An Elizabethan: Sir Horatio Palavicino 9780198212560, 0198212569

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AN ELIZABETHAN: SIR HORATIO PALAVICINO

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4 GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI CAPE TOWN IBADAN

Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University

Miniature traditionally called SIR HORATIO PALAVICINO

AN ELIZABETHAN: SIR HORATIO PALAVICINO

LAWRENCE STONE Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1956

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

ONULP

TO

J. c. s.

Noster, non nostras, tres vicit Horatius hostes, Mundi, carnisque & daemonis insidias. Sic quoque germanos Romanus Horatius hostes, Tres olim vicit: Forte fuit proavus Epitaph upon Sir Horatio Palavicino by ‘R. S.\ from Album seu Nigrum Amicorum, 1600

An Englishe man Italianate Becomes a divell incarnate But an Italian Anglyfide Becomes a Saint Angelifide Epitaph upon Sir Horatio Palavicino by Edmund Mason, from An Italians dead bodie Stucke with Englishe Flowers, Lambeth Palace Library, 7 M. 48

P

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

reliminary investigation into the life of Sir Horatio Palavicino was begun during the hot June days of 1940, when the Germans were advancing to

the Channel. For the next five years other interests pre/ eluded all but the most fitful attempts to collect more material. The bulk of the work upon original manuscripts was therefore not begun till 1946-7, when the award of the Bryce Research Studentship at Oxford made nearly full/time research possible. I am also indebted to the Board of the Faculty of Modern His/ tory at Oxford for a small research grant in 1950 for covering expenses involved in the checking of references and quotas tions. My work has been greatly facilitated by the courtesy and helpfulness of the staff at the Public Record Office, the British Museum Manuscript Reading Room, the Bodleian Library, the City of London Record Office, and the Lam/ beth Palace Library. For access to the Talbot MSS. in the College of Arms, I am indebted to Mr. A. R. Wagner, Richmond Herald, while thanks to the kindness of the Marquis of Salisbury I have been able to consult the manu/ scripts at Hatfield House. ProfessorWernham was so good as to put his transcripts for the next volume of the Calendar of State Papers Foreign at my disposal, and Mr. J. H. Hurst/ field gave me useful advice and assistance in finding my way about the manuscripts of the Court of Wards. Those who answered queries or gave me help in references include Carlo Castello of Genoa, Professor A. P. D’Entreves, F. G. Em/ mison, Professor H. J. Habakkuk, P. King, J. V. Lyle, Miss Lorna MacEchern, Miss Helen Miller, Professor J. E. Neale, Mrs. M. Prestwich, T. F. Reddaway, Professor R. H. Tawney, and H. R. Trevor/Roper. I am indebted to His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch for permission to reproduce

viii

Acknowledgements

the miniature in his collection, and to the Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office for permission to reproduce a page of one of Palavicino’s letters. It is customary to conclude a list of acknowledgements by stating that without the assistance and advice of one’s wife the book could not have been written. In this case it also happens to be true.

CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

x

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

xi

INTRODUCTION 1. THE MAN

xiii !

2. THE MONOPOLIST

4x

3. THE WAR FINANCIER

65

4. THE AMBASSADOR

98

5. THE SPECULATOR

182

6. THE SECRET AGENT

231

7. THE LANDED GENTLEMAN

267

8. THE HEIRS

289

Appendix

I. The European Money Market in 1587

321

Appendix

II. Walsingham’s Sources of Intelligence, c. 1580-90

323

Appendix

III. Sir Robert Cecil’s Intelligence Service in 1598

325

GENEALOGICAL TREE

331

INDEX

333

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Miniature traditionally called Sir Horatio Palavicino, from the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch

frontispiece

Last page of a holograph letter by Sir Horatio Palavicino to Queen Elizabeth, 26 February 1591 (P.R.O., S.P. Germany, States, 6, f. 150V)

page 170

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE i. All dates are old style, but the year is taken to begin on i January. 2j" References to State Papers Foreign in the Public Record Office cannot be uniform owing to changes in policy by the editors of the Calendars. (a)

Calendar references: up to 1584 each document in the Calendars is num¬ bered consecutively, and is referred to by this number; after 1584 only page references are given in the Calendars.

(b) Manuscript references: at dates varying according to each series, the compilers of the Calendars changed from references to document numbers to references to folio numbers. Of the series used in this book, S.P. Holland and S.P. Flanders alter on 1 April 1587, S.P. Germany, States, on 1 July 1588, and S.P. France on 1 January 1589. Thus in the Calendar for the last half of 1588 references are sometimes to document numbers and sometimes to folio numbers. The folio numbers used for references subsequent to the calendared pordons correspond to those in the typescript indices by Mr. J. B. Hinds, available in the P.R.O. Reading-Room. As calendaring proceeds these references may well become out of date, but no alternative is at present available. 3. References to manuscripts from the Cotton and Lansdowne collections in the British Museum are given to the document numbers as listed in the catalogues. This provides immediate reference to the document required, while enabling scholars to identify the document in the catalogues. Reference to the new pencilled folio numbers makes it utterly impossible to discover what document is referred to, other than by going to the British Museum and ordering out the manuscript volume in quesuon. Even the catalogues in the Museum itself have not yet been marked to facilitate cross-checking. Use of the new pencilled folio numbers without any prospect of new catalogues would thus seem to be a positive disservice to scholar¬ ship. 4. No manuscript references are given in the earlier volumes of H.M.C. Salis¬ bury MSS., while a few of those in later volumes are wrong. The correct references can only be discovered by looking in the calendars kept in the Muniment Room at Hatfield House itself. References given for original manuscripts at Hatfield may therefore bear no relation to those in the H.M.C. Calendars. 5. The following common abbreviations are used in the footnotes: Bodl.: Bodleian Library, Oxford. B.M., Lansd., Hark, Add. MSS.: British Museum, Lansdowne, Harleian, Additional Manuscripts.

i

Bibliographical Note

Cal. S.P. Dom., For., Span., Ven.: Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Foreign, Spanish, Venetian. H. M.C. Salis. MSS.: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury Manu^ scripts. I. P.M.: Inquisitio Post Mortem. P.C.C.: Somerset House, Prerogative Court of Canterbury. P.R.O.: Public Record Office. V.C.H.: Victoria County History.

B

INTRODUCTION iography

forms a very clumsy mould into which to

force the recalcitrant material of a developed historical k argument. It compels a personal and subjective view-' point, and imposes a semblance of chronological

development, neither of which is a particularly satisfactory method for tackling a major problem. On the other hand it makes a very convenient peg upon which to hang illustra^ tions to a theme or set of themes, or a centre around which to construct a picture from which to judge the moral and intel/ lectual atmosphere and political interests that dominate a given society. And it is largely as such a peg that this biography is intended. It would be imprudent to claim that Sir Horatio Pala^ vicino1 was an Elizabethan of such importance as to deserve in his own right a fulhlength biographical study. Owing to the nature of the evidence that has survived, it is his failures rather than his successes which can most easily be traced, and consequently today his name is virtually unknown to all save the narrowest of sixteentlvcentury specialists. Though to his contemporaries he was a figure of some prominence, familiar throughout that exclusive society that formed the English ruling class, his career remains more significant than impor/ tant. Palavicino’s greatest virtue from the point of view of the biographer is his extraordinary ubiquity. An examination of his career leads into strange and sometimes untrodden paths of high finance and government borrowing, big business and world monopoly, diplomacy and espionage, land manage^ ment and social transformations, policy/making and party politics at home and abroad. 1 Throughout this book the spelling with one not two Vs has been adopted for Horatio Palavicino, since this was the way in which he spelt his name. The Italian branch is normally spelt with two.

xiv

Introduction

As reflected in Palavicino’s activities, the age of Elizabeth appears deprived of much of that glamour with which it is popularly endowed. Beneath the bluff and braggadocio of a violent and energetic period there is visible a background of hard-headed and often sordid calculation by those who wielded power. To some it may seem that the remarkable achievements of the age become more intelligible in the light of such a background and such calculations, that they should be regarded as the results of luck, greed, and a relentless struggle for power. There is no purpose to be achieved by the historian in deliberately seeking the sordid and discreditable and neglecting the more generous and respectable impulses that together compose the pattern of human behaviour. But politicians are concerned with the realities of power, and an Elizabethan was, almost by definition, a Machiavellian in his political methods. Some light may thus be thrown upon political motivation by the examination of the career of one who tended to move in the shadows of financial and diplo¬ matic intrigue. The reconstruction of the biography of a man who was primarily a business magnate might at first sight seem impos¬ sible in view of the total disappearance of the family archives, from which only three stray documents have survived. That so much can in fact be recovered is due partly to the condi¬ tions of the times. The Elizabethan age belongs to an era of State control of economic affairs, which began in earnest in the 1530’s and was largely swept away in the debacle of 1640-1. Consequently business magnates not only found that their commercial or financial activities were closely con¬ trolled and scrutinized by government officials, but that their most profitable field of speculation lay in exploiting the weaknesses of a state-planned economy. From the point of view of the historian, there accrued from this situation the inestimable advantage that in the administrative archives of

Introduction

XV

the bureaucracy can be discovered a wealth of detail concern/ ing the activities of the individual man of business. The purposes of this governmental interference in eco/ nomic life were not dissimilar to those with which we are familiar today. There was the ever/present need to husband resources and develop national productivity in case of war, for war was the norm of sixteenth/century life and its shadow tended to dominate the scene and override all other considera/ tions. There was a genuine sense of social justice, a feeling that it was the duty of the state to protect the economically weak, that was the corollary of a social ethos that was snob/ bish, hierarchical, and rigid in the extreme. To buttress this theoretical approach, there was a very genuine fear of the poor. No one forgot the events of 1549, when the peasantry rose in revolt and the gentry fled before them. Consequently strenuous efforts were made to provide employment, to fix maximum prices for essential commodities, and to mitigate the rigours of destitution by a nation/wide system of poor relief. Lastly, inspired by a healthy fear of an adverse balance of payments involving a loss of bullion, efforts were made to stimulate exports and deter superfluous imports. The machinery by which such a policy was implemented was strikingly different from that of today. Lacking the finan/ cial resources or the educational media to produce an honest and efficient bureaucracy, the Government was forced back upon the employment of less reliable instruments. Administration of the country/side was left in the hands of unpaid amateurs who served from a sense of social obligation, for the pleasures derived from the exercise of power, and for the satisfaction of local prestige. Industrial and commercial controls were perforce exercised by means of ‘chosen instruments’, com/ panies and syndicates which were entrusted with powers of regulation in return for the exercise of monopoly. Such methods were inherently open to abuse. Moreover first the

Introduction

xvi

increasing pressure of war finance, and later the insatiable demands of a prodigal monarch, turned these legitimate planning devices into pure fiscal expedients; the abuses be' came open and flagrant. And when the political scene became so permeated with corruption that these economic powers were virtually put up for auction, it became clear that much of this machinery of control would have to be swept away. If the biography of Palavicino can do something to illuminate this relationship between government finance, political cor' ruption, and monopoly control of commerce and industry at the critical period between 1580 and 1600 when the ends of social planning were being displaced by those of financial profit, it will have served a useful purpose in the wider field of historiography. A further marked feature of the early seventeenth century was the growing hostility of the common lawyers to the Tudor network of conciliar courts, Star Chamber, High Commis' sion and Requests, and an equally bitter enmity towards the ancient Court of Chancery. And apart from this professional quarrel pursued in courts and Commons, there was a grow' ing body of opinion which held that the whole legal system, Common Law, Equity and Conciliar alike, was in drastic need of overhaul. In 1626 a shrewd commentator summed up the general feeling of the age: ‘as I have ever had (though but in speculation) no great goode opinion of our law, so now by practise and experience of these dilatorie courses I am the more confirmed to thincke yt one of the greatest greevances of our common wealth: and as thinges are caried yt is become rather a protection for cousening and bad debters, then any releif for the honest subject’.1 These deficiencies in the legal system were the subject of prolonged investigation by com' mittee after committee throughout the period 1642-60, though nothing whatever emerged, thanks in part to skilful obstruc' 1 N. E. McClure,

Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), ii, p. 564.

Introduction

xvii

tion by the lawyers. The tracking of Palavicino’s activities through the swamps and thickets of litigation in which he always moved provides a concrete illustration of the defects which provoked this profound dissatisfaction with the law, that characterizes the first half of the seventeenth century. It is now something of a commonplace that the collapse of the ancien regime in 1640 was an event that must be related to a shift in the social balance, the transfer of a section of the national income away from the Crown, some of the Peerage, and the Episcopacy to the middle classes of gentry, officials, and lawyers that took place in the preceding century. The money-lending

and

estate-jobbing

career

of Palavicino

throws some little light upon this process as it developed in the later years of Elizabeth. Noblemen and spendthrift gentry may be seen running into debt and mortgaging their estates, which promptly pass into the hands of the new class, of which Palavicino is a not undistinguished representative. On the other hand the converse of this process of social mobility is all too often lost sight of, and here the fortunes of Pala¬ vicino ’s children provide an instructive example. The chil¬ dren of the nouveaux riches all too often adopted the prodigal habits of those whom their fathers had exploited, and sank down again without a trace in two generations. For dissipa¬ tion and extravagance were not vices confined to peers and courtiers, even if only in these circles were they sufficiently prevalent to affect the general position of the class. The career of Palavicino also serves to shed light upon some of the narrower personal and political problems of the Eliza¬ bethan age. Ample evidence is provided of the intelligence, the industry, the caution, the cunning, and the essential integrity of Lord Burghley, at any rate in his prime before senility set in in the late 1580’s. It is possible to observe the deterioration of the standards of political life in the 90’s under the aegis of his son Robert Cecil, his secretaries Hicks and

xviii

Introduction

Maynard, and the Howard clan. Confirmation is found of the contradictory nature of the queen, her dominant and domineering personality contrasting with her growing in/ ability to make up her mind, her persistent tendency to sacrifice long/term objectives for short/term gains. Examina/ tion in detail of two or three important episodes of her foreign policy seems to show beyond all possibility of doubt that such success as that policy achieved owed as much to good luck as to good management. The hypothesis of a shrewd and calculating politician who always knew precisely what she was about, is one for which there is much support in a study of domestic politics up to 1600. But the detailed story of foreign relations seems to show a helpless irresolution in the face of events, an obstinate refusal to seize the main chance. There is no such creature as a typical Elizabethan, nor even a typical Elizabethan merchant financier. Not by the wildest stretch of the imagination can Palavicino be forced into such a category. The normal Elizabethan merchant was English; Palavicino was Italian. He was insular; Palavicino was cosmopolitan in outlook. He was an alderman of the City of London and a member of one of the City companies; Pala/ vicino was neither. Much of his capital was tied up in the great trading companies of the age, Merchant Adventurers, Eastland, Muscovy, Levant, or East India; Palavicino made no such investments. He was of humble birth, ill at ease in the snobbish atmosphere of the court; Palavicino sprang from an ancient Italian family and was from an early age an attendant at court, an associate of peers and princes. Nevertheless the career of Palavicino is not unique. The last but one of a long line of Italian financiers who for 400 years had served the English crown, his activities, his successes, and even his failures were only possible in the Elizabethan age. A generation before, government control of economic life was still too immature to have provided him with his

Introduction

XIX

opportunities. A generation later the disintegration of public morality and the extension of monopolistic enterprise would have given his remarkable talents even wider play. He would undoubtedly have made a far greater fortune in the reign of James than that which he actually contrived to amass. Profit' ing by the loosening of the higher ranges of the social frame' work, who knows, he might even have entered the ranks of the English peerage. Thus both the limitations and the successes of his career are the product of the times in which he lived. If not typical, his life is nevertheless highly sympto' matic of the age of Elizabeth.

T

i. The Man

Pallavicino family first emerged in the early Middle Ages as owners of a great feudal enclave on the Po, the Stato Pallavicino.1 2 3 As early as the twelfth century a cadet branch had settled in Genoa, and by the fifteenth it had entered the ranks of the merchant aristocracy of the city, and along with the families of Spinola, Grimaldi, Lomellino, Giustiniano, and Doria controlled the political destinies of the State. The family spread out in a com/ plex network of marriage alliances, and uncles and nephews were in high office at Genoa throughout the whole sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Three Pallavicino brothers were members of this aristocracy in the early sixteenth century, and all became senators. Of these, the most prominent was Tobias, the second son, who played a not unimportant part in Genoese diplomacy, being sent by the State of Genoa to greet Francis II in 1559s and being well acquainted with the great Cardinal Granvelle some years later.4 He was, moreover, a leading patron of the arts, the builder of no fewer than four great palaces, which he filled with pictures and works of art. One of these, the Villa delle Peschiere at Genoa, was designed by Galeazzo Alessi and remains to this day as one of the most striking Renaissance buildings in the city.5 It is with Tobias’s he

1 In this chapter footnote references have been given only to those statements which are not more fully discussed and documented later on. 2 Rodrigo Mendez Silva, ‘Memorial de la ilustre y antigua familia Palavicina’ (Bodl., Arch. 2, 119, Papeles varios ii); P. Litta, Celebri Famiglie Italiane (Milan, 1819-52), vi, tav. iii, vii, xii. 3 L. Romier, Le Royaume de Catherine de Medicis (Paris, 1922), i, p. 127. 4 E. Poullet, Correspondance du Cardinal de Granvelle (Brussels, 1878-96), iii, p. 399. 5 Enciclopedia Italiana, nth ‘Pallavicino’ and ‘Alessi’. 5763

B

2

The Man

second son Horatio, born some time in the 1540’s, that this book is concerned.1 2 . . There had been several previous contacts of the Pallavicin with England before Tobias’s business interests directed cer/ tain members to set up headquarters in London. Two of the family had been made freemen of London in the mid/four' teenth century, and nearly 200 years later, in the reign of Edward VI, the aristocratic branch had been drawn into English affairs, probably by the search for Italian mercenaries and allies to help in the war against France.” But this terrh torial aristocracy was, as has been explained, quite distinct from the merchant branch of the family settled in Genoa, and these contacts have no bearing upon Horatio Palavicino s subsequent associations with England. The first member of the Genoese branch to have dealings there was the banker Nicolo Pallavicino, who lived at the Spanish court and handled currency and commodity exchanges with Antwerp. The English Government used him for such transactions as early as 15 64,3 and in 1568 he was deeply involved in the Spanish cargo of bullion en route for the Netherlands that was impounded by Elizabeth. Nicolo s exact relationship with Tobias is uncertain, but there is a strong probability that it was a close one, and the former’s business contacts with the English court may have done something to introduce the family into England. At all events by 1576 Tobias s brother Alessandro is to be found well established in Lon' 1 The miniature in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch (frontispiece) bears on the back the inscription: ‘Ann. Dorn. 1584. Aetatis Suae 52 , which would indicate 1532 as the year of birth. The miniature is most probably of Palavicino, since it is unlikely that it would be falsely ascribed to so obscure a person, but such inscriptions on the back of sixteenth/century paintings are notoriously unreliable. The portrait is evidently of a much younger man, and in any case Horatio s mother was not born till 1522. 2 M. Beardwood, Alien Merchants in England, 3350-77 (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), p. 198; Cal. S.P. For. 1547-53, nos. 23, 114. 443J 1553~5^’ nos- 20> I54» 4673 Cal. S.P. For. 1564-65, nos. 31, 247, 812.

The Man

3

don1 and Horatio appears for the first time, as agent for the family at Antwerp and acquaintance of such conservative Catholic aristocrats as the Duke of Aershot.2 Of the first thirty/odd years of Horatio’s life before this date nothing whatsoever is known. The only clue is from the somewhat tainted source of a eulogistic latin epitaph by Theophilus Field, which declares \ . . Inferior ditavit eum Germania’,3 indicating that it was in the Netherlands that the foundations of his fortune were laid and that most of his early life seems to have been spent. There is the story, sedulously repeated from historian to historian and now enshrined in the Dictionary of National Biography, that he was papal tax collector in England under Queen Mary, and in 1559 abjured Popery and pocketed the money in his hands. There is, however, not a word of truth in this assertion, which arose from an imagina^ tive gloss by the eighteenth century upon the only piece of information about him which had survived—a scurrilous epitaph that was written upon his death.4 The poem, after halfa century’s circulation in manuscript, was finally printed in a collection entitled: ‘Recreations for ingenious Headpieces or a pleasant Grove for their Wits to walk in.’ The first four of the eight lines ran as follows: Here Lies Horatio Palavezene Who robbed the Pope to lend the Queen He was a thiefe. A thiefe ? Thou liest. For why’ He robb’d but Antichrist. The true explanation of the obscure references to Pope and Queen is to be found in an examination of the manner in 1 Returns of Aliens of London (ed. R. E. G. and E. F. Kirk), ii (Hug. Soc. Publ. x [1900], pt. ii), p. 201. Only two aliens were given a higher subsidy assessment than he. 2 M. Gachard, Correspondence de Philippe II sur les affaires des Pays'Bas (1861), iv, p. 223. 3 From Album seu Nigrum Amicorum (London, 1600). 4 H.Walpol e, Anecdotes of Painting (1862),!, p.186; Bodl., TannerMSS. 465, f. 62.

.

4

The Man

which he made his fortune and came to establish himself in England. The major business preoccupation of his father Tobias in the 1560’s and 70’s had been the handling of the great papal monopoly of alum, that involved leasing both the mines at Tolfa and the distribution rights in north-west Europe from the principal commercial centre at Antwerp. It is as head of the Antwerp branch of this international business that Horatio Palavicino first enters into recorded history, when in 1578 he carried out a deal which was to be the corner-stone of his career. He and his associates sold their huge stock of alum to the Dutch rebels against Spain, in re¬ turn for the granting of an import monopoly that would exclude the future farmers of the papal alum mines. The Dutch did not pay cash for these stocks, but bound themselves to repay the money within a few years. But since their credit was low and it was of the highest political importance for England to keep their revolt alive, it was Queen Elizabeth who actually underwrote the loan so far as the Pallavicini were concerned. The consequences of this deal were to throw Horatio Palavicino openly on to the side of England in the ensuing European struggle, to introduce him into court circles at London, and to link his financial position with the sol¬ vency of the English Crown. As it happened, Horatio could have chosen no more favourable moment in which to offer his services to the Eng¬ lish Government. For over a quarter of a century the great London merchant Sir Thomas Gresham had handled the complex ramifications of the Government s loan dealings, exchange juggling, and economic diplomacy. When he died in 1579 there was no other English merchant who could fill the void. London possessed men of wealth and ability, but none of the international stature and experience that was re¬ quired. Palavicino saw his chance, exploited it to the full, and in a few years had stepped into the responsible position of the

The Man

5

Government’s financial agent in its continental dealings. For twelve most crucial years from 1580 to 1592 he played a part in English foreign policy even more important than that played by Gresham in the previous thirty.With consummate skill he kept himself persona grata with both Walsingham and Burghley, though his real sympathies and personal affections undoubtedly lay with the latter. Used first to transfer credits to the Duke of Anjou and employed on minor intelligence work in France, in 1586 he was given a fulkscale diplomatic ap/ pointment, when he was sent as ambassador extraordinary to Germany, to raise an army among the Protestant princes with a view to creating a diversion in eastern France. Granted Letters of Denization in November 1585, he was knighted by the queen two years later,1 by which time he had already begun building up a landed estate in the country. After playing a prominent part in the Armada crisis of 1588, he again set out in 15 90-1 upon the complex task of enticing the German princes to contribute to save France from Philip II. Shortly afterwards he lost the favour of the queen, owing partly to her discovery of the huge profit that he had acquired from the 1578 loan, and partly to her displeasure at his handling of the embassy, and he found it prudent to retire to his country seat at Babraham in Cambridgeshire. From 1594 until his death he divided his time between London and Babraham, busy about the tasks of increasing his wealth by intelligent speculation and of investing the proceeds in land. At the same time he struck up a close friendship with Robert Cecil and was of very material help to the latter as the or¬ ganizer of an espionage system during the struggle with Essex for political supremacy. In the year 1600 Sir Horatio died, probably about sixty years of age, by now one of the richest

1 W. Page, Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalisation for Aliens in England (Hug. Soc. Publ. viii, 1893), p. 185. The knighting was witnessed by that inde/ fatigable sightseer, Philip Gawdy (H.M.C. Vllth Rep., p. 5196).

The Man

6

commoners in England and rumoured to be worth £100,000. Opinion was divided as to whither he had departed. Whereas Joseph Hall, Fellow of Emmanuel, assured the widow that he was ‘Resting by many a Saint and Angels side ,T the anonym mous author of the more popular epitaph argued that this was but a temporary lodging: Him death with besome swept from Babram Into the bosom of old Abram But then came Hercules with his club And struck him down to Belzebub. Such in brief is the public career of Horatio Palavicino, the various aspects of which will be examined in detail in subsequent chapters. But it is with the man himself, with his character and his opinions, that we are here concerned.

. Of the family at Genoa there is little enough to be gleaned. There were the parents, Tobias and Battina, daughter of Andrea Spinola; the three sons, Fabritio, Horatio, and Gian Andrea; four daughters; and the uncle Alessandro. All the family were involved in the business of the alum farm, Ales' sandro in London, Horatio at Antwerp, Fabritio at Rome and Tolfa, and old Tobias at the centre in Genoa. It was a wealthy, aristocratic family, with marriage connexions both with Lazzaro Grimaldi, the great Genoese banker whose sister had married Fabritio, with the Lomellini, and with the other great Genoese banking firm of Spinola. The importance of these'details is the proof they provide of the close family ties which bound the whole group of Genoese merchant oligarchs one to another, and to the essentially aristocratic though mercantile nature of these families. Horatio was born into a society for which there was no parallel in England. Here the pressure of social conventions 1 A. Davenport,

Collected Poems of Joseph Hall

(Liverpool, 1949), p- 104.

The Man

7

had always been so strong that a merchant and a gentleman were terms universally held to be mutually incompatible. In consequence the ambition of every commercial magnate was to retire from business, purchase land, and become absorbed into the class of landed gentry who set the tone to the whole society. In Italy the situation was altogether different, and it would be highly misleading to imagine that Horatio was brought up in an atmosphere of bourgeois mediocrity. Ah' though a merchant, Tobias was by heredity armigerous and by wealth and position a member of the refined and educated upper class. All his son’s letters and actions show him to have been a man of taste and breeding. This fact is of great importance, both in providing an explanation of Horatio’s extraordinarily successful career and in dispelling any illusion about a vulgar, pushful nouveau riche thrusting himself up into a higher stratum of society. Thus Queen Elizabeth—who was far from indifferent to the claims of birth and status— referred to Horatio in 1579, in an official letter to Cardinal Galli, as nohilis Genuensis. It was because of this semi/aristo/ cratic background that Horatio was able to step naturally and without strain into the society of princes, courtiers, and am/ bassadors, upon his intimate relations with whom he contrived to build his fortune. Alone of the great financiers of the age, with the exception of old Anton Fugger, he was the friend as well as the servant of the kings and magnates upon whose financial necessities he preyed. Another consequence of his inherited social position was the manner in which he spent the money he acquired. He avoided both the squalid VoL pone miserliness of his Cambridgeshire neighbour Thomas Sutton, and the vulgar ostentation of the London magnate Sir John Spencer. He enjoyed to the full all the luxuries that money could buy, but he never indulged in the cheap pleasure of showing off. Thus though frequently hated, he was never despised or ridiculed.

8

The Man It is the opinions of an individual upon public affairs that

are most readily accessible to the historian. Indeed it is by these and by his recorded actions that judgements upon his private character are most commonly assessed. Before prying deeper into personal characteristics, it would therefore be well to establish Horatio Palavicino’s views upon the great issues of his day. The evolution of his religious opinions can afford some grains of comfort to those who would like to see an intimate connexion between capitalist enterprise and religious radi/ calism. But although those opinions appear to have been largely at the mercy of his worldly interests, it would be false to leap to any specious conclusion of cynical indifference to religious matters. Indeed there is much evidence to show that Horatio, at the outset at least, was sincerely, even passionately, attached to his religious convictions, and that his conversion from Roman Catholicism to Anglican Protestantism was a process which may have begun with a bitter family quarrel with the Pope over the alum monopoly, involving the arrest and torture of his brother, but which took at least a decade to complete. The first record that has survived seems to show Horatio in the role of a bigoted Catholic devotee. One Sunday in November 1576 the violently antkCatholic Recorder of Lon/ don, William Fleetwood, decided to put an end to the abuse of diplomatic privilege by which the Portuguese ambassador, lodging at the Charterhouse, kept open house for those Englishmen or foreigners who desired to attend mass. Forcing his way past the porter at the gate, ‘a testy little wretch’, Fleetwood and the sheriffs burst into the long gallery of the ambassador’s house, to find about forty persons assembled there, attending mass celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest. With great difficulty Fleetwood removed the ambassador and his household together with the ladies. He was then left with

The Man

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a number of aliens resident in London and a number of English. The latter he committed to prison and the former, after some discussion and the taking of all their names, he dismissed. Among this last group, Fleetwood particularly noticed ‘a tal young Fellow, an Italian, that was very wanton with us. And it hath been told me sithence that he and others are kept here for two Causes. The one for uttering the Pope’s Allom: the other to serve for Intelligencer. Which, I think, are very spies. The Youth was very busy and bestirred himself as tho’ he had been treading of a Galliard.’1 It is impose sible to prove beyond doubt that this truculent young Catholic was Horatio. On the other hand there were only two prominent merchants trading in papal alum in England at the time, and they were Horatio and his uncle Alessandro. The latter may be ruled out since he belonged to the older generation, while the identification with Horatio becomes all the more likely since other evidence proves that he was in fact very tall and thin, excitable and quick-tempered. Furthermore Horatio’s immediate immersion in political and intelligence work as soon as he had committed himself to the English side after 1578 makes it probable that he had had experience in such work for Spain and the Papacy in the previous years. Fleetwood’s accusation that he was a spy as well as a merchant may possibly, therefore, have been not too wide of the mark. The evidence of Horatio’s continued adherence to Catholi¬ cism is reinforced by the official survey carried out in 1581 of those aliens in London who did not attend church on Sun¬ days. At the very head of the list comes the name of Horatio Palavicino, closely followed by those of most of the other great foreign merchants, Andrea de Looe, Agostino Grafigna, and old Acerbo Velutelli. Another survey two years later simi¬ larly reports that Horatio was ‘of no church’.2 Nevertheless 1 J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation, 1735, ii, p. 414.

2 Returns of Aliens of London, ii, pp. 219, 278.

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events were steadily forcing him to change his faith. The Pope’s outrageous treatment of his brother and his unscrupu/ lous efforts to break the Pallavicino’s alum import monopoly put too much of a strain upon allegiance to Rome. By 1582 he was indulging in violent anti/papal outbursts, in which he described the Pope and his administration as ‘those capital and perpetual enemies of good men’s repose and tranquillity . When he learnt that the Pope had subjected his brother Fabritio to torture so severe that a month later he still could not move and his handwriting was so shaky as to be urn recognizable, Horatio’s indignation with all things Roman had no bounds. ‘I pray God to do vengeance for it, or to permit honest men to do it on earth with their hands; and I hope to see it if I die of no ill other than old age.’1 News of these anti/papal expressions of opinion reached the ears of the Inquisition, and early in 1583 Horatio was officially sum/ moned to Rome to defend himself on a charge of heresy. This action inaugurated a long and acrimonious correspondence with the Genoese authorities, who intervened to protect the interests of so prominent and welhconnected a citizen, claim/ ing that the trial could only be held in Genoa itself and that any confiscation of goods ought legally to go to the State and not to the Church. In June 1584 Genoa made a final attempt to deter the Inquisition from proceeding to extremities, by pointing out the unpalatable facts that most of Palavicino’s property was safe in England anyway, that he would, if condemned, be deterred from repatriating himself and his wealth, and that the State of Genoa would thus lose the services of a distinguished citizen. Undeterred by these objec/ tions, the Inquisition proceeded to condemn Horatio in absent tia, seize his goods in Rome and papal territories, and solemnly burn him in effigy. To such lengths did the Papacy proceed in its persecution of Horatio than when in 1591 the State of 1

Cal. S.P. For. 1582, nos. 83, 88.

The Man

II

Genoa found it necessary to enter into negotiations on a com/ mercial matter with Elizabeth, and for such purpose sa w fit to use the good offices of Palavicino, they met with a sharp rebuke from Cardinal Spinola. Genoa was ordered to desist at once from addressing a heretic queen as Sacra Regia Maesta and from referring to the renegade Horatio as nostro gentiluomo seeing that his condemnation had automatically deprived him of all noble status and possessions.1 This action by the Papacy in 1583-4 was undoubtedly premature, but it left Horatio with no option than to hasten his open conversion to Anglicanism. At the time, however, he was still consorting with Catholics such as the French ambassador Mauvissiere,2 and appears to have reached the uneasy stage of Catholicism without the Pope. But it was clear that he could not long remain thus poised between two faiths, and the need to co/operate with the fanatical Walsing/ ham led him speedily to show all outward and visible signs of conversion to Protestantism, and even to radical Puritanism. In his letters to Walsingham, in marked contrast with those to the more practical Burghley or to the queen, he took care to adopt the language and phraseology of the godly. On his way to Germany in 1586 he took the trouble to inform Walsing/ ham that at Canterbury he had found a most efficient and fervent French Protestant Church, ‘knowing that you will rejoice that there should be here a pastor of such quality’. A month or two later, as the Huguenot situation became increasingly precarious, he prayed piously ‘may God give strength to those afflicted ones to defend themselves; and his name be praised that he has granted ours the victory. . .’. He described his mission to raise a mercenary army from Germany to create a military diversion in eastern France as 1 M. Rosi, ‘Per un titolo: contributo alia storia dei Rapporti fra Genova e l’lnghilterra al tempo della Riforma’. Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei;

Classe di sci., rnor., stor., efil., ser. 5, vol. vii (1898), pp. 204-15. 2 Cal. S.P. For. 1582, no. 464.

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one of ‘exhorting and animating these princes not to remain idle, but to stir themselves up to desire to participate in the glory of serving the common cause’. In May 1589 he went so far as to assure Walsingham ‘I earnestly hope in God that in the year ’90 we shall see the destruction of the Kingdom of Antichrist’.1 These were, however, mere words. No more than Burghley or the queen did he see the European struggle as a crusade of Christ against Antichrist. The realities of power politics were never obscured from him by the zeal of the fanatic. Nevertheless his conversion was real enough to satisfy the most exacting critics among the moderate elements in Europe. The Huguenot leader Francois de La Noue corresponded with him on friendly terms for years, and the Lutheran German prince found nothing strange in his representing England in the attempt to create a pan/European Protestant bloc. The queen, Burghley, and Robert Cecil all trusted him implicitly. His enemies, of course, were not so easily satisfied as to his integrity: Leicester used him but distrusted him. Michel de La Huguerye, the French secretary of Duke Casimir of the Palatinate, found it distasteful to have to deal with ‘Palavicin, italien duquel la maison avoit este employee au service d’ung pape’.2 But of Palavicino’s essential loyalty to the new religion there cannot be any doubt. Indeed he could hardly help him/' self since so large a proportion of his income derived from interest payments from the Protestant queen. Nevertheless it is significant that his closest friends were chosen from among that group that found itself on the extreme right wing of the Elizabethan Settlement: Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, his neighbour, Lord Thomas Howard, and Burghley’s brother^ indaw Sir William Cornwallis were all three high church 1 Op. cit. J5S5-6, pp. 366, 596, 652. Bodl., MS. Add. D. 109, f. 69. Leycester Correspondance (ed. J. Bruce, Camden Soc., 1844), p. 306. Michel de

2

La Huguerie, Memoires Inedites, ed. A. de Ruble for La Societe de I’Histoire de France (1877-80), ii, p. 362.

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13

anglicans with Catholic sympathies. Politically completely reliable, their loyalty to the Anglican Church in the days of Elizabeth was little more than lukewarm. But there can be no doubt about Horatio’s conformity in his later years. His wife came from a distinguished moderate Protestant family from Antwerp, and his children were all duly baptized in the parish church next door to the great house at Babraham. In his will he left the very substantial sum of ^300 for the con' struction of a church or chapel on one of his Norfolk estates, plate worth .£20 to John Baptista Aurelio, minister of the Italian church in London, and an annuity from the city of Geneva to the Italian church there.1 To complete this impressive list of evidence of practical devotion to the Reformed Church, there are two books of elegies upon his death, published under the direction of Theophilus Field by a group of ten Cambridge Fellows and graduates. Since two of the contributors—Field himself and the more reputable Joseph Hall—later became Anglican bishops, Horatio’s zeal for the established church is well indicated by these publications. Of the two works, the one is entirely in Latin, entitled Album seu Nigrum Amicorum and dedicated to Sir Robert Cecil, the other is in English, again principally by Field and Hall, but with slightly different collaborators, and going under the attractive title: An Italians dead bodie Stucke with Englishe Flowers. The same printer and publisher handled both editions, the only surviving copy of the latter being found in the Lambeth Library. But this is not convincing proof that the volume was called in and sup' pressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.2 Indeed it seems 1 The existing church at Westacre, in deceptive Jacobean Perpendicular, must be the outcome of this legacy. Help must have come from the parishioners, as stipulated in the will, and it was evidently completed by the next owner of the manor, Sir Edward Barkham, whose arms are on the battlements. 2 Lambeth Palace Library, 7 M. 48. See Gentleman’s Magazine (1851), N.s. xxxv, p. 235, and A. Davenport, op. cit., p. lxxiv.

I4

The Man

unlikely that either the queen, Cecil, or Whitgift himself would have had any interest in its suppression. Horatio may therefore be said to have died in a great odour of Anglican sanctity, exhibiting a zeal for Protestantism only slightly less perfervid than the enthusiasm displayed for Catholicism before Recorder Fleetwood at the Charterhouse twenty dour years be' fore. The evolution had been slow, but it had been complete. This was not the story that Horatio in his old age told his young friends. It was, so he said, devotion to Protestantism and not a struggle for the world monopoly of alum that had forced him to take refuge in England, and this pious fiction by dint of repetition had become so accepted by the time of his death that Joseph Hall based a complete epitaph upon it: Some leave their home for private discontent. Some forced by compulsed banishment; Some for an itching love of novel sight. Some one for gaine, some other for delight. Thus while some force, some other hope bereaves, Some leave their country, some their country leaves: But thee no griefe, force, lust, gaine or delight Exiled from thy home (thrice worthy knight) Save that griefe, force, that gaine, delight alone, Which was thy good and true religion. The halo of the martyr for Anglicanism is clearly visible, flickering around the head of the dead financier. The other great public issue upon which all men in pro/ minent positions in the latter half of the sixteenth century were required to take a stand was a question of power politics. What were the real intentions of Philip II of Spain, and what attitude was to be adopted in the face of the extraordinary expansion of Spanish power’ It was an extremely complex problem, obscured by the intrusion of ideological factors into a question of national security; by doubts about the ultimate intentions, pacific or aggressive, of the dominant power; by

The Man

15

distrust and dislike of allies united solely by fear of a common enemy; by anxiety about the crippling cost of full/scale war^ fare; and by uncertainty whether a firm stand against the occupation of the Channel ports by a great military power was worth the disruption of the economic prosperity of Europe. To such as Walsingham, the issue was clear. Re^ ligious principle and national self-preservation were to him both bound up with prompt and effective military aid to Dutch and Huguenot insurgents. He could survey the strange complex of civil wars, conspiracy, and intrigue throughout Europe as a single whole, given shape and meaning by the insidious expansion of the Counten-Reformation and of Spain. Italy, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland were all equally clear/cut battlefields in the pan^ European struggle. Others, like Burghley, could not afford such self-confidence. Having received his political education in the i54o’s and early 50’s, he continued to look upon France as England’s natural enemy. England’s primary in^ terest lay in maintaining peace and open commercial relations with Spain and the Netherlands, and a civil war that closed the Scheldt and ruined Antwerp should be stopped as soon as possible. England was fundamentally disinterested in the Indies, West and East, and acts of piracy by such as Drake were as militarily fruitless as they were nationally unprofitable. Lastly he was convinced that war would drive the Crown into bankruptcy and might ultimately destroy the whole Tudor political system—a fear that was in fact largely fulfilled. On the other hand he recognized the necessity for preventing the Channel ports, whether Dutch or French, from falling into the hands of an actively hostile power. The queen, irresolute but obstinate, hovered between the two courses of war and peace, the ultimate result of which oscillations was a policy which was neither bold enough to win a war nor weak enough to secure a peace.

The Man

I6

Horatio, who was obliged to act as the servant in foreign affairs of these three so divergent characters, was closest in his attitude to that of Burghley. Paying lip/service to the fanatic cism of Walsingham, his whole attitude was fundamentally materialist and practical. As a man of affairs whose business contacts spread across the political and ideological frontiers o Europe, he was acutely aware of the folly and futility of war with its accompanying impoverishment of all concerned. He found it hard to believe that reasonable statesmen on either side were willing to risk the destruction of the European economy for the sake of their political ambitions. He was, moreover, deeply distrustful of the careerists and extremists on either side. In 1576 he would seem to have resented Spanish policy in the Netherlands.1 At the same time, like Burghley and the queen, he had little patience with the religious and political radicalism of the Dutch rebels headed by William the Silent, and he seems to have sabotaged the aggressive schemes of Drake to seize the Azores in 1582. He was bitterly opposed to Leicester’s policy in the Netherlands in 1586 and advised his recall. Nevertheless, though he was busily engaged on Burghley’s behalf in opening up a secret channel of negotiations with Spain in 1586-7, he warned the Lord Treasurer in no uncertain terms that Spain was making intensive military preparations, and that the prospects of peace were in fact remote. He did not share in Burghley s hopes of peace from 1587-8, which so nearly resulted in disaster from military unpreparedness when the Armada crisis arrived. But after the defeat of the Armada, once England could again negotiate from strength instead of from weakness, he did his utmost to secure a peace. Throughout the 90’s he never ceased to advocate a vigorous prosecution of the war, while at the same time urging the necessity of continuing to put out feelers for peace. It may be suggested, therefore, that his

1

M. Gachard, op. cit. iv, p. 223.

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17

attitude towards foreign affairs was at once more consistent and more practical than those of his superiors who actually decided policy. The futility of the methods that for eighteen long years kept England neither at peace nor with any pros/' pect of victory was a perpetual source of irritation to him. Palavicino’s attitude towards military and naval strategy was as acute as his appraisal of the political factors. In the first place he showed a quite remarkable interest in naval affairs, exceeding that of most of his English acquaintances. Not content with personal service at sea against the Armada, he bombarded the Government with advice to pursue the battered Spanish ships into their suspected retreat in Denmark. When a forward naval policy was again under consideration in 1594, Palavicino promptly forgot the gout that had been keeping him bedridden for months and proferred his services for the expedition. He was, he declared, inflamed with desire to serve in so fine an enterprise. On the other hand, he was no longer content to serve as the private volunteer that he had been in 1588. Since to serve as a private person was no longer becoming to his age, he asked for ‘charge ... of one of the Queen’s ships, if not one of the largest ... at least one of the middle size’ for which, so he said, he had obtained a promise from the Lord Admiral.1 The expedition, which was des/ tined for Brest, finally petered out owing to the queen’s reluctance to release Essex from the court, and so this ambk tious suggestion came to nothing. But the desire for an English naval command remains a remarkable trait to be discovered in an elderly Italian financier. Equally significant were his views on naval strategy, which closely coincided with those of Hawkins and other naval experts, and which were undoubtedly correct. Hostile as he was to Drake’s casual and ineffectual piracy in time of peace, he was one of the first to urge his employment on missions of 1 6763

H.M.C. Solis. MSS. iv, p. 563. c

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l8

genuine military importance once war actually broke out. Aware that Spanish power depended largely on the pipe/' line of silver from Central America, he hoped that Drake would capture and hold a West Indian island from which to harry the treasure ships indefinitely. He supported Hawkins in his plans for a permanent blockade by sea; indeed accord-' ing to a Spanish spy, in 1589 he actually drew up a detailed scheme of his own for a double blockade off Spain and the West Indies, and laid it before the queen and the Privy Council.1 Modern naval historians are agreed on the wisdom of this policy and the folly of the queen in refusing to implex ment it. Horatio’s views upon strategy in the land war were as clearly expressed as his desire for an aggressive naval policy. From the first he conceived France to be the hinge upon which all else turned, including the security of both England and the Netherlands. If Spain were once permitted to obtain a grip upon the economic resources and central lines of com-' munication of France, he was convinced that resistance by English or Dutch would be futile. The Netherlands he there/ fore considered to be on the periphery of the struggle, and he repeatedly urged Burghley and the queen to follow the ex/ ample of Philip of Spain and to concentrate attention upon events in France. He carefully prevented the armies that he raised in Germany in 1586 and 1591 from being diverted to relieve the Netherlands. That he was correct in this diagnosis of the crucial nature of the struggle in France there can be no doubt. And if England interfered in the early 90’s sufficiently to prevent the defeat of Henri IV, this intervention must in some small measure be attributed to the diplomatic activity and lecturing of the queen and Burghley carried out by Palavicino. 1

Cal. S.P. For. 1586-8, p. 88; Cal. S.P. Span. i58y-i6oj, no. 507. Cf. J. A. Williamson, Hawkins of Plymouth, 1949, pp. 317-18.

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19

The last major issue of public policy upon which every responsible Elizabethan was obliged to take a stand was that of the internal war of personalities within the Privy Council itself. In the 8o’s the question turned around giving support to Lord Burghley on the one hand, or the Earl of Leicester in uneasy alliance with Walsingham on the other. At first Horatio exhibited a not unnatural reluctance openly to show his hand, though his sympathies were always strongly on the side of Burghley. He co/operated closely with Walsingham, supplying him with political intelligence and directing official dispatches to him when away as ambassador to Germany. Similarly he took care to court and flatter Leicester, who re/ lied upon him to carry out his private financial negotiations for mortgaging his estates and raising loans. It was Leicester and Walsingham, moreover, who were chiefly instrumental in obtaining for Horatio his Letters of Denization in 1585. On the other hand, when away in Germany he carried on separate correspondence with Burghley in a private code which was kept secret from Walsingham. While praising Leicester’s activities in his public dispatches to the latter, in secret correspondence with the former he was free and cate/ gorical in his denunciations of the harm that he was doing in the Netherlands. But as the 90’s drew on Palavicino dropped this ambiguous attitude, and his personal relationship with the Cecils grew closer. Lord Burghley was ever cordial—on occasions even jocular. In his diary he carefully recorded the domestic matters of his friend—his marriage, the denization of his wife, the grant of a licence for Horatio to go abroad—all jumbled up with affairs of state. Robert and Thomas Cecil were rather closer to him. They were family friends, linked by ties of business and affection. They worked together against the Essex faction; they invested money, they bought and sold land together. When Horatio made a conveyance of his

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20

property, the two brothers Cecil were a party to it; in his will they were made overseers to supervise its execution.1 On the political plane, he was active in organizing an espionage ser' vice for Cecil and when the crisis came with Essex’s disgrace on his return from Ireland in 1599, there could be no doubt of Horatio’s private satisfaction.2 On purely personal grounds, as well as on questions of foreign policy, Palavicino in the last years of his life found himself wholeheartedly upon the side of the Cecils in their fight for control of the queen and the political machine. Nor were the public at large and the Essex faction in any doubt where his sympathies lay, and if they suspected him of activities more subversive and nefarious than was actually the case, this only proves the importance that was generally attached to his views. •

•

•

•

•

The question that inevitably arises from an examination of Palavicino’s opinions upon public affairs is to what extent they were important. What was Palavicino’s status in Eliza' bethan society and politics? Was it sufficiently high to give a description of his views an historical and not merely a bio' graphical importance ? The answer to this problem can per' haps best be tackled by taking a vertical section of his life from 1587 to 1588, admittedly at the height of his public career, and by examining the range of activities in which he was involved throughout that period. The opening of the year 1587 found Horatio at Frankfurt, as ambassador from the Queen of England to the Protestant German princes, busy winding up a year’s complex negotia' tions which had finally resulted in the levying of a massive 1 W. Murdin, State Papers . . . left by Lord Burgh ley (1759), pp. 796, 8oo, 805; F. Blomefield, Topographical History of Norfolk (1805-10), ix, pp. 162-3. Sir Thomas even offered to go bond for Horatio (College of Arms, Talbot MSS. G., f. 607); PCC. 42Wallop. 2 Cf. Palavicino’s letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury (College of Arms, Talbot MSS. H., f. 27).

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mercenary army for the invasion of France to support Henry of Navarre. This, which apart from the garrisoning of the Netherlands was England’s most important military commitment of the year, had been negotiated single-handed by Palavicino, in close touch with the queen, Burghley, and Walsingham. The remainder of the year was spent in handling further negotiations by the Germans in London to obtain a second loan, to keep the mercenary army in the field for yet another year and to raise a relief army. In November he was knighted by the queen as reward for his pains in the prose¬ cution of these tasks. At the same time he was negotiating privately for the purchase of the cargo of the huge Portuguese East Indiaman captured by Sir Francis Drake off the Azores, and if he failed to secure such a spectacular commercial coup it was merely because he set his demands too high, and not because there was anyone else in England with greater finan¬ cial resources or commercial experience. He was also busy throughout this year in conducting delicate negotiations, part private and part official, for the release from a Spanish jail ofM. de Teligny, the son of the Huguenot leader Francois de La Noue. As the Armada crisis of 1588 deepened, so he became more and more immersed in state affairs. The Government was at its wits end to find the ready cash to pay for the military preparations, and in its desperation turned to the Merchant Adventurers and to Palavicino to see if they could procure ^40,000 worth of specie. Both parties were not unhopeful, but it proved impossible in the time to do more than put out exploratory feelers.1 Meanwhile Palavicino’s business and political correspondents plied him with news about Spanish preparations, all of which he duly passed on to a government that was by now voracious of accurate information. The one valuable piece of information that Horatio did lay hands on 1

S.P. Dom. Eliz. 212/66.

22

The Man

was unfortunately wrongly interpreted by him. On 5 June he informed Walsingham that he had received via Italy an account by a Genoese captain of the Armada of the prepara/ tions at Lisbon. The Genoese was depressed and anxious, asserting that men, ships, money, and ammunition were all far less plentiful than rumour had suggested. Indeed the Genoese thought them patently inadequate for the purpose of invasion, though he added that he had heard that Philip was deter/ mined to push on with the expedition regardless of these considerations. Horatio, however, could not believe that Philip could be so foolish. He assured Walsingham that in view of this report it was clear that the Spanish would wait until the French situation had become more favourable before they launched an attack.1 Three weeks later the Armada sailed. After this important error of judgement, an error into which Burghley had also fallen, Palavicino acted with decision and even bravery. For a short period all England was roused to a pitch of national enthusiasm. Even the courtiers felt something of the public emotion, and the majority, Horatio among them, rallied—or promised to rally—to the camp at Tilbury under the Earl of Leicester. But as the news of the Armada’s progress up Channel filtered through, dozens of the more eager young men deserted Leicester—much to his indigna/ tion—and sped off to the Sussex ports to take up with the fleet in mid/Channel, being taken on board some of the larger men/of/war as gentlemen volunteers. Astonishing to relate, Palavicino himself, now nearing his fifties, was one of the most prominent in the rush of young bloods to the Channel. There are two possible explanations of his conduct: the first is that he considered that in the event of defeat his lines of retreat would remain more open aboard ship than trapped with the army at Tilbury. The other is that his excitable nature was genuinely stirred by the wave of emotion that was sweeping 1 Op. cit. 211/16.

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the country. On the whole the latter explanation is more reasonable in itself, and psychologically more probable. But whatever the motive may have been, Horatio was determined not to allow the heroism of his action to pass unnoticed. The evening before he set out for the coast he penned to Walsing/ ham a letter couched in his most flowery Italian style in which he explained that his departure should be attributed to Vardore delV animo mio which was afire to join the fighting. Once in the thick of battle, he expressed his hope either to be a par/ taker of victory or else to win esteem by an honourable end, thus bearing witness to the world of his fidelity to Her Majesty.1 It is abundantly clear both from this letter and from sub/ sequent admissions by Palavicino himself, that his service in the fleet against the Armada was merely as a private volunteer. His name appears in no official list of officers, and it is quite certain that he was never appointed in any such capacity. To celebrate the victory, the Dutch presented to the Lord Admiral a huge scenic tapestry depicting the sea/fight and portraying around the edges the portraits and names of the individual ship commanders. This tapestry was subsequently hung in the House of Lords, where it remained until the building was destroyed in the fire of 18 3 4. Amid the great Elizabethan naval leaders who stared down from the tapestry upon their Lord/ ships for so many years, cheek by jowl with Drake and Frobisher, Howard and Hawkins, Ralegh and Fenner, there was the curious alien name and portrait of Sir Horatio Palavicino.2 By what devious means he got himself included in the tapestry is altogether unknown. Perhaps the Dutch thought it would be a polite compliment to their great and 1 Op. cit. 213/19. A translation of this letter, accurate for all except the last line, is to be found in J. K. Laughton, The Defeat of the Armada (Navy Record Soc. Publ., 1894), i, pp. 304-5. Laughton (op. cit. ii, p. 203, n. 1) thinks that Horatio went on board the flagship the Ark, but gives no evidence for this view. 2 P. Morant and J. Pine, The Tapestry of the House of Lords (1739)-

24

The Man

ever/threatening creditor, perhaps it was a tribute to his friend/ ship with the Howards. At all events it is certain that Horatio had no right whatever to be there and that his inclusion could only have been made as satisfaction for his amour propre. Some such explanation must also be at the back of the inclusion of his name as a prominent naval captain in the account of the defeat of the Armada by the Dutch historian Van Meteren, who as consul in London should have been aware of the truth. Not content with this remarkable exploit, Horatio pro/ ceeded to improve the occasion in his own inimitable way. The few months of the autumn and winter of 1588 saw him extremely busy. He entered quickly into the bitter struggle for future control of the fleet which centred around the personality of Drake, and threw his weight into the scales on behalf of the latter’s opponents, Cumberland and Frobisher.1 He put out secret peace feelers on the basis of exploiting the growing tension between Parma in the Netherlands and Philip II in Spain, by making the former an independent ruler of the Low Countries guaranteed by English military support. And finally he turned pamphleteer and wrote a highly/coloured narrative of the defeat of the Armada, full of exaggeration of the gallantry of the English, the severity of the pitched battle off Gravelines, and the damage inflicted upon the Spanish.2 Flavit Deus et dispersati sunt, the device inscribed on the official commemoration medal, was not a very inspiring theme for the propagandist, and Horatio’s account, which was probably circulated in manuscript among his continental business friends and relations, was a story far better calculated to raise the prestige of England. But his patriotism showed itself in even more material ways than personal participation in the contest and the dissemination of propaganda about the vie/ 1 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 215/6. 2 Op. cit. 215/77, printed Laughton, op. cit. ii, pp. 203-9.

The Man tory. In the autumn the queen raised a loan in the City to help pay for the war, to which the alien merchants contri/ buted ^4,900. The largest subscriber to this loan, equalled only by one other, was Sir Horatio Palavicino, who lent the substantial sum of -£3 oo.1 Evidence of Horatio’s status in society at this time is pro/ vided by the lists of New Year’s gifts exchanged between the queen and members of the aristocracy and courtiers who were her closest associates. The great majority of those who were permitted to partake in this ritual were titular members of the higher nobility, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons, and their ladies. A few others were the chief dignitaries of state such as the Lord Chancellor and the Lords Chief Justice, and the remainder were courtiers pure and simple, like Ralegh. But Horatio, who fits into none of these categories, was admitted to partake of the ceremony. In 1589 he was one of the sixteen knights who were thus favoured to receive a present of gilt plate from Her Majesty. In return Elizabeth received a jewel which cannot but have given satisfaction from its splendour, and perhaps still more from its value: ‘One bodkyn in silver gilte, havinge a pendaunt jewell of gold like a shipp, garnished with opaulls, sparks of diamonds and three small pearles pendaunt.’ Despite Horatio’s official alienation from the queen in the later 90’s, it is significant of the general accep/ tance of his position as a member of the court circle that he continued to exchange such gifts until his death. When his heir was born in 1592 the queen made him a christening present. For New Year’s Day 1594 he gave Her Majesty a pair of writing tables set with gold, rubies, and diamonds, while in turn he and his wife received the usual gilt plate. By 1598, however, Horatio had ceased to be so lavish in his gifts and the queen had to be content with a joint present from him and his wife of a doublet and kirtle ‘of Lawne imbrothered 1 Returns of Aliens of London, ii, p. 414.

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26

with golde and silver with a Worke like pannods and grapes’.1 But the amount of gilt plate in return hardly altered at all, which was a striking tribute to the prestige which Palavicino continued to enjoy at court. He was still one of only twenty knights who were involved in this annual ceremonial ex/ change. From this examination of Palavicino’s activities between 1587 and 1588, there can be little doubt that he held a posi/ tion of some considerable political and social prominence, deeply engaged in affairs of state of the highest responsibility and secrecy, and partaking in some of the obligations of court life which were the privilege of few save the hereditary aris/ tocracy and personal favourites of the queen. In the eyes of his contemporaries he was no mere merchant financier, but a courtier, a gentleman, and a member of the governing class. Palavicino’s personal friendships and domestic life go some way to confirm this estimate of his status. For the greater part of his life he remained unmarried, and we know nothing of his private affairs during this period, except that in about 1578 he became the acknowledged father of an illegitimate son, Edward, who appears to have been educated under his care, and perhaps under his roof. If he had any close friends during this period of the 70’s and 8o’s, no trace of their correspond dence has survived, and such personal relationships as have left their mark are with fellow Italians. He appears to have been genuinely devoted to his brother Fabritio, and he claimed that another Genoese gentleman, Prospero Spinola, was a very close friend. It is noticeable, moreover, that at least two of his servants in his London house were Italians. His relations with Englishmen appear mainly on the official level, and only Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador in Paris, speaks of 1 J. Nichols,

(1788-1821), iii, pp. 10, 19; p. 468a; J. Nichols, The Progresses of Jamesl{ 1828), i,p. 102; iv, p. 447; P.R.O., Chancery, Miscellanea, Bundle 3/40.

The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth

H.M.C. Vlth Report, H.M.C. Salis. MSS.

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27

him with any genuine warmth and affection. But in 1591, while in Germany on his second diplomatic mission, Horatio made a decision of fundamental importance: on 27 April Lord Burghley carefully noted in his diary: ‘Sir Horatio Pallavicino marryed at Frankford.’1 For some years now Horatio had been contemplating matrimony. The obscure liaison of the late 70’s, from which had issued his bastard son Edward, was no longer sufficient for a man of his present dignified status. His first move in this direction, made on the eve of the Armada, had met with a rebuff. Through Walsingham, he had begged the hand of Anne, daughter of the Huguenot leader, Frangois de La Noue. But La Noue’s reply, couched in terms of the most delicate irony, closed all prospects from that quarter: ‘elle est laide et le sr. Palavicino est beau gentilhomme. Elle est pauvre et il est riche. Elle n’a este nourrye es cours, et il est gentil courtizan. Toutefoys j’estime qu’elle a de la piete. Et qui scait, s’il l’avoit vue, s’il en seroyt degoute.’ Finally La Noue winds up in a note seldom struck by a sixteenth-" century parent: ‘J’ay tousjours estime qu’en telles affaires ung peu de conversation estoit bienrequise.’2 Horatio’s motives for making the offer are far more difficult to elucidate than those of La Noue in refusing. The latter subsequently proved his confidence in Horatio by entrusting to him the negotiations for the ransom of his son. If he admired Horatio’s talents and business sense, his letter makes it clear that he was unwilling to sell his daughter abroad, even to so attractive a bidder. But what object could Palavicino possibly have had in view ? Not wealth, since La Noue was relatively poor. Not beauty, since he had never set eyes on the girl. He was himself of sufficiently illustrious stock to gain little in social prestige by such an 1 W. Murdin, op. cit., p. 796. 3 H. Hauser, Francois de La Noue (Paris, 1892), p. 230. It says much for the Spanish espionage service that Philip II got wind of this proposal (Cal. S.P. Span.

1580-86, p. 553).

28

The Man

alliance. The only possible advantage that might have accrued would have been to remove all lingering doubts from the minds of Walsingham and other Thomases as to the genuine/ ness of Palavicino’s loyalty to the cause of Protestantism. Be that as it may, the rebuff served to cure Horatio from further vain pursuits of religious purity. His next approach was of the earth, earthy. It is significant, however, that the marriage was a step about which Horatio was extremely sensitive. He was desperately afraid lest for once his friends and his enemies might find cause for ridicule. He wrote anxiously to Lord Burghley in an endeavour to prevent the somewhat crude humour of the age from indulging in its usual comments upon the marriage of an old man to a young wife: T wrote on the 9th to Robert Cecil about the resolution I have taken on my own behalf in this city for my repose in these few years of life that it will please God still to grant me, and in it I gave him the reasons which moved me to it.’ He begged Burghley to believe it was sober practical reasons and not passioni 0 vani ohietti that drove him to such a step, and asked that he should be defended against the inevitable reprehensori who would carp at an action entirely founded on the desire for a quiet and Christian life. Particularly was he anxious about what the queen might think, in view of her welkknown hostility to marriage almost on principle. Un/ fortunately this appeal to mio unico prottetore arrived too late to stem the flood of ridicule. Horatio must have winced when a few days later he read the postscript to Burghley’s letter, which had crossed his own: ‘I . . . will make an ende of this my letter with a matter of sum mirthe, whiche is to knowe of yowe trewlie whether yowe be married or Contracted to a Ritche Yonkers dawghter of sum of the Fowckers or such like, for soe I heare that Monsieur Tiligni hath reported heare since his comminge hither.’1 1 S.P. Germany, States, 6, f. 186; 7, f. 1.

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The sober reasons which impelled Horatio to marry are not very hard to find. He was by now a man of great wealth and had begun to build up an estate in the country by means of judicious land purchases. A legitimate heir was essential if this fortune was to be preserved and handed down intact. Secondly the attraction of the dowry that went with the bride was probably not without its appeal. There were, moreover, more intimate reasons for marriage. He was by now suffering severely from gout and arthritis, and no doubt felt himself in need of the care and devotion of a woman. More intimate still, his doctor a few months before had pointed out to him the well-known fact that sexual intercourse was a most useful prophylactic against those pains of arthritis from which he was suffering, an argument which Horatio—unlike Falstaff —used as a reason for matrimony.1 All these were surely arguments the cogency of which even the queen would be obliged to admit. The only two possible objections that could be raised against the match were the wide disparity of age between bride and groom and the fact that Horatio was marrying below him into a family of nouveaux riches. For Horatio’s bride was unfortunately not a Fugger, though rumour was correct in saying that she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant prince. Her name was Anna Hooftman and her father was a rich burgher of Antwerp, Gielis van Eychelberg, alias Giles Hooftman. Starting from small begin¬ nings as a modest shopkeeper in Antwerp, being ‘but a pedler of pottes’, according to John Manningham,2 he and his brother Henry succeeded in creating a business and bank¬ ing house of European reputation. Denounced as a Cal¬ vinist heretic in 1566, he nevertheless proved too valuable, too popular, and too tactfully submissive to authority to fall a 1 W. Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 11, Sc. iii, 1. 39: ‘A’ did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was rheumatic. . . .’ 2 Diary of John Manningham (ed. W. Tite, Camden Soc., 1868), p. 51.

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The Man

victim to Alva’s persecution. In 1572 he was said to have saved the rebels in Flushing by supplying them by sea with munitions, yet he still contrived to flourish unharmed in Antwerp. When he died in 1581 he was reputed to be one of the richest men in the Netherlands, having acquired, mostly from landowners who had retired from the Low Countries owing to the Troubles, a very large amount of property in Antwerp, Birchem, Cleydael, Hoboken, and Aertselaer. In his will be showed a tolerance and impartiality that was ak most unique for his age, and which consequently pleased nobody: for he bequeathed 50,000 ducats to the poor of Antwerp on condition that the money was divided equally between Catholics and Protestants. His son Giles, Anna s brother, was echevin in Antwerp during the siege in 1585, but survived unmolested until his death in 1598.1 According to Manningham, who may have known since he was remotely related to the Hooftmans by marriage, Anna brought with her the huge portion of ^10,000, most of it in landed pro/ perty in the Netherlands.2 This marriage was the beginning of a general immigration of the Hooftman family to England. In 1594 Horatio was planning to go to Holland, because, as he explained to Robert Cecil, ‘my wife’s mother and her two daughters are there, whom I have long tried to get into England to be married according to practises I have held with certain English gentlemen; but these women are timid and without my presence they will never come’. Whether this feminine timidity was overcome, or whether Horatio’s ‘prac/ tises’ ever had any concrete results, is not known, but in the 1 Biographic Nationale de la Belgique (Acad. Royale Beige), ix. Bulletin de la Com« mission Royale d’Histoire (1911). vol. 8o> PP- 346-7- Notes and Queries, fourth series, viii, p. 431. 2 John Manningham, op. cit., p. 51. The land is mentioned in Palavicino’s will, and in a letter of 1593 he referred to ’my mony from Germaine pertaining to my wife, which rendreth reasonable secure frute withowt trooble or bond at all’ (College of Arms, Talbot MSS. G., f. 607).

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31

next reign Anna’s brother Cornelius was well established in the country, and received a knighthood from King James.1 Anna s life with Horatio cannot have been a very happy one. When she accepted Horatio in 1591 he was still a courtier, and no doubt she had looked forward to a gay social life in London. Cut off from her family and friends, isolated in an alien country-side in the wet lands round Cambridge, involved in Horatio’s unpopularity with many of the neigh¬ bouring gentry, and burdened with an elderly and crippled husband to nurse and comfort, it is not surprising if as early as 1593 she was a prey to melancholia and was suffering from insomnia and loss of appetite.2 Nor can she be blamed if at the earliest possible moment after Horatio’s death she should have married again, this time to a gay, extravagant young spark who could give her all those things of which she had hitherto been deprived. The household that established itself in the early 90’s in the newly purchased manor at Babraham near Cambridge was a highly cosmopolitan one. There, keeping up a style of living ‘fit for the greatest state in England’ dwelt the aged Italian financier, now crippled with gout and arthritis, his young Dutch wife, and numbers of servants, some of whom were Italians. Indeed this retention of alien trappings is highly characteristic of Palavicino. Though a highly skilled and fluent linguist, he never learnt to write anything but Italian, or at a pinch French.3 This lack of mastery of writing the language was of little importance when dealing with the old school of cultured statesmen. Walsingham, Burghley, or the queen were perfectly at home in most European languages. 1 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. v, p. 2; Cal. S.P. Dom. Add. 1580-1625, p. 513; that he was Anna’s brother is proved by the will of Giles Cromwell (B.M., Add. MSS. 33462, f. 126). 2 Lambeth Palace, Tenison MSS. 700, f. 129. 3 The frequent quotations from Palavicino’s letters which are given in English are all either in translation or are taken from letters dictated to his secretary.

32

The Man

Robert Cecil, on the other hand, had difficulty, particularly as his Italian tutor, whom Horatio had thoughtfully provided for him, found the lessons interrupted during the Armada crisis of 1588 and consequently departed.1 And so for the benefit of the less well-educated younger generation like the Earl of Essex, Horatio took the trouble to write French,2 while on one occasion at least ‘for better comprehension he tried his hand at English, being careful to add: ‘I beg you to pay no attention to the mistakes but only to the substance. As for Anna, the recipients of her correspondence in her most ungrammatical French must have found her lack of grasp of languages a real problem. But if the household was alien in one sense, in all others it conformed strictly to the type of that of the English country gentleman. For all this cosmopolitan air, the family partook of the local gatherings, such as weddings and christenings, they busied themselves with the rustic pleasures of sheepshearing, they baptized their three children Henry, Toby, and Baptina in the little church in the park beside the house. Only in his rather strict views on education did Horatio differ noticeably from his country neighbours. When offered a schoolmaster, he replied that he wanted to know more about the man: ‘his age, his habilitye to teache the Accidence & the grammer. . . for singinge and playinge I will have no use at all, but of the wrightinge I wilbe carefull’.3 The same determination to secure a sound education for young Henry, though qualified by attention to the attributes of a gentleman, was reflected in the provisions of Horatio’s will. At the age of fourteen Henry was to be handed over to the care of his godfather, the Earl of Shrewsbury, to be brought up in his lordship’s household. He was to have the relatively large allowance of 1 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. xvi, p. 299. 2 Op. cit. vi, pp. 344—53 Bodl. Tanner MSS. 77, f. 145.

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33

^300 a year, but every effort was made to prevent him from becoming an idle young rake. I earnestly desire him [the Earl] to receive him to attend uppon his Lordship bothe Sondayes and hollydaies and I wishe and will that all the rest of the weeke daies he may be placed by his Lordshipps appoyntment at some place nere his Lordship & not in his Lordshipes house and haue a Tutor to applye him to his booke and learninge whereby he may readely attaine the knowledge of ye Latin tongue and also to be taughte to Fence daunce and other activities & qualeties fitt for a gentleman and to have two men and a boy to attend upon him. Hitherto the character of Horatio Palavicino has been attacked from the periphery, by successive accounts of his career, opinions on public issues, social and political status, and domestic arrangements. The time has come to strike at the core, to examine the nature of the man himself. Of his physical characteristics we are singularly well informed, thanks to a probable portrait and to an elaborate medical report drawn up at Frankfurt in 1591.1 He was tall and thin, rather narrow-chested, with small feet and hands and delicate, wellproportioned limbs. Beneath a shock of curly black hair and a high jutting forehead there were set a pair of prominent, slightly watery and many-veined grey eyes, lively and lumin¬ ous with intelligence and vivacity. All the upper part of the face, including the large and rather shapeless nose, is full of charm. It is the face of a man of sensibility and refinement. But this attractive expression is contradicted by the mouth, which remains clearly visible despite the surrounding curly mous¬ tache and trim little pointed beard. It is a tight rat-trap of a mouth, with an iron nut-cracker of a jaw beneath. Narrow, pursed, and twisted up at one side, it conveys an alarming impression of cunning and rapacity. On closer inspection, moreover, the eyes, for all their fire and warmth, conceal an 1 5763

B.M., Add. MSS. 2111, part 2. D

34

The Man

inner reserve, a trace of hidden duplicity. The essential con/ tradictions of his nature seem thus written on his face. His impetuous eagerness and his emotionalism on the one hand, and on the other the cold, calculating reserve of the successful man of affairs. The medical report, concerned as it is with the purely physical characteristics, lays great emphasis upon the former qualities; the latter—the product of the triumph over natural impulses of an iron will—is naturally not mentioned. Again and again the doctor points out that his patient is highly strung, full of nervous energy that is easily dissipated and controlled only with the greatest difficulty. By tempera/ ment and inclination he was impetuous, quick, and lively, ‘expectandae fuerent actiones corporis atque animi magis con/ spicuae in alacritate Sc promptitudine quam in robore Sc constantia’. Based upon the theory of antitheses, of hot and cold, wet and dry, fire and water, and buttressed by quotations from Galen, Hippocrates, and Aristotle, the diagnosis is nevertheless not without merit. By 1591, when the report was drawn up, he was, like nearly everyone before the introduction of modern medicine, a sick man. His diseases, it is interesting to observe, were those that afflicted nearly every member of the upper class during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries— gout, rheumatoid arthritis, stone in the bladder, and general malaise of the digestive organs. The gout—‘e Bacchi Sc Veneris amplexibus orta’, as the doctor so unkindly ascribes it—took the form of pain and swellings in the back and legs that not infrequently in the years to come confined Horatio to his bed for weeks on end. Every year, principally in the summer, he was obliged to tell his friends, sono tormentato della Gotta. He had to go everywhere by coach, being largely crippled by the disease, and was obliged to desert the court ‘because the hobbling gait is too ungraceful’.1 For this agoniz/ 1 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. iv, pp. 351, 488, 500, 514; v, pp. 2, 224, 234, 248, 263,

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35

mg complaint the doctor could do little but prescribe to be laid on the affected part a paste compounded of styrax, Jewish bitumen, sandarac, myrrh, and camphor. Alternatively a cantharides paste was advised. The stone in the bladder gave rise to the usual symptoms of bloody urine, and occasionally a total stoppage. On this subject the doctor could offer little advice. Kenes sunt manijeste morhosi he gloomily concluded, and merely suggested light exercises—which were normally impossible anyway owing to the gout—and the usual unpleasant palliative of an occasional clyster. Indigestion took principally the form of wind after meals in the upper part of the belly, for which there was prescribed to be taken one hour before meals a soothing draught of sugar, coriander, conserve of roses, margaret, galanga root, aniseed, and cinnamon. Nor would any sixteenth-century remedy be complete without the addition of one of those explosive laxatives to which the age was so extraordinarily addicted. To put the finishing touch to this analysis of physical ills, the report concluded with the observation that Horatio was liable to occasional outbursts of haemorrhoids.1 It must not be supposed that this is the description of a man whose health had entirely broken down. When the examination was made Palavicino had another nine years to live, during which he married, begat three children, travelled twice to the Continent, carried on very extensive business operations, and conducted a number of lawsuits. This chronic ill health was the norm for a middle-aged member of the sixteenthcentury upper classes, the general state being the result of neglect and medical ignorance, the specific diseases arising out of bad sanitation, an absurdly unbalanced diet with a 306; xiii, p. 562; vi, pp. 19, 153, 251; viii, p. io. Bodl. Tanner MSS. 283, f. 7; College of Arms, Talbot MSS. H., f. 27. 1 All these were the common complaints of the age: thus Sir Robert Cecil is recorded by his doctor, Sir Theodore Mayerne, to have exhibited almost identical symptoms (H. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series (1827), iii, p. 246).

36

The Man

great excess of proteins, and grossly inadequate arrangements for protection against cold and damp. Owing to this discrepancy between the impetuosity and excitability of temperament and the calculating determination of will-power, it is not easy to assess Palavicino’s character at its true worth. On the one hand there is the picture of him dancing with fury at the interruption of his religious worship at the house of the Portuguese ambassador, or of him making off excitedly to join the fleet against the Armada; on the other there is the duplicity and cunning, the complex web of intrigue and wire-pulling, that were the cause of his material success. On the one hand there is the ruthlessness with which he squeezed his debtors and obtained their lands; on the other there is the genuine affection with which he was re¬ garded by the Cecils and by the Earl of Shrewsbury, with both of whom he had had somewhat equivocal business dealings. On the one hand there is the manner in which he used his position as landlord to squeeze his tenants, on the other there are the substantial legacies of ^jioo for the London hospitals of Christ Church, Saint Thomas’s, and the Savoy, -/C$0 to the poor of Cambridge, and £20 to the poor of Babraham. Similar contradictions run right through his career and make impossible any simple picture of the grasping, capitalist exploiter. His intellectual qualities were never called into question. Friend and enemy alike, from the Pope and Philip II to Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, were agreed upon his quick perception, his shrewd judgement, and his tactical skill. In commerce, finance, and diplomacy he was equally outstand¬ ing. His estimates of personality were on the whole extremely sound—witness his opinion of the worth of Sir Edward Stafford, the ambassador in Paris, or his character sketches of the German princes. Nor were his interests exclusively con¬ fined to material affairs. He possessed, so a panegyrist re-

The Man

37

lates, command of six languages—presumably Latin, Italian, French, Dutch, German, and English—and from his cosmos politan education, wide travels, and extensive acquaintance he was more a citizen of Europe than that of any one country. There are evident signs that Horatio fulfilled his obligations as a patron of the arts, thus following the family tradition. If William Gager, Student of Christ Church and Chancellor to the Bishop of Ely, saw fit to write an ode to celebrate the birth of Horatio’s first son, if Thomas Newton of Chester included him in his laudatory collection Illustrium aliquot Anglorum Encomia,1 it could only be because he was prepared to reward such flights of fancy. Theophilus Field, Fellow of Pembroke, was effusive in his praise: Horatio, Maecenas call him rather Or if ye will, the Muses foster father Virgil and Horace I envy you not For having so great Patrons as you had: . . . more royal maintenance Gave my Augustus. Field’s subsequent career reveals him as a corrupt and selF seeking cleric, and his eulogies of his patron lay emphasis on the financial aspects of the relationship: ‘six winters did thy bountie rain on mee’, he observes elsewhere.2 But the fact that a group of ten Fellows and graduates of Pembroke Hall, Emmanuel, and Saint John’s contributed to the little book of epitaphs written at his death would indicate considerable interest and patronage exerted by Palavicino in university circles. Moreover, of the contributors two subsequently be^ came bishops, one a dean, one an archdeacon, and one the head of a Cambridge college, which says much for Horatio’s 1 B.M., Add. MSS. 22583, f. 86; W. Leland, Collectanea (1770), p. 127. 2 Lambeth Palace Library, 7 M. 48, An Italians dead bodie Stucke with Englisbe Flowers.

38

The Man

discernment in picking out ability in the young.1 If personal self-advertisement was behind such patronage, no such suspicions can be levelled against his presentation to the queen, on behalf of the author, of a newly composed set of Italian psalms. The appointment of Alberico Gentile, future Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, as his latin secretary for the German embassy of 1586, was largely due to Walsingham, but Horatio at any rate acquiesced in this method of patronize ing learning.2 Finally, if we may believe Field, Horatio used often to declare that his protege’s poetry eased the pangs of his gout—though anyone who found solace in the third-rate doggerel of Theophilus Field must have been singularly lack¬ ing in perception.3 It was not his intellectual or aesthetic capacity but his moral worth upon which his enemies cast doubts. Most of those with whom he came in contact were left with an impression of astuteness that the less charitable called low cunning. When the Earl of Shrewsbury’s servant was trying to arrange a loan for his master, he confessed himself unable to discover ‘how to handle his Italian head (which is at this time full of fetches and devises)’. Casimir of the Palatinate found him ‘ung Italien pointilleux au possible’, and his councillor. La Huguerye, talked bitterly of‘son naturel aise a aigrir’. On the other hand men like Lord Burghley and Robert Cecil, Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Shrewsbury, Sir Edward Stafford and Sir William Cornwallis, accounted him their friend. More¬ over he appears to have taken much trouble to befriend his fellow countrymen in need. He exerted himself to help those Italians who found themselves cast away and imprisoned in Irish jails after the destruction of the Armada. He almost got into trouble once for giving hospitality and then a lift in his 1 Theophilus Field, Joseph Hall, Edmund Mason, Nathaniel Gifford, and Richard Sibbes. 2 S.P. Dorn. Eliz. 247/1; Cal. S.P. For. 1585-6, p. 652. 3 Album seu Nigrum Amicorum.

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39

coach to a vagrant Italian, about whom he appears to have had doubts and who later turned out to be a spy. ‘I had some suspicion while talking to him that he might be a Jesuit; but he seemed too illiterate’, he wrote apologetically to Cecil.1 On another occasion he urged the claims to charity of one Vicentio di Vicentio, imprisoned on somewhat flimsy pre/ texts thanks to the political wire/pulling of the Venetian agent in London.2 When Robert Cecil went to France in 1598 Horatio interceded on behalf of Mazin del Bene, the Navarrese agent in Paris, whose information he had been passing on for nearly twenty years. He implored Cecil, with a show of genuine feeling, ‘if you can, to console this good old man in this his last age’. It is noticeable that all these recipients of kindness are of Italian nationality, but this fact does nothing to detract from the impression of at any rate occasional benevolence. Judging by his death/bed behaviour he seems to have been on kindly terms with his wife, and his intensive efforts to prevent her remarrying were evidently due more to a desire to save his children and their fortune from the rapacity of a step/father than to any selfish personal motive. One of his more obvious minor defects was a strong tendency to sententious moralization. Sometimes, as in diplo/ matic and commercial correspondence, a useful cloak for hard/headed policy, in his later years it became an annoying habit. The preface to his will was far longer and more re/ plete with fine sentiment than was necessary to satisfy the demands of convention. And he appears to have developed a taste for lecturing his less affluent friends on the virtues of thrift and saving and the principles behind successful invest/ ment. Thus Sir Roger Wilbraham noted in his journal: ‘Sir Horatio Paulo Vicino Italian at Cambridge, retulit ista mihi 1598: In purchasing landes you must consider & respect the 1 H.M.C. Salts. MSS. ix, p. 127; cf. x, p. 245. 2 Op. cit. ix, p. 334: x, p. 154; Cal. S.P. Dorn. iS91~4> P- T56-

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The Man

4 elements: i° terra, the qualitie Sc proportionable soeing lands: 2° aqua, the river or other water: 30 ignis, how Sc what fuell or wood: 40 aer, the comodious situacion for markets or dwellings. Also he saieth the nobilitie of Italie seldom wast ther patrimonie: they are so provident in ther aeconomies: in which is respect to be had to stoare up somwhat yerelie; els shall a husband be distressed once in tenne yeres by one of these 4 casualties: viz: by building: marying a daughter: sute in law: or service of his prince or countrey.’1 Five years earlier he had lectured the Earl of Shrewsbury on the difference between business and friendship. Where question is of doinge your honour service I am to do it in such maner as becometh a man of my estate to an honourable personage whome I greately reverence; and when question is of matter of contract (because that to my judgement they are thinges greately different) then I take my selfe bounde to syncerite & plainness without blameworthy deceipt but yet with due regarde to trafficke for my selfe profitablely to the benefite of my little children and to the secure establishinge of my family ... so your honour may not compt it ill if in the point ofprofitt a man honestly every waies regard his owne commoditie.2 It is on this note of worldly wisdom and of the application of scientific principles to business matters that it is fitting to leave this study of Horatio’s character. For it is to these qualities and not to the more engaging sides of his nature that he owed his practical success. And without that success his biography would have been both impossible to reconstruct and unnecessary to attempt. 1 Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham, ed. H. S. Scott, Camden Misc. x (1902), p. 22. 2 Lambeth Palace, Tenison MSS. 705, f. 118.

T

2. The Monopolist

o be a suitable subject for monopoly control a material has to comply with three major requirements: a limited and concentrated supply, an imperative and inelastic demand, and a lack of adequate substitutes. Given these, a ruthless financial speculator can reasonably hope to supply the world’s markets at his own price, provided he takes adequate care to placate the necessary political powers. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance alum fulfilled all these demands to an almost ideal degree. Alum mines remained very rare right up to the seventeenth and even the eighteenth centuries, production being virtually confined to Asiatic Turkey before 1450, and to central Italy in the subsequent centuries. On the other hand the demand for alum became steadily more urgent. With the possible exception of building, clothing was until the late eighteenth century the only industry of major economic com sequence. Judged by the value of the product relative to the national income or by the number of workers employed, the clothing industry stands out as the one great manufacturing process of the period before the introduction of mass industrialization. Important as the sixteenth-century ‘industrial revolution’ undoubtedly was, that importance was qualitative rather than quantitative and its evolution did nothing to unseat cloth from its pre-eminent position in the eyes of the public and governments alike. But this great industry could be paralysed for lack of a regular if moderate supply of alum, which was indispensable for the finishing processes, being used as a mordant to prepare the material to receive the dye. Though relatively small both in quantity and in value, a regular import of alum was nevertheless the sine qua non of

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political stability and economic prosperity for the two great cloth-manufacturing areas of the sixteenth century, England and the Low Countries. If the natural potentialities of alum for monopoly were great, the possibilities of such manipulation were increased by certain special political characteristics of Renaissance Europe. Everywhere old forms of revenue were proving inadequate to satisfy the growing needs of the State. The cost of war was rising rapidly as the average size of armies increased and technical devices consequent upon the use of gunpowder became more complex and more expensive. Faced with the inelasticity of old forms of revenue, governments turned to the only readily available source, the exploitation by the State of production or distribution monopolies of various kinds. Of these, the most successful were Portuguese pepper, Spanish silver, French salt, Swedish copper—and Papal alum. Before 1455, production of alum had been confined to the mines of Phocea in southern Asia Minor, which had been controlled for two hundred years by a Genoese speculative syndicate. But after the capture of the mines in 1455 the intolerance and rapacity of the Osmanli Turks put an end to this supply by the imposition of a prohibitive duty. In the subsequent search for an alternative source, mines were discovered in Spain, Germany, the kingdom of Naples, and northern Italy. But the only really major discovery was made at Tolfa near Civita Vecchia, on papal territory, where an apparently inexhaustible mine of the first quality was vigorously developed. By the use of direct military force, un/ principled exercise of the spiritual weapon of excommunication, and liberal bribes to competitive suppliers to close their mines, the Papacy soon obtained a stranglehold upon European production. Papal finances, however, leant heavily upon the support of Italian and German banking-houses. Owing to the chronic indebtedness of the Pope and the usual administra-

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43

tive corruption which made the farming of government pro/ jects to private enterprises at a fixed rent more profitable than direct state control, the alum works soon fell into the hands of private contractors. This lucrative farm naturally gravitated into the control of the largest creditors of the Papacy. Till the end of the fifteenth century these had been the Medici, who had handled the monopoly with discretion without arousing excessive hostility among the consumers. A handsome bribe to the rulers of the Low Countries had secured a distribution monopoly in the main consumer area, and if the English Yorkist kings were less amenable, they at any rate had made no vigorous efforts to break the monopoly. But in the first decade of the sixteenth century the monopoly fell into less scrupulous hands. The Siennese financier Agostino Chigi reorganized production and distribution on new and more efficient lines, and then raised prices fourfold. The clothing industry in Flanders and England was thrown into confusion, and both Henry VII and the Emperor Maximilian were forced to take steps to import Turkish alum to break the Chigi monopoly. The Pope riposted with the threat and actuality of excommunication, and at length a compromise was reached whereby the Pope, Chigi, and the two princes all gained an increase in revenue, the cost being passed on to the English and Flemish cloth manufacturers. The second crisis occurred in the 1540’s when the distribu/ tion monopoly in the Low Countries was being arbitrarily manipulated by the Emperor’s financial agent, Gaspar Ducci. The cupidity of Henry VIII and the desire by a Portuguese Jewish financial syndicate to break Ducci led to a conspiracy engineered by Henry to destroy this distribution monopoly, an endeavour that was in part successful, though the result in no way reduced the costs to the English consumer. During the 1550’s, as Pope, Habsburg, and Valois all staggered towards bankruptcy and the Peace of Cateau/Cambresis,

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The Monopolist

further profits were squeezed out of alum by fresh monopoly contracts to a ring of Italian financiers at Antwerp headed by Agostino Sauli, amongst whom were the Genoese Nicolo Pallavicino and Battista Spinola. Production was kept concentrated at Tolfa, distribution for western Europe was exclusively centred at Antwerp, and in ten years the selling price was nearly doubled. England was impotent in the face of a situation so eminently profitable to the Pope, to Marguerite of Parma, the ruler of the Low Countries in Philip’s name, and to the Antwerp financial syndicate.1 On the expiry of the Sauli contract in 1566, the Pope farmed the Tolfa works for twelve years to Tobias Pallas vicino, the head of the Genoese firm closely allied to Battista Spinola. Pius V at once dispatched an agent to renew the monopoly import arrangements to Flanders and England.2 He recapitulated the history of the alum monopoly, stressed the even greater need of its enforcement at present, in view of the decay of papal finances, and urged Philip to support him so that the proceeds could be devoted to improving the fortifv cations of the Italian coastal towns and assisting the Hos' pitallers to defend Malta from the Turk. Nor was Marguerite of Parma less anxious to obtain a renewal of a contract which had made Antwerp the entrepot from which all Europe had to buy its alum. As she told Philip, it was worth 40,000 florins a year to her in customs.3 But the monopoly was vigorously opposed by the States General, who represented the clothiers, and she pointed out that if the delay between the expiry of the old and the conclusion of the new contracts lasted much longer, merchants would refuse to pay the tax, 1 For this early history of the alum farm see especially G. Zippel, ‘L’Allume di Tolfa , Arcbivio della K. Societa Romana di Storia Patria, xxx (1907); A. Theiner, Codex Diplomatics Dominii Temporali S. Sede (Rome, 1862) vol. m,passim; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xix, xx, passim. 2 Cal. S.P. Rome, 1558-71, no. 358. 3 J. S. Theissen, Correspondance franpaise de Marguerite d’Autriche avec Philippe II (Utrecht, 1925-42), i, pp. 438-9.

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45

claiming that it had lapsed with the contract. Worse still, they would import direct to England, France, or the Baltic areas without passing via Antwerp, which would greatly diminish the value of the tax. In this isolated case may be observed the operation of that canker that gradually paralysed the efficiency of the Spanish Empire. Under Philip II the whole administration slowly ground almost to a standstill, due to the intolerable delays in obtaining administrative action. ‘Mi venga la morte di Spa/ gna’ was a commonly expressed aspiration in contemporary Italy.1 Sixteenth/century communications were too slow for a widely scattered empire like that of Spain to be run on any but the most severely decentralized lines. But Philip insisted not merely on rigid centralization but on personal supervision of the smallest details. Moreover his methods were slow, his judgement long in forming. Spain choked at its centre. It was the same with alum as with everything else. As that acute observer Cardinal Granvelle observed pessimistically to Presi/ dent Viglius: ‘Ton differe de s’y resouldre, comme en toutes aultres choses, au si grand prejudice des affaires’.2 Thus the Pope first wrote to Philip about the contract in March 1566. In November Tobias Pallavicino gave a six weeks’ ultimatum for a reply, before he started negotiating separately with France and England for monopoly import agreements. Fourteen months later still no decision had been taken, Tobias was importing direct to England, and Marguerite of Parma was in grave danger of losing altogether her lucrative alum tax. In the end it appears that some settlement must have been reached. At all events it is clear that Tobias and his Spinola associates also took on the farm of the Massaron mines in Spain,3 1 J. Spedding, Life and Letters of Francis Bacon (1857-74) iii, p. 351. E. Poullet, Correspondance du Cardinalde Granvelle (Brussels, 1878-96), ii, p. 121. 3 These mines had been opened up in the early days of the century and for some time it had been customary to farm them out to the papal monopolist of the Tolfa works.

2

46

The Monopolist

though it does not appear that Antwerp ever again became the exclusive entrepot of Europe. English imports now came direct from Civita Vecchia. At this juncture the world of international merchant finance was shattered by the twin blows of the rioting in Antwerp during the Troubles, and the seizure by Elizabeth of the treasure en route for Alva in 1568. This treasure was the property of the most important merchant groups trading between Spain and Antwerp: Genoese, Lucchese, and Span/ ish.1 The Lucchese and Genoese were eventually repaid some years later through the mediation of a prominent Italian merchant in London, Benedict Spinola.2 There may possibly have been some truth in a spy’s report to Alva that Benedict had first suggested the seizure to Cecil,3 but there can be no doubt about the consternation of the actual owners of the treasure, who seem to have lost five years’ interest on their money. As the breach widened between Spain and the Papacy on the one hand and England and the Dutch rebels on the other, these international merchants were forced to take sides, as accorded best with their business interests, their political and religious sentiments, and their estimate of the relative prospects of victory of the two sides. In this connex/ ion it is worth noting that among the owners of the treasure there were many members of the Spinola family, including one Battista, as well as Philip Cataneo and Nicolo Pallavi/ cino.4 The business of the treasure threw into sharp relief the problem of the need to choose sides and brought many of these international houses into close if involuntary connexion with the English Crown. The choice was not an easy one for any 1 P.R.O., Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Accounts, Various, 129, ff. 14-20; 601, ff. 19-20. 2 Conyers Read, ‘Queen Elizabeth’s seizure of the Duke of Alva’s Payships,’ Journal of Modem History (1933), v, p. 457, n. 45. 3 Op. cit., p. 448, n. 18. 4 P.R.O., Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Accounts, Various, 129, f. 14; 17, f. 40; 19.

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of them, least of all for Tobias Pallavicino and his associates. For the religio-political divisions lay right athwart the lines of the world alum trade, whose production centres lay in the papal states and Spain, and whose consumer markets were the Low Countries, England, and Hamburg. But like business men before and since they refused to believe that political and ideological hatreds were strong enough to unleash a war so obviously disastrous to the material well-being of all. Things, they believed, would arrange themselves in the end. After all, the Netherlands was an economic unit and upon that unity depended its prosperity. England and Spain were bound by the closest of commercial ties. Surely responsible politicians would not be so foolish as to disrupt this economic harmony for the sake of ideologies in which they could not really believe, and lust for conquest from which they could hardly hope to profit. Thus these shrewd merchants and bankers thought that they would not be forced to make a choice; they trusted that there would be no general or prolonged war. During the 70’s, Tobias Pallavicino organized the produc¬ tion and distribution of his alum on the normal family lines. Of his two sons, Fabritio supervised at Tolfa and Horatio handled the Low Countries’ distribution at Antwerp, while his brother Alessandro was in London.1 Spanish production was probably handled by Nicolo Pallavicino and the firm’s interests at Madrid were certainly protected by the influential Lorenzo Spinola. At Antwerp Horatio was assisted by Philip Cataneo, agent for the firm of Nicolo Pallavicino and Simeon Sauli, as well as by Battista Spinola, and he appears to have exercised some form of control over his uncle Alessandro in London.2 The Pallavicini did not abuse their monopoly, and supplies were plentiful and at a reasonable price during 1 Alessandro was the most important Italian importer in London in 1575-6, according to the figures given in B.M., Lansd. MSS. 22/16. 2 These details are drawn from a variety of documents, mostly the accounts of

48

The Monopolist

this time. Tobias appears to have discovered the profitability of large sales at low prices. Indeed the reasonable handling of the Pallavicino monopoly became a stock argument in favour of other such distribution monopolies. For example when a notorious financial parasite, William Tipper, was trying to obtain a similar monopoly for the import of cochineal from Spain, he defended his project on the practical grounds that ‘experience we have had sufficient and yt of longe tyme when Palevicinus had the whole trade and contracte of Allom; he served the realme better cheape then longe time before it hath bene. And alwaise brought in as muche and more than colde yerlye be spent within the Realme.’1 But the firm became increasingly anxious as July 1578 drew near, the date at which the twelve/year contract was due to expire. They were determined to force the Pope to renew the contract to them, rather than to a rival firm. But the Pope, for unknown reasons, was equally determined to change his farmer. The Pallavicini therefore deliberately set out to make market conditions impossible for any future contractor. Their policy had two interrelated aspects, to acquire large stocks of alum with which to manipulate world prices and so destroy the profits of the new farmer; and to make monopoly import agreements with the main consumers so as to exclude their rivals from their market outlets. During the last few years before the contract expired they therefore began stepping up production at Tolfa far above what was needed for normal requirements. Stocks were accumulated which were said to amount to 210,000 quintals, which was sufficient for Euro/ pean consumption for about six years.2 the 1568 treasure, the Hawkins-Palavicino lawsuit (P.R.O., Chancery Proceed' ings, series i, Eliz., P. 10/53), and numerous references to the alum business in S.P. Dom. Eliz. and B.M., Lansd. MSS. 1 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 122/1. This statement is independently confirmed by S.P. Dom. Eliz. 253/115. 2 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/14. A Roman quintal weighed 47-25 kg., or almost 1 cwt.

The Monopolist

49

As the plan developed, difficulties accumulated. At the very outset the Pallavicini quarrelled with one of the most important shipping firms in England, that of William and John Hawkins of Plymouth, whose influence extended far beyond commercial circles into the realm of government policy. The quarrel is a story in itself.1 One of the first big shipments of alum stocks to western Europe in prosecution of this great undertaking was arranged for the summer of 1577. Fourteen thousand^odd quintals were to be transported from Civita Vecchia to England by the Hawkins’s fleet of four ships, the Salomon, the William, the John, and the Paul.2 So far as can be deduced from the cross-Haims of both parties, each seems to have had some cause for complaint. By the charter^ party signed in February by John Hawkins and Alessandro Pallavicino, who was acting for Horatio, fifteen working days excluding Sundays and holidays were to be allowed for loading the ships at Civita Vecchia; but in fact the ships spend 46 days there. Fabritio Pallavicino’s agents, who com trolled the working of the port, first withheld dockyard labour till another ship, the Lyhania, was unloaded. Work was then begun on Hawkins’s ships, but ten days later a Venetian argosy came in, also to lade alum for the west. The Pallavicini were anxious for it to voyage in company with Hawkins’s ships as a safeguard against piracy, and the dockers were therefore diverted once more. Then came a week of storm and rain when nothing could be done, so that in the end the ships only got away on 9 July. Fabritio seems to have realized that Hawkins might cause trouble over the delay, and therefore extracted from the masters a signed statement absolving him 1 P.R.O., Chancery Proceedings, series i, Eliz., P. 10/53; High Court of Admiralty, Libels, 48/64. S.P. Dom. Eliz. 123/15; 148/53-4; 161/40. 2 The Salomon was the fourth largest merchantman England possessed, being of 300 tons. An almost complete survey recorded that England at this time only owned 135 merchantmen of over 100 tons, of which six belonged to Plymouth. Of these six, four were engaged on this shipment (S.P. Dom. Eliz. 96, pp. 267-73). 5763

E

50

The Monopolist

from responsibility. The sea voyage took the astonishing time of ten weeks, the ships reaching Plymouth on 27 September, having apparently had a rough passage during which a cer/ tain amount of sea/water leaked into the holds. Now there was yet further delay since Alessandro and Horatio had quarrelled over the disposal of the alum. Hawkins sided with Alessandro, and refused either to deliver the cargo to Horatio’s agent or even give him the key to the holds. By the time this difficulty had been overcome, the queen had declared a state of emergency in view of the foreign political situation, and there was a general ban on all sailings. Meanwhile, so Horatio alleged, the cargo was left ‘abandoned and given over to the spoil of the mariners’, ^2 00 worth being stolen. It was already in bad condition due to the ‘oldness and by the default of the ships’, but now in order to make up the weight lost by the thefts, Hawkins is accused of having doctored the alum with water. At all events when the William and John at last dis/ charged their cargo at Le Havre, the French authorities seized the alum and condemned it as fraudulent, being genera ally in bad condition as well as watered. The Paul was sent to London to unload, but this time Horatio refused to accept delivery, asserting that the cargo was ruined. There ensued a deadlock, and for twelve days the alum lay unattended in lighters, Horatio refusing to accept it and Hawkins trying to get rid of it. During these twelve days the lifts, nips, and foists of London naturally made the most of their opportunity and much more alum disappeared. In the end Hawkins gave way and stored the remainder at his own expense, pending decL sion in court. To crown it all the Paul was then somehow wrecked and became a total loss.

The course of the struggle in the courts, that lasted five years, is illustrative of the defects in the contemporary English legal system. At first the case was submitted for arbitration to two leading London merchants, Benedict Spinola and Mr.

The Monopolist

51

Customer Smith, who awarded Hawkins damages, the one of £ 3 oo and the other of £ 3 3 6. For there can be no doubt that on the whole Hawkins had a grievance due to the long delays at both ports, though Horatio was also hard hit by the poor condition and loss in weight of the alum. An appeal by Hawkins to the Court of Admiralty over the issue of the

Paul alone was countered by a petition filed in Chancery by Palavicino over the whole affair, both sides apparently re' jecting the arbitration. Hawkins’s first retort was to describe Horatio’s petition as ‘very frevolous’ and to assert that the suit ought to be at Common Law. This was pure prevarication since Hawkins knew well that the Common Law would not admit as evidence any documents signed abroad, while Horatio’s case rested mainly on the written evidence from Le Havre and the statement signed by the ships’ masters at Civita Vecchia absolving Fabritio from responsibility for the delay at the Italian end. Hawkins then got down to more serious countercharges, and the suit dragged on its laborious course through 1579 and 1580 into the spring of 1581, when the case was reported to be nearing decision, opinion being that the evidence was ‘in very good tearmes for Mr Hawkins and strong againste Oratio’. But the protagonists in the case were far too important for the affair not to assume a political flavour, and in April 1581 the issue was removed from the courts and put into the hands of Walsingham for arbitration. Hawkins’s claims, including a rather tentative ^£500 for the loss of the Paul, totalled -£1,342, but no one seriously thought them to be worth more than Mr. Customer Smith’s original estimate of -£ 3 3 6. However, Horatio appears to have postponed a final decision into the summer of 1583, when the last that is heard of the case is a letter of his to Walsingham in his usual flowery Italian style, declaring his utmost confidence in Mr. Secretary’s judgement in the coming arbitration award. So far as the alum business was concerned this quarrel was

52

The Monopolist

important since it aroused the hostility of the Hawkins family at a time when the Pallavicini needed all the support they could muster to carry through their project. For while the prolonged legal conflict was in progress, Tobias Pallavicino was busily engaged in carrying out the second part of his plans, to keep the new contractors excluded from the Euro-' pean markets. This policy involved attempts to obtain a six' to eight^year import monopoly to England, and to extract similar concessions for the Low Countries (while there is reason to suppose that a third effort was made to monopolize the French market). For clarity the two aspects have to be treated separately, but for full comprehension of the scope of the plan it must be remembered that all sides of the project interlocked and were carried on simultaneously. The drive for the English market opened on 2 May 1578, when Horatio Palavicino’s petition came under consideration by Lord Burghley.1 Like all the work of the former, it is a clear, business-dike, and insinuating document. Horatio estL mates the total annual consumption of the British Isles to be about 10,000 quintals. He declares that he has had the ex' elusive supply for England from Italy for some time, and wishes to renew the contract for a further seven or eight years. He points out that alum in the Customs Rate Book is assessed at ns. 4d. a quintal; he offers to sell at 26s. 8d. at two or three distribution centres, as may be most convenient to the com sumers. Besides the ordinary customs, he promises an ad-ditional imposition of 3 i1. 4d. a quintal, payable in six-'monthly instalments, on the basis of the returns of the official weighers. If through war or any other act of God he fails to provide adequate supplies to satisfy consumers then the agreement is to be considered broken. In return he makes certain demands: that all alum should be sold in the queen’s name, Horatio acting as royal factor for collection of the sale money, thus 1 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/17.

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being protected from molestation under the cloak of royal privilege; that a proclamation be issued prohibiting the inv port of alum into any part of the kingdom from Civita Vecchia, Spain, or any other country under pain of confisca/ tion of goods, one/third to go to the queen, one/third to the informer, and one/third to Horatio; that a similar prohibition be placed on the buying of alum by retail from anyone but Horatio and his agents; that a special prohibition be placed on English merchants importing alum from Hamburg to Scot/ land, thence to filter into England; and that export to Scotland should be allowed only to those who had bought from Horatio in London. Finally, an escape clause was inserted whereby Horatio was to be allowed to raise prices if there took place any depreciation in the English currency and con/ sequent alteration of rates of exchange. The plan immediately raised a hornets’ nest of competing ambitions and outraged interests. The opposition was flurried, and to give itself time to reflect lodged the immediate and inconsequential objection that ‘It may please your Lordship to understand that Paulovicino yt maketh this suite is a miserable man and secketh great thinges with little charge’. To stir up Burghley’s jealousy and to exploit his well/known rivalry with Walsingham, the opposition insinuated that immediately after his interview with the Lord Treasurer Horatio had hurried off to get the support of Mr. Secretary. Meanwhile Burghley had consulted his economic experts, who reported favourably.1 They admitted that the Pallavicini stood to make huge profits. On the other hand, they did in fact hold in stock six years’ world supply, worth -£160,000, the 3.r. 4d. a quintal imposition would bring in an additional -£1,666 a year to the queen, and 26s. 8L ‘is thoughte reason/ able and is accompted a cheape price with the Clothiers’. Finally, *yf the new Contracters for Allam withe the Pope, 1 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/15, 14.

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The Monopolist

and Paulovicinoes Father shoulde happen to agree together they mighte sell Allam in Englande at what price they lysted, and therfore to avoyde the inhauncinge of the price ther of, yt semethe not amysse to take Paulovicinoes offer’. In other words acceptance of Palavicino’s distribution monopoly was a preferable alternative to being blackmailed by a world pro^ duction cartel if the two rivals came to terms. The first opponents in the field were the merchants trading in the Mediterranean, stirred up no doubt by the brothers Hawkins, and a few days later the Council of the City of London came into the ring with a letter to the Privy Council declaring that Palavicino’s project was ‘very hurtful to the Common Weale and this Citie’.1 Horatio made every effort to draw the teeth of this particular group by conciliation.2 He pointed out that the bulk of the Mediterranean traders would be unaffected. Those discharging in southern French or eastern Spanish ports could not afford to go empty to Italy to load alum, and therefore normally loaded their return cargoes in Spain. Most Italian traders preferred to lade silks, but Horatio offered to sell them alum if they wished for i6x. a quintal at Civenova, where the Pallavicino stockpile was apparently located. Only three to four ships a year went to Leghorn with herrings and cloth, and they either went on to Zante for currants or loaded alum at Civita Vecchia; the latter group Horatio offered to supply with alum from Cive^ nova, which was a nearer and better harbour. He further observed that the House of Commons could not really object to the proposed imposition of 3 s. 4 d. in view of the reasonable-' ness of the selling price. In any case it was not really an impost, but an acknowledgement of privilege—a nice distinction which angry orators in the Lower House were unlikely to appreciate. Finally, Horatio dwelt upon the economic advam 1 City of London Record Office, Repertories, xix, f. 3341'. 2 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/18.

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tages of bulk purchase of staple commodities for a great importer country in terms reminiscent of those used by similar advocates today. The Pallavicini almost won. A draft proclamation was drawn up prohibiting all alum imports by Italians, and ordering the arrest of all ships laden with alum that were in port or might subsequently arrive.1 But Burghley possessed that rare characteristic in a sixteenth-century statesman—a sense of responsibility for the consumer. He hesitated, and while he delayed the advantages of procrastination became apparent. A bitter price-cutting war developed between the old and new contractors, and in two years alum prices fell from 28s. and 30^. to 25L, 24s., and right down to 20s. a quintal. This was under cost-price, but both groups were obstinate and possessed powerful financial resources. So long as it lasted the English cloth finishers could not but profit enormously. The only drawback was that at any moment the two groups might combine to rig the world market: ‘if it so fall out, then will theie ymediately advaunce theire price to 30s. and so from tyme to tyme advaunce to 40s. and 50s. or higher at theire pleasure’.2 Into these dangerous and uncertain waters, that shrewd speculator Thomas Smith, the customs farmer, had plunged heavily.3 He knew that the pace was too hot to last, and that prices were bound to find their normal level again soon. He therefore invested ^25,000 in buying up at the prevailing cut prices all the alum he could lay hands on in England. Using this stock of about 24,000 cwt. as a weapon in the same way that the Pallavicini had attempted, he then proposed to bar¬ gain with the new contractors, the Florentine Company of Altovici, to divert all supplies to London, and at last make 1 Op. cit. 26/20. H.M.C. Salis. MSS. ii, p. 255. 2 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 34/57 (copy in S.P. Dom. Eliz. 253/115). 3 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/21, 14; 44/52.

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her instead of Antwerp the main alum entrepot of Europe. As he had farmed the customs on a long lease, Smith stood to gain doubly, both by the raising of the price of his stocks at home and by the customs revenue accruing from the increased import and export of alum. Unfortunately for him, he was not the only capitalist who had picked up ideas from the manipulations of the Pallavicini. The Florentine Filippo Corsini was rapidly becoming one of the most important alien merchants in London, his com/' mercial activity ranging from the Mediterranean through the Low Countries to Hamburg.1 A fellow countryman of Altovici and the agent of the Duke of Tuscany, it was only natural that he should handle the new contractor’s English marketing arrangements. He therefore planned to break Smith’s hold by importing 6,000 quintals to sell at a low price, obtaining a monopoly for eight years, and then restoring prices. This activity Smith denounced with all the indigna^ tion of outraged innocence as a ‘practise and sinister dealing’ and asked Burghley to remedy the situation by placing a 3s. 4d. imposition on all alum imported from Rome for three years—until in fact Smith had unloaded his stocks upon the public. This, he concluded, would harm neither consumers nor shippers.2 The selling price he suggested, of 255'. a quintal, would bring him a modest profit of about 25 per cent., seeing that on his own admission he had bought much of his alum at the bottom price of 19s. to £1. It is a remarkable tribute to the influence of Smith that Burghley accepted this dubious proposal, and on 20 May 1581 issued orders to the customers to collect an extra 3 a 4L tax on all alum imported from ‘any of the dominions of the Bishop of Rome’, the proceeds being handled by Smith himself.3 1 Op. cit. 113/23; B.M., Harl. MSS. 1878/53; 167/5. 2 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/21. 3 First draft: op. cit. 32/12; final version S.P. Dom. Eliz. 149/n. After Smith’s death his executors became engaged in a lawsuit with the queen over the proceeds

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The Altovici made a very reasonable petition against the deal, but in vain. The result of the alum imposition was exactly what might have been expected. In the first year some 6,000 quintals were imported, mostly by Corsini, but later on imports appear to have fallen off and in the six years from 1581 to 1586 only 9,683 cwt. were brought in from Italy.1 Spanish alum, which remained free from the impost, came in in greatly increased quantities, evasion of the duty was achieved by re-export via France, and the newly formed Turkey Com/ pany also imported from Asia Minor.2 Nevertheless by 1585 prices had risen again to 315“. and 3 2s. Having by now un/ loaded his stock, Smith no longer had any interest in main/ taining the imposition, and heavy pressure for its abolition was being exerted by Corsini, backed by the Duke of Tus/ cany. The objectionable tax was therefore withdrawn in November 1585.3 Henceforward Corsini appears to have been the chief importer of alum to England, and political hostility towards the Papacy failed to break the commercial link.4 Efforts by his enemies to prove that Corsini had helped the conspirator Anthony Babington, or that he was in regular correspondence by cipher with the Pope, failed to shake his position. He even survived the sinister rumour that every Sunday in St. Paul’s he ‘doth whisper secretly with all such ould soldiers which cometh latle over from Flaunders’.5 •

•

•

•

•

The Pallavicini projects therefore failed completely in Eng/ land, due partly to the greater pressure exerted by other of the impost (P.R.O., Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Entry Books of Decrees and Orders, series i, 24/80-290 passim). 1 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 26/16; 44/50; Bodl., Rawlinson MSS. C. 756, ff. 52-63. 2 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 44/53, 49; S.P. Dorn. Eliz. 233/133 B.M., Lansd. MSS. 44/49-51; H.M.C. Salis. MSS. iii, p. 114. 4 In 1589 Corsini imported 400 tons despite the protest ‘how capital an enimy the pope is to her Majeste’s sacred person & the realme, and therefore moost urn worthy of that privileage’ (B.M., Lansd. MSS. 61/48). 5 Op. cit. 61/55.

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The Monopolist

powerful interests, and partly to the conscientious hesitations of Lord Burghley. In the Low Countries, however, they were more successful, since the political situation played directly into their hands. The intimate connexion of politics and economics, statesmanship and high finance, are nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the evolution of this part of the Pallavicini scheme. When Tobias first began preparations for his coup he must have calculated upon having to deal with the Spanish rulers of the Low Countries. But by 1578 Brabant and Flanders were temporarily united with Holland and Zeeland in opposition to Spanish pretentions. In these four provinces were situated both the ports and the industrial areas, the transport facilities and the consumers, for the alum trade. It was with the States General, therefore, and not with the Spanish governor that a contract would now have to be made. The scheme fell neatly into place, dovetailing with the political situation. Elizabeth, pursuing her usual oscillating policy, was blowing alternately hot and cold upon the Dutch, to the despair of her ministers, who were greatly alarmed at the danger of French hegemony. However, in the end she gave the States General a little money in cash and empowered them to raise a loan of £100,000 by the use of her credit and that of the City of London. The Fugger agent summed up the military situation: ‘there will be plenty of men on both sides and the only question is which paymaster will hold out longest’.1 The financial position of the rebels was very precarious. The church plate of Ghent had already been melted down, and only if they could turn the queen’s credit into ready cash could they stave off defeat for a few more months. But all the great bankers, including the WTlsers and Fuggers, had withdrawn from Antwerp to Germany or France owing 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1578-9, nos. 129, 129 bis; The Fugger Newsletters, 1568-1605, ed. V. von Klarwill (second series), 1926, p. 15.

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to the political uncertainty, and the Dutch could not find anyone on hand who was prepared to advance money on the queen’s obligations.1 At this crisis Horatio Palavicino and his associate Battista Spinola made their offer. They had large stocks of alum lying at Antwerp and in Italy, which they proposed to lend to the States General, who could then sell it to the clothiers for cash. In return the Dutch were to give adequate security for early repayment, their own bonds being underwritten by others from the queen and the City of London; lastly—and this was the crux of the bargain—they were to grant the two merchants a six/year monopoly of all alum imports into the Low Countries. Elizabeth and Burgh/ ley gave their approval to this ingenious proposition and the Dutch had no choice but to accept. Obligations to repay within eighteen months £16,636. js. 3 d. to Horatio Pala/ vicino and £12,121. 4s. id. to Battista Spinola were signed by the queen and the City, covering bonds being given by the Dutch.2 Thus rapidly did the new Dutch administration adopt the identical fiscal device of a state monopoly that they had so much disliked in their former Habsburg rulers. During 1578 the Palavicino-Cataneo firm and that of Spinola Ob'tamed an ever greater hold upon the financial and economic affairs of the revolted provinces. They advanced money in re/ turn for bulk supplies of cloth at artificially low prices; they forced the magistrates of Antwerp to accept the queen’s obliga/ tions in lieu of cash for the customs dues on their alum imports, the farm of which the City had bought twenty years before; and in December they formed part of a consortium which undertook to pay off for the winter the soldiers who were 1 Cal. S.P. Span. 1568-79, no. 530; Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Polities des Pays'Bas et de VAngleterre (Brussels, 1882-1900), x, p. 411. 2 M. Gachard, Actes des EtatS'Generaux (Brussels, 1861-6), i, 1576-78, nos. 1185-6; N. Japikse, Resolution der Staten'Generaal (’s Gravenhage, 1915“ )> L 1578-9, p. 107; Cal. S.P. For. 1577-8, nos. 928-9; H.M.C. Vlth Rep., p. 447^Sm e £4,000 of the Spinola bond was later said to cover an old debt.

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preying upon the country-side for lack of money and food. In return for ridding the country of this common sixteenth-century scourge, the consortium obtained security on the tax moyens generaux of Brabant and Flanders. The alum monopoly was thus only a beginning; as the Dutch staggered from one financial crisis to another they fell ever deeper into the clutches of these detested but indispensable creditors.1 The Pallavicini now had their monopoly and it only re¬ mained to arrange shipment of the stockpiles from Italy and Spain. Unfortunately they had not reckoned on the violence that would be unleashed by their incursion into politics. For if to them the loan to the Dutch was a purely commercial transaction, to the rest of the world it was a deliberate act to bolster up the defence of the rebels against the authority of Spain. Without this help it was widely believed—rightly or wrongly—that the Dutch could not have held out.2 For once the Spanish authorities worked fast, though still not fast enough. Mendoza, the ambassador in London, had his spies abroad and was soon aware of what was going on. The queen and the City of London did not sign the bonds till 5 September, but by the 21st Mendoza was in possession of all the details. He immediately perceived the great importance of the deal and the vital necessity of freezing the Pallavicino alum stocks in Spain and Italy. If these could be impounded the financial stability of the Dutch rebels would be most seriously weakened. If, on the other hand, Horatio Palavicino was left at liberty to shift his alum to Antwerp, the Dutch Govern¬ ment stood to profit greatly from the customs dues. Since the success of the rebels largely depended upon their financial capacity to keep their troops in the field, it seemed to Mendoza that the destruction of this Pallavicino scheme was of first 1 N. Japikse, op. cit., pp. 108, 253, 263. 2 This was the opinion of both Alexander Farnese (J. Lefevre, Correspondence de Philippe II sur les Affaires des Pays'Bas, 2'eme partie (1940), i, no. 671) and of Mendoza {Cal. S.P. Span. 1568-jg, no. 530).

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importance to Spanish policy. He wrote at once to the Pope and to Philip,advising them in the strongest terms to take dras' tic action. Philip replied by return of post that he had ordered the impounding of all the Pallavicino ships and alum at Cadiz, Cartegena, and Alicante, and had sent letters for similar steps to be taken in Milan. In the Patrimony the Pope also reacted quickly, and even succeeded in laying hands upon Fabritio Pallavicino. The latter suffered more than mere inv prisonment, for the Pope was not over/squeamish in his conv mercial dealings. Did not his business interests coincide with measures ‘most advantageous to the service of God and the weakening of the enemies of his Holy Name’? It was pre/ sumably for the sake of these elevated ideals that he put Fabritio to the torture and severely maimed his arms. In addition, he managed to seize the Pallavicino property in Rome, which the family later valued at ^5,000 for Horatio’s share and ^10,000 for his brothers’. The former was never recovered, and the latter impounded for fourteen years.1 Both Gregory and Philip were well satisfied with their achievements. But they had reckoned without the inefficiency and corruption of their administration and the skill, influence, and perseverance of Horatio Palavicino. Much to Mendoza’s annoyance two shiploads of alum got through at the end of the year, bringing Horatio a profit of 30,000 ducats. The latter was highly indignant about the embargo, protesting disingenuously that he had dealt only with the queen and had nothing whatever to do with the Dutch. Mendoza ignored such quibbles and urged Philip to increase his efforts to ‘dissuade such people from helping the States again’. Horatio then hired eight English ships to transport the alum stocks, knowing that legally Philip was powerless to 1 Cal. S.P. Rome, 1572-8, nos. 955, 1001; Cal. S.P. Span. 1568-79, nos. 530, 536; Cal. S.P. For. 1578-9, no. 509; 1582, nos. 87, 88, 108; H.M.C. Salts. MSS. xviii, pp. 429-30.

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arrest them on the high seas. Seven ships arrived safely, but the eighth, depending on the influence of Lorenzo Spinola at Madrid to thwart Philip’s orders, put in to collect some alum from Alicante. The port authorities, however, were less corruptible than was thought; the ship had to weigh and sail in a hurry to escape arrest, and in the excitement twenty'five English sailors were left behind. The whole problem of the treatment of English sailors in Spain had been the subject of acrimonious negotiations two years before, in a stormy con' troversy with the Grand Inquisitor, and the point was still one upon which the queen was very sensitive. She at once began pressing Mendoza for the sailors’ release. The latter suggested to Philip that they should be freed on payment of a large fine, since Horatio would in fact have to pay it. A note of personal animosity now begins to creep into Mendoza’s letters—and indeed not without cause. Horatio was not merely stealing his letters for Walsingham’s espionage service, but was openly bragging that the Spanish authorities had been too slow to catch him. He managed to get more alum through in July, and thus despite the efforts of Philip and Pope Gregory seems to have succeeded in at least part of his plans, even if at the expense of his brother’s freedom.1 The arrest of Fabritio aroused considerable indignation in England, and Elizabeth was induced to take the very un' usual step of corresponding directly with the Holy See. On 24 July 1579 she dispatched to Cardinal Galli a letter con' taining an admirably judicious mixture of blandishments and threats.2 It began by explaining that the queen was approach' ing the cardinal in view of his well'known reputation as a man deeply imbued with a sense of justice and humanity. It then summarized the facts of the case, alleging that the arrest 1 Cal. S.P. Span. 1568-79, nos. 548, 563, 577. 578, 580, 584.

2 P.R.O., Transcripts, Rome Archives, scries i (31/9/m ff. 115-18). I am indebted to Professor J. E. Neale for calling my attention to this document.

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had been made at the instigation of the business rivals of the Pallavicini, Giovanni Francisco Ridolfi and Company. If this is true, the Ridolfi were presumably partners of the Altovici in the new farm of the Tolfa mines. The letter ended with an open threat that unless Fabritio was immediately released the queen would arrest all the ships, goods, and merchants from the Papal States that she could lay her hands on. This broadside apparently went unacknowledged, and it was not until the personal intervention of Catherine de Medici on his behalf in 1582 that Fabritio secured his freedom.1 But even then the Pope had the last word, having arrested Prospero Spinola, Horatio’s ‘singular and almost only friend’, and for some years the Pallavicino family continued to be dogged by papal spies.2

Of the subsequent dealings of the Pallavicini in alum nothing is known. The Dutch loan agreement had a decisive effect upon the career of Horatio, by tying up a great bulk of his capital, and by forcing him uneq uivocally upon the Anglos Dutch side of the European struggle. It seems that Horatio now spent a good deal of time in Paris, whence he continued to direct the family business of alum distribution throughout the early 8o’s.3 Later on, diplomacy, government finance, and more speculative trading investments absorbed his attention. But a limited and local success in the handling of the alum monopoly undoubtedly laid the foundations upon which he was able in the succeeding years to build a yet more copious fortune. The causes of the partial failure of the Pallavicino attempt are of some historical significance. The political animosities of Europe were increasing daily and shattering the old world order in which the international merchant cartel could flourish. 1 Baguenault de Puchesse, Letters de Catherine de Medicis (Paris, 1880-1909), viii, PP- 34-352 Cal. S.P. For. 1582, nos. 48, 108; 1583-4, no. 181. 3 Op. cit. 1583, no. 379; 1583-4, nos. 20, 181.

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The Monopolist

In the face of the jealously competing autarkies of the rival nation states, world monopoly was no longer possible. Every nation strove for self/sufficiency, and governments were even prepared to sacrifice the substantial revenues offered as bait by the international cartel in favour of the military security afforded by adeq uate domestic production. The ultimate failure of the Pallavicino European alum monopoly marks the end of an epoch.

T

j. The War Financier

problem of the repayment of loans to allies in time of war is one which at all periods has tended to embitter and distort the diplomatic relations of great powers. Century after century the post-war foreign policies of victorious nations have been deflected from their primary objectives by the endless bickerings between opulent creditor and impoverished debtor. Time and time again this single factor has served to shatter the wartime unity of allies, paralyse their freedom of action, and stultify hopes of achieving positive results from previous efforts. If a recognition of the futility of such quarrels has today at last obtained a limited popularity it is due in large measure to the over/ whelming evidence of past history. The Elizabethan Government lacked this wisdom. Faced with that traditional menace to English security, the acquisi/ tion of the whole of the Channel ports by a powerful and potentially hostile State, England towards the end of the sixteenth century was forced against her will into a policy of subsidizing the Dutch insurgents. Detested as rebels against the divinely constituted authority of Monarchy, suspect as religious radicals, despised as of vulgar bourgeois stock, the Dutch were scarcely welcome allies of the queen. And it was she who in the last resort was the sole director of foreign policy. But the need to keep their busy ports and flourishing industrial towns out of the grip of the French or Spanish overruled all such considerations. Self-interest forced the queen to sub/ sidize the rebels, lest anarchy in the Netherlands should pro/ vide the opportunity of aggrandizement to either of its greater neighbours. he

The first real crisis was reached in 1577. At first it looked 6763

F

The War Financier

66

as if the arrival of Don John might shortly crush all opposition, and an embassy was sent to Casimir of the Palatinate, the Protestant mercenary on the Rhine, to provide a counter/ poise. Then the situation took a new and, to the backward/ looking Elizabethan eyes, an even more dangerous twist. Don John’s duplicity alienated the Dutch as a whole and for a brief period the Catholic and aristocratic Flanders and Bra/ bant were united in rebellion with the Calvinist and bourgeois Holland and Zeeland. The leaders of this precarious alliance of incompatibilities were now looking for help, and they turned naturally to England and to France. There was a danger that if Elizabeth refused aid the Dutch would be forced to appeal to the French, thus threatening the establish/ ment of French hegemony over the Low Countries. Through/ out the autumn the delicate negotiations took place, the Dutch asking for a loan of ^100,000 and 6,000 troops, and Eliza/ beth hesitating in her characteristic way.1 Finally, at the turn of the year, the queen agreed to the Dutch demands.2 But early in 1578 Daniel Rogers returned from Germany with the news that Casimir was willing to intervene in the Netherlands if suitably rewarded for his pains.3 The advantages of using Casimir were obvious. A mercenary army would be more dependent on English directives than troops raised directly by the Dutch, and the employment of Germans rather than English would enable the queen to maintain the specious diplomatic pretence of non/inter/ vention. In March, therefore, Elizabeth informed the Dutch that she would advance ^40,000 direct to Casimir, with the aid of which he would invade the Low Countries with a force of 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1578-g, nos. 129,129 bis; also Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Politiques des Pays'Bas et de I’Angleterre (Brussels, 1882-1900), ix, p. 540. 2 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vi, part ii, no. 64; F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer. . . during the reign of James I (1836), p. 343. 3 Kervyn de Lettenhove, op. cit. x, p. 281.

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6,000 Swiss and 5,000 German horse. She also promised to give bonds for £100,000, upon which the Dutch could borrow money for immediate contingencies. Lastly she gave a direct loan of £5,000 and a permit to export war material from England. All debts were to be repaid within one year. The bonds upon which the £100,000 were to be raised were signed by the queen, and on her security by the City of London, during this fit of activity in mid/March.1 Acting on this information the States General cast about for creditors who would provide cash on the basis of these obligations, and were forced into signing the agreement with Battista Spinola and Horatio Palavicino by which the alum was transferred to the Dutch. The economic consequences of this agreement have already been described, and it is the long and complex financial and political developments arising out of it which must now be examined. It was not a very profit/ able arrangement for the Dutch, but under the circumstances they had no choice. It was reported that the loan was ‘not readie money, but part wares & part old debtes wherein was lost partly by sale of wares and partly by acceptacion of the debtes, 25 in the hundrethe’.2 Nearly fifty years later it was asserted that in return for bonds for £28,757. Hi-. 3d., Pala/ vicino and Spinola actually handed over to the Dutch a quantity of alum that the latter were unable to sell for more than £6,896. 10s. od. Moreover Spinola’s bonds for £12,121. qj. od. incorporated an old debt of £4,000, so that the Dutch obtained only £8,021. 4*. od. in cash from him. Thus in return for obligations for almost £29,000 the Dutch are alleged to have received in ready money rather less than £i5,ooo.3 1 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vi, part ii, no. 64; Kervyn de Lettenhove, op. cit. x, pp. 319, 417, 437; City of London Record Office, Journals of the Common Council, xx, part ii, f. 393. 2 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vi, part ii, no. 76. Cf. Kervyn de Lettenhove, op. cit. x, p. 529. 3 S.P. Dom. Charles I, 44/75.

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Unfortunately the queen’s fit of vigour and determination in March, which was inspired by a desire to induce the Dutch to break off negotiations with the French, soon petered out, and by the end of April she had entirely changed her attitude. Having convinced herself that the Dutch were perfectly able to support themselves, she refused to send over the counter' bonds upon promise of which Palavicino and Spinola had made their loan, and she insisted that the ^45,000 sent and promised in cash should first be repaid from the ^100,000 to be borrowed, though no such stipulation seems to have been inserted in the original bargain. Next, she ordered payment of the second -/T20,000 for Casimir to be held up at the last minute, on the grounds that the Dutch could well pay for it themselves. And finally she sent Cobham and Walsingham over to Antwerp with instructions to attempt the impossible and mediate a peace between Don John and the rebels. The envoys at once realized the folly of this dilatory policy and warned the Privy Council of its dangers, while the Council, led by Burghley, kept pressing the queen to implement her promises.1 The States General were without money for their troops, were daily harried by Spinola and Palavicino for the counter'bonds, without which the Italians refused to com' plete delivery of the loan, and were threatened by an invasion of German mercenaries under Casimir, who, if not promptly paid, would merely plunder the country to recoup themselves. Meanwhile Elizabeth remained deaf to all entreaties, and Alen^on was making tempting offers to the Dutch. The queen panicked at the last moment and on 9 August sent a hasty message offering up to 12,000 men and the long'promised bonds. But she was just too late, for four days later the Dutch signed the treaty with the French.2 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1578-9, nos. 77, 89, 98, 112, 120, 123; B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vi, part ii, nos. 63, 64. 2 Op. cit., nos. 159, 163.

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Confronted with the results of her hesitations, the queen set about trying to repair the damage. She signed the new bonds a fortnight later and by 5 September they had been counter/ signed by the City.1 But Elizabeth rarely gave away something for nothing and she now stipulated that she should be given the Burgundian crown jewels in pledge, and that the Dutch should promise to submit any peace negotiations to her advice and mediation. The Dutch were somewhat put out by the first of these demands, since they had already pawned the jewels to a Spanish merchant at Antwerp, and they had no money to spare with which to redeem them. In this extremity they turned again to Battista Spinola, who lent them a further ^3,636. 7-f. 4d.y for which he insisted upon more bonds from the queen. Furthermore, owing to one of those astonish/ ing mistakes in simple arithmetic that are such a feature of the accounts of that unscientific age, it was discovered that the original bonds for Spinola were £400 short. Once made, such a mistake was not easily rectified. It always took weeks of patient pressure to induce the queen to sign bonds or warrants for expenditure, and to work her up again to a frame of mind to sign for the missing -£400 was next to impossible.2 Moreover she was particularly irritable during this autumn, being tor/ tured with toothache for which no one could provide a satisfactory cure, and which both ruined her temper and impeded public business.3 Davison and Wilson were most anxious to see the bonds signed, partly because of the political dangers inherent in further procrastination, and partly because the Italians, who were no respecters of persons, were threaten/ 1 Op. cit., nos. 208, 226; Cf. City of London Record Office, Journals of the Common Council, xx, part ii, f. 426v. 2 Kervyn de Lettenhove, op. cit. x, p. 529; Cal. S.P. For. nos. 197,308, 328, 3733 For Dr. Anthony Fenot’s prescription, see B.M., Lansd. MSS. 27/44. In the end Bishop Aylmer screwed the queen’s courage up to the point of submitting to extraction by having a similar operation performed on himself in her presence (J. Strype, Life of John Aylmer, 1821, pp. 192-3); Cal. S.P. For. isy8-(), no. 411.

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The War Financier

ing the ambassadors with arrest for debt. Walsingham gave the Dutch and Spinola detailed instructions on the best way to approach the queen on the matter, and Davison went so far as to give the Dutch a promissory note of his own for bonds from the queen and the City for the additional ^400. In November he fell out with Spinola, whom he accused of lewd dealing and loose handling, and asked that the ^3,636. js. 4L should not be paid. But in January 1579 all was well again, and he once more took up Spinola’s cause, backed by urgent appeals from the States General to the queen. However on 11 April Elizabeth wrote to Davison telling him that she would have nothing to do with this sum. As for the ^400, the States endorsed the bonds for that amount in November 1578, but by the end of the year the queen’s signature had still not been obtained.1 Elizabeth had thus achieved very little in return for her advance of ^45,000 in cash2 and bonds of security for the ^28,000 loan by the Italians. The French had not been kept out. The encouragement given to Casimir had merely exacer^ bated the divisions between the Catholic Walloon provinces and the Calvinist North. The Germans had established themselves in Ghent and given direct assistance to the religious excesses of the extremists. When Elizabeth refused any further advances they disbanded and dribbled back to Germany in the spring. The sole result of this intervention had been to thwart the moderating policy of Orange, and to make the split between Catholics and Calvinists inevitable.3 On the other hand the queen’s new plans to dominate the situation by 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1578-9, nos. 245, 334, 349, 399, 512, 517, 648. 2 This was composed of: £20,000 given to Christopher Hoddesdonto disburse in munitions and later lent direct to the States, 7 August 1577; £20,000 lent to M. de Sweveghem for the States, 27 December 1577; £5,000 lent to M. de Havre for the States, 27 December 1577. (S.P. Dom. Eliz. 209/14.). This does not include the £40,000 lent direct to Casimir (S.P. Holland and Flanders, 14/142; H.M.C. Salis. MSS. ii, p. 180). 3 H. Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique (Brussels, 1902-32), iv, pp. 146-7.

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exercising her charms and providing offers of marriage to Alengon, tended to strengthen the hand of the French and in/ crease the internal division of the Dutch. At the same time her insistence on the pledging of the jewels, and her continual pressure for prompt repayment of her advances, destroyed what feeling of gratitude the Dutch may at first have felt for her assistance. Such were the inauspicious circumstances in which the English Crown and the City of London first contracted responsibility for the ^28,000 Palavicino-Spinola loan. No less than forty/eight years were to elapse before either party heard the last of it. It was the last occasion on which Eliza/ beth gave security to alien creditors and it caused almost more trouble than all the previous loans put together. It was dif/ ferent from all the other advances that England made to either Dutch or Huguenots in the coming years, for it was a loan from private individuals, and as such could not await a negotiated post/war settlement on international indebtedness. The ceaseless pressure of Palavicino and Spinola on the queen kept the issue in the forefront of diplomacy from the outset, and embittered Anglo/Dutch relations for twenty years. The later history of the loan has thus a political importance which far exceeds its intrinsic monetary value. It reveals the appalling wastefulness of the method of public finance by pri/ vate borrowing, it demonstrates the weakness of the Crown against these indispensable financial magnates, it sheds a hard light on the mutually suspicious and shifty relationship of the States General and Elizabeth, and it shows the de/ plorable effect upon private commerce of these government loans. The points of view of the Dutch and the queen were quite irreconcilable. The latter considered that the debt was funda/ mentally a responsibility of the Dutch, whose bonds she held as cover for those she had given to the Italians. She felt that

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The War Financier

the Dutch had broken their contract and left her to face the consequences. They repaid neither the principal nor the in' terest, and as a result her subjects were threatened with the arrest of their goods and persons. Even Walsingham had a low opinion of the Dutch allies’ behaviour: ‘the government of those countries resteth in the hands of merchants and advocates, the one regarding profit, the other standing on vantage of quircks’.1 On the other hand the Dutch had a hardly less plausible case. It was they who continued to bear the main brunt of the war, both militarily and financially. They were unwilling to ruin themselves to repay what they regarded as a direct advance to assist the common cause, and they knew that legally the Italians could only worry the queen and the City, who had signed the bonds. But that which weighed most with them was the fact that of the towns and provinces that had signed the counter'bonds many shortly afterwards seceded again to the Spanish.The remaining United Provinces saw no reason for assuming sole responsibility for an engagement made in common with others. Holland and Zeeland were always jealous of the commercial importance of Antwerp, and they asserted that the loan was made largely on the security and in the interests of that city. Any retaliation by the English, such as the arrest of Dutch merchants, would mainly damage Antwerp, and was thus an eventuality that the Hollanders could endure with considerable fortitude. When Antwerp also was lost to the Spanish, this argument of only limited responsibility became more cogent than ever. The Dutch therefore adopted a policy of polite procrastina' tion, which was one to which the decentralized constitution of the United Provinces was almost ideally suited. They knew that basically England’s jealousy of Spain and France would keep her attached to their interests, and they therefore calculated that the irritation their obduracy would cause the 1 Cal. S.P. For. i$8$-6, p. 114.

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queen was unlikely to drive her to extremes. It was a risk they considered that they could well afford to take. The bonds had been made payable in two six/monthly instalments, the first two falling due in February and June 1579 to Palavicino and Spinola respectively.1 By the winter, however, the financial plight of the Dutch had increased rather than diminished as the coalition of provinces dis/ integrated. Walsingham was well aware of the effect that non/ payment would have upon the queen and he strained every nerve to persuade the States General to fulfil their bonds, ‘for if they think to cast the burden on her, besides that they will deceive themselves, they will procure greater dissatisfaction than they would wish Her Majesty to conceive against them’.2 But the Dutch, supported by Davison, suggested that since the queen now held the jewels in pawn, she might well pay the debt upon that security. In March they gave the queen full obligations signed by the States General, empowering her to prolong the loan at an interest rate of 10 per cent., and promis/ ing indemnity. Spinola at first refused to accept interest and demanded his principal, but in the end he bowed to the inevitable. The Dutch, however, now failed even to pay the stipulated interest, to the well/justified indignation of Eliza/ beth. Palavicino and Spinola became increasingly menacing. They threatened to arrest London merchants in the Low Countries, as they were legally entitled to do according to the bonds of the City, and continued to badger Elizabeth until she declared testily that she was ‘infinitely importuned by them’.3 The group that was most directly affected by the quarrel was the Merchant Adventurers, whose persons and business 1

The original Dutch bond for Spinola remains in the P.R.O., Exchequer of

Receipt, Misc. no. 70 (2); that for Palavicino is missing. Cal. S.P. For. 1578-9, no. 225. 2 Op. cit., no. 569. 3 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vi, part ii, no. 76; Cal. S.P. For. 1578-1), nos.

571, 610, 658; 1579-80, nos. 99, 229.

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interests in the Netherlands were now in jeopardy. Elizabeth therefore saw a way to economize in the expense of ambassa/ dors or special envoys by employing the officials of the Com/ pany at Antwerp to carry on the negotiations. At first it seemed possible that the Adventurers might profit by the debt, since in May 1580 it was proposed that the States should give a mortgage on the tax moyens genereaux to cover the future interest of 27,312 florins a year, of which it was expected that the Merchants would discount 20,000 in freedom from cus/ toms dues on their own goods.1 If the Dutch had ever agreed to this somewhat complicated transaction it would have avoided the necessity for transporting bullion and would have been a stimulus to the English cloth trade. For the whole of the latter half of 1580 George Gilpin, secretary to the Merchant Adventurers, negotiated individually and collectively with the States, but with little success. He was a conscientious fellow and wrote a host of voluminous reports, detailing his own zeal and activity, the obstructiveness and prevarications of the Dutch, and the intransigence and threatening attitude of Palavicino.2 But the only result of this persistent haggling was, as Burghley himself admitted, further to drive the Dutch into the arms of Alengon.3 At the end of 1580 Spinola lost patience. He was heavily involved in Dutch finances, and in view of the precarious military situation was now trying to reduce his liabilities. He threatened that unless some settlement were made, he would hawk the queen’s bonds about the Antwerp bourse, selling them if necessary at a discount. This was a move which would strike a deadly blow at the prestige and honesty of the queen, who had hitherto been a paragon among princes for her finan/ cial trustworthiness.4 Palavicino, on the other hand, was bent on increasing his commitments. In the troublesome period that 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1579-80, no. 304.

3 Op. cit., no. 360.

2 Op. cit., nos. 394-532 passim. 4 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. xiii, p. 259.

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75

clearly lay ahead, he presumably considered that a foot in either camp would be an advantage. Moreover a steady io per cent, guaranteed by the queen and the City was as sound an investment as the times could offer. In his own name therefore, and on warrant of the queen, Horatio took over the whole burden of the loan, buying out Spinola altogether, the money being put up by Horatio’s father, Tobias, at Genoa.1 Horatio consequently received letters patent for a future annuity of ^2,942.1 is. 4d. to cover the annual interest, together with a guarantee that the interest still outstanding of .£4,616. 13s. id. was to be incorporated in the principal.2 Having thus committed herself, the queen determined on a really formidable effort to bring the States General to a sense of their responsibilities. She consequently sent William David¬ son and Christopher Hoddesdon, Governor of the Merchant Adventurers, to make a special appeal to the States General, which met in 1581, threatening that if the Dutch would not agree to give bonds covering the new contract, together with promises to pay the half-yearly interest, ‘they must looke for and after moer extraordinary courses’. She took a lofty moral line over the jewels, insisting that they belonged to the House of Burgundy and that the States General had therefore no power to alienate them. Honour thus prevented her, she declared, from selling the jewels to recoup her expenditure. In conclusion she warned the Dutch of the impolicy of breaking faith with the international financiers upon whose credit they might well be forced to draw again in the future. But the Dutch merely continued to protest their financial inability, though they agreed to pay the future half-yearly instalments of in/ terest.3 Preparations were made to withdraw the Merchant Adventurers from Antwerp, for fear of retaliation if the queen

1 City of London Record Office, Remembrancia, ii, p. 1; H.M.C. Salts. MSS. xiii, p. 569. 2 Op. cit. vi, p. 306; Acts of Privy Council, 1580-1, p. 356. 3 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vii, no. 44; Cal. S.P. For. 1581-2, nos. 26-28.

76

The War Financier

should arrest Dutch goods in England. But under the influx ence of these rumours, at the meeting of the States General in June it was decided to grant bonds for the full new capital of ^3 3,3 74. 4^. 4d., together with the future io per cent, interest.1 The deputies of Holland were present when the decision to comply was agreed upon—a fact of some importance in view of the subsequent disclaimer of responsibility by that province. The situation, however, was hardly improved by these paper agreements. Although the queen from now on began paying Horatio his six/monthly annuity, the Dutch comtinued to break their obligations on pleas of poverty. A few towns offered their contribution, but Holland and Zeeland remained deaf to all entreaties. They were busy. They had a war on. This was not the time for generous repayment of loans. Thus the tedious recriminations continued, to the exasperation of all parties. As the English agent wrote re^ signedly from Antwerp: ‘our doleances and suits are here so continual and common that they are little regarded though we have great right and reason for us’.2 The brunt of the trouble fell on the Antwerp merchants trading to England, who were in constant danger of arrest. In the spring of 1582 Wakings ham demanded to know as soon as a rich ship left Antwerp for England, whereupon he proposed to seize the Dutch goods and ship and hold them until Antwerp agreed to pay the debt. However, in the end the scheme was abandoned in view of the vigorous opposition offered by the Merchant Adventurers, who feared reprisals and a total stoppage of trade. Nevertheless, in the autumn the English merchants moved from Antwerp to Middleburg, in part perhaps to lessen the risk of their sudden arrest, either by Palavicino as B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, C. vii, no. 531 Cal. S.P. For. 1581—2, no. 272; N. Japikse, Resolution der Staten'Generaal, 1580-2, p. 224. 2 Cal. S.P. For. 1581-2, nos. 451, 497; 1582, no. 16; 1585, nos. 305-6.

The War Financier

77

sureties for his debt, or by the Dutch by way of reprisals for any drastic move by the English Government. As a pressure group the Antwerp merchants were in a weak position, being unable even to influence their own magistrates, who flatly declared that Her Majesty might do as she pleased, but Ant/ werp refused to pay what was owed by the States General as a whole, and did not care what became of her burgesses.1 For five years the queen had held her hand for fear of driving the Dutch too far into the clutches of France. But now a fresh pressure made itself felt, which brought things to a head. As has been seen, Palavicino had bought out Spinola in 1581, taking over the whole burden of the debt. But the 10 per cent, interest was granted only on £29,425. 135'. 10d., while the total principal, by the addition of the interest unpaid for the years 1579-81, had risen to £3 3,374- ¥■ 4^- This discrepancy was due to the fact that Palavicino had not bought out a co/partner who, under Spinola’s name, had contributed £3,948. ioy. 0d. to the original loan. This man, John de Camerina, had since died and his widow in satisfaction of a private debt had transferred the queen’s bond to Gerhardt Birboom, a prominent merchant of Cologne. In the sum/ mer of 1582 Birboom, backed by the official weight of the magistrates of Cologne, began dunning the City of London for repayment. Birboom’s letter to Walsingham was a master/ piece of polite blackmail: after referring to ‘that old prompti/ tude of payment for which Her Majesty was for many years celebrated throughout Europe’, and after asserting ‘I thought . . . those bonds I held, the very gold and silver’, he then pro/ ceeded to a delicate threat of arrest of Londoners’ goods and persons throughout Germany. To the City Birboom was seemingly less polite. The Lord Mayor was very alarmed and forwarded his letter in all haste to Walsingham, adding that ‘the protest conteineth very rude and uncomely wordes touch/ 1 Op. cit. 1582, nos. 10, 42, 93, 197, 428> 474J 1S83> nos- 305, 306.

78

The War Financier

ing the credit of Her Majesty’. But somehow Birboom’s irrv portuqities were fobbed off with fair words for another year. In the spring of 1583, however, a German agent arrived in London with authority to press Birboom’s claims to the uttermost, and to threaten the arrest of English goods in Ger/ many. All the arts of procrastination had now been expended, and if English property was not to be arrested in Germany, the queen would have to provide satisfaction. Here Palavicino once more came to her aid. On 10 June she decided to trans/ fer the whole debt to Horatio’s name, to raise his annuity to the full 10 per cent, of the whole, and to pay the arrears of interest owing to Birboom. New bonds were to be issued and the old ones surrendered.1 Palavicino then proceeded to buy out Birboom altogether. Presumably to secure political pres/ sure at home to keep the queen to her promise of paying the annuity for the future, he allowed Walsingham to take a share on very profitable terms. The latter invested .£1,448. ioa 6d., but drew interest as if for a total of £1,948. ioa 6d.y the additional £500 capital being apparently what Birboom secretly agreed to abate in order to get prompt settlement.2 So long as Walsingham lived it was unlikely that the queen would repudiate her obligations, and such certainty was well worth a £500 which Palavicino did not even pay. Having saved her reputation among European financiers, Elizabeth now seriously turned her attention to the problem of extracting at least interest payments from the Dutch. On 30 September 1583 Sir Richard Bingham was ordered to prepare to put to sea with the Minion and Foresight to carry out a sweep against pirates.3 In October he received further in/ 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1581-2, no. 708; 1582, nos. 186, 212; 1585, no. 21 r; B.M., Lansd. MSS. 42/32,34; City of London Record Office, Repertories, xx, ff. 1831/., 198, 234, 296, nsv-y 336; Remembrancia, i, pp. 393, 499, 513. 2 S.P. Holland and Flanders, 20/7; also S.P. Dom. Charles I, 44/75. The debt is mentioned in Palavicino’s will (P.C.C. 64,Wallop). 3 B.M., Add. MSS. 3S83i, f. 302; S.P. Dom. Eliz. 162/45.

The War Financier

79

structions: ‘We consideryng what just cause we have to staye any shipping belonging to the States or Subiectes of the Lowe Contryes, for certen debtes dewe by them unto us, and especi/ ally for a debt dewe by them to Horatio Palavicino and other Strangers... have not any other so good meanes to recover the same as to make some arrest of their shipping and goodes pas^ sing thorowghe the narrowe seas.’ Under pretence of searching for pirates Bingham was ordered to arrest and bring in a fleet of Dutch shipping from the south, expected shortly to pass up Channel. In this action, he was ‘so to use him self as this arrest may be done with lest force yt may be’.1 This order was never in fact carried out, due apparently to the objections of the Merchant Adventurers and to the cam vassing of alternative projects. The rather cynical suggestion was made to raise a special tax on Dutch refugees and emigres in England by which to cover the interest payments. Another idea put forward by the same ingenious projector, Nicolo Carenzoni, was accorded more serious consideration. It was suggested that all the queen’s loans should be repaid by means of an import-export tax on all merchandise coming in or going out of the ports still under the control of the rebels. Estimating incoming and outgoing tonnage at Antwerp at 400,000 and at the ports of Holland and Zeeland at 350,000, it was hoped to raise about .£58,000 sterling by this measure. Of this it was proposed that half or one^third should be set aside for repayment of the English loans, while the rest could go to bolster up the tottering finances of the United Provinces. This ambitious scheme received sufficient attention for Carem zoni to be authorized to proceed to the Netherlands in the summer of 1584 to urge it upon the Dutch. But Orange and the Dutch raised the usual objections that Antwerp should not be expected to shoulder a burden due in law from all Artois 1 There are several drafts: Cal. S.P. For. 1583-4, no. 143, and S.P. Dom. Eliz. 163/30.

8o

The War Financier

and Hainault and the towns of Arras, Tournai, See., and negotiations dragged on inconclusively.1 2 Next year the politic cal situation was so critical, and the Dutch in such imminent danger of total collapse, that for the time being the diplomatic offensive relaxed. By mutual consent, all mention of the debt was omitted from the treaty of 1585, though year after year the English Exchequer records show the annual payment to Palavicino of ^3,3 37. 8*. \LZ Horatio was increasing in wealth and political influence during the 8o’s and there seemed no reason why the golden flow should ever dry up. Occasionally there was a temporary anxiety when the queen, in a fit of irritation, would threaten to cut off the annuity, but the danger was never very serious. Walsingham’s support for Palavicino was assured by his investment in the capital and his share of the interest. Burgh/ ley was trying to raise money abroad again during the financial and military crises of 1587-90, and knew that any such repudiation would shatter the queen’s credit in Europe.3 Attempts to capitalize the victory of the Armada by bullying the Dutch for interest payments met with the accustomed obstinacy ofHolland.4 By 1589 the queen was again showing signs of restiveness, one of Burghley’s subordinates in the Exchequer having calculated that Horatio had now just exactly recouped his principal through interest payments alone.5 But the usual factors operated in Palavicino’s favour, and the danger was averted. So Horatio continued to get his pension till 1591, when Sir Christopher Hatton died leaving considerable debts outstanding to the queen. Elizabeth saw her chance and promptly paid off some £4,425 of the principal 1 Cal. S.P. For. 1583-4, nos. 608, 610, 697-8, 704, 786. 2 F. C. Dietz, ‘The Exchequer in the Elizabethan Reign’, Smith College Studies in History, Northampton, Mass., viii, no. 2 (1923). 3 Cal. S.P. For. 1587-9, passim. 4 Cal. S.P. For. July-Dee. 1588, p. 244. 5 S.P. Holland, 34, f. 48; B.M., Lansd. MSS. 59/38.

The War Financier

8l

by assigning part of these debts to Horatio, leaving him to extract the money from Hatton’s executors.1 A pension based on io per cent, of the reduced principal was paid for a year and a half, until one day a little mathematical computation revealed to Burghley that Palavicino had already received ^45479. 11*. 11^., which was £16,722. os. 8d. more than the original loan.2 Nor was this all, for some malignant spirit (Horatio suspected Gerard de Malynes, the disreputable but celebrated mercantilist pamphleteer) had been whispering poisoned stories into the q ueen’s ear, probably of how the D utch had been cheated over the alum they had accepted, and of how the business of the extra £500 of the Birboom settlement had 1 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. vi, p. 305. 2 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, D. x, no. 41; Galba, C. vii, no. 44; H.M.C. Salis. MSS. xviii, pp. 429-30; vi, pp. 305-6. The sum was composed as follows: Interest Payments

Date

£ 3.LX.78 Dec. 1580

15.iii.82

7-vi.83

8.vi.83

13.ii.92

8.XU.93

Loan of capita] sum 10% interest for 18 months July 1579 to Dec. 1580, total¬ ling £4,616. 13s. id., added to principal .... 10% interest for 24 months Dec. 1580 to Dec. 1582 paid on Palavicino’s share of capital of £29,425. 135. iod.t being £2,942. ns. p.a. . Arrears of 10% interest for 2 years on capital of £3,948. 10s. 6d. which was Birboom’s share .... 10% interest on full capital July 1583 to Dec. 1591 at £3,337- 8s. 5d. p.a. . Repayment of £4,425. 13s. lod. of capital . 10% interest on reduced capi¬ tal Dec. 1591 to July 1593, being £2,894 I7S- od. p.a. . Interest payments stopped . Total

Capital Repayments

s. d.

£

s. d. £ 28,757 II 3

33,374

5,885

2

8

789 14

2

30,036 15

9

5

6

£41,053 18

I

4,342

4

4

4,425 13 10

28,948 IO

6

£4,425 13 10

£28,948 10

6

£ Total paid out .... Capital still owing .... Grand Total owed by the Dutch 5763

s- d.

Capital

G

.

s.

d.

45,479 n n 28,948 10 6 £74,428

2

5

The War Financier

82

been arranged between Walsingham and Palavicino.1 The queen was enraged by these revelations, and on 8 December 1593 the blow fell: Sir John Fortescue, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ordered the Teller, Vincent Skinner, to pay no more money to Horatio Palavicino, either interest or principal, without the written consent of the queen.2 In the end, there' fore, the queen’s bonds proved as unreliable as those of any other prince in Europe. The proud boast that Elizabeth always paid her debts is not strictly true. As her economic position worsened towards the end of her reign, so her finam cial honesty diminished, and on her death there remained outstanding both this ancient Palavicino loan, and also a large semi'compulsory ‘loan’ from the City of London. The very day that he learnt the news of the queen’s decision by a letter from Sir John Fortescue, Horatio decided upon his future course of action. He would adopt an attitude of in' jured rectitude, dignified but full of protestation. From now on he would be professionally poor, in a way that would cause the maximum inconvenience. Those aristocratic debtors who had hitherto found him so ready to open his purse (on good security) to tide them over their economic crises, now found this source of credit closed to them. Palavicino declared that he ‘is sorry his affaires are so disordered and his paiment out of the Exchequer so uncertaine’, by reason of which he had no money. He would undertake no business ‘leaste the shewe of haveinge much money should greatly prejudice his estate’. He was a ruined man, he asserted, ‘non me resta con che vivere nella maniera che ho fatto sin hora’. Nor, of course, could he pay his taxes under these circumstances. The rate at which he was assessed was ‘made upon conceit of riches, which are not in substance but in mens talk’. In reality ‘I get poorer every day and daily lose hope of getting back the 1 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. viii, p. 157; S.P. Dom. James I, 70/27; Charles I, 2 H.M.C. Cowper MSS. i, p. 15.

44/75-

The War Financier

83

patrimony I placed in the Queen’s hands’. Yet these earnest endeavours to prove his poverty convinced no one, least of all the queen, who was the object of all this propaganda. Try as he would, the world remained obdurately convinced ‘that I was in possession of very great wealth, a veritable treasure, and had boundless gains through my agents’.1 The Cecils remained his friends, Lord Burghley having opposed the queen’s decision in the first place and Robert trying to persuade her to alter it subsequently.2 But it was not till the financial crisis of 1598, when the Government was searching desperately for ready money to pay for the colossal strain of the Irish war, that Horatio could obtain even moral satisfaction. On this occasion the queen was trying to float a large loan in the City, and Cecil wrote to Palavicino to ask for his help. The reply was devastating. Horatio pointed out that the present reluctance of the financiers was due to the fact that the queen’s credit had not been kept up as scrupulously as was desirable. ‘You say truly that I might have been of use in this, and so far as good will went no one would have done more than I; but it was not supposed that any such necessity of the kind would arise and I was thrown aside.... My credit . . . is now destroyed; and I can now do no more than what my small remains of power and that of my friends can permit.’3 This policy of petty irritation was carried to remarkable lengths. Thus just before the pension was cut off Horatio borrowed -£58 in advance from Sugdon, a Teller of the Exchequer. This money he refused to refund, telling Sugdon to go to Fortescue for it, and three years later Sugdon had to sue Horatio at Common Law before he could recover the advance.4 It was by these tiresome pimpricks that the great 1 College of Arms Talbot MSS. H, f. 659; H.M.C. Salis. MSS. viii, pp. 282, 547-

2 Op. cit. v-viii, passim, especially viii, p. 511. 3 Loc. cit. 4 Op. cit. vi, pp. 17, 20, 23.

84

The War Financier

and influential were kept aware of the grave disadvantages of not renewing the interest payments. But this persistent nagging at home was only a secondary phase of the general diplomatic offensive by Palavicino during these years. The main task was to put effective pressure on the Dutch to induce them to fulfil their ancient obligations. As early as February 1594 Thomas Bodley, the agent at The Hague, was instructed to open negotiations for a settlement of this and all other debts, but the arduous discussion on the subject dragged on for no less than four years before a settle/' ment was reached. The Dutch were in a strong bargaining position, since the only hope the queen possessed of recovering even part of her war loans would vanish altogether if she allowed them to be defeated. As so often occurs, the burden of indebtedness pressed more heavily upon the political im dependence of the creditor than of the debtor. Bodley therefore found his path strewn with difficulties and obstructions. At first Horatio suggested that the United Provinces should at least pay their share of the debt, the rest being raised by blackmailing merchants from the southern provinces still resident in England. Bodley did his best to give satisfac' tion, and pressed for repayment of interest owing since 1581. He pointed out that of all debts ‘aucune ne debuoit estre plus soigneusement acquit ee que ceste cy qui couroit a interest’ and summoned the States General to ‘Pen dis' charger en premier lieu, veu qu’elle en est a ce continuelle/ ment sollicitee par ledit Sr Pallavicino’. Early in April 1595, on the basis of drafts by Horatio, the queen wrote a stern letter to the Dutch, ‘requesting you therein to provide that wee be not importuned hereafter. In default of which wee can no longer denie him the libertie to helpe himself by all just and lawfull meanes for the getting and reimbursement’. The ‘just and lawfull meanes’ were the issue of letters of marque. Three weeks later the States General made their reply. They re'

The War Financier

85

newed their old plea that Brabant and Flanders, Tournai and Malines, who had signed the original bonds, were no longer within the United Provinces, and that Holland and Zeeland were not even present when the loan was first con/ tracted, much less had given their consent. They pointed out that there was no mention of the bonds in the 1585 treaty. However when the time came they promised to do their best to force Antwerp to make repayment. The queen now lost her temper, and told the States that if they did not pay up at once, she would publish their ingratitude to the world and withdraw all English troops and supplies. She declared that the States’ answer was insulting. This was of course pure bluff, as the Dutch realized. After some months they wrote two letters, one to the queen and one to the Council, the former conciliatory and obliging, the latter repeating the old excuses, and hinting that if pushed too far they would be forced to contemplate a separate peace with Spain. The discrepancy be/ tween the two letters did not escape the caustic comment of the old queen, but by now the decision to launch an offensive on the Spanish coast the next spring had been agreed upon, and more prudent councils prevailed in England. In return for a cessation of diplomatic pressure, the queen agreed to accept a loan of thirty ships for the proposed Cadiz expedition.1 It is scarcely surprising that such a solution should have failed to satisfy Palavicino, whose interests had thus been sacrificed to those of the allied war effort, and he openly blamed Bodley for his lack of zeal and determination in prosecuting the suit.2 Throughout the next two years the dreary quarrels continued. Horatio kept up pressure on the queen in three ways. By direct petitions and addresses to her; through the intermediary of his friend Robert Cecil, who was now his main ally in the negotiations; and through the Lord Mayor of London, who 1 B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, D. xi, nos. io, 24, 31, 32. 2 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. v, p. 263.

86

The War Financier

was spurred into activity from time to time by threats from Horatio’s brother in Genoa to proceed to the arrest of Londoners’ goods.1 The queen remained polite but adamant. Until she ob/ tained some satisfaction from the Dutch she would not renew the interest payments. She deferred action on all the various schemes propounded by Horatio till the Dutch treaty was concluded. She would not give him the Burgundian jewels as part payment, though the Dutch consented to this move. It vexed Horatio’s capitalist spirit to see this wealth lying idle che non fa nulla, albeit they were later described as ‘old and out of fashion, and the stones and pearls for the most part greatly decayed in their lustre and goodness’. She would not grant him letters of marque, even for the interest alone, and she equally ignored a suggestion that Sir Edward Norris at Ostend might intercept and confiscate the taxes of that part of Flanders still within the orbit of the United Provinces. Despite this obduracy towards Palavicino, Elizabeth con/ tinued vigorously to press his claims upon the States General.2 It would of course be false to suggest that this Palavicino debt was the sole cause of dispute between England and the Dutch. The whole problem of the scaling down and settlement of general indebtedness was involved. But since it was an interest/ bearing loan by a private individual, the Palavicino debt was the problem most urgently in need of a decision. By the time the Dutch treaty was signed in 1598, the debt of -£28,000 of twenty years before had now risen to close on ^90,000, due to the accumulated arrears of interest at 10 per cent.3 By the treaty the States acknowledged a total debt of ^800,000, and 1 H.M.C. Salts. MSS. v-viii, passim; City of London Record Office, Remem✓ brancia, ii, pp. 1, 156; Repertories, xxiii, 22 April 1596; H.M.C. Salis. MSS. vi, pp. 153, 170, 209, 251. 2 S.P. Dom. Eliz. 256/77; H.M.C. Salis. MSS. vii, pp. 11, 216, 380, 398; xii, p. 227; viii, p. 5; B.M., Cotton MSS. Galba, D. xii, no. 54. [For note 3 see opposite.]

The War Financier

87

it was stipulated that the Palavicino debt was to remain as it stood at present so that neither Palavicino nor the States should be injured by the treaty.1 Thus the Dutch won their point, and the issue of Palavicino’s debt was specifically omitted from the agreement. Time and political necessity had played into the hands of the debtors, who drove a hard and profitable bargain. If, on the other hand, the Dutch had made a separate peace with Spain, the queen would have lost all hope of recovering any of her -£800,000 and it was this fear that lay behind the signing of the treaty. There was little or nothing that Horatio could do, now that the treaty was signed. He was a naturalized Englishman, a man of property with extensive landed estates in England, and an old servant of the queen. The legal remedies of sueing the City in the courts or arresting London merchants abroad were consequently both closed to him. Of the shareholders whom he represented, Lady Walsingham was in the same case as himself, being in no position to take a strong line. But no such scruples or limitations imposed themselves upon Horatio’s two brothers at Genoa, Fabritio and Gian Andrea, who had inherited a share in the debt from their father Tobias. In the autumn of 1599 Fabritio filed a suit against the City of London in the Court of Common Pleas, claiming his share of the principal and interest according to the bonds of 1581. The mayor and aldermen were most alarmed, and appealed hastily to the queen, the Lord Treasurer, Sir John Fortescue, Robert Cecil, and the Privy Council as a whole. I

•

28,757 11 4,616 13

3 1

1581-91 interest paid by Queen Elizabeth 1591-3 interest paid by Queen Elizabeth

36,711 12 4,342 5

7 6

1593-8 interest owing

14.473

5

0

. £88,901

7

5

Total owing by the Dutch

1

s i.

1578 loan ...... 1581 interest arrears added to principal

T. Rymer, Foedera, xvi, p. 343.

88

The War Financier

They pointed out that if the case was allowed to proceed judgement would inevitably be given in favour of the plain/ tiff. If the queen intervened and stopped the case, Fabritio would merely proceed to arrest Londoners abroad, to the hindrance of traffic and diminution of the royal customs. The queen was furious and accused Horatio of being at the back of his brother’s action—a suggestion that the former indig/ nantly, and disingenuously, denied. As a delaying tactic Elizabeth seems to have stopped the progress of the lawsuit, and in the spring of 1600 Fabritio therefore proceeded to implement his threats. His victim was carefully chosen, being none other than Richard Staper, perhaps the greatest Mediter/ ranean trader in London, one of the main architects of both the Levant and the East India Companies. A fully/laden ship belonging to Staper which was lying in the harbour at Genoa was placed under arrest until such time as either the queen or the City chose to give satisfaction. At the same time two unexpected events occurred: the queen at last set up a commission to settle the matter, and Horatio died. Two drafts of a letter from the queen to the State of Genoa were prepared, the one conciliatory, the other threatening, but it is uncertain which was actually sent. At all events, on learning of the new developments Fabritio consented to release Staper’s goods pending settlement by the commission.1 The Mediterranean merchants were thus temporarily reprieved. In 1601-2 the suggestion was revived that the Burgundian jewels might be handed over to Palavicino’s widow in part payment, and it is to this action that we owe a most interesting inventory of the contents of the five chests, kept in the office of the Tellers of the Exchequer in the Treasury of Receipt at Westminster. In all there were 1,385 oz. of solid gold, mostly ' Salts. MSS v, p. 462; xiv, p. 118; x, pp. 3> 315, 339; xviii, p. 430; City of London Record Office, Repertories, xxv, ffi ±v., 8, i3> 23; B M Add MSS. 28621, ff. 6, 7. 2 H.M.C. Salis. MSS. xii, p. 227.

The War Financier

89

plate for the table, 4,268 oz. of gold plate, 32 jewels, 67 rings, three crystal pots, and a number of other miscellaneous items. Lady Palavicino’s agent naturally estimated the value at the lowest possible, putting it at £6,477. 5s. 0