The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail. Philip Marsden

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      John and Elizabeth Killigrew.

      The family was not originally from the coast. The small farm of Killigrew – meaning ‘nut-grove’ (not ‘grove of eagles’ as is often supposed) – was located to the north of Truro, half a day’s ride from the open sea. (Long after the Killigrews had gone from the town at Falmouth, the yard at Killigrew could still be seen. Not until the late 1990s was it finally destroyed, when teams of yellow earth-movers and diggers parked in it while they reshaped the land for the Trispen bypass.) It was through marriage, at about the turn of the fourteenth century, that the Killigrews became associated with the manor of Arwenack. From then on their name crops up in the records of Glasney College – as does that of John’s wife, Trewinnard. But while Penryn and Glasney prospered, safe behind their chain-barrage, Arwenack remained of little importance.

      For years, the Killigrews lived the provincial life of Cornwall’s gentry, those families who owned land around the county, who married each other and visited each other in an atmosphere of leisure and conviviality. ‘A gentlemen and his wife,’ wrote Richard Carew, ‘will ride to make merry with his next neighbour, and after a day or twain those two couples go to a third, in which progress they increase like snowballs.’

      With the breaking-up of the church estates and the building of the two castles at St Mawes and Pendennis, power shifted on the shores of the Fal. Like a crab with a new shell, John Killigrew crept out from under his rock and snapped up much of Glasney’s land. Soon he controlled the tithes of sixteen parishes. By buying up the south bank of the Helford, he controlled most of that river too. The land for Pendennis Castle was leased from him. Two of his sons received lucrative commissions for overseeing its building. When the castle was complete, John became its first captain and remained so for the rest of his life.

      Pendennis Castle made a little king of John Killigrew, protecting Arwenack from marauding ships and fortifying his status with Crown bombards and perriers, pyramids of stone shot and keep-walls 11 feet thick. He joined that class of Tudor men who grew suddenly wealthy from the easy pickings of church land. Killigrew was particularly fortunate: not only did he have an enlarged estate and a brand-new castle, he also had the sea. The combination gave him control of one of the best anchorages in the land, and a power that was constrained by little more than the laws of wind and tide.

      When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1554, and began to reverse the heretical advances of the Protestants, John Killigrew at once involved himself in the insurrection against her. Having no real authority as far west as the Fal, the new queen was forced to try to win him over. She reappointed him to his post at Pendennis. Her Privy Council confirmed his command of the castle, which he must ‘diligently, faithfullie and truly kepe, save and defende with all his power, connyng and industrie’. He and his sons did nothing diligently, faithfully or truly. They continued to plot against the Queen. Two were implicated with Sir Peter Carew in Wyatt’s rebellion. They fled to France where Henry II was happy to provide them with ships to attack the Spanish vessels of Mary’s husband, Philip II. Along with a number of other families from the Cornish and Devon coasts, the Killigrews conducted an ongoing campaign against Philip’s shipping in the Channel. Their small-time piracy, the habit of centuries among seafarers of Channel shores, became more political. The maritime historian Kenneth Andrews identifies a shift in motive at about this time: ‘the gentry took the lead, especially the west country families connected with the sea, for whom Protestantism, patriotism and plunder became virtually synonymous … the Cornish Tremaynes and Killigrews embarked on an unofficial war with Spain.’

      Back and forth across the Channel the Killigrews sailed – harrying the Spanish and taking Protestant rebels into exile in France. During the hot summer of 1556 – heat which drove the frail queen to her bed – Mary’s Privy Council lost patience with the pirates. At Arwenack, John Killigrew was arrested and with his heir, also John, brought up to London. The two were thrown into the Fleet Prison. At the same time, in the Queen’s name, a small squadron was sent into the Channel to round up rebel ships. The force was commanded by the veteran pirate-hunter, Sir William Tyrell.

      Tyrell had immediate success. Soon, just above the low-water mark at Wapping Stairs, six pirates swung from gibbets. He went to sea again and, according to the Acts of the Privy Council, captured ‘ten English pirate vessels’. One of the commanders escaped to Ireland in a small boat, where he was killed by local men as he struggled ashore. Another – who had escaped Tyrell for years – was Peter Killigrew.

      Of all the five sons of Arwenack Manor, Peter was the best-known sea-rover. The Venetian ambassador in London described him as ‘an old pirate, whose name and exploits are most notorious, and he is therefore in great repute and favour with the French’. At first, Peter Killigrew escaped again, was recaptured, tried to stuff 150 crowns into the skirts ‘of his woman’ and was finally taken in chains to London. Twenty-four of the ordinary seamen were hanged at Southampton, and another seven at Wapping.

      Peter was not killed at once. He and his brother were taken to the Tower where they later alleged they were tortured. From their confession comes a tale that resonates down the ages with an authenticity more convincing than the J. M. Barrie, dyed-in-the-wool brigand. Peter Killigrew was weary. He had known too many night chases, too many hostile landfalls, too many deceptions and betrayals. All he wished to do, he now explained, like any self-respecting mariner of the times, was to sail to the gold mines of Guinea and return with enough to retire on. He would then, he claimed, buy a house in Italy and never again put to sea.

      By this time, his father had been released from the Fleet, and promised to pay compensation to anyone wronged by his miscreant sons. With their marine skills and position, the Killigrews were deemed ‘useful’. Peter Killigrew was put in charge of the Jerfalcon, part of a naval squadron active in the war against France. John and his eldest son returned to Cornwall. Within a year Elizabeth was queen and John Killigrew’s Protestant fiefdom, centred on Arwenack and Pendennis Castle, was once more in sympathy with the Crown. Pugnacious seamen like the Killigrews were no longer outlaws but set to become the very drivers of the new regime.

      During the later years of his life, John Killigrew amassed a sizeable fortune. As governor of Pendennis, he continued to use the waters of the lower Fal to his advantage, in line with many of Elizabethan England’s most colourful ventures, seizing chances as they came, exploiting the legal ambiguity and anonymity of the sea. Even so, his maverick methods infuriated the state. Throughout the mid-1560s they received reports of his piracy and ‘evill usage in keeping of a castell’.

      John’s son Peter may genuinely have intended to retire, to reach Guinea, and buy a house in Italy. But it was easier to carry on doing what he did best, using the Killigrew lands on the Helford river as a base for his dubious trading. Helford – nicknamed Stealford – became known as a safe haven for pirates, a place to offload and distribute plunder without risk. The Killigrews operated their own mini-state around Falmouth. When an envoy of the Privy Council was sent to Arwenack to claim 184 rubies stolen by Peter, John Killigrew – then in his seventies – reached for his sword and threatened to stick him.

      With sea-gained bounty, the elderly John Killigrew set about rebuilding Arwenack Manor. Carts brought granite from Mabe quarry and, for ornament, barges of free stone from along the coast at Pentewan. Gables and high chimneys multiplied out from a three-storey central tower. A line of battlements ran along the top of the banqueting hall. A courtyard was enclosed on three sides, while on the fourth it opened onto СКАЧАТЬ