‘In mj nasions seruis’: An Unpublished Seventeenth-century English Consul's Report on São Miguel (Azores)

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Notes

1. The Manuscripts of J. M. Heathcote, Esq., Conington Castle, ed. Sylvia Lomas (Norwich: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1899). Hereafter this collection is referred to as Heathcote MSS.

2. This work is being assisted by grants from the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and the Central Research Fund of the University of London. We should like to record our gratitude to both these bodies.

3. At the end of the document the writer signs himself ‘Geffraj Cobbs’. This spelling also appears in a letter in Spanish, dated 10 December 1661, which Sir Richard Fanshawe wrote to the Marqués de Marialva (a copy of which is in the Dagenham archive): he refers to ‘Jofre Cobbs (Consul de Ingleses en la Isla de St. Miguel)’. However, in a letter which the consul himself wrote to Fanshawe, dated 10 June 1663, he signs himself ‘Geffraj Cobbes’. To add to the confusion, a note on the back of the letter in Sir Richard's own hand, says ‘from Mr. Cob’. Since this letter is not mentioned in Heathcote MSS and is of some interest, we reproduce it as an appendix to the present article.

4. Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas his Pilgrimes. Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others. 20 vols (Glasgow: James Maclehose for the Hakluyt Society, 1905–07), XVIII (1906), 360–74. The paragraph specifically concerned with São Miguel is on p. 370.

5. See Rebecca Catz, ‘Columbus in the Azores’, Portuguese Studies, VI (1990), 17–23, at 22–23.

6. There are in fact nine major islands in the Azores archipelago, divided into three groups: the south-eastern group consists of São Miguel and Santa Maria; Faial, Pico, São Jorge, Terceira and Graciosa form the central group. These seven islands are at a considerable distance from Corvo and Flores, which form the north-western group and which Cobbs excludes from his calculation. Purchas also states that ‘the lles of Açores … are seven’ (360). The Azores, so called because of the large number of ‘açores’ (hawks; actually, kites) seen there by the early settlers, were also called for many centuries the Western Islands (Cobbs’ ‘westward Islandés’). The originally uninhabited islands were first discovered and charted by Genoese navigators in the service of Portugal in the mid-fourteenth century. No serious attention was paid to them, however, until the time of Prince Henry the Navigator. During the 1430s the Prince had the islands stocked with sheep to provide food for visiting ships. A royal letter of 2 July 1439 authorized Henry to organize the colonization of the Azores, and the settlement of Santa Maria and São Miguel probably began in 1440, under the direction of Gonçalo Velho Cabral, who was directly responsible to the Prince. The colonization of the other islands took a much longer time. See T. Bentley Duncan, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago/London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972), 11–17.

7. São Miguel is the largest of the Azores, as Cobbs himself says: ‘the biggest in compas'. It has an area of 288 square miles. It is also the easternmost of the islands: the nearest continental land is Cabo da Roca in Portugal, which lies some 750 miles east of São Miguel. However, it was not, certainly by Cobbs’ time, ‘of greatest importance’. Although less populous and less wealthy than São Miguel, Terceira (so called because it was the third island to be colonized) was the most important island in the group: its capital, Angra, housed the bishop of the Azores and the largest military garrison, and it was the principal calling and refitting port for both the transatlantic and the Indian fleets; see Duncan, op. cit., 111. Purchas devotes over ten of his fourteen pages to Terceira (360–70).

8. Although the central group of the Azores lies between latitudes 38° and 39°, São Miguel is in fact just to the south of the thirty-eighth parallel.

9. Although a league is commonly three miles, it is a notoriously variable unit of measurement. As São Miguel is in fact 66 km (41 miles) long and 15 km (9 1/3 miles) wide, Cobbs' ‘league’ must have been equivalent to about 2 miles if his measurements were at all accurate.

10. This is Cobbs’ attempt at a conceit, for which, with reason, he craves Sir Richard's indulgence (‘bj your honors license’). The ‘ansient prouerbe’ to which he alludes is presumably the one included in John Heywood's Proverbs of 1562: ‘The cat would eat fish, but would not wet her feete’. It obviously had wide currency, since Shakespeare could make Lady Macbeth allude to it obliquely in ‘Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”,/like the poor cat i’ the adage’ (Macbeth, I. vii. 44–45). However, the ‘cristall gleabes’, the water fields of the Azores, Cobbs tells us, are actually inhabited by ‘cattes’, which are themselves fish.

11. ‘Nuss’ is a variant form of ‘huss’, commonly known as the dogfish. The dogfish's rough skin, like that of other sharks, was used by woodworkers as an abrasive (known as shagreen) before the invention of sandpaper.

12. The so-called tortoiseshell used in the making of combs and jewellery is obtained from the shell of the hawksbill turtle, found in tropical seas.

13. ‘Craca’ is the Portuguese name for the goose barnacle.

14. The ‘escolar’ retains its Spanish/Portuguese name in English. Also known as the snake mackerel, the escolar is any slender spiny-finned fish of the Gempylidae family found in warm seas. It is said to derive its name from the rings round its eyes, reminiscent of spectacles. We have been unable to find any corroboration of the embarrassing laxative properties attributed to the escolar's bones by Cobbs in the next paragraph.

15. The ‘rodes’ refer to searoads, a partly sheltered anchorage or ‘riding’.

16. Vila Franca do Campo, on the south coast, was the earliest capital of São Miguel. It was buried by a volcanic earthquake in 1522, with the loss of most of its inhabitants. Cobbs refers later in his report to the island's susceptibility to earthquakes. Purchas says that Terceira ‘is much subject to Earthquakes, as also all the other Ilands are’ (306).

17. ‘Sampier’ is an old form of samphire, deriving from the French ‘(herbe de) Saint Pierre’. It is also called glasswort, because of its use in the manufacture of glass. ‘Vrsella’ = ‘urzela’, i.e. orchil or archil, a lichen which, when mixed with aqueous ammonia, produces blue, violet and purple dyes. We suspect that ‘liria’ is a local variant (or a Cobbs misspelling) of ‘lírio’ (lily or iris), a subspecies of which is ‘lírio-dos-tintureiros’, the so-called dyer's weed, which yields a yellow dye.

18. Ponta Delgada, the present-day capital of the Azores, lies to the westward end of the south coast of São Miguel, some twelve miles west of the islet of Vila Franca. The castle of São Brás is the principal fortress of the island.

19. According to Duncan, op. cit. (84), one in eight adults in Ponta Delgada was in religious orders and about a third of the population made their living, directly or indirectly, from the religious establishment.

20. Rodrigo da Cámara was the seventh hereditary ‘capitão-donatário’ of São Miguel, and third Earl of Vila Franca. He was descended from Rui Gonçalves da Cámara, the third ‘capitão-donatário’, who was the second son of the ‘capitão-donatário’ of Funchal, Madeira, João Gonçalves Zarco. Rui Gonçalves bought the ‘capitania’ in 1474 and quickly built up the population and economic prosperity of the island, paying particular attention to the production of sugar. He was succeeded in the ‘capitania’ by the eldest of his three illegitimate sons João Rodrigues da Cámara, whose son, another Rui Gonçalves, was created first Earl of Vila Franca (do Campo) in 1580. Although Cobbs does not mention it, Rodrigo da Cámara, the third Earl, had in fact been imprisoned by the Inquisition in 1651 because of his homosexual practices. He remained in prison until his death in 1672. Because of Rodrigo's infamous conduct, the title of Earl of Vila Franca was suppressed. His son, Manoel da Cámara, was given the new title of Earl of Ribeira Grande. Duncan (85) would seem to be wrong when he states that Manoel was given the title in 1672, shortly after the death of his father: he is clearly designated Earl of Ribeira Grande by Cobbs in his letter of 10 June 1663 (appendix to the present article). It seems likely that, although Rodrigo was still technically ‘capitão-donatário’ of São Miguel in Cobbs’ time, effective power had passed to his son. See Duncan, op. cit., 84—85, and Dicionário de História de Portugal, ed. Joel Serrão, 4 vols. (Lisbon: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1963–71), I, 441. For the royal practice of granting the quasi-feudal donatory captaincies in the Atlantic islands to ‘fidalgos’ in the fifteenth century, see Malyn Newitt, ‘Prince Henry and the Origins of Portuguese Expansion’, in The First Portuguese Colonial Empire, ed. Malyn Newitt (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1986), 9–35. This article is also useful on the involvement of Madeirans in the settlement and development of the other Atlantic islands.

21. ‘Tenthes’ were the tax of ten per cent traditionally levied by the Portuguese King on all exports from the islands. By Cobbs’ time, however, because of declining trade and consequent loss of revenue to the Crown, the effective level of taxation was around twenty-eight per cent; see Duncan, op. cit., 90—91. For the involvement of the Portuguese Crown in trade, see Newitt, op. cit., passim.

22. ‘Couring’ = ‘covering’, i.e. clothing. Flax products were one of the major export staples of São Miguel; see Duncan, op. cit., 100—05.

23. ‘Bottatas’ = ‘batatas’, i.e. sweet potatoes; ‘iniames’ = ‘inhames’, i.e. yams. Purchas (362—63) has several lines on ‘Batatas’.

24. ‘Redd peper’ is another name for the very hot cayenne pepper. ‘Bastard saffron’ is presumably false saffron, another name for safflower, a thistle-like plant with large orange-yellow flowers.

25. The ‘jues’ (judge) is presumably the Conde de Ribeira Grande, the effective ‘capitão-donatário’ during his father's imprisonment. It was not uncommon for such men to buy lucrative monopolies from the Crown.

26. ‘Woode’ = woad (Isatis tinctoria), the plant which yields the blue dyestuff pastel. Pastel was the major export staple of São Miguel and some other Azorean islands (Purchas cites Terceira) during the period 1550–1650, with the trade reaching its peak between 1580 and 1630. In the latter half of the seventeenth century pastel was largely supplanted by the cheaper, less land-intensive and more easily processed indigo dye from Spanish Central America. The export of pastel from São Miguel, most of it destined for the English textile trade, dropped from 41,590 quintals in 1620 to 14,338 quintals in 1648 and to 7,707 quintals in 1669; see Duncan, op. cit., 86–92. This decline is commented on by Cobbs in what follows.

27. ‘Iunsa’ = ‘junca’, i.e. chufa or flatsedge, a plant with edible nutlike tubers. Purchas also comments on this crop and its use: ‘In eating it tasteth like Earth-nuts, but harder to bite: it is likewise a good meate, and much esteemed in other places: but by reason of the high quantitie thereof, it is most used to fatten their Hogges, and is called Junssa’ (363).

28. Purchas also comments on the ‘myne of Brimstone’ on Terceira and São Miguel and on ‘the places wherein there are Fountaines and Wells, the water whereof is so hot that it will boyle an egge, as well as if it hung over a fire’ (366).

29. This very curious word, split over two lines as ‘felt-ttes’ is presumably Cobbs’ attempt at ‘fleets’.

30. A beadsman was originally someone who prayed for another's soul, often in return for food, lodging or other alms. In the seventeenth century, the word was used to describe a messenger or petitioner, as here.

31. The most recent edition is The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe, ed. John Loftis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979).

32. Fanshawe's other duties during the second Portuguese embassy were mainly concerned with diplomatic business arising out of the marriage contract between Charles and Catherine: arranging the delivery of Bombay and Tangiers to the English Crown and the payment of the Queen's dowry of 200,000 crowns; improving the lot of the English troops in the service of Portugal; mediating, on Charles’ behalf, in the war between Spain and Portugal. See William Eugene Simeone, ‘Sir Richard Fanshawe: An Account of His Life and Writings’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Pennyslvania, 1950), 110–19.

33. This last difficulty is made very clear by Cobbs’ reference to ‘our marchantes ingratfullnesse’ in his letter to Fanshawe of 10 June 1663. For the role and duties of consuls, see Violet Barbour, ‘Consular Service in the Reign of Charles II’, American Historical Review, XXXIII (1927–28), 553–78; for their role in Portugal, see L. M. E. Shaw, Trade, Inquisition and the English Nation in Portugal, 1650–1690 (Manchester: Carcanet, 1989), 101–12.

34. For Maynard's career, see Shaw, op. cit., passim.

35. These data are derived from the text and tables in Duncan, 88–112.

36. We are assuming that Cobbs, after spending many years away from England, would be using the new dating system. We base our speculation on the probable date of his leaving Lisbon and on the fact that it took the Fanshawes two weeks (31 August—14 September) to travel the 900-odd miles from Plymouth to Lisbon (Memoirs, ed. cit., 145).

37. Lady Fanshawe writes after the battle ‘our house and tables were full of distressed, honest, brave English souldjers, who by their and their fellows’ valor had got one of the greatest victorys that ever was. These poor but brave men were most lost between the Portugese's poverty and Lord Chancellor Hide's [Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon's] neglect, not to give it a worse name. While my husband stay'd there he did what he could, but not proportionably either to their merits or wants’ (Memoirs, ed. cit., 148). We hope to publish shortly a collection of the papers from the Fanshawe archive relating to the battle of Ameixial and its aftermath.

38. We should like to express our sincere thanks to Emeritus Professor P. E. H. Hair, University of Liverpool, for reading an earlier draft of this article, for making several suggestions for its improvement, and especially for supplying us with invaluable bibliographical information.