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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
When the judge of the High Court of Admiralty, Dr Julius Caesar, rode south from London to Lewes on 26 June 1591 1 an important experiment was initiated in the Admiralty court's continuing quest for greater respect and authority. The judge was setting out on a circuit of the troubled south and west coast of England in hopes of forcing the local authorities in those regions to submit to the supremacy of the High Court of Admiralty.2An examination of the prelude to the circuit and of the circuit itself, as well as an appraisal of its aftermath, will provide us with an instructive view of the tension between the local authorities and the central Government at the end of the sixteenth century. If there were a marked reduction in the quality of central government leadership at the end of Elizabeth's reign, one cause was perhaps the unsubdued strength of the provinces coupled with the corruption of Crown officers who were beyond the effective control of Westminster.
1 B.M. Add. MS 12505, fo. 339.
2 Cf. Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558–1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 234. Caesar's pursuit did not differ greatly from that of the central government in general. Throughout the sixteenth century there had been ‘the steady pressure of the central government striving to impose its own rules and to stiffen the local authorities into enforcing the law with less obvious respect of persons’. The attempt to establish the Admiralty circuit was, on a much reduced scale, analogous to Privy Council's extension of itself into Wales and the north by means of the respective regional councils.Google Scholar
3 Andrews, K. R., Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585–1603 (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 22–31.Google Scholar
4 The aristocracy found the privateering ventures an exciting and occasionally profitable outlet for their surplus capital (cf. Stone, , op. cit. pp. 364–7). Their political influence, as investors, made the task of enforcement all the more difficult when they impeded the process of the High Court of Admiralty.Google Scholar
6 Cf. Andrews, K. R., English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, 1588–95, Hakluyt Soc., 2nd ser., cxi, 4. Dr Andrews discusses the Lord Admiral's difficulties in collecting his droits; he alludes to the corruption of local officials and he tells of the Lord Admiral's use of the High Court of Admiralty, by way of ex officio process, to enforce his rights. One wonders at this reliance upon the court on the one hand as contrasted with the Lord Admiral's circumvention o{ its ordinary process and his manifest willingness to undermine its authority on the other. Andrews is slightly misleading on this point by examining only one side of the Lord Admiral's relationship with his court.Google Scholar
6 Andrews, , Elizabethan Privateering, p. 26.Google Scholar
7 1 Holdsworth 549. The court had regained a national jurisdiction during Henry VII's reign, but it was left to its own devices when it came to enforcing this jurisdiction.
8 5 Holdsworth 151–2. The sixteenth century witnessed the advance of all the central courts in terms of their assertions of authority in the provinces, particularly as ‘the competition for business became fiercer’. ‘The Admiralty, especially, was very jealous of towns which, under cover of old charters, claimed and exercised jurisdiction which competed with itself.’ Holdsworth goes on to praise the central courts (including Admiralty) for their assertion of authority, because he doubted whether the local courts had the power to do the job they were trying to do. In the case of the Admiralty, it seems that the local courts had sufficient power. The question lay in the use to which the power would be put.
9 Acts of Privy Council (A.P.C.): 1588–1589, pp. 48–9 (26 Jan. 1589).
10 Cal. S.P. For., Eliz.: 1584–85, p.515 (May 1585).
11 A.P.C.: 1596–97, p. 444 (23 Jan. 1597).
12 B.M. Lansd. MS 157, fo. 312 (4 Feb. 1585).
13 Ibid. fo. 312V.
14 Cf. MacCaffrey, W. T., ‘Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Politics’, Elizabethan Government and Society (1961), p. 97.Google Scholar
15 B.M. Lansd. MS 157, fo. 34 (20 Oct. 1584).
16 Ibid. fo. 312.
17 Cal. S.P. For., Eliz.: 1589, p. 369 (5 July 1589).
18 B.M. Lansd. MS 157, fo. 428 (7 Nov. 1586).
19 A.P.C.: 1589–90, pp. 42–3 (17 Aug. 1589); see also for the Danish commission B.M. Cotton MS, Nero B. iv. 231 and B.M. Lansd. MS 147 (found in 146).
20 B.M. Lansd. MS 157, fo. 56V.
21 Ibid.
22 B.M. Lansd. MS 157, fo. 46.
23 Ibid. fo. 44 (19 Dec. 1589).
24 B.M. Add. MS 12505, fos. 319–29.
25 Ibid. fo. 317 (21 July 1591).
26 Ibid. fos. 331–2V. This document lists the members of the commission throughout the south and west. Aside from the principal peers in those areas where Caesar would hold court, the commission included the major law officers and the vice-admirals. Twenty-five knights, forty-nine gentlemen and nineteen mayors were also commissioned.
27 B.M. Add. MS 12504, fo. 119. Another list of offences subject to inquiry during the circuit is found in BM. Add. MS 12505, fo. 343. This memorandum is of additional interest because it contains a full list of the goods which had been declared contraband unless accompanied by the Queen's licence to transport.
28 B.M. Add. MS 12505, fo. 335.
29 Ibid. fo. 336V.
30 Ibid. fo. 334.
31 B.M. Add. MS 12505, tos. 360–1 (25 Sept. 1591).
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid. fo. 360.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid. fo. 360V.
36 The droits were the perquisites which the Lord Admiral was able to enforce by dint of his commission. One of the most important of these was a mandatory 10 per cent of the value of all prize ships. Caesar had managed to procure from the Lord Admiral a share of this bounty.
37 BM. Add. MS 12505, fo. 360v.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
