Naval warfare during the civil wars mirrored the complex military situation on land in many respects. The activities of multiple naval forces, and shifting alliances between them, can make it difficult to follow the course of the conflict at sea. As we saw in the previous chapter, parliament controlled the largest navy in the three Stuart kingdoms, but its dominance at sea did not go unchallenged. The king and his supporters set out shipping in England, Ireland, and Scotland, while both the Irish confederates and the Scottish covenanters authorised privateers to sail in support of their causes. The ad hoc nature of the creation and operation of these forces meant that they all faced similar problems. These included fluctuations in strength, an overreliance on merchantmen or privately-owned warships, shortage of facilities ashore, and a lack of centralised control and administration. Historians trying to reconstruct their activities must also take into account the limitations of the surviving archival records: in particular, much of what we know of the naval activities of the royalists and confederates during the 1640s and 1650s comes from hostile parliamentarian sources. This chapter seeks to unravel these sources, to outline the activities of these naval forces, and to assess how they overcame the problems they faced in order to mount a challenge to parliamentarian naval power. It is worth noting that confederate and royalist naval efforts were larger and more sustained throughout the war than those in Scotland. The ‘limited naval policy’ adopted by the covenanters for much of the conflict, combined with the poor survival of admiralty records, makes assessing maritime activity in seas around Scotland less straightforward than it is for other regions.

Royalists

Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon, in the famous History of the Great Rebellion, described the desertion of the navy to parliament in 1642 as an ‘unspeakable ill consequence to the King's affairs’. On a number of levels the loss of the fleet impacted on the royalist war effort. Without men-of-war at his disposal, Charles I lacked the ability to contest parliamentarian control of important ports and shipping routes; this meant his overseas trade and communications became vulnerable to interception, while at the same time the king could do little to hinder parliamentarian shipping.

William Brigeman's bequest [BRO P/AS/C/1/41; fo 5v] – ASB 3, Halleway, pp. 283–4.

Anno domini 1524

Here after follow such books, rolls and scrolls of prick song that William Brigeman late clerk of this parish church hath bequeathed in his testament to the use of this same church under the condition that no children should be taught upon the said books, scrolls and rolls.

In primis, 5 books of a mene [?uniform] volume containing 5 masses.

Item 5 books of a mene volume containing 16 anthems, besides divers Exultavit Salve festa dies with 1 mass sc. ascendo ad patrem qu. W. Brigeman.

Item a book of a large volume containing divers Kyre leyson, alleluia, Masses, anthems, Salve festa dies, Sequences of our lady, In nomine Jhesu, Sospitati, with many other songs for a great part of the year necessary.

Item 4 books of a mene volume containing 3 masses with anthems to sing the Saturdays at Evensong before the Cross with Vidi aquam &c.

Item a thin book of a large volume containing Kyre, alleluia, a mass book of 3 parts &c.

Item a book of paper Riall without a forell containing the passion for palm Sunday and a mass of docter Farfex['s] making called dobull Desolre with an Exultavit.

Item divers other small books and scrolls for children of Sancte deus with other song as Te lucis, Saluater, &c.

Item divers small quires containing anthems of our lady, sc. Sancta Maria, ascendit christus, Tota pulchra, In pace in idipsum, &c.

Item other books of a meme volume containing supra.

Item rolls of paper containing divers anthems, carols, passions for palm Sunday, Salve festa dies, Sospitati, ad sepulchrum, ex mortuis, Te deum, In pace, Inventor Rutili, Confitemini, Dicant nunc, Omnia viderunt, asperges, Gloria in excelsis, Nesciens mater, Regina celi, En rex venit, Gloria laus, with divers other small songs about the number of 40 rolls.

It was widely assumed by contemporaries that the Other House was a bastion for the military interest. Writing to Cardinal Mazarin on 24 February 1659, the French Ambassador Bordeaux reported how the army officers were pleased with ‘the new House of Lords’ because it was ‘composed of the principal officers’, allowing them ‘to secure the balance of authority in themselves’. As demonstrated in the previous chapter many of the Republican and crypto-Royalist tirades against the Other House concerned its military character. Consequently, this characterization permeates much of the historiography. Firth, in particular, suggested that the ‘maintenance of the other House was essential’ to the army officers ‘as a guarantee of their own influence’. Although he noted that the officers ‘were not the majority’ in the Other House, Firth deferred to the contemporary view that ‘they were at all events the preponderating influence there’.

Doubtless, in the early modern period contemporary perceptions were often more important for driving events than political realities. After all, it was Charles I's perceived duplicity and misgovernment, whatever the realities of his rule, that galvanized opposition to his reign. Similarly, the perceived military dominance of the Other House focused opposition to the new chamber and the Cromwellian regime as a whole. Yet, as already demonstrated in Chapter 3, the membership of the Other House summoned by Oliver Cromwell, was more balanced than previously realized. If anything, it was the civilian Cromwellians and conservatives who had the majority.

De todos los sujetos deshonestos que poblaron el discurso historiográfico del Siglo de Oro, Cleopatra fue, sin duda, uno de los que más resistencia pusieron a la contención de los límites retóricos de la historia. Como ya advertí anteriormente, la diversidad genérica acompañó la historia cleopátrica desde sus inicios clásicos, al ser narrada simultáneamente desde la historia (Plutarco, Apiano, Flavio Josefo, Lucio Floro, Dión Casio, Tito Livio, Plinio, Suetonio, entre otros), la lírica (Horacio, Propercio, Ovidio) y la épica (Virgilio, Lucano). Dicha variedad, como se vio en el primer capítulo, continuó en cierta forma en el periodo medieval y prehumanista con narraciones estrictamente históricas, como las de Lucas de Tuy y Alfonso X, con otras muy cercanas a lo histórico, como el De claris mulieribus y el De casibus virorum illustrium de Boccaccio, o con registros más cercanos a lo novelesco, como Li Fet de Romains (Flutre y Sneyders 623–57). En el siglo XVI esa diversidad se intensificó y la historia de Cleopatra, a medida que el personaje fue ganando popularidad, adquirió mayor espacio textual y ambigüedad genérica. En este sentido, podría decirse que la excesividad moral del personaje que los historiadores condenaban se extendió también a la narración misma de ese personaje, cada vez más difícil de contener en un solo cauce genérico.

En este capítulo se pretende explorar esa expansión de la historia cleopátrica hacia discursos que parten de lo histórico pero que se desplazan hacia territorios líricos y pseudoépicos. Como base para esta exploración me enfocaré en una serie de romances historiados compuestos durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVI, y en dos textos dados a la estampa hacia mediados del XVII, la Historia de Marco Antonio y Cleopatra de Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, y el Canto de Marco Antonio y Cleopatra de Francisco de Borja y Aragón, príncipe de Esquilache.

La composición de los primeros romances cleopátricos, alrededor de 1550, coincidió, por una parte, con la explotación editorial del romance historiado desde las imprentas antuerpienses de Martín Nucio y Juan Steelsio y, por otra, con el progresivo auge del icono cleopátrico en el campo literario y artístico español.

The range of questions posed by the codicological and textual forms in which The Book of the Duchess (hereafter BD) survives is closely connected to the larger enigma of the context in which it originated and was first recorded in manuscript. The three surviving copies all date from around 50 years or more after Chaucer's death, and they offer no explicit information about the historical circumstances in which the poem took shape and was first transmitted. There are no forms of external evidence concerning its date or occasion of composition, and much weight has had to be placed on cryptic internal allusions in order to reconstruct a plausible occasional significance: the death from plague of John of Gaunt's first wife, Blanche, duchess of Lancaster on 12 September 1368. The poem makes no explicit allusion to her death, and only the line ‘And goode faire White she het’ (948), and a cluster of final gestures (1318–19) to Lancaster (‘long castel’), ‘St John’, and ‘Richmond’ (‘ryche hil’: John of Gaunt was earl of Richmond in Yorkshire until 1372) suggest its connections with the death of the duchess.

This internal allusion to ‘White’ is supported by some very late evidence in one manuscript. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16 includes at the beginning of the poem the added note that it was ‘made by Geffrey Chawcyer at ye request of ye duke of lancastar: pitously complaynynge the deathe of ye sayd dutchesse blanche’ (fol. 130). This note, in the hand of the sixteenth-century antiquary John Stow (1525–1605), provides the earliest surviving assertion of the poem's occasion. Stow has also written the name ‘blanche’ in the margins opposite several occurrences of the word ‘white’ in the poem, at lines 905 (fol. 141v) and 948 (fol. 142); his is probably also the hand that has written ‘she ys dedde’ (fol. 147) in the margin opposite line 1298 (‘Sir quod I where is she now’, anticipating line 1309: ‘She ys ded’). Stow was both a collector of Middle English manuscripts and an antiquarian of distinction who clearly had some interest in the content of the poem and in Chaucer more generally.

On 3 July 1187 at the Horns of Hattin, near Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, Saladin routed the Christians and captured the unbelievably precious relic of the True Cross. The king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, was taken prisoner and on 2 October the Holy City surrendered. Pope Urban III is said to have died of shock and grief. Within ten days his successor, Gregory VIII, issued an impassioned appeal for a new crusade, explaining the catastrophe in terms of punishment for the sins not only of the Latin settlers but also of all Christians, whom he summoned to acts of penance. Meanwhile Conrad of Montferrat and the surviving remnants of the nobility and military forces of the Kingdom of Jerusalem took refuge behind the walls of Tyre, courageously defending it against Saladin's onslaughts and sending desperate messages to the West.

Richard the Lionheart took the cross as soon as he heard the news. Other leaders showed less sense of urgency. Richard's father, Henry II, and King Philip Augustus of France continued to wage war on each other, to outraged public reaction. Eventually they called a truce at Gisors in mid-January 1188, took the cross and agreed to levy the so-called Saladin tithe (10 per cent on all movable property and income). However, it took a long time for the crusade to get off the ground. Richard, Philip and Henry continued fighting. Henry died shortly after taking the cross, and Richard was crowned on 3 September 1189. The delays caused a storm of protest, ‘not only from ecclesiastics but also from troubadours and trouvères: there can be no doubt that public opinion was scandalized’. By contrast, Frederick Barbarossa of Germany had responded quickly and decided on a land route to the Holy Land, but after he had successfully marched an army through hostile territory and Asia Minor, he died suddenly as he was attempting to cross a river. After this the German contribution more or less collapsed. This was to have disastrous consequences: Runciman comments that ‘Saladin was right to see his salvation in the Emperor's death’, and ‘the grim fiasco of the Emperor's Crusade made it more than ever urgent that the kings of France and England should arrive in the East’.

Addressing the 17th century is no easy task. There are so many different kinds of society, of human (and, we must add, non-human) lives. The roles of European superpowers in this period were not straightforward, nor are they easy to comprehend. There has been and still is a tendency towards Eurocentric history writing, which makes us think from a European perspective. The violent history of the colonies in the Americas is a tragedy, and this traumatic experience is, most certainly, first and foremost the result of European expansion. But life in the Americas cannot, and this is important, be reduced to the European. The history of the Americas is far more complex and intricate, and we are only starting to grasp this interesting theme. Africa was violently tapped into via the slave trade during the same century, which also had a wide range of long-lasting effects. The 17th century is also marked by the fall, in 1644, of the Ming dynasty, a dynasty which had been powerful and influential far beyond the borders of China. The Moghuls still dominated much of south Asia. And along the eastern and southern borders of Europe this was a period in which the Ottoman Empire, although weakened, continued to play an important role. It was the time of the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War in which Europe became the scene of a destructive, partially anarchic and protracted era of violent conflict. This era of horror ended with the peace treaty at Westphalia, which established new political rules of lasting importance. The 17th century was also an era of technical developments, socio-economic change and fervent religious activities.

On 11 October 1639 the royal navy was humiliated. In the Downs, Britain's most important anchorage, a large Dutch fleet attacked and scattered a Spanish force, in so doing defying British neutrality and claims to maritime sovereignty, while a small English squadron was powerless to intervene. This marked the end of a month's anxious watching for the English commander, Sir John Pennington, and his fellows. This Spanish fleet had been sighted near Plymouth at the start of September, carrying 12,000 soldiers for their army in Flanders (some 2,000 of them aboard English merchant ships hired by the Spanish). They soon met the Dutch in the channel, under Admiral Maarten Tromp, and in a running fight sailed eastwards until 9 September, when they sought the security of the Downs.

The Dutch ships followed them, and Pennington's squadron found themselves in the middle of a tense situation. On the night of 11 September fifteen Spanish ships escaped northwards, which provoked protests from the Dutch, as Pennington had previously forbidden them to position their ships against just such an eventuality. About a fortnight later a Dutch ‘Frigat’ sailed into Margate harbour, flying English colours, and there seized upon two small vessels carrying Spanish soldiers: complaints to Tromp were met on his part by claims of innocence and ignorance. Indeed, the Dutch admiral repeatedly insisted that he would inform Pennington before he moved against the Spanish and would do nothing to offend the British crown. However, following the direct orders he had received from the Dutch government, he eventually attacked in the midst of a heavy fog, later maintaining that the Spanish had opened fire first.

Throughout these weeks Charles I's naval administration were unprepared and indecisive, perhaps because they had just supported a wholly unsuccessful military campaign in Scotland. Pennington's repeated requests for clear instructions about how to proceed elicited only prevarication. Algernon Percy, tenth earl of Northumberland, the lord high admiral, wrote to Pennington on 10 September that he was ‘confident the Hollanders will bee so respective to the King Our Master as not to offer any violence to the Spaniards whilest they are under his Majesties protection’, and again two days later that the king was ‘well satisfied … with the Hollanders civility at this time, and doubts not, but that they will continue their faire respects to his Majestie’.