"The Just will pay for the Sinners": English Merchants, the Trade with Spain, and Elizabethan Foreign Policy, 1563-1585

Abstract

For the English merchants who traded in the Habsburg empire and for English proponents of Anglo-Spanish cooperation, amity and trade were part of the bedrock on which English economic, dynastic, and political stability had long been built. Known (confusingly) as Spanish these men were primarily motivated by profit to argue for constructive relations with Spain, but pecuniary gain was far from the only factor.1 These merchants, and the diplomats and politicians who agreed with them, believed England's tenuous position in a hostile and unstable Europe would be better served by closer relations with Spain that might strengthen the English economy and stave off French power and influence. This article will discuss the political and commercial role of this group who argued for closer relations with Habsburg Spain and tried to influence England's foreign policy. A deeper examination of the actions and arguments of these merchants provides a new perspective on both the debates about foreign policy in a constantly threatened Elizabethan England and on the English naval and trading community itself.An analysis of two groups of the English community, the merchants and what I will refer to as the maritime faction, brings into relief the competing visions of England's foreign policy. The merchants, with some justification, argued that the long-term benefits of trade accrued from crown customs and increased employment outweighed the fleeting gains from more violent adventures, even ones as successful as Sir Francis Drake's. One of the most severe dislocations in prewar Anglo-Spanish commerce, the Antwerp embargo of 1563-64 triggered by English violence, shows both groups in action and how the merchants reacted to this crisis. The end of the competition between the two groups is well known to all scholars of the period. England's intrusion on behalf of the Dutch rebels made conflict with Spain inevitable, and Drake's circumnavigation and raids on shipping championed a divisive new direction in Anglo-Spanish relations.For a long time, historians have defined the Anglo-Spanish relationship of the period as one of antagonism. While this was the predominant contemporary mood-and has subsequently dominated its study-the relationship was far more nuanced, and it is easy to exaggerate contemporary anti- Hispanism while forgetting the economic importance of the trade. The merchants' deliberate strategy of caution facilitates passing silently over their role in English politics, and a study of their impact must necessarily focus on their deeds as much as their words. Yet the infamous Elizabethan privateering war interrupted a vigorous trade that employed and enriched thousands of merchants, mariners, artisans, and clothworkers. This trade, and not the piratical violence of the Francis Drakes of the world, constituted a long-running, daily interaction between Englishmen and Spaniards.The nature of England's relationship with the empire was a crucial element in Elizabethan debates over England's national interest. For the crown, and the majority of its subjects, the fundamental goal of English national interest was clear: the preservation of English dynastic and religious security (Glete 153). Both the merchants and their martial antagonists wanted an England that was Protestant, free, and ruled by (a preferably married) Queen Elizabeth, but they disagreed on how to secure these goals. Thus multiple articulations of what was in England's national interest competed with one another, and this paper will focus on two of them-the mercantile iteration of this policy and its relation to the more familiar policies espoused by the martial group. Elizabeth's own policies toward the national interest vis-a-vis Spain were highly variable depending on internal and external factors: sometimes she favored the proverbial carrot and other times the stick. …