Carlos Enriques Clerque as crypto-Jewish confidence man in Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera's Piratas y contrabandistas (1693)

Abstract

This article considers the story of Carlos Enriques Clerque, the enigmatic instigator of the 1669–1671 John Narborough expedition to Chile, as presented in Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera's Piratas y contrabandistas, a history of piracy from 1693, first published in 2011. Locating Seyxas's account in the context of related print and archival sources, this study demonstrates how the author develops a new and singularly complete picture of Enriques Clerque's South American adventure. At the same time, this article examines how Seyxas's version of the Enriques Clerque story exemplifies a uniquely Spanish vision of piracy specific to the final years of the seventeenth century. Setting aside the violent predators featured in Northern European texts on piracy from the period, Seyxas focuses on a category of sophisticated confidence men who deploy linguistic ability and cultural knowledge to undermine Spain's commercial system overseas.

Keywords:

• Carlos Enriques Clerque
• John Narborough
• piracy
• crypto-Jews
• Chile

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank John and María Atkinson, Tom Harper of the British Library, Mariana Velázquez of Columbia University, and María Ríos of Yale University.

Notes on contributor

Clayton McCarl is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of North Florida. His research centers on the textual products of the Early Modern maritime world. In 2011 he published the first edition of Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera’s previously unknown 1693 history Piratas y contrabandistas de ambas Indias, y estado presente de ellas. His article on Seyxas’s written sources on piracy—today mostly lost or forgotten—appeared in Book History (2014), and his bilingual electronic edition of Seyxas’s Avisos a pretendientes para Indias (1695) was published in Scholarly Editing (2014). McCarl is currently developing an electronic edition of Antonio de León Pinelo’s Epítome de la biblioteca oriental y occidental, náutica y geográfica (1629). He is also editing an unpublished manuscript related to the Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest in the eighteenth century.

Notes

1. Scholars have spelled the surnames of Enriques Clerque in differing ways over the centuries. In his testimony to the Spanish, he explains he was given the surname Enrique as a child in Germany (presumably Hendrik or a similar form), and suggests that he later came to use Enriques, adding the final sibilant (AGI, Lima 73 ‘Testimonio,’ f. 50v). This indeed seems to have been the form he used most commonly, among both the English and the Spanish (see, for instance, The National Archives, TNA, London, SP 89-10, f. 94r; CO1-33, 103c-1, f. 252r; CO1-33, 103d, f. 267r; and AGI, Lima 73, dispatch of the Real Audiencia of Lima, 17 April 1673). The commonly used spellings Enriquez and Clerk appear to be, respectively, a Hispanization of the first surname and an Anglicization of the second. Clerk was previously suspected to refer to this individual's role in the journey, a theory which now seems untenable (see Barros 1988, 40n15; AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ f. 42v).

2. Previous studies that consider Hispanic discourses on piracy include McQuien 1973, Cummins 1995, 258–73, Fuchs 2001, Marrero-Fente 2002, Firbas 2006, 83–85, Sánchez-Jiménez 2007, and Gerassi-Navarro 1999. Such works focus principally, however, on writing from the late sixteenth, early seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Specific attention to Spanish views of piracy in the second half of the seventeenth century has centered largely on the study of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora's Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez. Fabio López Lázaro's 2011 translation and Leonor Taiano's 2014 doctoral dissertation represent two important recent contributions.

3. Apparently through his familiarity with Seyxas (1690), Burney (1813, 323) was perhaps the first to make the connection between ‘don Carlos' and Enriques Clerque. For additional references to Enriques Clerque in Burney's seminal histories, see Burney 1813, 348, 361–62, 369 and 1891, 144. In their unpublished journals, Narborough and Richard Williams, an officer on the Sweepstakes, explicitly considered ‘don Carlos' to be a Spaniard. See Bodleian, Rawlinson MS A. 318, 202, 205–6; British Library (BL), Add. MS 88980, 12; and Royal Society, CI.-ui-32, ff. 1r, 2v.

4. See AGI Lima 73, ‘Testimonio de los autos,’ among other Spanish manuscript sources, and López 1682.

5. Enriques Clerque also appears in Mugaburu 1917–1918, 2:3–6, 131; Hanke 1979, 32–33 (documents from the Audiencia of Lima, 1672–1674); Olivares 1901, 82–83; Anales del Cuzco 1901, 141; Torrente 1828, 388; Odriozola 1864, 14; and Fuentes 1859, 342–43 (memoirs of the Duke of la Palata).

6. See Vicuña Mackenna 1869, 139–42; Barros Arana 1999, 101, 105; and Basadre 1935, 26–27; 1948, 175–82.

7. Additional texts that continued to portray Enriques Clerque as an Englishman include Morla Vicuña 1903, 203; Muzzio 1920, 277–78; Díaz Meza 1929, 232–41; Mendiburu 1932, 188; Vélez 1963, 485; Valdizán Gamio 1981, 45; and Orgambide 1995, 54.

8. Bradley examined the Narborough expedition again in 1989 (86–102), largely following his earlier article when addressing the involvement of Carlos Enriques Clerque (95n20).

9. See TNA, CO1-33; Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS A. 318; and Royal Society, CI.-ui-32.

10. For example, see Gil 1989, 293–304; Williams 1997, 77–82; Lane 1998, 131–34; Bradley 1999, 436–42; Isla 2002, 66–68; Preston and Preston 2004, 59; Martinic Beros 2007, 23–27; and Edmundson 2009, 17–18.

11. See, for instance, the following recent studies of the Restoration period, in which the Narborough expedition figures minimally or not at all: Glassey 1997, Coote 2000, Harris 2005, De Krey 2007, and Uglow 2009.

12. This manuscript (BL, Add. MS 88980) was previously in the collection of Lord Romney at the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone (CKS), now the The Kent History and Library Centre (personal communication with CKS and BL librarians, July 2011). Though not unavailable in the past, the BL manuscript does not figure in previous studies of Enriques Clerque and the Narborough expedition.

13. Seyxas's version is also the earliest, with the exception of Mugaburu (first published 1917–1918) and Nieremberg (1689).

13. While the writings mentioned here are today unknown, the map published following the Narborough expedition (Thornton c. 1670) is not. At least two manuscript maps also exist: BL, Add. MS. 5414 (article 29), ‘A mapp of the streights of Magelan’ (mentioned in Bradley 1989, 99n31); and BL, Maps K. Top. 124. 84. ‘The Land of Patagonia [et cetera].’

15. Seyxas gives these dates as they appear in the English sources, not adjusting for the ten-day discrepancy between the Spanish and English chronology that was not resolved until England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

16. See Narborough 1694, 1–2, 19–20, 23, 45–56, 84, 86–90, 96–98, 100, 104, 110–12, and Seyxas 2011, 147–49.

17. See BL, Add. MS 88980, and Bodleian, Rawlinson MS A. 318. These manuscripts follow the same general outline as the 1694 print version, but differ significantly from both that text and from one another. In addition to the Narborough journals, at least three others exist: the aforementioned text by Richard Williams, and those of J. Wood (BL Sloane MS 3833, 3–26; published in Hacke 1993) and Nathanael Peckett (BL Sloane MS819); see Burney 1813, 316–17, Bradley 1989, 88n5, and Barros 1988, 35. None, however, seems directly related to the Narborough manuscripts, nor appears to have influenced the story told by Seyxas.

18. For this Spanish visit to the Sweepstakes, see BL, Add. MS 88980, 157. Buitrón de Moxica (or ‘Buitrón y Moxica’) is named in AGI Lima 73, ‘Testimonio de los autos,’ f. 119r.

19. Additional archival sources (discussed below) that demonstrate Enriques Clerque's claims of prior experience in the Americas include TNA, SP 89-10, ff. 94r–94v; and TNA, CO1-33, 103c-1 and 103d (transcribed in Barros 1988, 51–58).

20. See AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 42r–46v, 50v–52r.

21. See the documents in TNA, CO1-33, discussed below.

22. See, for instance, the case of the merchant Antonio Lopes Suasso (1614–1685), documented by Jonathan Israel (2002, 258).

23. See AHN, Diversos-Colecciones, 27, n. 41; TNA CO1-33, 103c (1), ff. 245r–52r and 103d, ff. 265r–67r.

24. See Bodleian, Rawlinson MS A. 318, 202, 205–6; Böhm 1963, 56–57; Baron 1973, 316n64; Bradley 1986, 472–73; and Martinic Beros 2007, 24.

25. See TNA, SP 89-10, f. 94r/v, letter from English diplomat Robert Southwell (1635–1702) dated June 1669, a source that does not figure in previous studies dealing with Enriques Clerque and the Narborough expedition.

26. These documents, cited in Barros (1988), are TNA, CO1-33, 103c (1), ff. 245r–52r, a letter in Spanish from Enriques Clerque to Charles II, 14 July 1669 (Barros transcribes, 51–57); 103c (2), ff. 253r–63r, an English translation of 103c (1), 14 July 1669; 103d, ff. 265r–67r, a letter in Spanish from Enriques Clerque to Charles II, 25 July 1669 (Barros transcribes, 57–58); 103e, f. 269r, a list in English of materials, 23 August 1669; and 103f, f. 271r, another list in Spanish, different in content from that found in 103e, 25 August 1669 (Barros transcribes, 59). For a summary of the two proposed voyages, see 103d, f. 265r (transcribed in Barros 57).

27. Suggestions that he occupied such a role are found in the Narborough journals (1694, 19–20; BL Add. MS 88980, 74, 142, 144, 146, 153; Bodleian, Rawlinson MS A. 318, 142–43), Williams's journal (Royal Society, CI.-ui-32, f. 2v), and the statements of Fortescue and Arminger in AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio’ ff. 84v, 95r, and 96v–97r.

28. See AHN, Diversos-Colecciones, 27, n. 41, a letter Enriques Clerque addressed to the viceroy from Valdivia in January 1671, also transcribed in AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 55r–78r. Copies are found in BL Add. MS. 21539 (‘The Metford Papers'), no. 8 and BL Add. MS. 28457, ff. 2r–21r, and AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 19r–22r is a shorter version, dated Concepción, 11 February 1671. The claim Enriques Clerque makes here to being the leader of the expedition is repeated in AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 4r, 19v and 40v.

29. Tomás de la Iglesia is Narborough's ‘Thomas Highway’ (1969, 112; BL Add. MS 88980, 155), who appears to have served as a translator for both the English (Narborough calls him a ‘linguest’) and Spanish (see, for example, AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 27v–28r and 119r).

30. Enriques Clerque had indeed proposed such a deception in his communications to Charles II while in England, and later mentioned these secret orders in his statements in South America. See TNA, CO1-33, 103c-1, f. 246v (transcribed in Barros 1988, 51); and AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 40v–41r.

31. See BL, Add. MS 88980, 146; AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 79v, 80r, 82r/v (Tomás de la Iglesia); ff. 29r, 33v, 95r, 96v–97r (Arminger); ff. 33v–34r, 88r (Fortescue), and the letters by Arminger and Fortescue from April 1671, in AGI, Lima 72. The BL manuscript contains an episode in October 1669 that reflects tension between Enriques Clerque and the English sailors, even before the expedition's true destination was revealed (Add. MS 88980, 23).

32. This is largely because the letters and testimony of Arminger and Fortescue are the only known English sources to document the case after Narborough's departure for England.

33. The professions of faith Enriques Clerque makes in Seyxas's version agree with testimony the foreigner himself gave in Valdivia. See AHN, Diversos-Colecciones, 27, N.41, f. 1v, where he asserts that, though born in Germany, he was Spanish by ‘affection and religion.’ For the trip to Panama, an unsuccessful attempt to remit Enriques Clerque and the others to Spain, see AGI, Lima 73, dispatch of the Real Audiencia of Lima, 17 April 1673. For Enriques Clerque's apparent effort to exploit the jurisdictional divide between civil and religious law by claiming to be an ordained Franciscan, see López (1682, 1–20), a source Seyxas apparently did not know.

34. See BL, Add. MS 88980, 155.

35. See TNA, SP 89-10, f. 94r/v; AGI 73, ‘Testimonio,’ ff. 103r–4r.

36. Bradley mentions the possible connection to Meneses (1986, 467), which Gil explores further (1989, 297–300).

37. See TNA, CO1-33, 103d, f. 265r (transcribed in Barros 1988, 57).

38. Bodleian, Rawlinson MS A. 318, 143.

39. See AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio’ in general, and for material related specifically to possible ties to Meneses, see ff. 8v–10v, 16r–18r, 22r–25v, 46v–48r, and 98v–99r.

40. AGI, Lima 73, ‘Testimonio,’ f. 99r.

41. See Cummins 1995, 258–73.

42. Seyxas's reading of Portugal's colonial experience would seem to derive in part from his reading of texts like Martínez de la Puente (1681). See 343–44, cited in Seyxas (2011, 46n46). For Seyxas's concern regarding Spain's failure to exclude foreigners from the New World, see McCarl 2011, xxxviii n97, xliii–xlv; Seyxas 2011, 195–99, 229–31; and Seyxas 2014, f. 24r/v.