Redeemed out of their Slauery att Sally by Harbert Aylwin.   Phillip Stanack   John Jackson and 4 more £492-2-6 BL MS Sloane 5105, fo. 8; CSPD Charles II, October 1, 1683 – April 30, 1684, 26:11.

268

Captives

1684 Lieutenant Wilson Historical Manuscripts Commission. Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part V. The Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, 105.

May 1684

Satisfaction demanded by the Kings Hous for the underwritten slaves that were carried away in the English men of war vidz: Mary Rose, Constant, Warwicke and [?] all which were in this Port. 16 day of May 1684. John ffox [captured] 3 December Ant. Jenkins [captured] 8 November Geo Baugs [captured] October [Jo]hn Hill [captured] October [Paper damaged] Port charges

1680 – 550 dollars 1679 – 240 dollars 1678 – 230 dollars 1678 – 200 dollars 250 dollars -----------------1470 359:4 ------------------1829:4

To ye two slaves my Lord Portsmouth tooke out of ye ? in Tangier, first cost 0430:TNA SP 71/2/382.

8 May 1684

---MacDonnell and ----Chiver and five other captives belonging to the Greyhound. CSPD Charles II, May 1, 1684 – February 5, 1685, 27:8. 1684? (Ransomed and reported by Nathaniel Bradley in Tripoli) John Spreen12 Francis Blyth 12

See another reference 25 June 1677, TNA SP 71/22/II, 13.

269

Captives

Peter Solyman James Gilbert Thomas Carpinter James Scott Richard Short

John Fleminge Edward Martyne Peter ffrench ffrancis Bowers TNA SP 71/22/II 4.

Algiers c. 1684–85

Husband of Mary Nevill TNA SP 71/2/448r. Petition of Hiliary Vibert and Elias Grandin on behalf of “sons and Relations” in Algiers”. TNA SP 71/2/414. John Gwillyn/m TNA SP 71/2/429, 455r.

29 May 1685, “three of the clock in the afternoon”

Thomas Phelps Remaining: Edmund Baxter Samuel Crampton Anthony Bayle Will Robinson James Ingram (escaped) John Elliot Thomas Phelps, A True Account of the Captivity of Thomas Phelps (1685).

Algiers c. 1685

“Sonns and Relations” of Hilary Vibert and Elias Grandin TNA SP 71/2/441r.

14 December 1686

Harris “soon after died”. TNA CO 1/61/#28.

270

Captives

June 1687

Daughter of Mr. Neale, along with “about 40 English persons” The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–1691, ed. Stephen Taylor, 4.93.

8 August 1687

Eleanor Browne, her daughter, and Lampson Ironside, “a Negro” TNA SP 71/3/88.

10 August 1689

James Hamel TNA SP 71/14/221. 1689 James Hampton Hopkins, Letters, 34.

8 February 1690

Charles Desbrough escapes from Algiers on board an English ship. TNA SP 71/3/142. 1690 John Whitehead + 220 BL MS Sloane, fo. 90. 1692 John Robson FO 113/3/32.

271

Captives



Before 1693

Francis Brooks Elias Roberts William Chalender Tristram Bryan Robert Jackson Edward Tucker Benjamin Newman Mr. Bellamy (and his men). Francis Brooks, Barbarian Cruelty (1693).

January 1695

“Names of Captives Redeemed out of Algier by Thomas Baker from May 1692 to 10th Decemb. 1694”. Andrew Yilman Lewis Parsons John Norby Henry Thompson Richard Walker James Leeche John Bright Johhn Hearth William Bowden John Denny William Hobs Elizabeth Bell Mathew Dyer William Scott John Thomas John Steevens William Patten Edward Pope John Hooper John Pitcher Thomas Clements William Clark John Hawks William Hawks Robert Lunsfoot Leonard Edwards

Master

Master Master Master Carpenter Carpenter Sailman Gunsmith Gunsmith Gunner

Charles Horsman Cooper Ersbil Bartlet Charles Penny James Rigon Daniel Bannister Robert Wallis David Ellis ? Richard Russell John Stockwell Thomas Goodwyn Martin Bullen Henry Douglass Martin Gray Dennis Langston John Collins John Prowles David Howell Robert Jennings Thomas Lee Mary Philips John Armstrong Philip Herbert     Master William Norway   Pilot William Dy Master Joseph Penwarden

272

Captives

Thomas Tuckerman Oliver Knot Nicholas Palmer James Key Edward Cromwell Anthony Edmunds James Read Benjamin Hyde Walter Gonne James Walter John Whithead Thomas Clunyeon Edward Lane George Hughson Walter Popham Richard Pembarton Richard Ketler Thomas D[?] James Askins James Evans Daniel Owen John Procter George Fleming John Taylor William Andrews Joseph Browne John Robinson John Davis John Wilson

Carpenter

Pilot Carpenter Carpenter ? Master Pilot

Surgeon Carpenter Carpenter Carpenter

Thomas Browne William Barber John Riffe (Ribbe?) William Philips Magnus Peterson William Hayman Henry Hinde Edward Evans Isaake Bindon Thomas Gale John Tanner John Tucker Robert Fletcher Edward Tibbs Thomas Cotton Philip Burgesse John Peterson William [no surname] Daniel Baker James Martin Richard Norman James Ward Cornelius Lawrence John Gennal [109] Algier 15 Jan: 1695 T. Baker. TNA SP 71/3/303–304.

Carpenter Carpenter Cooper Cooper Cooper

Saylmaker Calker Calker

June 1695

Andrew Watson Skipper Alexander Skeen John Crawford William Adie Cuthbert Glass

John Aitkin Rodger Weir Thomas Hill James Jervie.

Act for a Contribution for the Redemption of Nine Slaves and Captives in Barbary (1695).

Captives



273

March 1697

A generall list of the sufring subjects of his Majesty…in miserable captivity at Mequinez (London, 1697). The list names 207 captives taken at Macquinez (Meknes), who were alive in March 1697 and 34 who had died or fled since the list was prepared in May 1695.13

September 1698

John Prideaux’s cousin Fifth Report of the Royal Commission, Part I, 372.

January 1700

Peter Emes CSPD William III, 1 January, 1699–31 March, 1700, 5:387–388.

May 1701

Robert Sparks Samuel Everton & 2 of his men Thomas Rimmer Thomas Johnson George Shepard Robert Golden Henry Hart John Hickman Gabriel Conengham William Pinter[Painter] James Bull Thomas Warring[Warren] William Palmer Thomas Knight George Wilson John Ling Stephen Carman Nicholas Cloak John Ward. Nicholas Russell Magnus Becky TNA SP 71/15/173. In brackets, the spelling in CSPD William III, 1700–1702, 6:470. See below. (20 December 1701). 13

The reference appears in Piracy & Privateering (London, 1972), Catalogue of the Library of the National Maritime Museum, v. 4, p. 14. Upon inquiry at the National Maritime Museum, I was informed that the document had been lost/destroyed. I could not find any other copy.

274

Captives

10 October 1701

Daniel Beezy (?) TNA SP 102/4/122.

20 December 1701

Thos. Warren John Hickman Rob. Golden Will. Painter Thos. Johnson CSPD William III, 1 April, 1700 – 8 March, 1702, 6:470–71.

10 November 1703

Wm Penton James Harris TNA SP 71/4/67.

2 March 1704

Panton Hawes CSPD Anne, 1703–1704, 2:585.

26 July 1705

John Thomas Daniell Caroll Edward Court “dyed at Tetuan” TNA SP 71/15/149.

10 June 1706

Captain Samuel Everton…with two of his men TNA SP 71/15/315.

Captives



275

13 February 1707

Robert Helliard BL MS ADD 61542, fo. 11.

29 October 1709

Wm Penton and James Harris, two officers “Two Ireish Men, James Moriarty and John Welsh, immediately released after being captured”. James Hambetton TNA SP 71/4/61.

15 July 1710

James Oswald TNA SP 71/4/97.

14 April 1711

Jane Marrion’s husband TNA SP 71/4/114.

10 July 1712

Mr. Hudson TNA SP 71/4/176.

14 November 1712

Captain Anding Hill TNA SP 71/16/30.

276

Captives

31 December 1712

James Harnaby on a Neapolitan ship, “born at Wey in the Country of Kent…the Captain of the prize & most of the saylors made theyr Escape”. TNA SP 71/4/250. 1713 Edward Andrews The London Gazette ( from Tuesday November 10 to Saturday November 14, 1713). Nathaniel Uring The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle (1726).

8 October 1713

John White TNA SP 71/16/107v. 1715 Captain Ferris (Topsham) Captain Foster (London) Briant Clarke John Crimes John Dunnal Thomas Pellow, The History, 7.

6 June 1716

John Willdon TNA SP 71/16/254.

Uncle of Thomas Pellow Lewis Davies George Barnicoat Thomas Goodman William Johnson

Captives



277

18 July 1716

John Stock TNA SP 71/16/235.

August 1716

William Constable Thomas Saphra (“Negroe Servant”) Thomas Pocock, The relief of captives (London, 1720), 10–11.

18 September 1716

Mr. Meggison TNA SP 71/16/256.

14 November 1716

Thomas Goodman TNA SP 71/16/256v. 1716 John Morgan Earle, Sailors, 117. 1721 [There are three versions of this list. The one reproduced below is the first: 1.

“A List of the English Ships taken by the Sallee Rovers, and of the Men carry’d Captives to Mequinez, from Oct. 5, 1714, to July 14, 1721”. Description of the Nature of Slavery Among the Moors and the Cruel Sufferings of those that fall into it. (London, 1721).

278 2.

3.

Captives

Entries in italics and square brackets appear in the manuscript but not in the printed version. The printed version was prepared after the manuscript as it contains information about deaths that do not appear in the manuscript. The date of the manuscript is 29 September 1719. TNA SP 71/16/304–305. “A List of the Captives redeemed from Morocco by His Majesty’s Royal Care,” in The London Gazette, 4 December 1721.]

John Ballwine, in a “Portuguese,” with an English sham Pass, taken October 5, 1714, dy’d June 14, 1715. Robert Otterson James Comings George Barber John Waiver Nicholas Miller, turn’d Moor James Prosses, turn’d Moor. “Constant John,” of and for Topsham, with Wine and Salt from Lisbon, Robert Keene, Master, taken May 2, 1715. Peter Way, Mate, dy’d May 15, 1718 William Mould John Pickett Richard Shoulder John Cock (Cook?) Robert Wibber, dy’d August 5, 1716 Robert Bowdidge Joseph Reynolds Thomas Carr Lynn Horton Henry Saymour, Boy. “Desire” Brigentine of and from Foy wth Salt from Lisbon, Richard Sampson, Master, taken June 19, 1715 William Wyatt, Mate, dy’d October 12, 1716 Robert Bray William Scott John Samuells dy’d Decemb. 12, 1715 William Burn dy’d Novemb. 1, 1716 William Penrose John Patrick dy’d Aug. 13, 1716

Captives

279

Thomas Orten, Boy. “Henry and Mary” from Lisbon, with Salt for Amsterdan, John Killigen, Master, taken June [December] 19, 1715. Andrew Cooke, Mate Hugh Stalkart William Johnson turn’d Moor Thomas Burtt Jonathan Stacy dy’d Dec. 2, 1715 Edward Jarvis dy’d June 2, 1716 Richard Southerly dy’d Feb. 4, 1716 Roger Poyde dy’d Nov. 23, 1718 David Maxem dy’d May 29, 1716 James Brown Joseph Adams Thomas Simpson dy’d August 29, 1715 Robert Aikings Jacob Holmes dy’d Jan. 17, 1720 Samuel Idel Charles Tweedy William Killigen “David of Topsham” from Tunis, with Barley for Lisbon, George Trickey, Master, taken June 20, 1715, dy’d July 25, 178. George Trickey, Mate, dy’d Jan. 5, 1716 Henry Dayer Humphrey Harris William Tucker Edward Fouraker dy’d Oct. 24, 1715 James Pole, Dec. 24, 1715 Thomas Parks turn’d Moor, Roger Towell, Boy Thomas Woosley, Boy “Abigail Sloop,” from Bristol for Antegoa, with Beer, Cyder, &C Thomas Hayes, Master, taken Aug. 4, 1715. Samuel Vaughan Denis Carty Zachariah Kirk, dy’d August. 5, 1718 William Mackneal turn’d Moor John Hanson, Boy

280

Captives

“Katherine of Hampton,” from Newfoundland, for Alicant, Peter Rosignol, Master, taken Sept. 15, 1715, dy’d Stept. 16, 1716. John Baker John Smith dy’ed Feb. 6, 1716 John Walker dy’d Sept. 15, 1715 Matthew Rosignol dy’d Sept. 26, 1715 William Davis “A Galley of Bristol” from New England, with Fish for Cadiz, Thomas Morey, Master, taken Sept. 19, 1715. James Morey, Mate Andrew Lawrence James Brown dy’d Aug 22, 1719 John Pedrick Amos Firth Edward Thomas dy’d Aug. 7, 1719 John Jones Robert Thomas Anthony Morey, Boy “George Sloop of London” for Seville, Thomas Maggison, Masterm taken Oct. 2, 1715, dy’d Aug. 16, 1719. Christopher Presson dy’d Dec. 22, 1715 John Parker, dy’d Dec. 24, 1715 John Whiledine Thomas Price dy’d Oct. 16, 1716 Richard Hatterhorn “Sarah Galley of Bristol” for Barbadoes, with Beer, Cyder, Beef, &c John Stocker, Master, taken March 25, 1716. Christopher Salmon Andrew Debbridge [1 Mate] John Necholls [2 Mate] William Jones George Follen dy’d Sept. 8, 1716 Charles Howill William Merritt William Puttom Benjamin Hardwick Waller Philpot

Captives

281

William Jones John Baker Henry Gerry turn’d Moor David Doyle Jos. Millinson “Endeavor of Topsham” from Lisbon with Wine and Salt for Newfoundland, George Passmore, Master, taken April 9, 1716, dy’d Aug. 8, 1717. Robert Tuckerman Mate John Woodford John Elson John Blacke John Snell William Whendon dy’d June 25, 1717 Benjamin Daws dy’d June 23, 1717 Robert Pinn, Boy “Prosperous sloop” of New England from Terceras for Lisbon with Wheat and Fish, Benjamin Church, Master, taken April 16, 1716, dy’d Dec. 2, 1716. Benjamin Lizanby, Mate, dy’d Oct. 26, 1720 John Street John Clark Nathaniel Fellows Walter Tophsam Abraham Remack [Boy] “Union of Plymouth” from Cadiz, with Oil for Topsham, Andrew Tessier, Master, taken April 20 [16], 1716. Peter de Cord Mate William Bennet Alexander Parker Peter Russell, Boy, dy’d July 31, 1721 “Francis of Falmouth” from Gallipoli with Oil for London, John Pellow, Master, taken Aug. 2, 1716. Thomas Goodman Mate Thomas Grimes dy’d April 26, 1716 John Donnall dy’d Dec. 5, 1719 Lewis Davis Bryant ark dy’d Aug. 16, 1717

282

Captives

George Bernycott Thomas Pellow, Boy, turn’d Moor “George of Topsham” from Gallipoli, with Oil for London [Topsham], Robert Fowler, Master, taken Aug. 2 [22], 1716, dy’d Oct. 11, 1716. Stephen Morris, Mate, Matthew Elliot, dy’d April 2 [22], 1717 John Green William Loud John Henly [not in manuscript] Thomas Deane, Boy. “Southwark of London” from Portsmouth for Leghorn, with Wheat, Richard Farris, Master, taken Aug. 3 1716, dy’d Oct. 7, 1716. William Drew, Mate, dy’d Nov. 15, 1716 William Petterton [2 Mate] Edward Martin Richard Collins dy’d Nov. 8, 1719 [death not in manuscript] John Osborn dy’d Dec. 8, 1717 John Foster dy’d Nov. 9, 1717 John Lizenby John Pryor John King Robert Flamon [Hanson] Joseph Nicholson Hugh Isaaks Alexander Gibbs Thomas Newgent turn’d Moor James Brook James Wilson Richard Farris James Waller. “Rebecca and Mary of Hull,” with Beans & c for Leghorn, Christopher Tompson, Master, taken Aug. 5, 1716, dy’d Sept. 13, 1716. Stephen George Peter Simons dy’d at Salle [Oct 1716] Robert Litten dy’d Sept. 12 [28], 1716 Christopher Ouston Charles Wood

Captives

283

Richard Guy [Gye] dy’d Nov. 19, 1716 George Cooke Samuel Rice [Rise] dy’d Sept. 14, 1716 James Hardick dy’d Jan. 13, 1717 [Boy] Thomas Alline [Boy] John Rea. “Philadelphia of London from Amsterdam,” with Powder, Spices, Bale Goods, &c. for Leghorn, William Constable, Master, taken Aug. 5, 1716. John Phillips [mate] Thomas Tongue [Toung 2 Mate] Charles Starky [Starkey] John Martall [Mortol] dy’d Sept. 15, 1716 David Rice William White dy’d Sept. 14, 1716 Nicholas Teritt, ---------1720 [not in manuscript] William Read Randall dy’d -------1721 [Brereton]14 John Jones dy’d Nov. 20, 1716 [Boy] Thomas Pero, Boy [Saphra] “Princess, of and from new-England,” with Fish for Alicant, Jonathan Tyng, Master, taken Sept. 1, 1716, dy’d April 8, 1717. William Febins [1 mate] William Singclear [2 mate] Morris Haley dy’d March 19, 1717 [Harecy] John Mackerall Thomas Goodgame [Goodman] John Kenn Tho. Applebe Michael Renew, dy’d Oct. 9, 1717 Robert English, Boy, turn’d Moor John Pringle, Passenger. “Charles of London,” for Seville, Anthony Porro Master, taken Oct. 25, 1718. Arch. Grey William Hodges [Hodgers] John Davis turn’d Moor [not in manuscript] 14

See also the reference by Consul Hatfield, SP 71/16/325 (8 October 1721).

284

Captives

George Harris turn’d Moor Ralph Wilson “Little Bristol,” of and from Bristol, for guinea, John Normanton Mater, taken Jan. 11, 1718, dy’d Aug. 26, 1720 [death not in manuscript] Edward Bryan [Mate] John Thomas, dy’d Aug. 17, 1720 [death not in manuscript] John Ryan dy’d Jan. 29, 1720 [death not in manuscript] Edward Bryan John Thomas dy’d Aug. 17, 1720 John ryan dy’d Jan. 29, 1720 Robert Hudson dy’d Nov. 8, 1720 [death not in manuscript] George Stephenson John Thomas William Moor Gowin Hudgson dy’d Aug. 28, 1721 [death not in manuscript] William Butter William Gaskett [Gaskitt] John Leagett [Ligett] Thomas Staples Daniel Hide [Hyde] Matthias Meorcan [Marian] Christopher Henderson Thomas Mockford [Mackford] Christopher Allin Robert Born Thomas Coster [Colster]. John Armstrong belonging to the Sarek (?) of London James Amos Commander for Guinia unfortunately blown up in an Engagement with a Sally Rover (….) the only person of 27 Saved & Landed at (…) Cruz. “Anne and Mary of Bristol,” from St. Fillo, with Corn, &c. for London, Robert Buddicom Master, taken Aug. 18, 1718. William Tompson James Mills Robert Williams Charles Mecormick turn’d Moor Thomas Flacher [Flaiker?]turn’d Moor [conversion not in manuscript] William Hussey turn’d Moor

Captives

285

William Aldridge turn’d Moor Thomas Pearle [Pearce] William Perrem. “Return Sloop of Lime [Lyme]”, for Gibraltar, Gamaliel Vincent, Master, taken Sept 20, 1718. Thomas Johnson [Mate] John Wise dy’d Nov. 8, 1719 [death not in manuscript] Abraham Edwards Barren [Bernard] Lane John Hoore, Boy. “Arrow of London,” from Mahoon, in his Ballast for Lisbon, Daniel Swinford, Master, taken May 20, 1719. John Hobbs [Mate] John Cullmer [Colmor] Henry Cullmer [not in manuscript] William Clunn William Hudson dy’d July 19, 1719 [death not in manuscript] Richard Neithersale [Neithersaile] David Regent John Cullmer [Boy] Samuel Whiteing. [Boy] “King George Snow, of Weymouth” from Lisbon, with Limons for London, Thomas Bryer, Master, taken May 26, 1719. James Merrell [Merrett mate] Samuel Tackelle [Tackle] George Singclear Nicholas Edgecomb Francis Day [Boy] Edward Blear Robert Cooke Passenger Francis Bennet, Passenger. Mathew Malonel run from Malila cam to Mequinez and Turn’d Moor John Surril run from Suta came to Mequinez & Turn’ed moor Robert Steward run from Malila came to Mequinez & Turn’d moor Anthony Cross Run from Malila & came to Mequinez but still remains a Christian. Living 188

286

Captives

Dead 53 Turnd Moors 16 “Friendship Sloop of Bristol,” on the Privateer Account, took a Spanish Brigantine off Cadiz, coming from Havana, with Logwood, Snuff, Tobacco, &c. and was retaken by a Sallee Rover, Thomas Miller, master, taken Sep. 3 [23], 1719. John Green, Master of the said prize Edward Foster turn’d Moor [Mate] [conversion not in manuscript] William Harabin Cornelius Conner dy’d --------1720 [death not in manuscript] Erasmus Banbury James Wibb [Webb] Richard Conner John Ash Joel Shipard [Shepherd] James Hunt Thomas Perry, Boy, dy’d Aug. 15, 1721 [death not in manuscript] [This Makes 199] Manuscript list ends here. “Alexander of Inverness,” from Cadiz, with Wire, Oile, Fruit, &c. for Leath in Scotland, Alexander Steuart, master, taken Dec 2, 1719 Daniel Steuart Alexander Ro[ ] James Barber Robert Edmond John Laveriock Rudrick Williamson John Adamson William Macintosh Andrew Campbel William Nelson Boy. “Experiment of London,” from Mahon to Lisbon, with Ballast, with eighteen Guns, was taken by Tetuan Row Boats, the chief Mate was wounded, and remain’d on Board, Adam Ridgon, Master, taken May 6, 1720 William Mackaness Francis Huntt John Sturges dy’d July 30, 1721 Philip Locke Richard Moon John Ludlow dy’d Aug. 30, 1721 John Morrison John Neatherfell Thomas Smelt Roger Bray John Snutton Walter Power Peter Barker John Joad Philip Adams. John Daverson

Captives

287

“Diligence of London,” from Portsmouth, with Provision from Gibraltar, John Paule, Master, taken May 12, 1720 Benjamin Austin Charles Catford Robert Deeble Tuer Cock William Southen James Vibert John Abbot Richard Williams, David English “Welcome, off and from Cork,” for Lisbon, Daniel Healey, Master, taken may 12, 1720 John Healey dy’d July 21,1721 Michael Gale Edmond Butler James Mahoney Edmond Sheely Margaret Shea, a Woman Passenger Dennis Birdan was forced to turn Moor. “Providence of Hull,” from Porto to St. Ubes, John Harpur, Master, taken May 22, 1720. Matthew Foot Robert Harpur Thomas Yeare Henry Fearn Thomas Williams Arg. Carter William Peacock Richard Cooke. “Pink, of and for London,” from St. Luck’s with Fruit, Henry Boyde, Master, taken June 12, 1720 Joseph Bossworth James Power Richard Kelly William Stendell John Kittel Edward Letton Cornelius (?) dy’d Oct. 29, 1720. Francis Allen James Beving “Norton of Topsham,” from St. Martins, with salt for Newfoundland, Thomas Aynes, Master, taken July 2, 1720 Nicholas Wallis dy’d Agu. 10,1721 Nicholas Selby William Lyle Thomas Brow Henry Hardin George Tilly Henry Hollwill John Keen dy’d Oct. 10, 1720 Richard Page, Boy Southy Lightfoot Thomas Short, Passenger. (?) Ellis Flee dy’d Aug. 21, 1721 “Prince of Wales, of and from London,” from Rochel, with Salt for New-England, Abraham Howard Master, taken July 7, 1720.

288 John Keits Henry Beard David Peters Thomas Winne John Gardner John Oldfield Henry Anderss (?) William Priddis Dennis Carron John Harrison John Boudidge

Captives

Thomas Bizewell John Armstrong came here from Santa Cruz [The printed text is inked over and is illegible] (?) run from the ship…Moor. Robert Steward From Ditto, turn’d Moor John Spurett, from Ditto, turn’d Moor Anthony Craft, from Ditto, remaining a Christian.

“Fortune Sloop off and from Plymouth,” with Beer &c. for Seville, Thomas Taylor, Master, taken Nov. 10, 1720 Francis Searle, Mate Thomas May William Roncy. “Success, of and for London,” with Wine from Alicant, James Kirk, Master, taken Nov. 16, 1720 Jonathan Gipson, Mate John Ferrill Henry Jones dy’d at Mamoro Richard Hetton Michael Dibbs William Tosh dy’d on board Henry Bull James Gavin Ditto Robert Spargrove John Camberoon “Newt Galley of Topsham,” from New England, with Fish for Lisbon, John Richards Master, taken Nov. 29 1720 John Vaughan Hugh Lewis, Mate William Fowler Stephen Bowdidge Daniel Tozer. Darlow Marther “Happy, of and for Lisbon,” from Madera, with Wine, Brandy, Tobacco, &c. George Painter, Master, taken July 14, 1721 Richard Emett Bartholomew Brown Charles Jenkins Francis Holcomb. Alive, July 14, 1721, 291 Persons. Some dy’d afterwards while the Treating was negociating, and some in their Passage Home. Above 280 return’d.

Captives



289

8 October 1721

Randle Brereton (mentioned above) and “an English boy”: both remained in captivity. TNA SP71/16/325.

April 1725

George Doucell TNA SP 71/22/III, 108.

c. 1727

Son of Edward Foster and his wife Anna (and “Sons Parents and husbands…to the Number of Many Scores”) in Salé. TNA SP 71/21/28.

15 April 1730

Edw. Harris, William Stanes William Moses Tho. Spratt, Masters. Robert Medows E. Fletcher, John Wilson John Parker, 1st Mates. John Blaney R. Weston Benjamin Pitman John Parker, 2nd Mates. Thomas Carpenter.15 J. Watson, W. Whiteing, Carpenters Redeem’d and Receiv’d on Board His Majesty’s Ship the Drake, the 15th Day of April, 1730. A Second Journal of John Russel (1745), 43.

Tangier 1730

James Argatt TNA SP 71/17/179. 15

Next to this list is another of “German Subjects,” three of whom have a family name of “Tunis” (?).

290

Captives

17 July 1731

John Peter Busse (in Algiers) TNA SP 71/7/167.

23 October 1734

Griffin Austin and sailor TNA SP 71/7/691. 1734 Ransomed by King George I: A List of the Masters and Ships Names John Baldwin, Bonaventure, 7 Men, from Brazil, for Lisbon. Rob. Keen, Constant John, 12 Men, from Lisbon, for Topsham. Rich. Sampson, Desire, 9 Men, from Lisbon, for Foy. John Killigen, Henry and Mary, 18 Men, from Lisbon, for Amsterdam. George Trickey, David, 10 Men, from Tunice, for Lisbon. Tho. Hease, Abigail, 6 Men, fom Bristol, for Antego. Peter Rosignol, Catherin, 5 Men, from Newfoundland, for Alicante. Tho. Morey, Neal-Galley, 10 Men, from Ditto, for Cadiz. Tho. Maggison, George, 6 Men, from London, for Sevil. John Stocker, Sarah Galley, 18 Men, from Bristol, for Barbadoes. Geo. Passmore, Indeavor, 9 Men, from Lisbon, for Newfoundland. Benj: Church, Prosperous, 7 Men, Newfoundland, for Lisbon. Andrew Tessica, Union, 5 Men, from Cadiz, for Tophsam. John Pelow, Francis, 8 Men, from Galipoli, for Topsham. Rob. Fowler, George, 8 Men, from Ditto. Rich Ferress, Southwark, 19 Men, from Portsmouth, for Leghorn. Christ. Tompson, Rebecca, 11 Men, from Hull, for Venice. Will. Constanble, Philadelphia, 11 Men,from Amsterdan, for Venice. Jonath. Tyng, Princess, 11 Men, from Newfoundland, for Alicante. Anth. Poor, Charles, 6 Men, from London, for Sevil. John Normanton, Little Bristol, 20 Men, from Bristol, for Guinea. Rob. Buodicum, Ann and Mary, 10 Men, from Feloe, for London. Gam. Vincent, Return, 6 Men, from Lyn, for Gibraltar. Dan. Swinford, Arrow Galley, 10 Men, from Mahon, for Lisbon. Tho. Bryrer, K. George, 9 Men, from Lisbon, for London.

291

Captives

Alex. Stuart, Alexander, 11 Men, from St. Lucar, for Lieth. John Green, in a Spanish Prize, for Bristol. Adam Rigdon, Experiment, 17 Men, from Mahone, for Lisbon. Retaken. John Harpur, Providence, 9 Men, from St. Urbes, for Hull. John Paule, Diligence, 10 Men, from Cork, for Lisbon. Dan Heaty, Welcom, 7 men, from Cork for Lisbon. Hen. Boyd, Neptune, 10 Men, from St Lucar, for Eondom. Thom. Ares, Norton Gally, 13 Men, from St. Martin, for Newfoundland. Abr. Howard, Prince of Wales, from Plymouth, for Sevil. Tho. Taylor, Fortune, 4 men, from Plymouth, for Sevil. James Kirk, Success, 11 Men, from Alicante, for London. John Richards, Nawty Galley, 7 Men, from Newfoundland, for Lisbon. Ransomed by King George II. Those, against whose Name is this Mark (*) died in the Passage, after their Redemption. COMMANDERS John Chilley *William Mathews Richard Picke Joshua Weston George Bayley Philip Graves

John Blanch Nicholas Wadge *Fitz-John Allen16 Samuel Cockshutt James Howell Richard Couch *Edward Bower17

MATES and SAILORS Robert Howard Iohn Dillon William Eckersell William Skinner Jos. Brouse Walter Deniston John Lameth Andrew Oglethorpe William Nealson Thomas Dawson

Benjamin Williams Henry Driver Benjamin Halkerson Peter Lassly Alexander M’Coore Richard Seton *William Patterson Thomas Ramsey John Dunan Samuel M’Callash *William Blight

16 17

Asterisk not in Morgan. Asterisk not in Morgan.

292 Thomas Lee John Brumble Richard Tanner James Hewlett John Parsons Thomas Swift Mathew Edwards Thomas Page Thomas Langley Thomas Bladborn John Travess William Winsor Michael Short Thomas Scilley John Evans Henry Devey *William Waldon Robert Tucker Abraham Polden Jos. Parsons William Rowe George Hixs Thomas Morren William Burk Oliver Dunn Jos. Vernon Thomas Jenkins Henry Calton John Godfrey John Holmes John Stephens Thomas Rudd John Abadham Jos. Abadham William Smith Thomas Barnes Thomas Johnson Richard Kitching John Jennis Isaac Warner Phillip Richardson

Captives

John Biggs William Parker Anthony Reynolds William Strong Thomas Brasnall William Tosett Ralph Jarrett James Brown Charles Lloyd Stephen Clark William Plaskett Samuel Thomas Daniel Mansfield John Willis John Harris Thomas Williams Thomas Slater Ephraim Briggs Edward Malash John Corkett Hall Richardson Nathaniel Ireland John Conner George Cooke *Edward Rice William Reathborn Benjamin Warren Thomas Neal James Abraham John Harrison John Eccleston Robert Walley Robert Ashey John Sudden Jerm. Battersby George Davis Walter Hooper William Giles John Hardey Thomas Murfey William Socks

293

Captives

William Lowley Thomas Ingons Peter Killey Richard Lane Thomas Conner Thomas Barry John Gready Francis Conner William Conner Thomas Barneby William Tweed William Vennis Hector Page Matthew Warton

Edward Clauson Samuel Bilton John Dunn Richard Coats Norm. Snorton Christopher Clarke John Raiston *John Dixon Man. Newport *William Morrsion John Stove Barnard Gunn Mathew Eagen Samuel Warton.

[ Joseph Morgan], A Voyage to Barbary, For the Redemption of Captives; Performed (in 1720) by the Mathurin-Trinitarian Fathers, Fran. Comelin, Philemon de la Motte, and Jos. Bernard. Now first English from the French Original (London: for Charles Corbett, 1735), 142–146. Morgan relied on the list that had appeared in The London Gazette (Tuesday November 12 to Saturday November 16, 1734) for the list of “Commanders” and “Mates and Sailors”.

10 July 1735

Captain John Echlin TNA SP 71/18/64v.

28 August 1737

List of British Subjects lately in the Service of Spain against Oran, made Slaves in Algier Richard Fry master of ship Abraham Saunders Robert Whitefiled, mate Richard Barry Francis Simon, Sailor18 John Thomas Whitborn Wells John Holmes John Woolenger Charles McNeal Arthur Fryer Alexander McCulloch 18

Near the names of Simon and Whitefield:” Since taken by the Maltese”.

294

Captives

Phillip James James Basely Garrot Cuphen Dennis Delany Joseph Cossey since writing ye List Robert Chamberlain Dead John Rogers James Butler Daniel Griffith, since Dead James Morris, from Tunis William Mills Thomas Turner Dr. Theordeus O’Connel Phisitian his Wife, Two Boys, and One Girl his Children who are ransomed for Three Wesmen (?) Soldiers with their Children Dead in Algier Robert Williams John Eves David Ambrose John Lancaster John Jones John Welch Robert Sinclair John St John Thomas Mitchell Thomas Pelham Robert Steel. TNA SP 71/7/767. See also the petition below presented by some of the above.

Algiers c. 1739

Petition of Captives to the Duke of Newcastle: ? Sanders [Abraham Saunders] Richard Fry John Holmes [Homes] John Thomas John Rogers Richard Barry John Wollenger Garrett Cossins

Dinmis Delaney [not on list] James Morris Charles Oneal [MacNeal] Phillip James James Barley [not on list] Wilburn Wells Alexander MacCulloch [not on list] Arthur Fries [Fryer]. BL MS Egerton 2528, fos 17r-v.19

[Names in square brackets appear on another petition presented to the Lord Admiral, along with these additional names:] Robert Chamberlain FRobert Whitefiled 19

The SP version of this petition, a folio after the list, includes the “Marks” of the signatories, TNA SP 71/7/61 (21 April 1737).

Captives

John St. John Willm Pipper Thomas Mitchell Thomas Tellam Thomas Turner TNA SP 71/18/111v (18 June 1737).

Tangier Bay 4 January 1746

A List of those that escaped at the Time of the Wreck, being 87. Thomas Bell Edward Hutchings John Gibson William Earl George Edger John Lingwist John Croak Thomas Jones, a Black Ephream Moore Kinsbe Betten James Wells Arthur Price John Buckland John Haynes James Pridham Thames Pearce Richard Gough William Hudson Joseph Bartie John Trott Alexander Hamilton Thomas Lawson These 22 were released from Slavery March 1748–9. Ozburn Noble, Carpenter Thomas Nelson, Midshipman William Lucas, Surgeon’s Mate John Price, Steward Charles Milson Thomas Troughton Thomas Jones Thomas James John Gifford Thomas Hughes Christopher Graham Peter Bouhier Henry Rosewarn William Spurl William Barker

295

296

Captives

Timothy Lealow Thomas Chapman Charles Porcas Mugford Dampheir John Cannon Alexander Scott James Macdonald William Scotney Thomas Searl Samuel Morris These 25 were released from Slavery Dec. 1750. Edward Fitzgerald George Beale Thomas Stanton Emanuel Rochester These 4 were stopt by the Emperor, in order to be made a Present to his Majesty, without paying Head-Money for them. George Kilbs, Master John Marlow Francis Strong Benjamin Barton John Neal David Foster John Torrington William Richards These eight died in the Country. Richard Marlow Stephen Barlow John Meekings Thomas Wish Joseph Gingell Thomas Mears These 20 turn’d Moors.

Hercules Birk Peter Carter John Amous Thomas Mitchell John Howell John Armatage, a Black George Hall William Steward Thomas Saint John Matthew Richard Black Daniel Crawley John Draycoat John Butler

J. Smith, a Moor, and an Inhabitant of Tetuan; which makes up the Number of the Ship’s Crew that were on board when she was wreck’d. The following Persons were in Barbary before the Inspector Privateer was wreck’d. Robert Ray Thomas Belson Peter Milton Felix Connaway Timothy Sullivan

297

Captives

These Five were Slaves in the Country, before the Inspector Privateer was wreck’d, but were redeem’d by his Excellency William Latton, Esq; with other British Captives. John Allen John Spicer Jerimiah Rowland Charles Lazenbey Nicholas Sykes Benjamin Berkley Simon Mackinze James Mackgee John Wright James Towns These Ten were also Slaves in the Country before, and turn’d Moors. Thomas Troughton, Barbarian Cruelty, 14–17. Some of the names also appear on p. 8 where “Arthur Price,” “Tho. Hughes,” and Tho. Lawson” have a cross next to their names along with the word “Mark”. See also TNA SP 71/18/226, the list of fifty-six men prepared on 19 June 1648.

Algiers 19 January 1748

“formerly Miss Nancy Tichborne but lately married to one Mr. Reply,” along with eighteen officers, forty soldiers and two women. TNA SP 71/8/269.

Fez 10 March 1748

Tho:s Nelson TNA SP 71/18/226.

Tetuan 9 February 1749

Thomas Nelson Wm Lucas John Price Jn. Macdonald Thomas Belson Thos: Searll

Mugford Dampiese John Haynes Thomas Price Tim Pretty Charles Forcas James Pridham

298

Captives

Wm Toornel Thomas Chapman Ephraim Moor John Kannon Tho; Troughton John Buckland Jn Trott Peter Bochier Charles Nelson Rich. Goughs Thos. Hughs Alex. Price W Jones Henry Roasome Joseph Barta Jn: Gifford*20 Edwd: Huchins* Thomas James Willm Earle* Jn Linguist* Tim: Sullivan*

Phoelix Conoway* Peter Milton* Robt. Bay* Thos. Jones* Alex. Hamilton* Christophr Graham* Tho. Lawson* Wm Spurle* Thos.Bell* Jn. Gibson* Wm. Barker* Geo. Edgar* Jn. Crooks* James Wells* Alex. Seatt* Sam. Morris* Kinoby[?] Beeton* Wm.Hudson* Osbourn Noble* TNA SP 71/18/111v.

1750 Edward Fitzgerald George Beale Emanuel Rochester Thomas Stanton A Supplement to the Barbarian Cruelty (1751). 1754 A Roll of His Majestys Subjects released from Captivity in Barbary by William Petticrew, His Majesty’s consul, in 1752,1753 and 1754. Thomas Leason Belonging to the Navy Scooner of Gibraltar Wracked on the Coast of Sallee, he the only surviving person. 20

Names with asterisk had a mark next to their names.

Captives

299

Thomas Salmon, Joseph Wilson, William McCanty Taken by the Spaniards in the West Indies & banished to Ceuta from whence they fled to the Moors who condemned them to slavery. John Tivitoe with eight Mariners Master of the Ship Hope of Weymouth, wracked near to Ceuta, and enslaved by the Mountaineers. Henry Mauger Master of the Thomas & James of St. Ives in Cornwall wracked near to Tanger, and enslaved by the Mountaineers, he the only surviving person. John Solliveset with six Mariners Master of a Polacra belonging to Mahon, taken by a Cruiser of Tanger, Six this Crew continue in slavery under the Emperor. 22 Subjects. TNA SP 71/20/I, 13. 1756 John Bird/Baird Hopkins, Letters, 79. Elizabeth Marsh James Crisp Marsh, The Female Captive, ed. Bekkaoui.

9 April 1760

“Redemption of Capt’ Barton and all the Brittish Subjects in Barbary” TNA SP 71/20/264.

Works Cited Unpublished The National Archives: SP 71/1–27; SP 102; SP 103; SP 105; SP 16/306; SP 16/469; Kew, Surrey SP 16/36; SP 16/332; SP 25/62; SP 29/138; SP 46/102; S P 18/39; SP 29/44; SP 29/138; SP 44/205; SP 84/164; SP/89/18; SP 89/44; SP 89/90.  FO 113/1–3. CO 1/25; CO 1/47; CO 1/65; CO 279/10; CO 5/1183; CO 5/1184; CO 279/30. British Library: ADD 5489; ADD 36445; ADD 21993; London ADD 46412; ADD 61542; ADD 61536, ADD 61535; ADD 61493; ADD 61544.

Stowe 124; Stowe 212.



Sloane 3511; Sloane 2755.

Egerton 2528. 1434.i.5. The Manuscripts of the Duke of Northumberland, microfilm 285. Bodleian: Oxford

MS Arch Seld 72.6. Rawlinson C 366; Rawlinson A 191; Rawlinson A 194.

Devon PRO

Quarter Sessions, 128. County of Devon.

Archives Nationales: Paris

Marine, B/7/210; B/7/213.

BnF: Clairambault 501. Paris University of Minnesota: Bendysh Family Archive Minneapolis

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Index* ʿAbdallah, Muḥammad ibn  4n, 7, 151 ʿAbdallah, Mulay  40, 147, 150 Abghālī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAli  69 ʿAra’ish/Larache  9, 11, 189n al-ʿAyyāshi, Abu Sālim  93 Abbot, George (Archbishop of Canterbury)  83 Abbott, W. C.  108n, 110n, 111, 111n, 124n Abby, Henry  87, 205 Adams, John  60 Addison, Joseph (Secretary of State)  65 Aden/Yemen  90, 91 Aga, Assan  35, 176 Aga, Ibrahim  131 Agadir  1, 2n, 193 Ahmed VI (Sultan)  108 Alexandria  72, 79, 95 Algiers/Algeria  1, 4, 6, 8n, 9, 10n, 11, 20n, 22–25, 29n, 31, 35, 37, 38, 39n, 45, 46, 49, 56, 61n, 63, 64, 67, 71, 74, 77–80, 82–86, 88, 93–95, 100, 101, 105–107, 111, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 124, 125, 127, 131–134, 139, 140, 149, 154, 162n, 164, 172–174, 175n, 176, 178, 179, 180n, 181n, 183–188, 191, 192, 194, 205, 231, 250, 256, 257, 268, 269, 293, 296 Alicant  78, 279, 282, 287 Allen, David  69n Allin, Thomas (Admiral)  18n, 119, 175 Allison, Robert J.  60n, 241, 242 Amboyna  58 Amsterdam  58, 116 Anderson, Gilbert  38 Anderson, John L.  1n Anderson, R. C.  5n, 119n Anderson, Sonia  166n Andrews, Kenneth  60n Anglican  69, 129, 154 Anne, Queen (of Great Britain)  138, 140, 142, 187 Appleby, William  35, 97n Apson/Epson  42 Archer, Arthur  58 Arabian Nights  194

Argatt, James  17 al-Asghar, Muḥammad  93 Astiyyū, Muhammad  162n Atlantic  1, 8, 9, 11n, 18, 25, 31, 41, 43, 56–58, 65, 70, 77, 86, 93, 97, 103, 107, 128, 132, 158–164, 183, 188, 191 Aubin, Penelope  146, 151 Auchterlonie, Paul  39n Audellay, John  75 Avery, Henry  69 Aylmer, Matthew (Admiral)  64 Baepler, Paul  60n Bak, G.  61n, 76n Baker, Francis  164 Baker, Peter  73 Baker, Thomas (Consul)  6n, 48, 49, 50, 51, 63n, 133, 134, 140, 170, 184, 185n, 186n Baltarne  42 Baltimore, Ireland  69, 86 Baltharpe, John  40, 160n, 174n Bamford, Paul W.  16n Bantam  90 Barbados islands  27, 40, 57 Barbary Company  72 Barber, Mary  149 Bargrave, John  114 Barnett, Louise K.  3 Barnstable  42 Barute (Beirut)  68 “Battle” Battle of Edgehill  99 Battle of Lepanto  28, 72 Battle of Naseby  100 Battle of Sedgemoor  27 Battle of Viga  187 Baxter, Richard  27 Bekkaoui, Khalid  41 Belhamissi, Moulay  16n, 88n, 172n, 178n, 184n Bell, C. F.  29n Bellislerard, Sieur de  179 Benali, Hamad  37

* The index does not include names in the Appendix.

index Benaman, Haly  62 Benfayda, Mustafa  11n Ben Mansour, Abd El Hadi  6n, 24n, 39n Benmissou, Borca  62 Bennassar, Bartolomé  21n, 40n Bennassar, Lucille,  21n Bennet, Henry (Secretary of State)  116n Bennett, Norman Robert  24n Berbrugger, Adrien  46n Berkshire  140 Bermuda(s)  43, 56 Bernard, Augustin  24n Berriman, William  146 Berry, Rich  14n Bion, Jean/John  19 Blackborne, Robert  105 Blake, Edward (Consul)  147 Blake, Robert (Admiral)  103, 105, 107–109, 110n, 189, Blake, Robert  34, 93, 94 Blassingame, John W.  11n Blili, Lëila  40n Blome, Richard  10, 25, 68n, 160n Blunden, William  67 Bonn  132 Bonnell, Samuel  91 Bono, Salvatore  10n, 22n, 24, 66 Boothby, Richard  57n Boothhouse, Samuel  103, 104 Bougie/ Bugea/Bugia  8, 78, 176 Bowtell, William  42, 125, 126 Bradley, Nathaniel  51, 124 Bradstreet, Simon (Governor)  125 Braudel, Fernand  23, 160 Brereton, Randle/Randal  145 Brest  64, 132, 165 Brewer, John  51n, 82n Brissac, Phillip de Cossé  16n, 34n, 83n, 84n, 87n, 92n Brissenden, William  93 Bristol  35, 42, 66, 76, 92, 95, 116, 123, 126, 146, 155, 165 Britain  1, 4n, 7, 12, 13, 20, 27, 29, 32, 33n, 39n, 40n, 44, 49, 52n, 59, 64, 66n, 67n, 68, 70, 71, 82, 88, 98, 116, 132, 135n, 137n, 138n, 140, 147, 149, 151, 152, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 176, 177n, 180, 185, 186, 187, 188n, 189–192 Brogini, Anne  67n

325 Bromley, J. S.  28, 51n, 64, 65n, 160n, 174n Brooks, Francis  134, 135 Brown, Cedric C.  57n Brown, Kenneth  65n, 162n Browne, Eleanor  41 Bulkbashi, Ramadan  173 Bulut, Mehmet  62n, 160n Bundocke, William  85 Bunyan, John  129 Burker, Aaron  58 Burnet, Gilbert (Bishop)  31, 69 Busted, Amrborse  58 Butler, John  48 Byam, Henry  47, 84 Cadiz  19, 49, 63, 64, 67, 68, 111, 132 Caillé, Jacques  4n, 153n Caipha  68 Cairo  90 Calais  64 Canada  15, 59, 134 Canary Islands  139 Cannary (“Admiral”)  181–184 Canterbury  27, 83, 114, 126, 135 Cape Bone Esperance  91 Cape Spartell  176 Carapatam (Kharepatan)  58 Cardenas, Aḥmad (Ambassador)  139 Carew, George (Lord)  61n, 62, 77n Carleill, Christopher  73 Carr, Cecil T.  160n Carranza, Fernando de  41n Carolina  125 Carroll, Kenneth L.  34 Carroll, Rory  9n Cartagena  60 Cason, Edmond  28, 42, 100, 101 Castle, George  107 Castries, Henry de (Comte)  61n, 79n, 82n, 107n, 132n, 190n Catholic  6, 19, 27, 59, 69, 75, 82, 86, 101n, 123, 134, 154, 156, 194 Cave, John  126 Cenival, Pierre de  34n, 83n, 84n, 87n, 92n, 107 Cervantes, Miguel de  28, 29n Ceuta  8, 22n, 41n, 64, 147, 151, 163n, 193, 298 Chaney, Eric  22n Chappell, Edwin  25n

326 Charles I (King)  29, 33, 35n, 46n, 47n, 62n, 63n, 65n, 82, 83, 84n, 85–87, 88n, 89–91, 92n, 93, 94, 95n, 97n, 98n, 99n, 100n, 101, 102, 105n, 154, 157n, 173, 175 Charles II (King)  2, 15, 27n, 38, 45, 46, 47n, 48, 58n, 60n, 67, 68n, 77n, 84n, 113, 114n, 115, 116–123n, 124, 125, 127n, 128, 130, 131, 155, 160, 163, 169, 174n, 175n, 177, 178 Chatham  42 Chester  141 Chetwood, William Rufus  147 China  91, 161 Christchurch  42 Christianity (Christian)  1–7, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22n, 24, 25, 29, 35, 37, 41, 46, 48n, 53, 56, 60–62, 64, 66n, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77, 81, 85, 86, 94, 98, 107, 111, 115, 118, 119n, 123–125, 128–130, 132, 137, 139, 142, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 174, 181, 185, 186, 190, 191, 193, 194 Ciappara, Frans  66n Cidmouth (Sidmouth)  42 Cinque Ports  116 Cipollone, Giulio  19n Clark, G. N.  35n Clissold, Stephen  2n Cobb, William (Captain)  91 Cocks, Robert  58 Coffey, John  27n, 129n Cohn, R. L.  37 Coke, Edward  75, 138 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste  106 Cole, Robert (Consul)  8n, 11, 46, 49, 63, 139, 140, 164, 184, 185, 186n, 187, 188 Coleman, Emma Lewis  15, 20 Colin, Gabriel  52n Collenberg, Wipertus H. Rudt de  6n, 21n Colley, Linda  2n, 13, 45n, 158, 161, 180n Constantinople  80, 146 Contreras, Alonso de  19, 60 A Coppy of the Captives petition as it was presented to the Kings most excellent Majesty  114 Corbett, Julian  97n, 157 Cormandell  91 Cornwall, John Trelawny (Vice-Admiral)  65, 81n, 100, 156 Coron  5 Costa, Margaret Jull  19 Coventry, William  131

index Coverte, Robert  90 Coxere, Edward  110n Craggs, James  163n Crashaw, William  53 Cresti, Federico  22, 82n Crete  40n, 65n, 107, 177 Crisp, James  152 Croft, Lionel (Consul)  47, 127, 131 Cromwell, Oliver  45, 103–110, 155, 163 Cromwell, Richard  111 Crosse, Edward  79, 122 Crossfield, Robert  51 Cumberland  140 Curtin, Philip D.  11n, 67n Curtis, Edward (Captain)  103 D’Aranda, Emanuel  173 d’ Estrées, Jean II (Naval Commander)  184 Dakhlia, Jocelyne  22n al-Dallā’ī, ‘Abdullah  107 Dan, Pierre (Father)  23, 86n, 101, 173n Danvers, Frederick Charles  37n, 90n Danziker, Simon  61 Dardanelles  102 Dartmouth  42, 92n, 119, 122 Davenant, William  108 Davies, Geo.  109 Davies, William  87 Davis, David Brion  9 Davis, Robert C.  9, 35n Dawes, Mr.  31 Dawūd, Muḥammad  193 Daza, Juan  16n Defoe, Daniel  27, 68n, 69, 128, 191 Delavall, George (Captain/ Ambassador)  44n Demos, John  59n, 60n Denis, Rob.  37 Depp, Johnny  2 De Ruyter, Michiel (Admiral)  106, 174 Devon  38, 50, 63, 181 Record Office of  50 Devoulx, Albert  180n Dey, Yusuf  62 Diaz, Joseph  140 Diaz, Ramón Lourido  7n, 152n Digby, Kenelm  84, 85n, 95 Dior, Richard  123 Dorcetshire (Dorchester)  42

index Dover  42, 97n, 117n Downe, Robert  51 Dryden, John  32, 58, 67 Dundee  42 Dunkirk/Dunkirkers  64, 70, 71, 97n Duprat, Anne  22n Durham  141 Dyer, Alan  42 Earle, Peter  9, 19n, 63, 64, 88n East India Company  37, 57, 58n, 90 East Indies  13n, 57, 58, 66n, 91 Eastman, Edward  47 Easton, Peter  61 Eburne, Richard  56 Edict of Nantes  131 Edinburgh  42, 59 Edwards, Philip  29n Egypt  7, 73n Ehrman, John  51 El-Ghachi, Mustapha  8n Eliot, John  81 Ellis, J.  131 Elliot, Adam  120 Elizabeth I, (Queen of England)  73n England  4, 10, 15n, 16, 17n, 18, 19, 20n, 27–29, 32–35, 37, 38, 39n, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46n, 47n, 49–51, 53, 57, 59, 60n, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69–71, 74, 75, 76n, 77, 79, 81, 83,84,86, 87, 88n, 92, 93, 101, 106, 108, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 122, 126, 128–132, 134, 135–139, 142n, 145, 146, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156–158, 160, 162, 163, 165, 169, 173, 175, 176, 180, 181, 183, 185–187, 194 Erlisman, John (Consul)  48, 64, 68, 116n, 118, 124, 131, 183n Esquer, Gabriel  179n, 180n Ethiopia  91, 150n Evelyn, John  3, 31, 57n, 116, 131, 132 Eversham, John  74 Ewald, William Bragg  69n Exeter  10n, 42, 66, 95 Falmouth  42, 59, 146, 183 Fenton, Geoffery  71, 72n Fez  41n, 147, 150, 152 al-Filālī, ʿAbd al-Karīm  7n Fischer, Kirsten  28n Fisher, Godfrey  74n, 180

327 FitzGeffry, Charles  47 Flavell, John  32 Florida  2, 57 Flushing  62, 123 Fontenay, Michael  16n, 21n, 108n, 146n, 181n Foster, Edward and Anna  114 Foster, William  58n, 59n, 90n Foulston  42 Fox, George  18, 129 Foxe, John  72 Foy (Fowey)  42, 76, 146 France  8n, 13n, 16n, 19, 21, 22, 39n, 46n, 49, 57n, 64, 70, 81, 82, 84, 91, 93n, 94, 101, 111, 116, 123, 131–134, 139, 140, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 162, 163, 164, 165, 171, 172, 180, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191 Franchina, Antonio  21n Frethorne, Richard  28n Freville, John  139 Frizell, James  80, 81, 83, 85, 86, 87, 93, 95 Fuchs, Barbara  29n Fusaro, Maria  22n, 29n, 66n, 160n Garcés, Maria Antonia  23n, 29n, 35n García-Arenal, Mercedes  101, 181 Gardiner, Thomas (Captain)  113 Gari, J. A.  33n Garrett, William  78 Gascoigne, George  72 Genoa  40n, 111, 123 George I (King of Great Britain)  17, 42, 141, 147, 149, 151, 153, 156 George II (King of Great Britain)  17, 141, 147, 149 George III (King of Great Britain)  152 Georgijevic, Bortolomej  57n Germany  17, 44, 62, 92, 134, 156 Gibraltar  5, 6, 18n, 37n, 66, 69, 142, 144, 156, 161, 188, 189n, 191 Gibson, Colin  29n, 21n, 22 Giffard, John (Captain)  77 Gill, Joseph  126 Glemham, Edward  60 Goa  58, 159 Goffman, Daniel  107n, 160 Good Hope, Cape of  160 Goodwyn, Thomas (Consul)  49 Gouge, William  47, 94

328 Gramaye, Jean-Baptiste  6n, 23, 24n Grandchamp, Pierre  22, 39n, 82n, 184n Graves, William  76 Great Fire (London)  117 “Great Migration” (to America)  88 “The Great Turke” (poem, 1664)  99n Greece  123 Greene, Molly  6, 160n, 161n, 163n, 188n Greenwich Palace  72, 144 Groot, Alexander H. de  61, 165 Guiana  56, 57n Guinea  103, 136n, 160, 161 Gulf of Persia  91 Gunter, John  58 Gwillym, John  129 Habib, Imtiaz  16, 66n Haddock, Nicholas (Rear-Admiral)  149 Hadfield, Andrew  29n Haefeli, Evan  59n al-Ḥajarī, Aḥmad ibn Qāsim  65n Hakluyt, Richard  32, 35n, 52, 57n, 71, 72, 73n, 74, 161 Halvorson, Michael J.  40n Hammond, Paul  29n Haniyya, ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd  189, 310 Harborne, William  35n Harding, Richard  178n Hargrave, William  58 Harper, Graeme  28 Harrington, James  44 Harris, G. G.  35n, 37n, 58n, 62n, 84n, 88n, 97n, 182n, 183n Harris, Tim  149n Harrison, John  83–87, 89 Harrison, Richard  188 Harrison, William  38 Harwich  129n, 183 Hasleton, Richard  10n, 18, 74 Hatfield, Anthony (Consul)  144, 145n, 146, 148n, 189n Havana  60 Hawkeridge, William (Captain)  88 Heard, J. Norman  60 Hebb, David Delison  10n, 13, 25n, 28n, 50n, 77n, 78n, 82n, 83n, 85n, 86, 87n, 92n, 93n Helliard, Robert  139 Helstein, A.  44n, 177, 181n

index Herbert, Arthur (Admiral)  48, 127, 128, 178, 181 Hershenzon, Daniel Bernardo  24n Hewes, Thomas  58 Heywood, Colin  12n, 22n, 49n, 66n, 160n, 162n, 177n, 185n, 188 Heywood, Thomas  29, 56n, 87 Hickman, John  137 al-Hīla, Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb  23n, 66n, 189n Hinderaker, Eric  28n Hitchens, Christopher  2n Hobson, Victoria  161n Hodges, William (Captain)  100 Holland  18, 58, 63, 104, 105, 116, 182 First war with  105 Second war with  116 Holmes, John  14n Hopkins, J. F. P.  4n, 93n, 137n, 152n Hoppit, Julian  65 Hotten, John Camden  33n Houston, Chloë  57n Howell, James  41 Huguenots  57n, 131 Hull  42, 59, 76, 146, 192 Hunter, F. Robert  164, 190 Iceland  77 Ilika, Aaron J.  29 Inchiquin, Lord  39, 113 India  37n, 59, 95, 151, 192 Indraghiri  58 Ipswich  42 Ireland  61, 62, 70, 77, 86, 89, 93, 132, 146, 155, 160, 186 Islam (Muslim, “Mahometan”)  1–7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17–19, 21, 29, 31, 32, 35, 38, 39n, 41, 43, 46, 47, 52, 56–58, 60–62, 65–70, 72, 73, 75–77, 79, 83, 84, 88, 95, 107, 108, 109, 111, 114, 115, 118–120, 127, 128, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 143–145, 147, 152–156, 160–166, 181, 190–194 Isle of Wight  70, 181–183 Ismā’īl, Muly/Mulay  4, 5, 11, 40, 41n, 67, 128, 130, 132, 134–140, 142–145, 147, 150, 151, 190, 193 Istanbul  18, 23, 74, 79, 90, 131, 172, 175, 177 Ja’far, Rayyes  61 Jamaica  109, 176

329

index James I (King of Great Britain)  52, 56, 61, 75–81, 181–183 James II (King of Great Britain)  57n, 131, 181, 190 Jamestown  52 Jamieson, Alan G.  2n, 13n, 123n Janet, Lalla  41, 76n Japan  91 Jefferson, Thomas  2n, 60 Jews  4–6, 11n, 19, 50, 101, 121, 123, 128, 135, 142, 156, 163n, 170, 194 Jones, Inigo  29, 30n Jones, Jezreel  137, 138, 139, 143 Jones, Richard  87 Joppa  68 Josselin, Ralph  31 Jumayyil, Nāṣir  6n Kaiser, Wolfgang  9n, 10n, 19, 22n, 92n al-Kamoun, Mulay Aḥmad  7n Kaufman, Helen Andrews  67, 68n Keeble, N. H.  27n Keene, Robert  144 Kent  140 Kerridge, Thomas  90 al-Khadr Ghaylān  115 al-Kharazī, Badī’a  7n Kidd, William  68 King, Christian  185 Kirke, Percy (Captain)  128 Klepp, Susan E.  28n Knight, Francis  24, 42, 87 Knolles, Richard  76, 79n, 85n Knox, Robert  58 Kizilov, Mikhail  11n Lacoste, L.  172n Lagos  134 Lancaster, James  90 Lane-Poole, Stanley  173n Laqruié, Claude  16n, 39n, 40n, 42n, 312n Latham, Robert  31n, 69n, 114n, 117n, 173n Laud, William (Archbishop of Canterbury)  88, 155 Lee, Adam  58 Le Fevre, Peter  178n Le Guin, Charles A.  37n León, María Luisa Sánches  16 Leslie, James  128

Levant Company  52, 64n, 73n, 74, 96, 98n, 100, 166 Lewis, Thomas  44 Libya  9, 13, 70, 168, 170 see also: Tripoli Lille, John  46 Lime (Lyme)  42, 146 Limecon  61 Lisbon  120, 123, 146, 184 Liverpool  42 Livorno  14, 15, 19, 34, 52, 54, 63, 78, 105, 123n, 149, 162 Locke, John  31, 129 Loddington, Nathaniel (Consul)  49, 50n, 121, 171, 172 London  9, 14, 16, 20, 21, 29, 32, 42, 44, 45, 48, 60, 61, 66, 67, 69, 73, 75, 76, 84, 86, 88–90, 93, 99, 103, 104, 107, 109, 114, 117, 121–123, 126–128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135n, 136, 138–144, 146, 147, 148n, 149n, 151, 153, 156–158, 166, 167, 172, 174, 175n, 176, 177, 184, 192, 194 Londonderry  132 Longino, Michèle  23n Longland, Charles  14 Lord Clarendon/Edward Hyde  31 Louis XIII (King of France)  93, 101 Louis XIV, (King of France)  16, 125n, 179, 180 Loupas, Bernard  16n Low  42 Lucas, Haggi Homar  147 Luke, John  67n, 68 Luke, Sam  68 Lunsford, Virginia West  62 Maʿmūra  61, 70 Mabie, Joshua  49n Macfarlane, Alan  31n MacLean, Gerald  52n, 61n, 62n, 77n Madagascar  56, 57, 68n, 151 Maddock, John  87 Majid, Anouar  2n Majorca  17, 60n, 95, 174 Makenye, Alexander (Captain)  124 al-Malik, Mulay ‘Abd  85, 86 Mallindia  91 Malta  4, 5n, 18, 19n, 20n, 38n, 39, 65n, 66n, 79, 85, 88n, 104, 123, 168, 193 Mandouze, André  6n, 24n

330 Mansell, Robert  78, 79n, 157 al-Mansūr, Mulay Aḥmad  73, 74 Manwaring, G. E.  122n Manwaring, Henry  61n Marlowe, Christopher  74 Marotti, Arthur F.  57n Marrakesh  39, 86, 158 Marsden, R. G.  63n, 77n, 86n, 91n, 101n Marseilles  21, 93, 116, 123, 162 Marsh, Elizabeth  41, 152, 195 Martin, Samuel  (Consul)  4n, 25, 45, 48, 122, 124, 154n, 176, 177 Mason, Robert (Doctor)  66n Massinger, Philip  29 Masters, Betty  73 Matar, Nabil  10n, 18n, 29n, 52n, 67n, 98n Mather, Cotton  3, 60, 134 Mather, Eunice  60 Mathew, David  60n Matthews, William  31, 69n, 114n, 117n, 173n Mauritius  90 Maydman, William  87 Mayence  132 Maziane, Leïla  22n, 141n, 147n, 162n McDonald, Kevin P.  57n Mecca  39n, 68n, 137, 170 Mediterranean Sea  1, 7–9, 19, 20, 22n, 23n, 25, 37, 40n, 43, 44, 52, 56, 58, 61, 65, 67, 70, 71, 76, 77, 81, 82, 84–86, 90, 91, 96, 97, 105–107, 116, 120n, 134, 158, 160–162, 166, 174n, 175n, 182 Meggitt, Justin  34, 39n, 129 Mehdia  8, 61 Mehmed III (Sultan)  73 Meknes  11, 12, 18, 37, 71, 128, 130, 138, 143- 145, 158, 193; Machanes 130, 140, 141; Markiness 125; Mequinez (“Maaquinez”) 41n, 144, 145 Melilla  8, 64, 147, 193 Mellyn, William  78 Mendes Drumond Braga, Isabel M.R.  22n, 24n Mesnage, J. (Father)  4, 23n, 33n Meunier, Dominique  190n Michelborne, Edward  90 Milbanke, Mark (Captain)  152, 153 Milbrook  42 Milton, John  129

index Minehead  84, 89 Minorca  142, 152, 156, 161 Moll, Herman  188 Molloy, Charles  28, 32 Molucco (islands)  91 Montagu, Lady  Mary Wortley  20 Montgomery, Thomas  28n Mootham, (Captain)  31 Moraley, William  28 Morea  5 Morgan, Edmund S.  16n, 56 Morgan, Henry “Colonel”  3 Morgan, Joseph  9, 74n, 79n, 149, 192–194 Morgan, Patrick  139n Morocco  1, 4, 5, 13, 19n, 20, 22n, 24, 28, 29, 34n, 41, 42, 46n, 50n, 56n, 61, 70, 73, 74, 77, 85–89, 92, 100, 109, 128, 134, 135, 137–139, 141–143, 145, 147–151, 162, 163n, 189, 190, 192 Morrice, Roger  31, 149n, 182, 183n Morse, Humphrey  58 Morsy, Magali  37n, 147n Morton, Thomas  134 Moulfra, Hugh  156 Moureau, François  66 Muḥammad ibn ‘Abdallah, Sidi  4, 7, 145, 151–153, 192 Muller, Andrews  44 Munday, Anthony  53 Murad III (Sultan)  73 Murad IV (Sultan)  85 Muscovy Company  71 Nadal, Gonçal Lopez  1n, 16n, 40n, 163n Naples  123 Narbrough, John (Admiral)  48, 122, 123, 166–170, 189 al-Nāṣirī, Aḥmad ibn Khālid  171n Nassis/al-Naqsīs, Samuel  140 Netherlands 62n, 63n, 70 see Holland Nevell, John  47 Neville-Sington, Pamela  57 Newcastle  42 New England  15, 43, 53, 57, 59, 60, 73, 89, 110, 146, 185n Newfoundland  43, 52, 53, 56, 130n, 146, 181 New Model Army  111 New York  43, 68, 133 Nine Years War  51, 132, 139, 184

331

index North Africa  1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 20, 27, 28, 32–34, 38, 41, 48, 50, 52, 53, 56, 59, 65, 66, 70, 71, 76, 102, 103, 113, 116, 124, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 149, 150, 152–158, 160, 162, 164, 165, 169, 172, 178, 190–194 North America  3, 28, 33, 50, 52, 53, 56, 59, 70, 89, 103, 134, 155, 169 Nottingham, David Finch, 2nd Earl of (Secretary of State)  171, 186 Nova Scotia  56 Ockley, Simon  39, 142, 193 Ogborn, Miles  13 Okeley, William  25, 50 Omri, Mohamed-Salah  23n, 29n, 49n, 66n, 188n Oran  8, 14, 62, 85n, 193 Orlando, Florida  2 Osman II (Sultan)  79 Östlund, Joachim  27n Ottomans/ Turks  1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11n, 14, 18n, 23n, 31, 38, 41, 42, 56, 57n, 61, 63, 65–69, 71–73, 75–77, 79–81, 83, 85, 86, 88–90, 92, 95–99, 103, 106–110, 113, 114, 117, 118, 120–122, 124, 132, 168, 174, 179, 180, 183, 192, 194 Oxenden, Christopher  58 Oxford  99, 116 Paddon, George (Captain)  5, 50n, 140n, 142, 143 Painter, Will.  137 Palestine  7 Pallache, David  101 Pallache, Samuel  101 Panzac, Daniel  161, 162, 165n, 166n, 175n, 179n Paris  93, 180, 184, 190 Parker, Hyde (Captain)  152, 156 Parker, Kenneth  42 Parker, Samuel  129 Paul, Vincent de  39 Penn, Giles  88 Pennell, C. R.  1, 6, 170n Penzance  42, 97 Pepys, Samuel  25, 31, 69n, 114, 117, 130, 166, 167, 173, 178 Perecop (isthmus of)  132 Persia  66n, 91, 160 Petticrew, William  4, 151n

Phelps, Thomas  130, 182n Phillips, William D., Jr.  16n Picherot, Émilie  22n Pichtin, Ali  173n Pike, Ruth  67n Pile, John  47 Pincus, Steven  116n Pindar, Paul  95 Pitts, Joseph  10, 39n, 59n, 124, 137 Playfair, R. L.  3, 86n, 97n, 120n, 164n, 179n, 184n Plymouth  42, 47, 66, 76, 82, 83, 126, 146, 177, 181, 182 Plymouth (New England)  56 Pocock, Thomas  47, 144 Poland  99 Pontchartrain (French Secretary of State)  133 Poole  42 Portsmouth  19, 37, 42n, 165, 177, 192 Portugal  5, 65, 123, 146, 160, 173, 181 Pringle, Denys  17n, 25n, 26 Quail, Richard (Captain)  90 Quinn, David B.  52n, 73n Qur’ān  108, 129 al-Raḥmān, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd  174 Rainsborough, William (Captain)  93 Rajapore  58 Raleigh, Walter  56, 57n Ravenscroft, John  45 Rawlins, John  10, 49, 81, 91 Red Sea  13, 68n, 90, 91 Rhine  132 Richard, Jean  6n Richelieu, Cardinal  101 Richter, Daniel K.  15n Ritchie, Robert C.  68n, 135n Robinson, Henry  98, 99 Roe, Thomas  23, 25, 77, 79–82, 90, 95, 96 Rogers, John  14n Rogers, P. G.  5n, 136n, 142n, 148n, 150–153n Rollins, Hyder Edward  38n Rousseau, Alphonse  174n Rowlandson, Mary  41, 50, 57, 59 Rowly, Francis  35

332 Rubin, Alfred P.  1n Russell, John (Ambassador)  37n, 185 Rycaut, Philip  48, 49n, 179 Rye  42 Ryerson, Kay  11n Sadok, Boubaker  162n Safi  87, 158 Said, Edward  2 Saker, Christopher  58 Salé  1, 15, 22n, 34, 38, 61, 62, 63n, 65, 71, 82–86, 88, 89, 92–94, 102, 103n, 107, 114, 118, 120, 121, 122n, 128, 133, 135, 141, 142, 144, 146n, 147, 154, 158, 160–163, 165, 176, 188n; Sally 38, 81, 105, 117, 118, 125, 144n, 160; Salee 5; Salley 46 Salisbury  77, 116 Salitskiy, Igor  22n Saltash  42 al-Samarrai, A.  65n al-Sammār, Muḥammad  61n, 83n Sancroft, William (Archbishop of Canterbury)  114, 126 Sandwich  42 Sandys, George  89 al-Sarrāj, al-Wazīr  23, 66n, 189n Sarty, Ahmad Ben  132 Sauzet, Robert  40n Sayre, Gordon M.  2, 60n Schen, Claire S.  39n Schiltberger, Johannes  57n Scotland  44, 64, 93, 123, 132, 186 Scott, Jonathan  67n, 103n, 111 Seborne (Sherbrone)  42 Selleck, Jo.  114 Sellijman, Seltjman  62 Serjeant, R. B.  68n Shadwell  69 Shakespeare, William  29, 56 Sharab, Aḥmad Bū  16n Sherlock, William  138 Ships Ann  119, 121 The Bey  110 Biddiford  144 Bilbao Mercht  118 The Brother  119 The Charity  118 Charles  101

index Christ  119 Delight  86 Deptford  119 Dolphin  118 Elizabeth of Dartmouth  119 Experiment  144 Francis of Plymouth  119 George  119 Hanna  118 Hasan Rice  110 Hopewell of London  119 James of London  119 Jane and Mary  119 Larke  92n Litchfiled  152 Lydia  152 Mary  94, 119 Mary and Anne  121 Nich. Of Galloway  119 Nich. Of London  119 Patience  92n Peter  86 Rose Garden  92n Ruth  118 Somerset  152 Susanna and Judith  121 Talbot  101 Toby  74 Tunis merchant  118 Worchester  104 Shirley, Don Anthony  76 Shirley, Thomas  76 Shovell, Cloudsley  127, 189 Shrewsbury, Lord (Secretary of State)  171 Sidney, Philip  74 Sidon  68 Simpson, Percy  29n Sismondi, Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde  179 Slotkin, Richard  15 Smith, Billy Gordon  28n Smith, John  57 Smith, Thomas  120, 121 Smyrna  64, 134, 165, 166n Snader, Joe  147n, 195n Sollicoffre, John Leonard  148 Solliveset, John  151 Sosa, Antonio de  23, 35n Southall, Seth  125

333

index Southhampton  42 Spain  16n, 28, 61, 63, 65, 73, 75, 76, 78, 84–87, 95, 96, 101, 107, 111, 130, 139, 140, 150, 152, 154, 156, 160, 173, 185, 193 Spenser, Edmund  74 Spierling, Karen E.  40n Spithead  182 Spragg(e), Edward  67, 119n, 122, 124, 176, 188 Spratt, Devereux  39n, 50 Spreen, John  37 St. Augustine (Florida)  60 St. Bartholomew Ejection, 1662  114 St. John de Acres  68 St. Kitts  56 St. Laurence  91 Stackhouse, Thomas  69n Staden, Hans  57n Stapers, Richard  77 Starr, G. A.  195n Stewart, Charles  163n Stocker, John  143 Stoeckel, Rudolph  29n Stubbe, Henry  32, 63 Sumatra  90, 160 Sumner, Charles  99n, 105n, 179n Surat factory  90 Swanley, Richard  58 Swansee  42 Sweeney, Kevin  59n Syria  7

Thomson, Thomas (Consul)  49 Thurloe, John  105, 106n, 111n Tinniswood, Adrian  19n, 61n al-Tlimsānī, al-Jīlānī  174n Tolbert, Jane  23n Tongas, Gérard  23n Tooker, Samuel  48 Tracy, James  65 Bandello, Matteo  72 Treaty of Ryswick  135 Trinity House  84, 88, 94, 95, 97 Tripoli  6n, 7, 8, 14, 15, 18, 24, 37, 45n, 46n, 48, 50, 51, 60, 63, 64, 68, 73n, 74, 102–105, 114, 122–124, 131, 134, 142, 161, 162, 164–172, 176, 188, 189, 191 Troughton, Thomas  8, 36, 42, 49n, 150, 151 Tulidanu, Hayyim (Ambassador)  4 Tunis/Tunisia  4, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17n, 20, 22–24, 26, 35n, 40n, 45, 46n, 49, 61, 63, 64, 76, 77, 79–82, 85, 88, 93–95, 100, 102, 103, 105, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116–119, 122, 124, 131, 132, 134, 154, 157, 162, 164, 171, 187, 189, 191, 193 Turkey Company (East Levant)  64, 72, 94 Turner Strong, Pauline  3 Tyndall, Robert  58

al-Tamjrūti, Ali ibn Muḥammad  74 Tangier  2, 5, 7, 8, 15, 17–19, 25, 27, 31, 34n, 38n, 44n, 60, 67, 68, 70, 115, 117, 121, 123n, 124, 128, 130, 137–139, 141, 147, 150, 158, 160, 163, 165, 168, 190, 191, 193 Tanner, J. R.  7n, 166n Taylor, Stephen  183n Temimi, Abdeljelil  49n, 188n, 189n Temple, William  165 Teonge, Henry  122, 168 Tetuan  24, 88, 109, 110, 135, 136, 140, 142, 144, 145n, 147, 158, 191 Thames  77, 94, 106, 116, 129n Thomas, J. M. Lloyd  27n Thomas, John  14n Thomson, Ann  164 Thomson, Janice E.  2

Vaca, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de  57 Valensi, Lucette  165 Valletta  15, 19, 52, 111 Van Koningsveld, P. S.  65n Vatin, N.  13n Vaughan, Alden T.  15n Vega, Lope de  28 Venice  40n, 52, 55, 65, 76 Verney, Francis  61n Vienna  130, 180 Vincent, Bernard  22n Virginia  2n, 16n, 33n, 40, 52, 56, 57, 97, 130 Virginia Company  52, 53 Virgil  130 Vitkus, Daniel J.  10n, 13n, 25n, 28n, 49n, 50n, 74n, 76n, 81n, 88n, 96n, 99n, 130n, 182n

Underhill, Josias  58 United Provinces, The  62, 125n, 178n see Holland United States of America, The captives of  60

334 Villiers, George (1st Duke of Buckingham)  81 Voigt, Lisa  42n Wadsworth, James  14 Wales  32, 43, 70, 93, 113, 146, 165 al-Walīd ibn Zaydān, Mulay  4, 85, 89 Waller, Edmund  94n, 98, 99n, 116 Waller, Robert  94 Ward, John  61, 76 Ware, John  38 Warner, Thomas  56 Warom  42 Warren, Thomas  67, 128, 137, 160n Watchet  42 Watkins, John  11n Weale, John  107 Weiss, Gillian  21n, 22, 24, 92n, 93n, 101n, 158, 191 West Indies  3, 151, 193 Westminster  117, 154, 183 Wettinger, Godfrey  5n, 38n, 39n, 66n Weymouth  42, 146 Whitehall  27, 33, 45, 121n, 233n, 148, 154, 183 Whitehead, John  135, 137 Wiegers, G. A.  65n, 101n

index William III (King of Great Britain)  17, 44, 49, 63, 125n, 132–137, 140, 156, 185, 186; William 132 Williams, John  59 Williams, Neville  61 Williamson, Joseph  49, 176 Wilson, Diana de Armas  23n, 35n Winchelsea, Heneage Finch (Earl of)  163, 164, 173 Windus, John  145–147 Wolf, J. B.  23 Wood, Alfred C.  64n Wood, Benjamin  90 Woodmason, Joshua  38 Worcester  42 Wye, Edward  87 Yahall (Youghal)  42 Yarmouth  42 Yermolenko, Galina I.  11n Yoemans, George  58 Yorkshire  140 Young, Gilbert  120 al-Zāhirī, Malīka  20n Zoboli, Giacomo  39n