At ten o'clock in the evening of April 1625, night watchmen at Margate called out to an unknown ship entering the harbor, “Who's there?” Because Charles I had begun preparations for war against the Habsburgs, the watchmen demanded an answer: “We are for the King and must know what you are.” They received a memorable response: “Shite on your king and kisse myne arse.” The ship was from Dunkirk, and with war imminent, English coastal residents were anxious about the Spanish naval squadron based there. The Flemish captain was eventually charged with using “unreverent and uncivil words aforesaid of his sacred Maiestie.”Footnote 1 Yet once war erupted later in the year, English seamen quickly learned that when it came to Dunkirkers, incivility was the least of their worries.
In the ensuing conflict, English contemporaries were terrified of Dunkirkers, whose frigates snapped up English ships apparently at will and whose unusually large crews made coastal residents fearful of raids and even invasion. In response, they requested various countermeasures. In the town of Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast, the residents were effectively defenseless. Their small trained band could not interrupt a corsair attacking ships anchored offshore. The gun emplacements from Elizabeth's reign had disappeared, and its eight minions, light artillery best used at close range, were “hony combed and nott fit for any great service.”Footnote 2 The residents did not want replacements; they wanted to upgrade to demi-culverins, the standard heavy ordnance that fired a nine-pound iron shot, and they wanted ten of them, not eight. And although Whitehall typically shared the expense of new ordnance with towns, Aldeburgh demanded that the regime shoulder the entire cost.Footnote 3 For a small town, this was a big ask.
The town's pursuit of heavy artillery sprawled over several years and involved neighboring towns, the Suffolk magistrates and lord lieutenant, the privy councilors, the master of the ordnance and the Lord Admiral, the Duke of Buckingham. While this case is not exceptional, it is well documented, thanks to Aldeburgh's recorder, Nicholas Rivett, and the town clerk, Mr. Taplie.Footnote 4 Although the town's minute book has disappeared, Rivett prepared a “Book of Letters and Answers” detailing the episode, and Taplie kept remarkably detailed financial accounts. Consequently, we can clearly see the impact of the naval war on this otherwise obscure Suffolk fishing community.
The scholarly indifference to the Dunkirkers in the 1620s stems from the paucity of information about them. While continental historians acknowledge their importance, English scholars have not, which is astonishing because by 1628 the English had lost 522 vessels to Dunkirk attackers.Footnote 5 Instead, for this period, English historians have focused on diplomacy, Parliament, the Forced Loan, and various expeditions.Footnote 6 S. R. Gardiner, for example, observed that in 1626, “if the West of England cried out against the rovers of Sallee, the East cried out against the Dunkirk privateers”; yet he mentioned the Dunkirkers only a few times in his monumental history, and only in passing.Footnote 7 Roger Lockyer's biography of Buckingham represents one of the few exceptions to this pattern, but his repeated references to the Dunkirkers reflect the Lord Admiral's optimistic assessment, not the anxieties of a small town in harm's way.Footnote 8
This scant coverage stems from the confused situation in home waters. While we can follow Buckingham's naval countermeasures, his commands bore little relationship to operational reality. In April 1627, for example, he was thunderstruck to learn that the rear admiral guarding the Channel had ignored repeated orders and had not put to sea in a year.Footnote 9 Nor are the standard letter collections much help. Perspective was everything, and none of the elite letter-writers spent much time in small craft at sea. Dr. Mead in Cambridge and his London correspondents generally ignored the Dunkirkers, aside from occasionally bemoaning the “wicked Dunkerks” and their “massacre of the Fishermen,” and the Earl of Clare never mentioned them in his detailed letters.Footnote 10 Consequently, a touch of condescension echoes through Sir Harbottle Grimston's comment that “the townsmen of Harwich are much afraid” of the Dunkirkers.Footnote 11
The records of the coastal communities only intermittently refer to the Dunkirkers. Some coastal towns—Margate, Lowestoft, and Southwold, for instance—were unincorporated and produced few documents. Others have disappointing records. Minute books can illuminate a town, but none have survived from, for example, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Grimsby, or Aldeburgh. Just important was the zeal of the town clerk. In Harwich, which the Dunkirkers allegedly planned to invade late in 1625, its clerk filled exactly eleven folios from 1625 to 1630.Footnote 12 Meanwhile his colleagues in other towns, such as Boston and Ipswich, seemed oblivious to the violence at sea.Footnote 13 Fortunately, we have a very detailed minute book from Great Yarmouth.
A passion for clupea harengus bound Great Yarmouth and Aldeburgh together. Thomas Nashe, who grew up there, observed that for profit, “There is no fellowe to the red [i.e., salted and smoked] herring.” Although “caught in such abundance” offshore, every spring the fish swam out to Iceland, where some three hundred herring busses and five thousand seamen from Norfolk and Suffolk went to find them. The profits made Great Yarmouth, in Nashe's words, “this superiminente principall Metropolis of the redde fish” and indeed “a head citty of Norffolke and Suffolke.”Footnote 14 It boasted St. Nicholas, whose lofty spire guided seamen home, and although theological disputes famously divided the residents, the Dunkirkers united them by cheerfully capturing Protestants of any variety.Footnote 15 In contrast, Aldeburgh was more mundane. It had a parish church and perhaps a thousand faithful, a small harbor several miles up the Alde River, and a shingle beach where fishermen pulled up their boats. Although poor in other ways, Aldeburgh was rich in seafood; years after Marmaduke Rawdon had served as the town's Parliament-man, the corporation still sent him “a small present of excellent fish against Lent.”Footnote 16
With this abundant material on Aldeburgh, supplemented by details from Great Yarmouth and other coastal towns, this essay first analyzes the Dunkirkers and English countermeasures to them and then focuses on Aldeburgh's wartime experience. The result illuminates both the trauma of England's conflict against Dunkirk and the complex relationship between center and localities.
This case calls into question Conrad Russell's famous argument about the “functional break-down” of the early Stuart regime,Footnote 17 which was so “broken-down” that it was effectively “a fifth hand Mini,” nearly ready “for the scrap-heap.”Footnote 18 The Dunkirker crisis provides a concrete example of Michael Braddick's more general argument that “conceiving of the state as the whole network of political institutions coordinated in London reveals how they served to integrate central and local interests.”Footnote 19 It also explains the rapid disintegration of the Duke of Buckingham's war coalition, which remains one of the central conundrums about the 1620s. In 1624 the Parliament-men did “seem to carry [him] upon their shoulders in triumph … as the redeemer forsooth of our country,” but two years later the same men denounced him as “the grievance itself of all grievances.”Footnote 20 Finally the crisis also reveals the limitations of our current understanding of England's central and provincial government of the time. Scholars have long appreciated the basic pattern in which Whitehall proposed, and local communities generally opposed, any new measures. Yet Aldeburgh's campaign for ten demi-culverins reverses that model. Far from trying to disappear from Whitehall's radar screen, the fervent hope of most corporations, Aldeburgh was desperate that the regime notice its plight and intervene.
Above all else, this episode reveals the pain of Buckingham's wars. In addition to the thousands who died, many more suffered grievous economic and personal loss, particularly if they lived beside the North Sea. Whitehall generally ignored irate seamen and fishermen, but as will be seen, the Parliament-men from the coastal towns backed the dramatic assault on Buckingham, which only intensified as alarm over the Dunkirkers grew. The paucity of the sources generally makes it hard to determine the precise attitude of their constituents lower down the social scale. Yet in Great Yarmouth and particularly in Aldeburgh, we can hear “verie poore and much ympoverished” herring fisherman repeatedly demanding the right to defend their community.Footnote 21 Scholars, albeit belatedly, should listen to them.
I
Heroism defined the young monarch, whom some hailed as the new Charlemagne. Abandoning his father's pacifism, Charles went to war with Spain to restore his sister and brother-in-law to the Palatinate. England itself seemed in no immediate danger. Hence, although the 1624 subsidy bill provided money for “the defence of this your Realme of England,”Footnote 22 the regime spent only £2,740 on repairing coastal fortifications, reserving the rest for offensive operations.Footnote 23 As Charles and the Duke of Buckingham pondered where to strike first—Lower Saxony, Flanders, Spain, or the West Indies—they did not ignore Dunkirk, positioning five vessels to blockade it. They then concentrated on their grand “forward” strategy, confident that it was England's best defense.Footnote 24
Reality intervened in October 1625, just after an Anglo-Dutch amphibious force put to sea. An “extraordinary great tempest” in the Channel then sank the blockading ships before Dunkirk, allowing two dozen warships and some four thousand troops to sortie.Footnote 25 From Dover, Sir John Hippesley warned “the dunkerkers are all loose.”Footnote 26 William Trumbull was terrified: “I know not what may empeach theire sallye, unless it be some myracle from heaven, there being no sufficient power to make resistance.”Footnote 27 With most of the fleet heading for Cadiz, Charles and Buckingham hastily assembled a squadron “to attend the motions of the Dunkerkers.”Footnote 28 But which way had they gone? After intelligence reports suggested down the Channel, the Privy Council sent warnings across the country, but in particular to Kent, Devon, and Ireland. Unfortunately, the Dunkirkers headed north, where they “doe spoyle all the fisher man at Yarmouth and upon those costs.”Footnote 29
Publicly, Buckingham minimized the damage. A few months later, he assured the Earl of Suffolk, “I have not heard of any Shipp or vessell that hath bene taken by the Enemie in any harbour of the Kingdome nor receved any Credible Intelligence of anie soe great spoyle done by the Enemie.”Footnote 30 Privately, however, he brooded over “how to unnest the Spaniards of theyr ports of Flanders … by taking from them Dunkerke,” lest they “make prey in those seas of our poore fishers and merchants.”Footnote 31 The bailiffs of Aldeburgh shared his concern about the Dunkirkers, who “will not onely in short tyme bringe misery and beggary to all upon this coast but utter disolation.”Footnote 32
As Buckingham struggled to find an effective response, many English recalled when Flemish corsairs began operating out of Dunkirk, a port ideally situated near Anglo-Dutch shipping lanes. Late in 1601, their successes prompted Thomas Damet, an otherwise reticent burgess from Great Yarmouth, to report how “the subiectes of this land on the sea coastes” had been “spoyled, robbed, beaten, wounded, themselves taken, ransomed, fyned and some executed.” The royal navy could not stop these Flemish “wolves” from feasting on the English “sheep.”Footnote 33 Edward Peake from Sandwich seconded Damet, announcing that “every daye men come home, their goodes and all they have taken awaye; yea, their very apparel.”Footnote 34 A year later, the situation worsened after Philip III ordered the Dunkirk galleys to “take the war with blood and fire, as far as their very homes” to “deprive the enemy of the herring fisheries.”Footnote 35 In response, the regime built its own galleys, increased naval patrols, and joined the Dutch in a land campaign to capture Dunkirk. These initiatives ended in 1604 once peace returned. But the memory lingered; in 1625, Lord Brooke, the Elizabethan veteran, badgered Buckingham about the importance of “blocking up of that denne of pyratts at Dunkerke.”Footnote 36
Buckingham faced a new threat because the Spaniards had recently transformed Dunkirk and its warships. Extensive fortifications and shifting sandbanks made Dunkirk impregnable from seaward attack, and the completion of “the splinter” at Mardyke in 1622 finally provided deep-water access. Meanwhile, local shipwrights perfected a nautical masterpiece. Compared to the royal navy, which included the 1,200-ton Prince Royal, the Dunkirk squadron was puny; yet most were frigates, agile, shallow-draught warships well suited for the North Sea, and skilled commanders like Michel Jacobsen and Jacques Coleart revealed their lethality against merchant-men and fishing vessels. Finally, after the truce ended in 1621, the Dutch discovered the near impossibility of blockading the port during the winter months as the Dunkirkers devastated Dutch fishermen.
The ferocious Flemish assault on the Dutch dismayed English observers. Because the Dutch had begun tossing Flemish captives overboard, the Dunkirkers returned the compliment. Even before the Anglo-Spanish war, some English captains had experienced their ruthlessness; the Dunkirkers, for example, tortured the crew of the Diana by “pouring in one bucket of salte water and one bucket of fresh water into theire mouthes.”Footnote 37 Worse still, the corsairs had a sense of humor; after intercepting some English troops sailing to Holland, the Dunkirkers sent them on their way—“naked,” having stripped the “Apparell from their backes.”Footnote 38 Open warfare with such opponents plainly would be an ordeal.
In response, Buckingham labored to save coastal communities from spoil and invasion. In 1625, the Essex-trained band stood guard at Harwich to repel a possible landing as espionage scares swept the coasts. Amid the growing panic, an Englishman serving in the Spanish army discovered that October 1625 was the wrong time to visit relatives in Kent.Footnote 39 Coastal residents planned for the worst, and some in the Isle of Thanet began moving out.Footnote 40 Anxiety gave way to panic as the Spaniards established an almirantazgo over the North Sea. Angry citizens descended on the authorities. Lewes had to cope with residents whose houses the Dunkirkers had burned, and the privy councilors were beset by Alice Young, whose husband the pirates had imprisoned.Footnote 41 While merchants were upset, fishermen were fatalistic, because a herring buss could not defend itself. Yarmouth thus correctly observed the Dunkirkers “make much havock and destruction of poore fishermen.”Footnote 42 This litany of misery quickly dimmed any hopes of dynastic glory.
In general the English who ended up in Flemish jails were treated well, viewed as valuable assets. Distraught relatives and friends tried to help those taken captive, who included captains and seamen by the score as well as a chaplain, several widows, a family with children, three infantry captains, the governor of Sark, and even a Parliament-man. In 1627, the French captured Sir Thomas Glemham, Aldeburgh's burgess in 1625 and 1626, and once he was released, the Dunkirkers promptly recaptured him. Consequently, he sat out the 1628 session, keeping some constituents company in Dunkirk.Footnote 43 At first it seemed possible to buy freedom, and Hull quickly collected £54 10s 6d for their colleagues. Poor friends scrambled to find Flemish prisoners to exchange. William Dawson and Margaret Catmor of Aldeburgh eyed two of the Earl of Warwick's captives, because Dawson's son and Catmor's husband lay “in great misery, they nor their friends beinge able to sustayne or redeeme them.”Footnote 44 Fortunately, Aldeburgh had earlier assisted Warwick, who agreed to help “in acknowledgement of your kindness to me when I was with you.”Footnote 45 The prisoners’ release, however, proved difficult.
Hugh Ross, who arrived in Flanders in August 1626 to arrange the exchanges, found so many prisoners, some 244 of them, that the Dunkirkers generously agreed to swop forty Britons for a Spanish captain, a Franciscan friar, and a Jesuit priest. But the rest languished. Captives were charged a shilling for daily room and board, or about £18 a year, which many could not pay. Furthermore, Spinola, the Spanish commander, insisted on a single mass exchange; as Ross reported, those “that ar aibill to pay ther charges can not be released till the poorest ther be enlarged.”Footnote 46 To end the suffering, Charles I agreed to give £1,500, allowing the penniless to work off their debt in the navy. But when the Exchequer was slow to produce the cash, Spinola threatened to send the captives to Spain, where they would “serve in the gallies to end their dayes in miserable bondage … to the great disgrace of our Realme.”Footnote 47 Finally on 26 September 1626, some prisoners left for England. Catmor was among them, but Dawson was not, and he may have been among those who died in captivity. Yet having cleared their prisons, the Dunkirkers promptly refilled them, beginning another round of misery.Footnote 48
As these problems arose, questions about who was responsible were soon heard in Parliament, where an angry delegation from Great Yarmouth very nearly arrived. Early in 1626, the city's burgesses told the Privy Council of “the losses at sea and the feare of our Towne and of all the Contrye aboute us” and “how notwithstanding we have much suite” for waftage, “yet wee have none.” Frustration boiled over in March when fishermen who normally sailed for Iceland “dare[d] not Adventure for feare of the Dunkerkers.”Footnote 49 Anxious of the “future destruction of many poore men whose lyving depends upon their labors att sea,” several seamen left to “make their complaints unto the kings Maiesty, the Parliament, the Lords of his Maiesties Counsell or the Lord Admiral.”Footnote 50 Their presence in Westminster would have caused a sensation, but the reality of such a long journey soon persuaded the delegation to turn around.
Others shared Yarmouth's irritation with Buckingham. Edward Whitby began the session by highlighting “the power of the Dunkerkers,” which was “so great that they not only rob and take our ships at sea but adventure to the ports to the great terror sand loss of the inhabitants.” Indeed, soon, he declared, “we shall have no ships left in the kingdom.”Footnote 51 Others seconded him. On 11 March 1626, Buckingham's impeachment effectively began when Dr. Samuel Turner proposed five queries about his conduct. Initially it seems baffling that Great Yarmouth's Parliament-men sent back these queries, which were recorded in the Assembly Book. Their action becomes clearer after considering the first query as to “whether the loss of the King's regality of the Narrow Seas may not be attributed to the Admiral's neglect.”Footnote 52
In 1628, Parliament returned to the Dunkirkers. Against the secretary of state Sir John Coke, who argued “an offensive war is better,” lawyer Sir Edward Coke retorted that “in an island defensive war is safest,” and William Coryton observed that the raiders had seized so many grain ship sent to help the Huguenots that “instead of victualing Rochelle we have victualed Dunkirk.”Footnote 53 Even more striking were the many otherwise silent Parliament-men from coastal towns who spoke. Sir Peter Riddell of Newcastle reported that colliers “cannot go out in summer” and in the winter “they are lost”; Roger Matthew of Dartmouth noted that “no fisher boat or bark can go out”; Alderman Moulson of London lamented “our trade of white cloth” was “lost.”Footnote 54 Among the recent losses, Sir Simeon Steward added one from his constituency; Aldeburgh had lost eighty pilots.Footnote 55 Naval patrols seemed hopeless; John Barker from Bristol dismissed royal warships as “too large,” and William Cage from Ipswich thought they “could do no good.” The Dunkirkers, Christopher Clitherow of London maintained, “scorn our ships,” and one frigate mocked his English pursuers by trailing “our colors in the most disgraceful manner that may be.”Footnote 56 Noting that “letters in tears and blood come in daily,” John Lister of Hull bemoaned how “we that have given laws to others are now kept in by 2 paltry towns [Dunkirk and Ostend].”Footnote 57 The Remonstrance drawn up in June voiced “the importunate and most pitiful complaints from … near adjoining the sea in this kind would rend, as we think, the stoniest heart in the word with sorrow.” Because “the town of Dunkirk does so continually beat, rob, and spoil your subjects,” all soon would “be utterly lost.” While Trinity House had earlier estimated 170 vessels lost since 1625, the Commons set the figure at 260 ships over 100 tons, most from six east-coast towns: London, Ipswich, Newcastle, Hull, Great Yarmouth, and Aldeburgh. The total of all shipping lost was a staggering 522 ships, and of that number 13 percent had come from Great Yarmouth and Aldeburgh.Footnote 58
Although parliamentary discussions continued in this vein, various local records reveal more about the struggle in the North Sea.
II
Admirals, like their military counterparts, were obsessed with the previous conflict. The Armada's massive galleons haunted later English planners and explains their ham-handed response to the Dunkirkers. The warships that Buckingham posted around the coast rarely caught anything. As he told the Lords in 1626, “Our ships [are] not so good for swiftness as theirs, ours being strong (but heavy), their light and swift.”Footnote 59 The use of cumbersome Newcastle colliers scarcely improved the situation. Instead, Captain Richard Gifford envisioned fast, new vessels which could take Dunkirkers. The result was the Whelp class, and Buckingham ordered ten of them. But until the first Whelp ships were ready late in 1628, many Parliament-men agreed with Mr. Cage that royal warships “could do no good.”Footnote 60
If the navy could not capture the raiders, they at least could “waft” (escort) convoys. Buckingham understood that “there is nothing that hathe more disheartened the Subiect, encouraged the Ennemy or dishonoured his Maiestie then the damage and spoyle made by the Dunkerkers in the Narrow Seas.”Footnote 61 Yet with scant funding for waftage, the duke tried to privatize convoys. In April 1626, Sir John Savile and several Yorkshire Parliament-men proposed that if the king earmarked £4,000 from a Privy Seal loan for waftage, payments would “come in with the more freedome and alacritye from his Maiesties loving subjects.” Footnote 62 Complex talks with Newcastle merchants and Yarmouth fishermen eventually resulted in three escorts for cloth ships to London and three more to the Netherlands. Afterward, all six would join the fishermen in Iceland. Unfortunately, implementation was “not to expectation.”Footnote 63 Next, in August 1626, the council announced the “loan ships” scheme. Given “the vast ambition and malice” of Philip IV, Charles, not content with “a new strong fleete to carrie the warre as farre as may be from our owne coastes,” decided “to arme and strengthen himself upon his own coasts.” Consequently, the coastal counties and towns had prepared, and financed, some three dozen loan ships, all “for the defence of your religion, prince and countrie against that ever growing tirany of Spain.”Footnote 64
This innovative scheme produced some guard ships—and ferocious rating disputes. Yarmouth first imposed a £4 fine on each fishing buss, but “many refused and neglected to pay.” Instead, the city suggested dividing the costs between Norwich, Norfolk, Great Yarmouth, and the Suffolk herring towns.Footnote 65 The county objected; it was already paying for a loan ship from King's Lynn, “a wealthy town” that “may performe the service of themselves.”Footnote 66 Meanwhile, Ipswich tried to lumber Suffolk with 97 percent of the costs, and Aldeburgh fended off collectors from both Ipswich and Yarmouth, explaining that they were “verie willing and redy to contribute and paye to the Charge so as it be but to one place.”Footnote 67
Waftage and “loan ships” soon became entangled in the Forced Loan, which, as Richard Cust has shown, produced local side deals. In December 1626, Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Southwold, and Walberswick had told the Privy Council of the damage after the promised escorts arrived too late. Some captains had stayed in port and lost £15,000, while others set out alone, and the Dunkirkers helped themselves.Footnote 68 Following protests that “the trade of fishing wilbe quite overthrown, manie coast townes much impoverished, the navigacion of the kingdome much impaired and manie of his Maiesties poore subjects ruined,”Footnote 69 Charles offered in January 1627 to deduct £1,768, the cost of four escorts, from the county total for the Forced Loan. Afterwards, Buckingham promised the escorts “within ten daies after the money shalbe paid in for that service.”Footnote 70 This unusual arrangement made, Sir Henry Glemham, a deputy lieutenant, warned Aldeburgh to get a warrant for “disposing these moneyes to that use, before you have paid the money into the Exchequer.”Footnote 71 Nevertheless, the offer was irresistible, and in October 1627, “Alburgh” was one of the areas in Suffolk that had “paid all into the Exchequer.”Footnote 72
The same deal applied to Norfolk and Yarmouth. Since the new revenue would secure “the freedome of your Trade abroad and safetie att home,” Secretary Conway “could not but wonder” at Yarmouth's “backwardnesse.”Footnote 73 Great Yarmouth, struggling with “almost unsupportable chardges” exceeding £25,000, grumbled that Norwich was secure twenty miles inland, “never suffering by the dunkerkers.”Footnote 74 By August, the fishermen “dare[d] not proceed in their herring fishing this season without a continuall garde”; the Privy Council promised three escorts once the town paid its share of the Forced Loan.Footnote 75 Yet by September 1627, Yarmouth had only collected about two-thirds of its assessment, although the citizens impressed Charles by providing three ships at their own expense to assist in the Île de Ré expedition in June.Footnote 76
To fund waftage, Charles announced in June 1627 that the recusant fines in northern England and a voluntary composition on Newcastle coal would fund six guard ships. This revenue, although never enough, helped finance six vessels, one of which, the Mary Ann, came from Aldeburgh.Footnote 77 Weary of the constant wrangling, Yarmouth began late in 1628 to explore the idea of financing its own escorts “because it wilbe done heere a greate deale cheaper, a greate deale sooner … [and] with much better content to the herring fishers.”Footnote 78
The crisis made many fear for their communities. They accepted the inherent dangers of seafaring, which involved “great and continued hazard of life.”Footnote 79 Threats to their families, however, were another matter; Yarmouth fretted over “the grand danger that this Towne is in, Yf the Enemyes of Flanders by their shipping and men, dayly foraging att sea alongst our coasts shold happen to land and shold attempt any suddaine Assault or enterprise upon it.” Disaster would inevitably follow, given “unpreparedness in their fortifications, Ordnance and Ammunition.”Footnote 80
If Dunkirkers landed, the towns naturally looked to the newly improved militia. When some in Suffolk objected to expense, the privy councilors thought they had “no care nor feeling either of the honor of his Majesty and the State or of their owne good.”Footnote 81 Yet coastal residents rarely complained about militia assessments. Although King's Lynn, several miles up the Ouse, was comparatively secure, the town corporation took no chances. In the latter half of 1625, it completely rearmed its sixty musketeers and established “the Kings Watch” of seventeen men and a drummer to stand guard every evening.Footnote 82 Likewise, Yarmouth seemed safe enough, but the beaches on its eastern side seemed to invite invasion. By October 1625, watchmen would admit only those “well knowne,” and by February 1626, four hundred militiamen trained every Thursday, and all householders kept a musket, powder, and bullets at home. By March, a new “Voluntary Companye” trained in its recently opened Artillery Yard; and by December 1626, each man stood watch every eighth night.Footnote 83
Behind this zeal was anxiety about the county militia. By 1626, each shire had veterans training the men, a powder magazine, and a line of beacons connecting potential landing sites with inland units. The beacon at Aldeburgh, for example, would summon 9,300 men from Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Yet geography left Yarmouth and Aldeburgh vulnerable. Isolated by the Alde to the south and the Thorpeness Meare to the north, Aldeburgh residents feared the Suffolk militia would never arrive in time. Likewise, Yarmouth was a thumb of Norfolk projecting into Suffolk, which was reluctant to assist the town. Nor would the Norfolk militia be much help. Distracted by his quarrels with Buckingham, the lord lieutenant, the Earl of Arundel, wrote to few of his deputies between 1626 and 1629, leaving them largely on their own. Frustrated by the situation, the Norfolk deputies resigned en masse in 1628. The resulting disorganization became apparent when a Dunkirker attacked a small English ship near Yarmouth; when some militia-men appeared on the beach with muskets, the Flemish crew “shewed themselves very insolent in disgracing and scorning our nation to the view of many beholders.”Footnote 84 The humiliation would have been complete if the Dunkirkers had landed, because the musketeers’ powder had been carefully stockpiled in Norwich.Footnote 85 Little wonder that coastal towns became fixated on fortifications and ordnance.
Once the war began, King's Lynn immediately pressed for “Twelve great piecs of ordnance for the defence of the towne.”Footnote 86 The town even posted a cash bond of £300 for the cannons’ return, which was an impressive statement of the town's concern—and its wealth. Finally, in April 1626, after paying transport costs of £106 1s 4d, the town acquired four demi-culverins and six sakers.Footnote 87 Few other towns had such a straightforward experience. The available ordnance was limited, and as King's Lynn discovered, ready cash accelerated the process. But most corporations could only offer an indenture under the town seal. In August 1626, when Kingston-upon-Hull requested ordnance, the council replied that “his Majesties occasions are soe greate at the present for ordnance and his treasure soe many ways exhausted that you cannot possibly be furnished out of his Highnes’ stores.” Yet Hull could buy cannon outright at “the easiest rates and such as his Majestie paies.”Footnote 88 Yarmouth had a similar experience: in spite of extensive walls and sixteen towers, the city “standeth in verie great daunger” and needed twenty-four modern cannon.Footnote 89 Although the council appreciated that Yarmouth was “a principall porte of the kingdome” and understood “the apprehension of the danger of the said towne doth still increase,” no ordnance was available.Footnote 90 Consequently, the city quietly cultivated Sir William Heydon, a senior official in the Ordnance Office, as someone “lykely to doe the Town favour,” and finally in late summer of 1626, Yarmouth received twelve demi-culverins.Footnote 91
In the government's defense, there simply was not enough ordnance to go around, given the need to arm merchant-men and coastal towns. But this awkward administrative triage eventually worked, as King's Lynn and Yarmouth discovered. Indeed, by 1627, the government found some cannons for coastal towns in Kent. In Aldeburgh, the residents could only bide their time, rally their few friends and hope the Dunkirkers had more tempting targets elsewhere.Footnote 92
III
In July 1626, after the Privy Council finally asked about its defenses, Aldeburgh immediately invited the local deputy lieutenants to inspect the town. Their report noted that Aldeburgh, “one of the greatest Townes in that parte of this County for trading by sea,” was “very open to invasion within twelve howers sayle of Donkerk (the daylie Enemy of these coasts).” Indeed, “a fleete of shippes may ride within musket shott” of its beach where “there may be very easily landed by boates and sloopes ten thousand men in an hours space whoe may force the towne and take pillage thereof before the County can come to ayde them.” Invaders would find “noe Bulwarks nor fortifications … to defend it.” Its eight small cannon stood “open to the Enemy without any shelter or defence, soe that if a shott come from the enemye and beate upon the shingle the said shott will hassard to kill the gunner and all those about him or att least dryve them from the ordnance.” In addition, most adult males “beinge sea faringe men are gone to sea and leave the towne destitute of any great number of serviceable men” to defend it. Consequently, the town need five emplacements, three on the beach and two up on the hill, each with two demi-culverins, for protection. Finally, because the residents were “verie poore and much ympoverished not onely by divers loses at sea sustained by the enemy but allsoe for want of trade by sea,” and because the improved defenses constituted “soe greate” a expense, the residents “are not any waies of themselves able to undergoe the same nor to mayntayn them when they are made.”Footnote 93
Pending a response from Whitehall—and that was not imminent—Aldeburgh was on its own. In July 1625, the town spent some £16, repairing fourteen muskets, three of which needed new stocks, and refitting the cannons with new axles and wheels.Footnote 94 The danger soon became quite real. On 23 July, the bailiffs gave two shillings to “a man taken by Dunkerker,” the first of many other such payments. In February 1626, the enemy appeared off shore, and after a firefight, the town spent 2s 9d in beer, toasting among others Roger Yaxlie and Robert Staker, who manned a troublesome cannon.Footnote 95 Given the “honey-combed” ordnance, a celebration was in order.
In the following year, military expenditures rose again. In Whitehall's push for a “perfect” militia, Aldeburgh purchased thirty-three new pikes, twice repaired its drum, erected its beacon, and paid Mr. Poley £2 a year to maintain it. The cannons again consumed money. First the gun emplacements were cleaned, retaining walls repaired, and wooden planks placed under the gun carriages. Next the town acquired various “ladles and spunges and wormes” as well as handspikes, ropes, and staves. The aged minions required constant maintenance, and the bills soared for tar, tallow, pitch, rosin, blacking, wheels, axles, and various pieces of ironwork, both refurbished and new. Further repositioning required more laborers and more beer, while muskets and minions gobbled up powder and shot. Initially, the town purchased powder in small amounts and then began buying it by the barrel. While nine pounds of lead and forty pounds of match took care of the musketeers, the cannons needed specialized ammunition. In spring 1626, the town sent to London for 105 brass shot, possibly used in canister shot and for “7 great shot” to hurry along any curious Dunkirker. In all, Aldeburgh spent almost £32 on military costs, roughly 17 percent of its total expenditure for 1626.Footnote 96
The war consumed men and ships as well as money. In 1626, Dunkirkers had captured three local ships—the Mayflower (100 tons), the Nightingale (70 tons), and the Hopewell (160 tons) —along with some crew members, among them Dawson's son and Catmor's husband, leaving their families without income. The first child appeared in the town's accounts late in 1626 when Mr. Bardwell, a leading figure in the town, accepted £2 for taking one as his apprentice. Similar expenses soon followed. The town corporation in 1627 began supplementing the parish's poor relief funds, adding £2 4d that year. In August, Dunkirkers captured the Speedwell (160 tons), and in October 1627, the residents bitterly lamented Buckingham's Île de Ré expedition, which claimed the Mary Magdalen (350 tons) and the Jewell and George (300 tons). Then on 26–28 October a heavy gale threw five ships—the Dragon (300 tons), the Mary Anne (350 tons), the Pilgryme (300 tons), the Ellen and George (200 tons), and one other ship—onto Orford Ness, where they broke up. Some sailors survived, and the town gave £1 12s to help the “shipp broken” men to “travell home.” With that latest calamity, losses had risen to nearly £7,000, and some two hundred seamen were either dead or in Flemish jails.Footnote 97
The most poignant evidence of the pain in 1627 can be seen in an account recording “Cloathing of Towne Children,” whom the Dunkirkers had left indigent by imprisoning their fathers. The Lilborne family looked after “Bobbits child,” and Widow Boone took charge of “Cooks child,” and to keep these children decent and warm, the town set residents to work producing smocks, cassocks, petticoats, waistcoats, shirts, britches, hats, shoes, stockings, and entire suits of clothes. After spending nearly £7 on clothing, the town apparently thought these expenditures unsustainable and instead simply spent nine shillings on “sheets for poor people.” While these might have used as bedding, perhaps they were made into inexpensive, makeshift garments. Meanwhile, more orphans were apprenticed to local businessmen.Footnote 98
These tragedies had a silver lining. French naval prizes bolstered the Tower of London's supply of ordnance, which grew even larger after Buckingham returned from the Île de Ré. Consequently, notwithstanding the continued press for cannons—Hull, for example, wanted six more—the council finally did something for Suffolk, and in October 1627, citing “theise tymes of danger threatened by the preparation of a forraigne enemye,” it ordered a detailed report on local coastal defenses based on the responses to a questionnaire.Footnote 99 Two of the queries were particularly awkward for Aldeburgh: “What gard of men shalbe kept upon the said Ordnances least they should be left a prey to the Enemye and Spoyle,” and “what allowance of Matche, Shott and other provisions” would the town make?Footnote 100 Sir Henry Glemham, deputy lieutenant, began the survey. He knew the town well; indeed, he and his son had represented it in Parliament. Yet it was a frosty day, and leaving Mr. Benham of Ipswich to complete the report, he rode back to warmth of Glemham Hall.Footnote 101
Benham's report recommended four, not five, bastions; two at Aldeburgh would house two cannons each. The others would be further away, one two miles to the north guarding Thorpeness and the other to south protecting Orford Ness, each with three cannons. Further, Benham called for cannons no longer than ten feet, mounted on naval carriages and in bastions erected “at their Costs and Charges.”Footnote 102 The Privy Council first saw Benham's recommendations, and fortunately for the town, the Earl of Suffolk then intervened. In 1626, he had succeeded his father as lord lieutenant and secured some “field pieces” for the county militia. Now he pressed for assistance to the vulnerable coastal towns. On 18 December 1627, the councilors finally acted and awarded Aldeburgh three demi-culverins. Suffolk promptly objected that three were not enough; as he explained to his deputies, “I have not spared to give my best furtherance to your request for Ordnance and Munition for your Countie and the Coast Townes.”Footnote 103 He was persuasive, because the council later raised the town's artillery complement to ten.
Any jubilation was premature because the council ordered the town to “make provision of powder, shott, match and other necessaries thereunto.”Footnote 104 Enraged by this demand, the bailiffs announced that henceforth they would negotiate directly with the council. In response, Glemham begged them to consider “what difficulties you wold have found” if Suffolk “had not under taken the business upon his deputy lieutenants humble sute and former information.” The bailiffs would then “make a better interpretation of what was undertaken by your frends for the good of your towne.” Had matters been otherwise, Glemham assured the town, “I could well have spared soe coald a Jorney.”Footnote 105 The bailiffs replied that while they “shall ever be bound to your worship in al bonds of love,” Benham was another matter. They would happily send up someone to London to collect the ordnance, but they rejected Benham's call for cannon no longer than ten feet in length, insisting on cannons “xi foote longe or more.” Plainly, the town's unnamed ordnance expert had military experience, because the navy preferred shorter cannons, easier to maneuver in tight quarters. The bailiffs insisted on demi-culverins on “land carriages,” which “will doe us more good, for shippe Ordnance and Carriages … are not of use to us.” Lastly, they hoped the Privy Council would “leave the plantinge guarding and charge in keeping of them to our owne discretions.”Footnote 106
Two weeks later, the bailiffs were still fluming that Benham had called for “noe demy-Culverins above 9 or 10 foote longe and that ship carriags are as good for us as land Carriags.” Understandably, they were “hartelie sory that Mr. Benham hath questioned all our discretions soe farre as that wee should not knowne the length of newe Ordnance latelie made as well as himself and the use of shipps cariages.” Therefore they requested that Benham “wold desist further solicitations” on their behalf. Indeed, unless the council assumed that the towne “knows what Ordnance and Carriags are best for our use,” Aldeburgh would withdraw its request, vowing “to make shift with those wee have and leave the others.”Footnote 107
On 22 January, the town was even more defiant at a meeting in Ipswich where Glemham told the bailiffs, “If you hold it fittinge for some of your Companie to expresse your owne desires and the Reasons thereof, you shall fynde that you have some frends that wishe well to your towne.” In particular, he asked for a meeting with Mr. Rivett, a demand that the recorder doubtless happily entered in his “Book of Letters.”Footnote 108 There, as the Suffolk ports carefully enumerated their recent losses, Aldeburgh challenged the standard conditions of the government's offer of artillery. Once the town had voiced its concerns, the councilors dismissed Benham's recommendation for short cannons mounted on sea carriages. Yet as we have seen, the council routinely requested that towns pay the costs of all “necessaries” involved with supplies, fortifications, and guarding. Aldeburgh, however, refused. Outlining its “lamentable losses and decay,” the town did not simply reiterate its losses of thirteen ships, two hundred seamen, and £7,000. It pointed out it was also responsible for three hundred “poore widowes and fatherless children which take releefe and [are] maynteyned att the charge of the towne.” After reciting “the exceeding great losses which your petitioners have hitherto and latelie susteyned, both in his Majesties service and likewise from the Enemy and nowe last of all by Shipwrecke,” the bailiffs then did something extraordinary”: they asked the council “to commiserate.” The residents were “not of themselves any waies able to maynteyne the foresaid Odinance with powder, shott, Match and other necessaries, or to mayntayne any such gard upon them, or make such plantations.”Footnote 109 They even produced a 1569 warrant from Queen Elizabeth, who had recognized their plight and given them gunpowder as a gift in 1569. The councilors did not have to take Aldeburgh's word for the town's poverty; Glemham and three other deputy lieutenants also signed a powerful testimonial: “Wee humblie present unto your Lordships that of our knowledge this petition and Certificate herewith annexed are most true, wee beings nere dwellers unto the said towne of Aldeburghe.”Footnote 110
Although larger corporations routinely sent agents to London, Aldeburgh generally could not afford one. Instead, it sometimes shared lobbying costs with other towns. In this crisis, however, the town finally bit the bullet, deputing Captain Thomas Johnson to go to London on a frugal budget of two shillings a day.Footnote 111 It was shrewd choice; Johnson had served in various local offices. Better yet, he had meet Buckingham when the duke had visited Ipswich late in 1625, and as the owner of a privateer, the Rainbow of Aldeburgh, he knew something about Whitehall, precious knowledge indeed among herring fishermen.Footnote 112
After arriving in the metropolis in February, Johnson made his first call on the Earl of Suffolk, whom he got to see after tipping the earl's secretary and porter £1 2s. Next he applied himself to Totnes's secretary and then to the earl himself, who on 5 February ordered his staff to prepare Aldeburgh's cannon. (A copy of this warrant cost Johnson £1.) The matter, however, was complicated; the Ordnance office did not have enough demi-culverins. Johnson then visited Thomas Meautys, the clerk of the Privy Council, and gave him £2 for “the preferring of the petition” from Aldeburgh. The reward for his intervention came on 16 February 1628.Footnote 113 Alarmed by reports that Aldeburgh and neighboring Southwold “lye more exposed then other parts to the spoyle and depredations of the Dunkerkers,” the council, with Buckingham and Suffolk in attendance, found a solution.Footnote 114 Learning—likely with Johnson's help—of some surplus culverins, the councilors ordered Totnes to prepare three culverins and seven demi-culverins for shipment. Back Johnson went to Totnes, who duly issued the requisite order. But this time the earl paid more careful attention to the town's request. Totnes's initial warrant called for Aldeburgh to receive “the best and longest sizes,” but only ordnance of the shorter “ordnance length” was available. Perhaps in compensation, Totnes asked his staff to send along “such a proportion of Ammunition as may be spared.” They found “ladles furnished with staves, spunges and Rammers” along with 120 iron shot for culverins and 280 for demi-culverins. And as the town requested, the cannons were mounted “upon field Carriages.”Footnote 115 Plainly Johnson's second £1 gratuity was well spent.
Johnson's next task was to collect the ordnance and supplies. Gratuities rained down on the staff at the Tower. The wheelwrights, blacksmiths, and carriage-makers each received two shillings, and the laborers £1 1s “for bringing up the Ordnance to the Crane.”Footnote 116 Johnson was particularly generous with senior Tower staff. The clerk received six shillings, the carter who delivered the iron shot and the gun carriages fourteen shillings, and the overseers of the Tower £5. Twenty barrels of gunpowder proved more awkward. That too appeared once Johnson secured a third letter from Suffolk's secretary—another £1 gratuity—and slipped the powder store manager ten shillings. His task apparently completed, celebrations were in order, and Johnson paid £2 for a lavish evening with the overseers and Suffolk's secretary.Footnote 117
Unfortunately, another hurdle remained. Because culverins weighed five thousand pounds and demi-culverins three thousand, Johnson had to move nearly thirty tons of iron up the coast. To do so, he hired two hoys, the Joane of London and the Hopewell of Ipswich, for £8. But before the crews set sail, Johnson's new friends in the Ordnance Office intervened; the transports could not sail “until a ship bee found to their Convoy.”Footnote 118 In short, the town's long-awaited defensive against Dunkirkers needed waftage against the same threat. Now Johnson went into the heart of Whitehall and paid a call on Edward Nicholas, Buckingham's naval secretary. Possibly with Nicholas's help, Johnson, then petitioned the Lord Admiral, suggesting the answer to the problem lay anchored in the Thames—the Seaflower of Aldeburgh, an armed two-hundred ton vessel that had just been discharged from royal service. Perhaps the Seaflower could escort the hoys? This petition came at an inopportune time when the duke was obsessed with the crisis over the Petition of Right. Nevertheless, Buckingham relied on Nicholas in naval affairs and agreed to Johnson's request. For his pains, Secretary Nicholas received a £1 gratuity. After the three ships set sail, Johnson rode to Aldeburgh, having spent £82 15s in London. Footnote 119
Learning the news from Johnson's letters, the residents looked for ships coming up the coast. Finally, in late March 1628, they spotted the Seaflower shepherding the heavily laden hoys. Francis Street, a pilot, met the convoy at the mouth of the Alde and then guided them up the winding river to the landing at Slaughden, a few hundred yards south of the town, a task that earned him ten shillings. There the residents flocked to unload the cargo. Their hard labor eventually turned into a festival as the bailiffs paid Widow Well and Mr. Booth 14s 8d “for beere and bread for men who wrought when the Ordnance were had a shore.”Footnote 120
The last step was to harden the target. In a public-works project in April 1628, lavish by Aldeburgh's standards, carpenters, blacksmiths, and laborers used £24 18s 1d in lumber and several thousand cubic yards of shingle and sand to construct five gun platforms. Nothing could block the field of fire, not even a dwelling, which the town ordered demolished. The hardest task came “when the Ordnance were drawne from Slaughton,” but the laborers could look forward to beer at the end of the day. In all, a town with an approximate annual income of £180 spent some £55 on the construction of these five bastions. To direct the fire, Aldeburgh hired John Love as master gunner with Walter Astley and Thomas Boone to assist him, and their annual salaries came to £13. Next the town erected at least two watch houses and paid Francis Chapman's son 9s a year to be ready to sound the alarm with his drum. Finally, the town had earlier built a storehouse, which was soon deemed inadequate. Aldeburgh purchased land and two thousand bricks for a more substantial “vault.”Footnote 121
The residents soon saw a return on their investment. Dunkirkers regularly snatched vessels close to shore, and on 1 July 1628, Robert Saunders's vessel from Walberswick seemed about to be their latest victim as he headed for Aldeburgh with a Dunkirker in close pursuit. Master Gunner Love was doubtless delighted to have three culverins in position. Two thousand pounds heavier than a demi-culverin, these weapons had formidable hitting power with eighteen pound shot, twice that of a demi-culverin. This heavy artillery, together with the seven demi-culverins, certainly ruined the day of Dunkirkers who assumed that the town had only its antique minions. Residents’ earlier humiliations made it a joy for them to turn on their tormentors. Afterward, they received £2 2s “for shott and powder that was spent in defending Robert Saunders against the man of warr that gave him chase.”Footnote 122 The same scene recurred on 21 August 1629 when the town's ordnance saved “two ketches for a dunkerk” and received £1 from the grateful captains. On 14 January and 20 September 1630, they rescued a bark from Great Yarmouth and a London merchantman and earned £1 17s.Footnote 123
Such celebrations only occasionally broke the gloom. In 1629 and 1630, the residents continued giving beer, bread, and a few shillings to a somber procession of men and women who had escaped the Dunkirkers with only the clothes on their back. These unfortunates soon left town, but the children orphaned by the Dunkirkers remained. The accounts continued to record payments “for keeping John Cooks child,” “for a sute of clothes for Thorps boy,” and “for taking of Hills daughter an Apprentice.” While we cannot recover the full details of these family tragedies, we can trace disbursements for these children, which totaled £19 7s 10d in 1629 and £13 14s in 1630.Footnote 124
In 1631, the town added a “lucorne” (a lantern) to the church tower, where observers had a commanding view of the sea from atop a hill. The timing initially seems baffling since the Anglo-Spanish war ended in 1630 and the prisoners in Dunkirk came home. Aldeburgh quickly returned to normal, dispatching its full complement of herring busses to Iceland.Footnote 125 Yet the timing becomes much more explicable once we appreciate that the war had taught the residents an important lesson: there was no point in penny-pinching when it came to the defense of the town against Dunkirkers.
Conclusion
In 1628 Charles I approved the Petition of Right, which closed some of the legal loopholes that Buckingham had used to fund the war.Footnote 126 Several towns recorded the petition's text in their records, but that was not enough for Aldeburgh. There the residents tolled the bells “for Ioy for the good news from the Parliament.”Footnote 127 In late 1625, the bailiffs of Great Yarmouth had feared “these troublesome tymes wherein all Europe is for the most part in Armes, like to fell into most cruell and bloody warres and the dunkerkers dayly foraging and praying on his Maiesties subiects and their shipping.”Footnote 128 Their anxieties had proven to be well founded. The impact of the ensuing “most cruell and bloody warres” could be seen on the beach just south of Aldeburgh, littered with the wreckage of its ships, and it was apparent in the many mothers and children on poor relief and in the paucity of adult males. In short, Buckingham's war had scarred the town and its residents.
This study underscores the wisdom of Keith Wrightson's call for “a history in which a deliberate effort has been made to recover the experience of the mass of the English people … and to understand their part in the making of their history.”Footnote 129 It also calls for ending the scholarly amnesia about Dunkirk's significance in the seventeenth century. The same freebooters who had vexed Buckingham later drove Oliver Cromwell to join with Louis XIV to take Dunkirk from the landward side. They prompted Parliament in 1694 and again in 1708 to compel the Admiralty to station forty-three warships in home waters. And they made the British government insist that the French agree to demolish Dunkirk's fortifications and to fill in the harbor before signing the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.Footnote 130 Admittedly, the realm's protracted involvement with Dunkirk sits uneasily with the larger narrative about burgeoning British naval power. For precisely that reason, Dunkirk and the grievous losses its frigates inflicted deserve a prominent place in Stuart history.
English attitudes to the Dunkirkers varied according to location. R. B. Wernham argues that Westminster officials in 1600 regarded them as “irritants rather than serious menaces,”Footnote 131 and the same view sometimes applied a quarter century later. Consider James Palmer's strategic survey late in 1625. Writing from Whitehall, he considered developments in Denmark, Holland, Savoy, Germany, Spain and France as well as the French loan ships and the Cadiz expedition—all without mentioning the carnage then taking place in the North Sea.Footnote 132 By 1628, John Reynolds, a prominent pamphleteer, at least noticed it: “What a sharpe thorne in our foote Dunkerke hath beene and still is to England.”Footnote 133 Geography dictated the level of pain. Dunkirkers were inconsequential to someone living in the Midlands, uncertain if Flanders even had a coastline; an annoyance to a Londoner upset with the price of coal; and a nightmare to fishermen alone and defenseless in the north Atlantic. Equally distraught were their families and neighbors powerless to stop the Dunkirkers from creating an “utter desolation” along the coast.Footnote 134 Their pain and suffering force us to reconsider our understanding of the age.
As Conrad Russell famously argued, in 1603 the Stuarts, “inherited a financial system which was already close to the point of breakdown,”Footnote 135 and it collapsed altogether under the strains of war in the 1620s and again in the 1640s. Consequently, the Stuart monarchy “could not fight” because “an effective war effort was incompatible with the self-governing counties, which were the ideal of Stuart England.”Footnote 136 In 1627–28, chaos engulfed several counties that were compelled to billet troops for months on end.Footnote 137 In contrast, east coast residents had been in turmoil since late 1625, and in spite of waftage and “loan ships,” Buckingham did not bring the situation under control until late 1628 when the Whelps finally put to sea. Until then, coastal residents felt abandoned. Hence the Yarmouth fishermen began their march on Parliament in 1626 and discussed organizing their own naval escort service in 1628.
Did all these events represent a “functional breakdown”? Granted, the system was creaky and never well funded. Nevertheless, between 1625 and 1627, Whitehall was able to deposit some forty thousand soldiers on the continent, everywhere from Andalusia to Lower Saxony. Furthermore, the east coast defenses, while sketchy in 1625, steadily improved, and by early 1628, most coastal towns boasted impressive defenses. Arguably the best conclusion is that, notwithstanding erratic funding and some self-inflicted administrative wounds, Whitehall retained considerable, and at times impressive, military and naval functionality. The problem was not the country's inability to fight a war but rather to fight the particular war that Buckingham waged. The Earl of Clare, an Elizabethan war veteran, identified the problem in April 1625. Because Charles and the duke “understand not the vertue of providence and experienced counsell,” England was “falln into the trot of the wars, too hard a pace for coached, and carpet bredd.”Footnote 138 Then, abruptly in 1625, Buckingham led the realm into a war against the most powerful dynasty in the continent. Had he been more cautious and proceeded more deliberately, had he attended to coastal defense before attacking Spain, the results might well have been more in line with those of the Elizabethan war effort.
By appreciating that it was Buckingham's jolie de grandeur rather than any “functional breakdown” that undermined the war effort, we can better understand why the “Patriot” war coalition, which had swept all before it in 1624, spectacularly collapsed early in 1626. Many factors were involved: religion, rival court factions, the French Match, and the disastrous overseas expeditions. Yet for merchants and fishermen operating in the North Sea, these issues were all secondary to the Dunkirkers, and for them and their representatives in Parliament, Buckingham's war had practically ended before it began. On 24 October 1625, English troops waded ashore at Cadiz, opening the Anglo-Spanish war. Coastal residents, however, could be forgiven for thinking that they had already witnessed the crucial event of the war two weeks earlier when several dozen frigates sortied out of Dunkirk. While modern historians have missed the impact of the Dunkirkers, Edmund Howes, who continued John Stow's Annales, did not. When explaining Buckingham's fall from popular favor, Howes first pointed to religion and then to an issue all too familiar to coastal residents: the people began “to murmur … at the Dukes inexcusable neglect of the narrow seas being Admirall.”Footnote 139 For coastal residents, some of whom were godly, the heroic campaign to restore Frederick and Elizabeth to Heidelberg had swiftly mutated into a grim search for the least-bad outcomes.
Equally fascinating is the scene of a small coastal community repeatedly imploring Whitehall to act. For inland communities, a naval war meant recurrent demands for pressed men and money. In coastal towns, however, these demands paled in importance as the conflict threatened their lives and livelihood, and the regime controlled the only effective remedies, increased naval patrols and improved coastal defenses.Footnote 140 In short, as scholars trace the emerging fiscal-military state in early Stuart England, we should recall Steve Hindle's caution that center and locality were not binary oppositions: “The early modern state did not become more active at the expense of the society; rather it did so as a consequence of social need.”Footnote 141 As Braddick succinctly put it, the state, “far from having to penetrate the localities was frequently invited in.”Footnote 142 Aldeburgh's pursuit of coastal defense therefore neatly illustrates Hindle's general argument that “early modern English governance … was a process in which subjects were intimately involved, one which they learned to manipulate.”Footnote 143
Aldeburgh's quest for improved defenses is essentially about extended negotiations between Whitehall and a locality—and a little manipulation. Sir Henry Glemham had warned the bailiffs against interacting directly with the council, begging them to consider “what difficulties [they] would have found” on their own. If instead they worked with the local magistrates and deputy lieutenants, he told them, “you shall fynde that you have some frends that wishe well to youre towne.”Footnote 144 While Sir Henry had erred in letting Benham complete the report on the town's defenses, he did not oppose the bailiffs when they rejected it, and shortly afterwards he and other deputies crucially supported the town's emotional petition about its perilous state. Likewise, the earl of Suffolk had energetically supported Aldeburgh and persuaded his fellow privy councilors that the town needed ten, not three, cannons, and although he had failed to secure all the town wanted, he had gained, he insisted, “all that can be done as the times now stand.”Footnote 145 Finally, Buckingham need not have supported Johnson's petition for the Seaflower; he owed the town nothing, and he was then wholly absorbed with Parliament. Nevertheless, he approved the request. Plainly Aldeburgh's case cannot be used to argue that all was well in early Caroline England. Nevertheless, notwithstanding frequent wobbly moments, the system of local government had not collapsed; it had worked up to a point. The real problem was timing. A wait of nearly three years infuriated Aldeburgh residents—with good reason. At the same time, three years was a comparatively swift response for Whitehall, and indeed for any early modern state, especially given Aldeburgh's relatively low priority in a national scheme of things.
The admiral, the councilors, the lord lieutenant, and his deputies could have claimed credit for Aldeburgh's impressive new defenses, and in truth they partly deserved it. Yet the local herring fishermen, and certainly Mr. Rivett, Mr. Taplie, and Mr. Johnson, knew the full story. Only after years of incessant protests were the residents of this small town finally able to sleep soundly. But even the most unhappy resident would have conceded that the story had a happy ending. After all, Whitehall eventually gave the town more than it requested, and in July 1627, an astonished Dunkirker captain pursuing Mr. Saunders discovered that fact when Aldeburgh opened up with culverins as well as demi-culverins.
