The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail. Philip Marsden
Among the Marie’s crew were two Flemings who had secretly agreed to hide the ship’s weapons. The boarding party had little difficulty in tying up the Spaniards. Inspection of the holds, though, proved a disappointment – all they found was holland cloth and some nice leather chairs. They would have to rely on the ship itself for a return; they set sail for Ireland and, as the Privy Council was later told, ‘most of the men cast overboarde’.
When a London merchant, with a venture of his own aboard the Marie, called for an investigation, the Commissioner for Piracy in Cornwall strangely failed to muster any evidence. But in this case the Privy Council made one or two of their own inquiries and managed to breach the local cordon of alliance and alibi. Soon Killigrew himself was being sought as a suspect. He fled Arwenack. He travelled to London ‘where he secretlie lurked in some place’. When he was discovered, he was held at Greenwich, bound before the Earl of Bedford for sureties of £1,000.
The case against Sir John Killigrew for the ransacking of the Marie was still outstanding when he died a year or so later, in 1584. In seventeen years as master of Arwenack, Sir John had managed to outdo his father in extravagance, the wanton exploitation of official appointments, and impunity. Now with Europe slipping into war, the Channel becoming ever more dangerous, the next John Killigrew sailed back to Cornwall, leaving behind the court of Elizabeth where he had been living under the wing of his uncle Henry. He promised not merely to ‘make large satisfaction for his father’s faults’, but to correct the wrongs of all his other freebooting uncles. He pledged to honour Her Majesty by doing everything in his power to protect, during these dark days, the strategic part of her realm that was his charge. He took over Arwenack Manor and the governorship of Pendennis Castle, and in due course, was elevated to the position of vice-admiral of Cornwall.
But the third John Killigrew, according to a later charge-sheet, ‘kept not within the compass of any law, as his father now and then, from fear of punishment, did’. To try to stem his growing debts, he sold off land, parts of Penryn and farms in the hundreds of Penwith and Kerrier. He managed, though, to cling to his house at Arwenack and also the wooded-off creeks of the Helford river where the plunder-mart provided income. Looted ships slipped with ease in and out of the river, swelling his shoreside cellars with cloth and metal and wines. He had his supporters in the surrounding area, those with little regard for the English state, who decorated their houses and their person with the pickings of pirated cargoes. The clamour of creditors and writs did not stop Killigrew filling the banqueting hall at Arwenack with a host of high-living merchants and privateers. He lived a life of risk and sudden reward, of brazen ship-ventures, and in the interludes between them recreated their spirit at his own gaming table. Of all the Killigrews, the third John Killigrew of Arwenack was by far the most dissolute.
The Privy Council became used to petitions for his debts. They summoned him frequently from Cornwall, but he never appeared. In 1588 they received a complaint from a Danish merchant: Killigrew had ransacked his ship. The Council was furious, not least to learn that he was still at large: ‘for as much as divers messingers have been sent for the said Killegrew … he goeth up and down the countrey accompanied with divers and lewde and disordered persons for his gard, armed with unlawfull weapons’.
All available force should be used, they urged, to apprehend him, even if he was in the keep of Pendennis Castle. Only the following year, still uncaptured, was he deemed not a ‘fytt man to beare anie office of authoritie’. He was removed as vice-admiral (yet remained governor of Pendennis). A few months later, the Privy Council went further. They requested a writ of rebellion to be raised against Killigrew.
But he survived. His case was swamped by the great tide of Spanish-invasion fear. And within a few years, with a common enemy, he was trumpeting his loyalty. He asked the Council for money to fortify Pendennis: £1,400 or £1,500, he wrote, should cover it. He himself would provide for half the garrison. There was no response. He wrote again: he understood, of course, that with his record, they might have reservations about giving him money, but the Council may award it through a third party. Still nothing.
In 1595 a force of a couple of hundred Spanish landed near Penzance and burned the villages of Mousehole and Paul. They were driven back, but the people of Cornwall remained terrified of the next attempt. John Killigrew’s pleas became more shrill. He urged Hannibal Vyvyan, governor of St Mawes Castle, to try to convince the Council on his behalf. Vyvyan excelled. Killigrew, he explained to the authorities, had diligently repaired the castle when required and ‘used her majesties money (yea rather more) for mounting of his great ordnance’. (A lie – the courses of Pendennis Castle were sprouting with fern and only one gun in the entire castle was serviceable.)
The following month, Killigrew himself wrote, saying he was ready to sacrifice his own life and those of his men to protect the castle: ‘better 1000 as good as myselfe should loose theire lives, rather than the enemy should possese the place’. The threat, he pleaded, was becoming ever more urgent, and in this he was perfectly correct.
In Spain, a plan had resurfaced, one that had first been presented by Pedro Menendez de Aviles long before the 1588 Armada. To invade England, it was not necessary to sail up the Channel and risk interception. Instead, a fleet could head straight into Falmouth, take Pendennis Castle and cut its link to the land. Then as many ships as were required could be brought into the Carrick Roads. Sea-surrounded Cornwall would be easy to defend from Crown forces. Ten thousand men could march to Plymouth, and from a western bridgehead, the errant land be rescued from its godless rulers.
From the Boazio map of Falmouth.
In order to illustrate the danger, Killigrew cited a recent incident. A Spanish force had landed at Arwenack at midnight, and laid barrels of gunpowder around the house. Only one charge went off and the raiding party fled, taking a fisherman and a local boy with them back to Spain. The intention, said Killigrew, had been to kidnap his own wife and children. When they reached King Philip the Spanish detail tried to cover their failure by dressing the boy up in fine clothes and telling the King that they ‘burnt Mr Kyllegrews house to the grounde being the finest house of one of the finest cavaliers in all the weste partes’. Pointing to the boy, they told Philip that he was a younger son of Killigrew. King Philip made him the page of his own younger son, and rewarded the captain with a gold chain of 200 ducats and an annual pension. The fisherman returned, reporting the intention of more raids.
But there was a much easier way for the Spanish to secure Pendennis Castle. It was common knowledge in coastal ports, ‘table talk’. A Spanish prisoner, captured at Calais, confessed that he had been ‘feasted, entertained and lodged’ at Arwenack. He was then secretly sent to Spain with an offer from the Englishman Killigrew: when he saw the approach of Spanish ships, he would hand the castle to them without a fight.
On 8 October 1597 another Spanish Armada left La Coruña for Falmouth. There was, this time, no fleet to stop them. The English fighting ships, under Essex, were far to the south, in the Azores. One hundred and thirty Spanish vessels pushed north across the Bay of Biscay. On board were crammed 10,000 troops, along with chests of booty to establish themselves in Falmouth and the West Country. On the great St Bartholomew alone were 100,000 ducats and sheaves of printed posters proclaiming in English: Peace and immunity for all who turn Catholic! Devastation to apostates! The country lay like a ripe fruit before them. But twenty leagues short of the Isles of Scilly, the winds veered and strengthened, coming out of the worst and also the rarest direction, east-north-east. The fleet was scattered and the St Bartholomew lost with all its treasure.
Once it became known that the Adelantado’s plan was to capture Pendennis and the Fal, Killigrew’s pleas were answered. A high-ranking delegation was sent to Pendennis to survey its defences. It included Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. They were horrified by what they found. ‘It is now,’ spluttered Raleigh as he inspected the headland, ‘the most dangerous place that I ever saw and the worst provided for.’ Only a few months separated the realm from disaster – with better weather in the coming spring, the Spanish would try again. Hundreds were drafted to dig earthworks and erect around the headland a series of 200 wooden perches. As the men trenched the slopes of Pendennis Point, and the order went through to the foundries