Author: Carol Schremp

Eleanor Hubbard was formerly an Assistant Professor of History at Princton University specializing in early modern British history. She received the David L. Rike University Preceptor in History award for 2014-2017. At the time of publication of Englishmen at Sea (2021) she was the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow in Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to Englishmen at Sea, Hubbard is the author of City Women: Money, Sex, and the Social Order in Early Modern London (2012).

Hubbard’s detailed and engrossing account of Englishmen at Sea is a history of maritime activity when England was not the powerful actor it would be in the eighteenth century and beyond. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, England was focused on European politics. Under both monarchs England did not have the financial resources to establish new colonies, or to maintain the ships needed to project imperial power. First efforts at colonial activity were financed by private investors. Habsburg Spain was a major power with vast wealth coming from mines in the New World. From 1585 to 1604 England was at war with Spain. Private English ships with seamen became privateers with a letter of marque issued by the crown. Investors who owned the ships would profit from captured Spanish ships with valuable cargo, and all the participants would gain from this activity. The crown benefitted from the success of each voyage through the collection of tariffs on confiscated goods. Queen Elizabeth was an investor in privateers. English sailors skilled in sailing these ships and willing to fight were essential to this activity.

Hubbard’s book “makes extensive use of sailors’ and merchants’ examinations for the Court of High Admiralty.“(18) Civil disputes and criminal cases involving piracy provided depositions from various participants. Hubbard states, “more than 10,000 sailors appear in legal records, travel writing, and state papers that form the archival basis of this book, and in a number of cases they can be traced across different archives.”(8) It is her goal to highlight the various activities of this period from the point of view of common English sailors. She acknowledges contributions to the subject of her book provided by other historians: Kenneth Andrews “revealed the chasm between Elizabethan imperial rhetoric and reality.”(9) N. A. M. Rodger explained that “heavily armed and handy English ships were not suitable for founding or sustaining a colonial empire overseas.”(9) John Appleby states that despite English maritime strength by 1625, England “had yet to establish an overseas colony able to reproduce itself.”(9)

Common seamen were laborers, men who had to be compensated and managed to achieve specific goals. Labor is a major focus of Hubbard’s study. She states that in colonial and imperial activity private individuals endeavored to get labor at the lowest cost possible. Indentured workers and transported people in the colonies served the purpose of providing cheap labor, and eventually so did slave labor. “Medieval maritime custom endowed English sailors with the belief that their interests ought to be central to maritime enterprise.”(10) This attitude led them to assert their right to a share in the profit of privateer activity. In addition to windfalls from captured ships, common sailors on English ships were able to get higher wages than people working on land because of their skills and their willingness to fight. Over the period Hubbard covers, sailors will be authorized English privateers, seamen working for foreign privateers, employees of English merchant capitalists, and pirates acting independently and in defiance of English laws.

A second major focus of Hubbard’s book is nation. The English seamen in this history, and the English people who employed them identified as Englishmen. They were seen as Englishmen by the many people they encountered from other countries. “The nation was a key organizing principal for the sailors and merchants who participated in overseas enterprise.”(14) “The idea that English merchants and seamen were part of the English nation suggested they were members of a single coherent national community bound together in a web of mutual obligation.”(15) This sense of mutual obligation conflicts with the exclusive definition of membership in the national community held by elite society who controlled economic activity. The English nation was defined as a commonwealth, and Hubbard claims a commonwealth “rests upon the assumption that there was such a thing as the public good. In practice, the public good was…the claim that only the interests of certain people mattered, the people who belonged.”(6) Indentured servants did not belong until they had paid their debts. Transported people did not belong because they violated English laws and were thought to be a drain on society. “Private rulers and colonial elites fashioned societies that were advantageous to themselves, expecting much of their laboring subjects and granting little.” (6) Common sailors assumed participation in the English nation, and they insisted they should participate in the benefits of maritime activity.

“Violent plunder was central” to what sailors engaged in English privateering had in common.(22) These men “were largely attracted by the prospect of material gain and martial masculinity.”(22) “Common seamen were shareholders in voyages: like other participants, they had interests to protect and expected to take part in important decisions.”(22) The life of a privateer was dangerous and violent, but it had the potential to make money unavailable to most people who worked on land. When the war with Spain ended under James I, English privateering was forbidden. Some former English privateers went to “the Mediterranean, where they entered the service of both Muslim and Catholic patrons of the religious privateering war known as the corso.”(22) Here they were engaged as foreigners to religious groups to which they did not belong. The nature of the work was familiar to them, and potentially the rewards were similar.

Merchant-capitalists, when they were urging sailors to do something dangerous and to face more risk, asked them to do so for their country or their king. In some situations, but not all, sailors died to protect the people and goods on the ship where they were employed. This was true particularly on English ships with English crews. Merchants from the East India Company or the Levant Company encouraged seamen to behave in respectful and courteous ways to foreign people to demonstrate the honesty and trustworthiness of English traders and English people. This was self-serving behavior on the part of English merchant-capitalists, and not necessarily true. These merchant-capitalists were promoting an alternative form of economic activity to that of the plunder economy. It would be the model that prevailed in the eighteenth century as England developed its vast colonial empire.

For a dramatic but brief period, English seamen engaged in outright piracy in the Atlantic. They made their home ports in Mamora in Morocco or sometimes on the western coast of Ireland. This was opportunistic plunder with no legal backing. Some of the English pirates who had participated in privateering during Elizabeth’s reign or working for corsairs moved into piracy. Despite their illegal activity, some of them maintained the sense that they still belonged to the English nation, and they hoped to return to England to live. They continued to have connections with seamen living in London. Hubbard suggests that “Jacobean Atlantic piracy may be considered and alternative, illegal form of private imperial expansion, one that retained a strongly national quality exemplified by the lethal rivalry between English and Dutch pirates but that was more lucrative and less dangerous for seamen than legal commercial and colonial projects.”(23)

“The basic elements of English maritime power: thriving fishing and coal-shipping industries, a large merchant fleet, global trade routes, and a standing navy” were in place by the 1630s.(276) Despite ongoing problems with piracy, the transition from predatory economic activity to “a more disciplined commercial and colonial orientation was complete.”(276) The English Navy assumed responsibility for securing commercial shipping, eliminating the economic leverage English seamen had prior to the early 1630s. In 1680 the population of English sailors was “around fifty thousand, about 1 percent of the total population.”(276-7) Wages increased into the 1670s; after that they were stagnant for 150 years. These many changes in the future do not diminish the impact of English sailors between 1570 and 1630. Hubbard declares these sailors “had set England’s course for empire.”(279)

Susan Doran is Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has written sixteen books about the Tudors. From Tudor to Stuart (published in 2024) is the result of over eight years of research on the transition from Elizabeth I to James I and the early part of his reign, 1603 to 1612, where her history ends.

Part I of Doran’s book deals with the death of Elizabeth I and her legacy, background information about James up to 1603, two conspiracies that threaten James before he is crowned, and James’s careful management of his coronation and his presentation of himself and Queen Anna to his new subjects. Part II covers Queen Anna and their children, James I’s court and courtiers, his relationship with his privy council whose power was reduced because of a newly created department, the royal bedchamber, filled only with Scots. James brought people from Scotland into his court. When parliament failed to support his programs, he sometimes went to the courts to gain his objectives without their participation. Part III covers the ongoing struggle between Protestants and Puritans and the continuing presence of Catholics and recusants. The next to last chapter provides details about James’s efforts to promote a union of England and Scotland with one set of laws and the economic and social integration of the Scottish and English people. There was resistance to this project by people in both countries, and the union was not accomplished. Doran’s final chapter deals with the intricate maneuvers James took to assure peace between England and Spain as well as other powers in Europe.

An article by Michael Corrie Questier, The Reputation of James VI and I Revisited from The Journal of British Studies, published in 2022 points out problems associated with predominantly negative depictions of James I in the past. Questier argues that a “persistent Anglocentricity” has given an inaccurate picture of James I.(953) He further notes that critical scholarship of James I failed to place him in a European context where some of his undesirable behavior was not uncommon.(957). Questier urges historians to shift “away from seeing early modern government in anachronistic and modern terms – in other words, as if it were primarily about administrative efficiency and balanced budgets.”(953) Questier quotes Susan Doran writing in 2014 as one of the historians contributing to the negative image of James. Questier states: “Susan Doran could claim in 2014 that James’s ‘future English subjects possessed strong evidence that he was devious, duplicitous and capable of treachery.’ He was handicapped by ‘the general perception of him as weak and untrustworthy’ leading to ‘anxieties about his fitness to rule over England.’” (966).

These sentiments are not expressed in From Tudor to Stuart. In the chapter which covers some background information about James prior to 1603, Doran writes “James had developed into an accomplished and effective adult ruler. His political maneuverings with the Kirk and nobility brought domestic peace to Scotland as did his policy of ensuring that his government was broadly based. The king was also successful in his foreign policy. The terms of the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Berwick had made him and Elizabeth formal allies but did not oblige either of them to enter the other’s wars.” (41) Doran relates how Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth I’s trusted advisor, maintained communication with James VI of Scotland during the last weeks of Elizabeth’s life. Cecil believed James’s hereditary connection as a great-great-grandson of Henry VII and his experience as King of Scotland made him the best candidate to replace Elizabeth after her death. Cecil and others thought that James would have the least difficulty being accepted by the people of England, and his accession would go smoothly.

In a general comment about historiography, Doran explains, “For many years, historians of England treated 1603 as a watershed moment. Their books either ended with Elizabeth’s death or began with James’s accession. In part, this division was a legacy of nineteenth-century accounts that projected the causes of the English Civil War back into James’s reign. James I was held responsible for transforming divine right theories into absolute principles and practices, while the Jacobean house of commons was thought to have ‘seized the initiative’ and begun to claim some form of parliamentary sovereignty.”(465) She notes that “Historians have long moved away from this interpretation.”(465)

Questier’s article argues that critical historians in the past failed to see James’s commitment to peace in “the Anglo-Spanish peace-making of 1604-05.”(962). In Doran’s last chapter, The Habsburgs and the Dutch (430-464), she carefully describes how James was able to achieve peace with France, Hapsburg Spain, and maintain good relations with Protestant countries including the Dutch. Henry IV valued James’s commitment to peace with France, but although France and Spain had negotiated a peace treaty, Henry wanted James to continue to support the resistance of the United Provinces to the Spanish Netherlands. James skillfully managed to achieve peace with Spain, maintain his friendly relations with France, and give himself room to permit English subjects to freely choose to join forces to help the United Provinces. James clearly saw that peace with Spain was a priority because Spain was too powerful to have as an enemy, and the costs of war were not in the best interests of England’s people. Similarly, maintaining a peaceful relationship with France, the country with Europe’s largest population was also good for England, and Scotland had had a positive relationship with France for years. In this section Doron provides numerous examples of the existence of bribes and lavish gifts in the process of European diplomacy. The modern critics of James must take the realities of Early Modern diplomacy into consideration.

In her conclusion, Doron argues that the despite the significant differences in personal style between Elizabeth and James, in the end little had changed between England in 1603 when Elizabeth died and 1612 when Doran’s history ends. “James did not introduce any radical overhaul of the administration or governance of the realm.”(471) “England remained firmly Protestant. Although James was more Calvinist in his theological beliefs [than Elizabeth], he, no more than she, would allow predestination doctrines to become fully part of the Church’s official teachings.”(472) “Both monarchs understood the royal supremacy to mean they had the right and duty to impose uniformity of religious practice on their subjects.”(473) “Both Elizabeth and James denied that they were making windows into their subjects’ souls, claiming instead that they allowed freedom of conscience.”(473) Local control through “commissions of peace and the work of JPs continued to grow.” (474) Doron ends her history by stating that in a later part of his reign “James was far less sure-footed, but that is the subject of another book.”(476) Readers like me must go elsewhere to learn the rest of James’s history.

“The Elizabethan Reformation transformed England.” (xv) “A People’s Reformation provides new perspectives on the English Reformation and the roots of the Church of England.”(6) When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, England had experienced “thirty-odd years of religious turmoil. In those decades conformity was impossible.”(xv) Conformity of religion and stability of the state were primary goals of the Elizabethan Reformation. Kaufman declares that “To transform the nation, the bonds between crown, church and people had to be rewoven, into a cloth neither entirely new nor a replica of the old.”(12)

“This book places people of England at the heart of not just the local or cultural, but the political story of the Reformation and its remarkable and transformative effect on the world.”(6) At the end of Elizabeth’s reign England had experienced over forty years of peace. “Elizabeth began a process of Protestant religious change that left great scope for private personal belief, but little room for public disobedience or nonconformity.”(5) During the stability of the Elizabethan Reformation, people “had to create new understandings of authority, subordination, and power.”(5,6)

This book draws upon archival material from across the US and Great Britain. Primary sources are the parish ledgers where collection of dues, expenditures on parish maintenance, purchase of books, communion tables, and pews, and the costs associated with removing inappropriate items are recorded. It examines notices of visitations by the church to the parish and to particular people in the parish. It looks at requirements imposed on individuals to put them back into the good will of the church and the parish community after they have broken acceptable codes of behavior.

Kaufman states that “she takes seriously the scholarship of the past fifty years.” (v) This scholarship points out that “the late-medieval parish hummed with the energy of the laity. What differed in the Elizabethan parish is that this energy had been harnessed and directed by the state.” (87) Michael Braddick stated, “the increasingly centralized English state relied on a system of local agents to expand, maintain, and deepen its power.” (87) Ethan Shagan and Eamon Duffy “clarified the ways in which the old world was destroyed and challenged our understanding of why this destruction occurred.” (12) “The goal of Kaufman’s book is to explore “how a society was able to rebuild after an episode of massive, even violent, change.” (12)

Kaufman explores themes which become apparent in her chapters. “The first main theme is the increasing involvement of the laity in the Elizabethan parish.”(17) A second theme: “The Elizabethan Reformation emphasized results, not process.”(19) A third theme “is the legacy of history and memory of the Reformation.”(20) The fourth theme “is the theme of compulsory community.”(21)The book rests upon five chapters that give different aspects of what the crown and church asked of its people, how the people responded, and how the English Church evolved.

Chapter 1: Bounding the Parish, “investigates new efforts by the state church to make the parish legible, from increasing the frequency and efficacy of visitations to more closely bounding the parish.” (16) The church endeavored to include every English person into a specific parish. They also kept track of the behavior of all the parishioners in each parish to ensure they regularly attended church in their own parish, and how often they took communion. Churchwardens helped identify people who were not following rules. They might also notify church officials of bad behavior on the part of clerics and parishioners who violated acceptable norms. “By enforcing strict notions of residency and by mandating compulsory attendance within these boundaries, the Elizabethan church defined the parish community.”(52)

Chapter 2: Policing the Parish, “explores the policing and governing of the parish, particularly the growth in both power and authority wielded by the churchwarden and the vestry.”(16) Lay men in the parish often vied to be churchwardens. The position required considerable work, but it also provided esteem and responsibility. The Churchwardens were to collect funds and keep the church well maintained. Churchwardens also warned people if they were violating church or parish rules. If a warning did not correct a person’s behavior, then the churchwarden would send a complaint to church authorities. “The English Reformation was policed by its own people.”(88)

Chapter 3: Funding the Parish, “dives into the material culture of the parish, looking particularly at its financial implications.”(16,17) Churchwardens collected tithes, money for the poor, rental fees for pews, and special fees for parish activities. Early in Elizabeth’s reign Churchwardens had to implement the removal of inappropriate items left over from Queen Mary’s reign. Altars had to be removed and replaced with communion tables. Crucifixes had to be removed; pictures of saints had to be painted over. Removal of Catholic features and purchase of necessary Protestant elements took time, money, and effort. Conformity of appearance was important in the parish churches. Nevertheless, different parishes responded in different time frames, sometimes because of a lack of funds. Pews in bench and box forms became an important form of parish revenue.

Chapter 4: Taxing the Parish (134) “analyzes the methods and means by which parochial tithes were reshaped and administered in the Elizabethan parish.”(17) Tithing was an ancient and important form of tax revenue. Custom was often the determinant of what someone owed the parish. If a person customarily paid tithes in money, the parish might suffer a loss of real income due to inflation. Parishes might insist upon payment in grain or animals to offset the loss. These settlements were often contested and went to court. Sometimes the outcome rested on custom not fairness.

Chapter 5: Receiving in the parish (181) “examines the role of sacramental conformity in the English church, looking at both rates of reception and the mechanisms by which conformity was enforced.”(17) Kaufman provides an analysis of conformity to participation in communion over time. There were many reasons why people would take communion with the members of their parish. Doing so demonstrated that they belonged to a community, were in good fellowship with their neighbors, and were showing faith in Christ which was essential for salvation. The 1603 “census reported slightly over 2.5 million communicants in England. The total number of recusants listed was 8,500.” (219) This level of conformity to religious practice was extraordinary. It was remarkable in comparison to the discord of 1549.

The success of the Elizabethan Reformation: maintaining peace; giving people a clear understanding of the beliefs and practices of their state religion; providing a sense of a shared community for the vast majority of English subjects, took place through the collaboration of church and state, and because individual people were able to participate in and benefit from their parish and English society.

Mark Stoyle states his aim is “to provide a new history of the Western Rising , and to consider the disturbances afresh.” (3) In several ways Stoyle highlights that with slight changes the rising might have been successful.

The Western Rising of 1549, also called the Prayer Book Rebellion, took place in Devon and Cornwall. The first part of Stoyle’s history describes background events that took place under Henry  VIII, and disturbances that took place before 1549. One precursor to the rebellion was a dispute between Nicolles, a young evangelist, who bates a church canon, Crispin, who is comfortable with traditional religion, but realizes he is out of step with the Crown. Stoyle argues this public dispute revealed the strong religious divisions existing in the West Country before 1549. (292) The rising had critical precedents, and events were driven by activity coming from outside the West Country.

The second part of the history consists of four chapters, including the outbreak of rebellion in June 1549, a period of escalation during the first half of July, intense battles in the second half of July, and finally the defeat of the rebellion in August 1549. One of Stoyle’s most important findings about the battles is that “the initial gathering of Cornish rebels did not take place on 6 June,” as misstated in records after the battles were over, “but on 6 July.”  This meant “Humphrey Arundell and his lieutenants managed to gather their forces and march to Exeter in just three weeks.” (293) Had Cornish forces gotten to Exeter more quickly while Russell’s troops were inadequate, the final outcome of the rising might have been different.(293)

The third part describes retribution imposed on the people of Devon and Cornwall after the rebellion was defeated. A second chapter describes events in London, which Stoyle calls aftershocks. In this section Stoyle points out that political machinations after the rising was put down came close to achieving the goals of the rebels, to return to a more traditional form of worship they had experienced before Henry VIII died, but it did not.(294) Some might argue that the strength of the evangelical, reformed religious position was too strong for that the happen.

Stoyle begins by explaining that in Devon and Cornwall “most ordinary people were deeply attached to their traditional faith.” (22) Parishioners paid to maintain their beautiful churches with stained-glass windows, paintings, and a crucifix. In 1532 Thomas Cranmer was made Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a churchman of strong reform leanings. In 1534 the Act of Supremacy declared that the king was head of the Church of England. “Having brought the Church completely under his control, Henry was now determined to take revenge on the religious orders, which he regarded as the chief centers of resistance to the royal supremacy.” (26)

Royal injunctions issued to the clergy in 1536 required they explain the royal supremacy and deny the power of the pope.  The Ten Articles, the Church of England’s first statement of independent doctrine was “followed by a church statement ordering that the dedication feasts of all churches should henceforth be held in early October, and that their traditional patronal festivals, or church holy days, should no longer be observed. (27) People in the West Country were upset that they could not have their separate ceremonies honoring their churches. A story emerged of a member of a parish who asked a painter to create a religious banner for a procession to take place on Pardon Monday. The banner would show people appealing to Christ to tell the king to let people have their parish celebrations. This was alarming to Henry VIII at a time when the Pilgrimage of Grace was taking place; a rebellion driven by anger at Henry and Cromwell’s actions.

Because Edward VI was nine when his father died in 1547, it was necessary for others in the privy council to direct his actions. Edward Seymour, (who became duke of Somerset; referred to as Somerset going forward), brother to Edward VI’s dead mother, maneuvered to be the protector of the realm and the chief guide of his nephew. Somerset became the de facto king of England. Somerset was determined to continue Henry’s expensive wars. He was also determined to drive through “a radical religious policy.” (45) Somerset and Thomas Cranmer placed more religious reformers in Devon and Cornwall. Simon Haynes, an evangelical, was appointed to be dean of Exeter Cathedral. Haynes, Sir Gawen Carew, and Sir Peter Courtenay, all reform-minded, were made JPs in Devon. The powerful Arundell family lost two places as Justice of the peace in Cornwall. They were replaced by reform-minded Sir William Godolphin and Sir Richard Grenville who became the “most senior JPs.” (46) JPs formed the powerful council that was responsible for local control.(46) Somerset and Cranmer placed people of their mindset in the West Country

In July 1547 a new set of royal injunctions for the governance of the English Church “to plant true religion“ was published. Many of these injunctions erased  practices acceptable before and during the reign of Henry VIII. (48) Additionally, all parishioners were to be able to read the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments in English. In early 1549 during the reign of Edward VI, two acts were passed by Parliament. The Act of Uniformity decreed that the liturgy in Latin should be abolished, and it should be replaced with the Book of Common Prayer which was written in English. (80) A second Act, the Act for the Relief of Sheep and Cloth, granted the Crown the ability to impose new taxes on sheep and cloth. (80) In Devon and Cornwall raising sheep for wool and manufacturing cloth were important economic activities. Demonstrations against enclosures had been happening since 1548.

According to John Hooker who lived through these events, some parishioners complained to the priest of their church in Sampford Courtney, Devon, on Monday June 10, 1549. The Parishioners told their priest that they wanted to continue with the service as it had been done under King Henry VIII. They also claimed King Henry had stated that nothing should change under Edward VI until he had “come into his full age.”(86) Other parishioners joined in. The priest gave in to the parishioners’ request and performed the service in the old manner. After the service the people remained at the church and celebrated. Local magistrates, JPs, also came to the church. It was their job to admonish the people and the priest that they must follow the Act of Uniformity, but they did not do so. All over Devon people supported what had happened at Sampford Courtney. William Hellions, “a minor gentleman, or perhaps a yeoman” did speak to the parishioners and tell them they had to participate in the new service using the Book of Common Prayer.(94) He was taken to a church house where people were gathered. There Hellions continued to argue with the parishioners, but they attacked and killed him.

The Crown sent Peter and Sir Gawen Carew to Devon to resolve the issue. When they arrived in Exeter, they learned people from all over Devon were gathered 7 miles away in Crediton.  They had set up barricades and chosen a spot close to Exeter, the regional capital. The Carews and a support party approached Crediton on Saturday, June 22 intending to talk with the people. The protestors had created a strong position, and they “refused to negotiate.” (101) Hooker implies that the protestors fired first, but Stoyle cautions that Hooker is biased, and although he is frequently the only source available, it is necessary to view his opinions cautiously. It may have been the Carews that began fire. A battle ensued. It was this event that began the rising of 1549. People in Devon had killed a man who disagreed with their right to have church services as they had done when Henrry VIII was king. They fired on people who represented the crown.

Stoyle describes how the common people’s commitment to rebellion eventually drew in members of the gentry and lords of Devon. The city of Exeter did not permit the rebels to enter. Somerset responded to the rising by directing Lord John Russell to put down the rebellion. Russell struggled to get sufficient troops to defeat the rebels because of the many problems the Crown faced at that time. When he received support with the help of mercenaries, he was able to defeat the Cornish rebel forces at Sampford Courtenay. Some scholars have suggested that the rising was a class war, but Stoyle asserts this was untrue. There were powerful people in the West Country who also wished for a more traditional religion, and they joined forces with commoners. A new look at the rising also points out the importance of the Arundell family that supported the rebels.(295)