The Problem of Piracy in Ireland, 1570–1630

Abstract

Maritime disorder was a major problem in north west European waters during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Under the pressure of international rivalries and conflicts, organized privateering and piracy severely disrupted trade and shipping, inflicting widespread damage on maritime regions, stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Plunder on this scale represented a significant redistribution of wealth both between and within the economies of England, the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal and France. For early modern states, engaged in an uneasy process of centralization, maritime depredation also presented a finely balanced range of problems and opportunities. As the case of England demonstrates, states with limited financial resources and military power were tempted to exploit private enterprise at sea for strategic and tactical purposes, particularly in the form of privateering, under which legally commissioned private vessels were authorized to attack enemy shipping under the guise of legitimate reprisals. During the long Anglo-Spanish conflict from 1585 to 1604 privateering grew into an extensive business; during the closing stages of the war, however, it became increasingly disorderly in nature. Indeed the increasing seizure of neutral vessels, often in violent and dubious circumstances, led to complaints that the English were a ‘nation of pirates’.¹ These conditions favoured the development of organized English piracy after 1604, when large groups of mainly English rovers roamed the Atlantic in search of plunder.