Pre-1650 printed literature in english on the Atlantic Islands

              PRE-1650 PRINTED LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
ON THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS
P. E. H. HAIR
«If sack and sugar be a fault , God help the wicked! >>
W. Shakespeare, Henry IVpart I
Original literature on the Atlantic islands published in English in the
period before 1650 was meagre in arnount and limited in range, though
increasing over the period. English readers could however turn to translated
literature which for most of the period provided fuller references to the
islands than did the original literature. As for English imaginative literature,
&is contained few direct references to the isiands; but after 1550 noticed
with increasing regularity certain of their commodities.. Al1 in all, it must be
said that the literature and literary references, while they document a
developing British interest in the islands, do so very inadequately.
One element of recent British interest was of course lacking before
1650. Much of the present-day literature in English on the Atlantic islands is
tourist literature. But tourism, ((winterinp, and ultimately retirement
residence in the sunnier South, did not come about until the steamboat era1.
A related point is that the Engiish-speaking Irish Catholics, whose
descendants played sudi a large part in the later history of some of the
islands, did not generally se& refuge and residence in them until after 1650.
Thus, before 1650 British interest was essentially economic, not social.
Nevertheless there were many strands and layers to the economic
interest. One of these was a geopoiitical interest in the islands on account of
their vital place in the widening network of British econornic interests in
both the North and the South Atlantic. British interest in the' islands
expandeci with giobai economic deveiopments, not ieast 'because the
technology of carriage and communication in the period made small
strategically-placed islands as important as large distant continents- a point
often evident in the design of maps. By 1650, British (in practice, as
1. But the tourist approach was perhaps signalled by an 1813 English description of the
Azores whose chapters included a «Tour through St. Michaelss and whose author justified his
work by explaining that afor want of other employment in these islands 1 have bestowed much
of my time in exploring their conditions and circumstancess: T.A., A History of tbe Azores.. .
containing an uccount of tbe Manners undcburacter ofthe Inhabitants, London, 1813.
hereafter, English) interest in the Atlantic islands had Sroadened and
deepened over a period of two centuries, and had grown from being very
slight to being modestly substantial.
Because it developed within the wider ((western enterprise)) of the
English, and within the much more intense and involved interest of Spain
and Portugal in the Atlantic islands, the English connection has tended to
surface in both Iberian and British historiography and literature only in
relation to its more dramatic moments- wars, assaults, persecutions.
(Tennyson's line, «At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay»,
probabiy remains the only historical reference to the islands known to the
late twentieth-century British schoolboy). It will therefore be useful to
sketch briefly the development of the English connection, in order to note
what the contemporary literature reflected, and also what it failed to reflect.
THE ENGLISH COiWJECTION 1400- 1650
With the discovery and settlement (or re-settlement) of the islands the
English connection was negligible historically, though not
historiographically. Despite the medieval link between England and
Norrnandy, the Norman conquest of the Canaries was attributed by Hakluyt
and Purchas to Frenchmen, correctly2; but these later English publicists
added that the Franco-Spanish activity was inspired by a desire to emulate
the earlier discovery of Madeira by an Englishman, Machan. The legend of
Machan, though alrnost certainly without historical foundation (despite
Armando Cortesao's cautious defence of its historicity as recently as 1973),
was highlighted by Hakluyt in 1589 in his documentation of English marine
2. A tenuous connection between England and the Norman conqueros of the Canaries
was allowed by an eighteenth century Canarian historian: Joseph de Viera y Clavijo. Noz'icuZr
de la HGtoriageneraLde la Islas de Canani (1782-3), ed. Elías Serra Rafols, Tenerife, 1950, p.
259. But the only real connection was negativa: when there was a lull in the Anglo-French
War, Norman military men turned their energies from fighting the English to conquering the
Canaries: see Elías Serra and Alejandro Cioranescu, ed., Le Canarien, La Laguna. 1959, vol. 1,
chaps. 3-5. The sixteenth century Englishman, Thomas Nichols, incorrectly claimed that athe
Spaniards first conquered these (Canary) islands, with divers English gentlemen in their com-panies:
Cioranescu, Alejandro, Thomas Nichols: mercua'er de azúcar, hispanista y hereje, La
Laguna, 1963, p. 105. There is more substance in the view that ~isolated individuals of
English, Scottish and Irish extraction lived in Madeira from the fifteenth centuryn, since an
inquiry from the island in 1319 about a Scottish ancestor is documented: Duncan, T.
Bentley, Atlantic isZands: Madeira, tbe Azores and tbe Cape Verdes in seventeentb-century
commerce andnavigation, Chicago, 1972, p. 5 5.
enterprise3. The Machan legend does not form part of English traditional
literature but instead appears to have been invented in Portuguese circles in
the later fifteenth century and to have spread into Spanish literature. While
the invention may testify primarily to Anglo-Portuguese amity and the
desire to flatter the dynasty descended from Philippa of Lancaster, it must
surely iridicate that even before 1500 Iberians took a view of Engiish marine
errterprise which made it not implausible that Englishmen should sail and
explore to the South.
My predecesor at Liverpool, Professor David Quinn, has convincingly
expounded the history of the early development of Engiish enterprise
westward in the Atlantic, a development sufficiently understood in the period
to lead Columbus at one stage to offer his services to the English king4. In
the light of our growing knowledge of this westward enterprise before 1500,
English enterprise to the South before 1500 should not be under-estimated
merely because, as yet, the very fragrnentary surviving evidence has not
been gathered together and woven into a measured assessment5. It can be
argued that, given the fairly close links txtween latemedieval England and
Portugal, including the dynastic connection (even if we adrnit that Viaorian
historians created «Henry the Navigaton) in orden to exaggerate the
significance of his English ancestry), it would have been .odd if
fifteenth-century Englishmen had been unaware of, or had failed to cast
sideways glances at, Portuguese enterprise in the Atlantic. Similarly the long
history and accepted usefulness of Anglo-Castilian trade must have aroused
in some Englishmen a desire to pursue an economic interest in the wake of
the Spanish exploitation of the canaries6.
3. R. Hakluyt, P&cz$aII Nav&ations, London, 1589, reprinted Cambridge 1965 (here-after
cited as Hakhyt 1589), p. 80: A. Cortesao, Tbe story ofRobe~Mt achin's discovery oftbe
a a a i thr H í w í z t q , Serie Separatas 85, Agt;pamenco de Esv~dosd c Car-tografia
Antiga, Coirnbra, 1973 (Portuguese version in Revista da Universidade de Coirn-bra,
23).
4. Quinn, D.B., Engl'and andthe dircovery of America 1418-1620, London, 1974, espe-cially
Part. l.
5 . The insularity of the English before the sixteenth century can be exaggerated. King
Henry IV (1399-1413) who, before reaching the throne visited Jemsaiem and considered parti-cipting
in a Barhry crrscdc, vas the f k t x!er iz n;ectern EU:G~C:G co::espd wkh kblo-pia:
and (as Hakluyit inferred) the real or irnaginary travels of Mandeville circulated and were
received in western Europe as the activities of an Englishman. On the marine connections of
late-rnedieval England, see Scarnrnell, G.V., The world encompassed, London, 1981, p. 460.
6. See Childs, Wendy R., Angl'o-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages, Manchester,
1978. especially pp. 107, 125.
Evicende of pre-1500 Engiish interest in the Central and South
Atlantic can indeed be found. Of doubtful significance is «the ayde and
assistance given to john the first of Portugale by certaine Engiish merchants
for the winning of Ceut in Barbary, anno 1415)) which Hakluyt noted and
with which he led off his documentation of Engiish enterprise in Africa and
to the South; and the faa that the earliest map showing the whole Saharan
coast, as well as the islands (except the Cape Verdes), was drawn in 1448
when the Italian mapmaker was passing through London is in the same
category7. However the extensión of English interest to the islands was
certainly signalled by the movement of Engiish commodities, particularly
woollen cloth. Some of the cloth taken by the Portuguese to Arguin in the
1440s and to Senegal in the 1450s may well have been Engfish cloth: the
cloth brought back from Mina in 1480 and sent up the Gambia in 1493
certainly was8. We cannot therefore doubt fhat from an early date English
cloth reached the settlers on those islands en route to Guinea. In the
opposite direaion, export commodities from the islands reached Britain,
also from an early date. The earliest record of export of sugar from Madeira
relates to its arrival at Bristol in 1456: the dye, orchil, procured in Madeira,
the Canaries and Cape Verdes, and used for dyeing cloth, was in demand in
England before 1500~E. nglish involvement in the international market in
the produas of the new world to the South was shown by the distribution
monopoly for malagueta pepper obtained c. 1480 by the Anglo-Portuguese
adventurer, Sir Edward Brampton, alias Duarte Brand2010. English shippers
7. Hakfuyt 1589, p. 80; Corresao, A,, History of Portuguese cascography, 1971, vol. 2,
pp. 142-148.
8. Gomes. D., De fapremie7e découverte de fa Guinée, Bissau. 1959, p. 23 (f. 272) (the
named cloths were probably Moroccan and the ship-owner, Robert Kerey, may have been a
Breton rather than one of the London Careys or Kerys); Cadamosto, Luis de, Viagens, Lisbon.
1948, p. 34; Fosse, E. de la, «Voyage 2 la cdte occidencale dPAfrique.. . 1479-1480~R. evue His-panique,
4, 1879, p. 187, xdrap de Londres»; Marques, J.M. da %va, Descobrimientospor-tugueseJ,
vol. 3, Lisbon, 1971, p. 397 «hua fradilha de brystall~N. ote also the roya1 monopoly
in the 1490s on the export to Guinea of «cloths from Ireland and Englandu: J. Münzer, nltine-rariou,
O Instituto, 83, 1932, p. 157. For Bristol and London cloth in the Canary Islands, c.
1500, see Fernández-Armesto, F., The Canary Isfands afier the Conquest, Oxford, 1982, pp.
158-9.
9. Magalhaes Godinho, o#. cit.., p. 437, and for later referentes co sugar reaching England
pp. 438, 440; A. Baiao, O manuscrito nVafentim Femandesr, Lisbon. 1940. f. l58v., f. 287;
Fernández Armesto, op. cit., p. 71.
10. C. Roth, <Sir EdwurdBrampton, alias Duarte Brandaou. La Société ~uernesiaisel Re-ports
and Transactions of the Guernsey Sociecy of Natural Science, 1956, p. 164: in 1489
Brandao was trading London cloth for pepper, Blake, J.W., Europeans in West Afnca 14j0-
IjGO, Hakluyt Society, London, 1942. p. 89.
considered the new possibilities: we know of a voyage from Bristol to
Madeira in 1480". The names of newly-discovered islands, the Cape Verdes
and the off-shore islands of western Guinea, as well as the names of the
eariier-discovered islands, were communicated to an English savant c. 1480,
presumably from a Bristol source; and we know that ships from Madeira
were reaching Bristol. In 1481 an Engiish voyage to Guinea was prepared
but not pursued, allegedly because of Portuguese protest: the episode was
later noted by ~ a k l u ~ tEln~g.li sh merchants were stablishing iinks with
Morocco as early as the 1460sI3. Thus, though there appears to be no
evidence of English traders operating in or resident in the Atlantic islands
before 1500, it is clear that commercial iinks were drawing English
attention to the islands14.
After 1500 English interest quickened and hence produced firmer
evidence. in í 50 í, a contact was estabiished between Bristol men and a
party of Azoreans who were exploring the North America coast a n d this
may indicate earlier commercial intercourse between England and the
But Anglo-Portuguese contracts were not always friendly.
According to a Portuguese complaint in the 1560s, over the last twenty-five
years some 80 ~ o r t u p e s eve ssels had been seized by English pirates, mainly
in the Channel; and some 40 of these were carrying sugar, from S. Tomé,
Madeira, or ~ r a z i l lP~o.r tuguese complaints about English pirates went bach
much further than the development of the Atlantic sugar trade, but it is easy
to see how stolen sugar not only helped to give the English a sweet tooth
but encouraged them both to maraud nearer the centres of sugar production
and to develop an economic interest in this commodity. In fact, at least two
Engiish merchants were active in sugar production in the Canaries by the
1510s, predating Hakluyt's discovery in «an old ligíer booke of M. Nicholas
Thorne the elder ... of Bristol)) that in 1526 the Engiish had resident agents
11. @inn,op. &., pp. 57-38,
12. HaRluyt, 1589, p. 81; for this and a posible later attempt in 1488, see Blake, J.W.,
West Afnta: quest for GodandGoLd, 1977 (eniarged edition of European beginnings in West
Africa, 1937, same pagination), pp. 60-63; Russell, P.E., «Fontes documentais Castelhanas
para a historia da expansao portuguesa na Guiné nos ultimos anos de D. Afonso V», De Tem-poedaHzhorza,
4, 1971, pp. 30-31.
13. Quinn, D.B., ~EdwardIVandexplorationu, Mariners Mirror, 21, 1935, p. 277.
14. On Porrugiiese md Spanish ves se!^ trtvz!!ing te :he islands :here mq we!! have been a
number of English sailors, but there is no evidence of that either.
15. Quinn,EngLand, pp. 113-116.
16. Public Record Office, London, State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, 70, vol. 95, my
analysis.
at Teneriffe who traded cloth for orchil, sugar and hideslO. In the l520s,
Roger Barlow, the Anglo-Spanish trader who helped Sebastian Cabot to
explore the River Plate, visited the Canaries and the Azores, where it is
likely that he already had agents18. (Unfortunately his extended translation
of a Spanish geographer, which included references to his Atlantic aaivities,
remained in manuscript after he presented it to Henry VIII). The English
trading presence in the Canaries, once established, persisted; it is fairly
well-documented and need not here be described in detail. By 1650, English
uaders had resided in these islands for nearly a century and a half, continuity
only being broken during the period of Philippine reiigious persecution.
The historical sequence, Engiish commodities -Engiish shippers-
English resident traders, also appiied to the other Atlantic islands, but not
al1 completed the sequence before 1650. Although stolen S. Tomé sugar
k!p! to draur &e Engbsh to the South Atlantic: Portugal's equatorial
islands remained outside direct British interest. As far as is known, no
Englishman ever lived on S. Tomé, Principe or Annobom; no Engiishman
ever traded to them; and no English assaults on them were ever mounted19.
English knowledge of them probably only derived from translations,
particularly a 1600 traslation from Italian (Pory) and post 1600 translation
from Dutch voyage-accounts recounting assaults. The Cape Verde Islands
also seem to have lacked any English residents and up to 1650 the
Portuguese authorities kept away regular English shippers and traders. Since
English commodities certainly reached these islands, and also passed
through them en route to the Guinea coast, where the Portuguese residents
from the 1560s accepted trade whith the English as inevitable and profitable
17. Fernández-Armesto, op. cit., p. 168: R. Hakluyt, Principal Navigutionr, London,
1598-1600 (hereafter Hakiuyt 15910, vol. 2, secondpugination, p. 2.
18. R. Barlow, A briefe sumne ofgeographze, ed. E.G.R. Taylor, Hakluyt Society, 1932,
pp. 101, 103: Barlow complained that the Portuguese had damaged the prosperity of
Southarnpton, and hence presumably of England, by centring their spice trade at Antwerp,
which perhaps irnplied that the English should retallate, p. 46.
19. Exceptionally, in 1589 the crews of two English pinnaces burned a village on Ilheo das
Rdas, off S. Tomé, and were in turn attacked and were driven off when they tried to water on
cine rnain isiand: Purchas, S. Purchas Bisr"ig7imcii, Londün, i625, pait. 1, buüh 7, chap 3, p.
970. It may be noted here that the Atlantic islands discussed in this paper do not include those
Souch of the equator (only St. Helena had substantil English contacts, and chis only after
1600) or the island of Fernando Po off Guinea (which was virmally univisited by Europeans).
(though to be represented in more sinister terms to the a~thorities)~'i,t is
curious that the Cape Verde islanders, suffering the disadvantages of the
crown and metropolitan control of trade in much the same way as did the
Canary islanders, were more passive than their Spanish neighbours21. Me do
not hear of smuggling of English goods, or of commercial allies of the
English on the islands, as happened in the Canaries. The English helped
themselves to salt from the almost deserted salt islands, but otherwise the
only direct contact between the English and the Cape Verdes was negative,
that is, in the 1580s and 1590s English fleets regularly raided the islands,
causing some of the destruction and decline which led the islanders to -
consider evacuating themselves to the mainland22.
But if the equatorial islands and the Cape Verdes experienced iittle or
no developrnent of contaa with the Engiish over the period, Madeira and
the Azores fe11 midway between that experience and the lengthy and
eventually close contact with the English experienced by the Canaries.
English merchants began settlement in Madeira in 1590, in the 1620s there
were half a dozen of them, and by 1650 «the English merchant cornrnunity
of Funchal [was gaining the] pivotal position it was to occupy until the
twentieth centurydJ. Engiish merchant settiement in the Azores 'began oniy
a little later and between the 1620s and 1650 the English held the major
share of the main export trade, in woad (though thereafter this trade
~ o l l a ~ s e dM) ~an~y .o f the pioneers in both groups of islands were Roman
Catholics, but later merchants were Protestant: their exports of wine and
woad linked them to West of England textile communities and to English
settlements in the Caribbean and North America. The post-1600 history of
English enterprise in both groups has been depicted in the excellent history
of the Portuguese Atlantic islands by the Anglophone historian, Bentley
Duncan, and no more need be said here.
20. For some comment on the unofficial realities of Anglo-Portuguese contacts on the
Guinea coast, see Hair, P.E.H., ~Protestantsa s pirater, slavers andproto-missiona~esS: ierra
Leone, lS68andlJ82u, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 21, 1970, pp. 203-224; aSierraLeone
ana'the Por t zg~e~Boeo k ofComp/aint 1507-iS08»,S ierra Leone Smdies, 26, 1970, pp. 2-10;
nSources on eariy Sierra Leone: (14) EnglZrh accounts of lS82», African Research Bulletin, 91 1-
2, 1978, pp. 67-99.
21. For disccrsion ef the cenflkt ef ecenor+ intcosts hcmrecn the Czn-rks znd thc
Spanish crown, see Morales Padrón, F. EL comercio Canario-Amenkano, Seville, 1955, and
Chaunu. P.. S e d e etLfAtlántique (IJO4-IGSO), VI11 (l), París, 1959.
22. Almada, A. Alvares de, Trafiadob reve dos Rios de G~uinéL, isbon, 1946, chap. 19.
23. Duncan, Bentley, op. cit., p. 5 5 .
24. Ihd, p. 88.
One negative aspect of pre-1650 English contacts with the islands, that
is, the English naval assaults on them, often as part of a wider Atlantic
strategy directed against Spain, has been, in the case of the Canaries,
exhaustively described by Rumeu de Armas, with great scholarship (although
it is necessary to demur from his setting the assaults within the framework
of- an international Protestant-Jewish conspiras- directed against the
Catholic k k ~ ~ s ) ~B'u.t the history of English assaults on the Portuguese
islands is much more complex and is as yet lacking an historian.
Paradoxically, whereas the Portuguese islands resisted English economic
pressure more rigidly than did the Spanish, they were much more ambiguous
in their attitude to English ((piracyn and assaults, since after 1582 the
English were acting partly in the name of the Portuguese pretender, D.
Antonio, and hence of on-going resistance to Spanish over-nile. It is true
that after Spain beat off the first Franco-Anglo-Antonine attempt to seize the
Azores and the Cape Verdes, the Portuguese inhabitants lay low and
effusively proclaimed their loyalty to King Philip and his descendants; but
the popular rebellion of the 1640s suggests that the English were not
entirely hipocritical in their expressed belief that assaults on the islands
would enable anti-Philippine elements to emerge.
Finally, another negative aspect, that of religious persecution, is
difficult to evaluate. Were English merchants in the Canaries persecuted
primarily as heretics or because of cornmercial j e a l ~ u s ~T?h~e~ te.r minology
of religious concern was on everyone's lips in the period, but not necessarily
in everyone's hearts. It was apparently not only «New Christiansn who had
trading contacts in the Canaries with John Hawkins and other English
traders. Nor was it only Jews who fled the Cape Verdes to trade with
heretics and marry the heathen on the mainland. As for English religious
persecution, this may have worked the opposite way, to strengthen contacts.
It is doubtful if any of the English resident traders in the islands were
religious refugees from Protestant England; but a number found it
beneficia1 in gaining acceptance into Iberian communities to proclaim their
Catholicism.
25. Rumeu de Armas, Antonio, Pi rate~ay ~a taque3 navales contra lar Islas Canarias, 3 vols.-
in-4, Madrid, n.d. (1945). The earliest assaults on [he Canaries were on behalf of :he Catholic
Kings of France: regular English voyages to Guinea began in :he reign of ;he Catholic Queen
Maiy; 2nd ;hc h c i E iiglisi: assa~lrsw cic a: leas; paitkj iii thc name of thc Ca:ho!ic p:e:ender
to the rhrone of Portugal.
26. See Alberti, L. de and Chapman, A.B., English merchants and the Spanish Inqui-sition
in the Cana&, London, 1912.
To sum up this sketch of English pre-1650 contacts with the Atlantic
islands. English commodities reached al1 inhabited islands from at least 1500
and Englishmen set foot on al1 except the equatorial islands of the Gulf of
Guinea, in the case of Madeira and the Canaries from at least 1500 but
elsewhere only after 1550. Sixteenth century contacts with the Azores and
Cape Verdes were mainly in terms of warfare, but after 1600 Madeira and
the Azores joined the Canaries in having English commercial contacts which
were developing and important, and which entailed not only visits of
English shippers but the long-term residence of English merchants,
adrnittedly few in number yet influential in the economy of the islands2'. In
the middle of our period, during the later sixteenth-century, warfare on the
islands and is the seas around them, as well as religious persecution,
provided dramatic scenes which highlighted, at the same time as they
presumably retarded, the steady growth of the English connection.
PRINTED LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
The earliest printed reference in print to the Atlantic islands seems to
be a very brief reference, apparently to the Canaries, in an Antwerp-printed
pamphlet, a translation of an account, previously published in German,
Dutch and Latin, of the 1505 Portuguese voyage to the East Indies: the
English publication probably dates from c.1510. The reference is to Gran
Canaria and two islands «before it which produce goats» cheese, fish and
sugar. A reference in the other versions to Madeira and its wives was
omitted in the English version. Three English publications of c. 15 10-~1520
which list parts of the world, including «the new-found lanh in America, do
27. For a general view of English commercial connections up to 1650, see Morales Lezcano,
V., Relaciones mercandes entre Inglaterra y los archipiélagos del AtIán~ico Ibérico: su estruc-turzy
su historia (lS03-1783), LaLaguna, 1970, pp. 50-71.
28. «Of newe iarideSB, iepiiníc: iii E., T~ L -r JCxIm~ .+Ju+ ~rL~- -r-o r r Tr ;r -t -; rfoArL, oL v- -vLn ~u r r
America, Birmingham, 1885; see also Kronenberg, M.E., De Novo Mondo, The Hague, 1927,
Parker John, Books to buildan empzre, Amsterdam, 1965, pp. 21-2. A reference to athe
Fortunate Islandsx and «Canaria> appeared in the 1482 Caxton print of the English translation
of the fourteenth century universal history, Ranulf Hidgen's Polichronicon, as pointed out by
Parker, op. cit., p. 15. But this reference was traditional, being wholly derived, as Higden
states, from Pliny and Isidore of Seville; it was not a reference to the contemporary discovery of
the Canary Islands.
not mention the Atlantic i ~ l a n d sE~n~g.li sh translations of Portuguese and
Spanish accounts of Atlantic and other discoveries were generally lacking
before the 1550s30. Howerer this almost total lack of publications in English
before 1550 does not testify to a totaiity of either disinterest or ignorance on
the part of the English, for educated Englishrnen simply read the material
available, at first in Italian and Latin, then later in Portuguese and Spanish,
for instance, Cadamosto's account of Madeira and the Canaries and the
discovery of the Cape Verdes.
The first works to draw the attention of Engiish readers to the
Pomguese and Spanish discoveries were the translations and cornpilations of
Richard Eden. His 1553 translation of Münster's Cosmography included a
passage on Madeira and the Canaries: his 1555 translation of various sources
on America included passages on the conquest of the Canaries and on the
Cape Verde Islands (from Peter Martyr) and on S. Tomé (from Ramusio):
each work had severa1 passing references to the islands3'. But his Tbe
Decades oftbe Newe Worlde, the 1555 translation, also contained accounts of
two Engiish voyages to ~ u i n e a ~A~n . i ntroductory sketch of Africa
mentioned «the Ilands of Canarie cauled in owlde time the fortunate Ilandesx
29. Hyckesconzer, London, c. 1510; The shzp offolys, London, 1509, Rastell, John, Inter-lude
of the Four Elements, London, c. 1520 the relevant sections reprinted in Quinn, New
American World, pp. 128-129, 168-171. A poem of c. 1510 by the Scottish writer, William
Dunbar, referred to nthe YLis of Aphircaner, but the poem remained unpublished: ibid
p. 131.
30. The earliest translation from Portuguese was an account of the 1513 Ethiopian
ernbassy to Portugal, published in English in 1533; Thomas, M. nEngLish trandatiozs of
Portuguese bookr before 1640n, The Library, 7, 1920, pp. 1-30. The translator and publisher
belonged to the More-Rastell circle which had earlier shown interest in American discoveries
(see Quinn, Englandandthe Discove~yo fAmenca, pp. 161-162): it is hard to say whether Sir
Thomas More's ((Utopiau (1515-1516) drew any of its inspirarion from the discovery of islands
in the Atiantic.
3 1. Eden, R., A treatise of the Newe India, London, 1553, reprinted Arber, E., Thejrst
Englirh books on America, Birmingham, 1885, pp. 40.1; Decades (see next note), in the
same, pp. 65,66,68.87,210.
32. Tbe Decades of tbe newe worlde or west India. .. wTitten in d e Latine twngue by
Peter Ma~tyrof Angleria, andtransla~edintoE nghhe by Richurde Eden, London, 1555, ff.
344, 345 v., 346, 350 v., 351, 353, 353 v. But there were complexities not represented in the
printed account. Windharn, the leader of the 1553 voyage, on a voyage to Barbary the pre-vious
year, had visited the Canaries and had an affray with the Spaniards: this was reported by
Hakluyt but only in hissecond edition: Hakluyt 1598, vol. 212; pp. 8-9. And when Windham
visited Madeira in 1553, after a discussion with the suspicious Portuguese authorities on the
main island, the English had an affray on a small island: the reporr from the Captain of
Madeira is printed in Blake, Europeans in West A f h . pp. 320-324.
(throughout our period educated men in England, as elsewhere, knew and
puzzled about the ancients ((Fortunate I$lands» and (flesperidesn). The 1553
English voyage called at Madeira to load wine and slip by a suspicious
Portuguese warship; it passed the Canaries; and it loaded goatsn meat at S.
Nicolau and other «deserte Ilandesn in the Cape Verdes. The 1554 voyage
passed Madeira and the Canaries, and the account described both groups of
islands as seen from the sea, is some detail, including a reference to «a great
hyghe picke lyke a suger lofe» at Teneriffe; and it returned by the Azores,
without sighting them. An Azorean, Francisco Rodrigues, acted as pilot on
both English voyages33.
In 1568 a work appeared which, although only a translation, was to
influence later English writing. This was Tbe Newfound worlde, or Antarctik,
a translation of André Thevet's. Les Singdaritez de ía France Antarttique of
?558. N9 !es &un ^ice chupes ni! this c&xs ~ n r pk s prt te del! with
the Atlantic islands: two chapters each on the Canaries, icluding mention of
sugar and orchil, on Madeira and its wine, and on the Cape Verdes,
including a reference to the volcano on Fogo Island and a further reference
to orchil: one chapter each on ((Saint Homem, i.e. S.Tomé, and the Azores.
The information in these chapters is substantial but badlyarranged, often
inaccurate or out-of-date, and alrnost always derivative, for although Thevet
and sailed within sight of the Canaries in 1555 close exarnination of his text
suggests that he no more set foot on these than he did on the other islands
he di s~us s edT~h~e. work was read by ~ n ~ l i s h m (eand~ b~y others in the
period, so that it deserves more detailed study than it has so far had), but its
major influence in England may well have been the one which is
wellknown. It was read by Thomas Nichols, a merchant who had lived in
the Canaries in the later 1550s, on his return to England in the 1570s after a
prolonged brush with the Inquisition. Shocked by the ((great untruthes)) of
33. Blake,Europeans,p.321.
34. The New found worlde, or AntarctiAe.. . by that excellent Learned man, master
Andrew Thevet.. ., London (1 568): Thevet, André, Les Singulan'tez de la Frunce Antarctzque,
autrement nommée Amerique: et de plusierurs Terres et I s h decouvertes de nostre temps,
Paris, 1558, reprinted. ed., Gaffarel, P., Paris, 1878 (the reprint omits an illustration, f. 28,
cmdely showing the volcano on Fogo with men climbing up it. including what looks like a
man in contemporary French secular dress - if so. is it Thevet. and is it a claim to have land-ed?):
cf. Rumeu de Armas, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 196-7.
35. E. Story Donno, ed., An Elizabethan in 1582, Hakiuyt Society, London, 1976, pp.
228-23 1 (the diarist notes Thevet's information on the Canaries and Madeira); Parker, op. cit.,
pp. 60-1.
Thevet's work, written as Nichols said «by hearesay)), Nichols produced his
own short account of the Canaries and Madeira, and this was published
anonymously in 1583. A desm)tion of tbe Fortunate Ilandes has received the
respectful attention of Canarian historians, and in 1963 Cioranescu
published a useful reprint and translation, with details of Nichols' heresy
trials3'.
Nichols' account was brief and limited in details, and not comparable
with that of a laken foreign resident, Leonardo Torriani (c.1590), though
this remained unpublished. Perhaps the publication of Nichols' account,
exiguous though it was, testifies to how little on the Atlantic islands had
appeared in English before. The account concentrates on the economic
products of the islands, but includes references to the former inhabitants,
the Guanche, and a description of the Peak. Little is said about the export
trade or the English contribution to it, but we leam that John Hill of
Taunton had a wineyarh on Hierro Island. The Inquisition is mentioned
but no details of Nichols' encounter with it. Al1 in all, the work is
disappointing, considering that Nichols must have had much fuller
information, and that he was an educated man. Nichols' account seems to
have been produced hastily, to meet the growing public interest in Atlantic
strategy aroused by the dramatic events of the late 1570s and early 1580s.
Nichols was one of a handful of Englishman who from the 1570s
began to produce translations from Portuguese and Spanish. A 1578
translation of the Spanish Indies section of Enciso's geography (by John
Frampton, another former Inquisition captive) contained a reference to the
canaries3'. Severa1 later relevant translations were organised by, and in one
instance prepared by, Richar Hakluyt.
36. A Pleasant descn$tion of the fortltnate llandes culled the Ilands of Canana.. . Coqbos-edby
thepoore Pilgrime, London, 1583; reprinted in Cioranescu, Thomas Nichols. Cioranes-cu
refers to the earlier work on Nichols by Bonnet Reveron and by Rumeu de Armas. There is
scope for a further annotated edition of Nichols' text, and a study of its relatinship to Thevet's
material. Nichols went on to publish a series of translations from Spanish. These translations
tended to direct the attention of the English both to :he wealth of the Spanish ernpire and to
the cBlack Legen» side of Spanish enterprise, thus giving the English econornic and moral
encouragernent to challenge Spain: so too did the English translations of another victirn of the
Inquisition, John Frampton; hence, Spanish religious persecution produced, indirectly,
English reaction. Coincidentally, the Canarian inquisition provided personnel for the newly-established
inquisition in New Spain, at Mexico City, whose campaign in 1572 against EngIish
prisoners frorn Hawkins' third voyage, when publicised in England, further fuelled anti-
Spanish feeling.
37. Parker, op. cit., pp. 88, 116.
Between the late 1550s and 1580 there were both routine and dramatic
English contacts with the islands, but none of these was publicised until
Hakluyt colleaed (and in some cases had encouraged the writing of) a
number of accounts which he published in his Principal Navigatiom of
1 5 8 9 ~ ~T.h ese accounts gave only a partial view of English aaivities.
Furthermore, as shown by his earlier compilation, Divers Voyages of 1582,
Hakluyt was mainly concerned with the ((westward enterprise)) to North
America; and voyages to the South that is, to Morocco, the Atlantic islands
apart from the Azores, and to Guinea -received less attention. In 1589,
Hakluyt published nothing specific on the islands apart from the passage
relating the conquest of the Canaries to the Machan legend, and references
to the islands were only incidental features of voyages elsewhere. Hakluyt
even failed to include Nichols' 1583 account. Nevertheless, in the accounts
of Tomson's voyage to New Spain in 1555, of Towerson's voyage to Guinea
in 1557-8, and of John Hawkins' first voyage to Guinea and America in
1562, there are significant references to English merchants living in the
Canaries and to English trade with these islands. The account of the 1562
voyage is introduced by Hakluyt with a pregnant statement; ((Master John
Haukins having made divers voyages to the yles of the Canaries, and there
by his good and upright dealing being growne in love and favour.with the
people, informed himselfe arnongst them by diligent inquisition, of the state
of the West India, whereof he had received some knowledge by the
instuctions of his f a t h e r . . ~Th~e~ s tatement may be coloured by the fact that
alrnost certainly it derived from things written or said to Hakluyt by
Hawkins himseif, as may the account of Hawkins' father's voyages to Guinea
and Brazil c. 1530, an account first published in 1 5 8 9 ~H~o.w ever, since the
account of John Hawkins' second voyage not only included a brief
description of the Canaries but referred openly to the assistance Hawkins . , received from cinc Canarian mcrchanr, Pedru de Puiitc, it 1s t'riat tiie
Hawkins family did in faa have a long connection with the Canaries. Indeed
Hawkins' father may very well have called at the Canaries on his
38. An exception to the staternent in the text was Hawkins' own account of his third voya-gc
7hKh hc püb!isid iil 1569. DuUt this iíieidy ííieniioned íhe Cznaii~j.
39. Hakhyt 1589, pp. 122, 524-5, 580-2. 1 repeat an argurnent to be found in rny con-tribution
to Quinn, D.B., Tbe Hakhyt bandbook, Hakluyt Society, London, 1974, pp. 190-
196. On Hawkins' visit to the Canaries in 1560, see Rumeu de Armas, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 336-
341; and on English cornrnercial and piratical contact, before 1560, ibid., chap. 8.
40. Hakhyt 1589, pp. 520-1.
trans-Atlantic voyages c. 1530, although his son's very brief account gives no
indication of this.
In 1589 Hakluyt also included incidental referentes to less friendly con-tacts
between the English and the Portuguese and Spanish. He reprinted the
Engiish voyages to Guinea origmally in Eden, which only hinted at Iberian
hostiiity; and added Towerson's three Guinea voyages of 1555-8, which
included a visit to Grand Canary in 1557 and a fairly polite encounter with a
Spanish fleet in harbour -this was in the period when Philip of Spain was
consort of Mary of ~ n ~ l a n dB~ut' .t he accounts of English voyages of the
1560s docurnent increasingly hostile relations, in Guinea,, in America, and
therefore in the islands between. In 1562 and 1564 Hawkins received
afriendly entertainment)) in the Canaries, at least from his comrnercial allies;
but in 1567 his own account (published 1569, reprinted by Hakluyt) spoke
of wzterL7g in the Caliaries and omated to memioII hiS c"n,inerc~a~
contacts and the barely-concealed hostility of the Spanish a~thor i t i e sS~h~e.
account of Fenner's voyage of 1566-1567 records a Portuguese attack on an
English ship off Marocco, very cautious and suspicious English contacts
with a Spanish governor on Teneriffe, and sea-fights with the Portuguese off
the Cape Verdes a d A Z Q ~ P S ~ Y~ .e t despite the chmging internatier?~!
climate, and despite the religious persecution in the Canaries, English
traders continued to maintain a measure of commercial relations: Hakluyt
records that in 1568 an Anglo-Spanish merchant travelled to America via
the Canaries and that in 1578 an Anglo-Portuguese merchant in Brazil was
sending goods through these i ~ l a n d sM~ ~or.e neutrally, in 1583 an Engiish
vessel was instructed to load salt in the Cape
However, in 1580 the elder Hakluyt, offering advice to voyagers to the
North, drew on experience in the southern oceans: «Wheras the Portingalles
have in theyr course to theyr Indies in the Southeast, certaine ports and
fortifications to thnist into by the way ... so you are to see what Islandes and
what portes you had need to have in your course to the ~ o r t h e a s t I~t ~ ~ .
41. ibid., pp. 122-3.
42. &d., pp. 522-524, 553; Williamson, J.A., HawkimoJPlymouth, London. 1949, pp.
112-3; Ri?meli de Armas, np. m?., vo! 1. pp. 425-440
43. Hakhyt 1589, pp. 143, 146-9.
44. Ibid., pp. 588, 639; see also Halkuyt 1598. vol. 3, p. 528 (English traders in [he
Canaries, 1574).
45. Hakluyt 1589. p. 187.
46. R. Hakluyt. Diven voyages, 1582, sig. Hi, reprinted Hakluyt 1589, p. 460.
might be inferred that Atlantic islands under Iberian nile were an obstacle
to English expansion; and certainly in the 1580s the English made attempts
to bring them under their own military and naval influence. In 1577 Drake
sailed through the Cape Verdes, capturing a Portuguese vessel, exchanging
shots with the land, and searching for provisions on the lesser islands; hence
the account of his circumnavigation, inserted by Hakluyt just before
publication in 1589, included some details about the islands. Eight years
later, in 1585, after abandoning an attempt to land on the Canaries, Drake
made a massive assault on the Cape Verdes, holding for a short period the
capital, Santiago: for reasons that are not entirely clear, Hakluyt did not
document this in 1589 but only in his second e d i t i ~ n ~ ~ .
In the early 1580s England was plunged into Atlantic adventures in the
w&e of a caii for assist;uice fmm eiemeiits iii tlie pPofiugriese empiie hostile
to the union of the clown of Portugal with that of Spain.
Anglo-Franco-Antonine forces landed on the Cape Verde Islands in 1582-3,
without success- perhaps this is why the episode is almost entirely
wrecorded in English sources. But the Azores was the focus for Portuguese
resistuncr te Pkifip, 2nd fnr Ang!c)-Fremh interventim in rxpprt d E.
António: the English effort was slight but not negligible48. Enough interest
was generated at home for the publication, probably in 1583, of translations
into English of two short Spanish accounts of the conquest of the
After the Spanish successes, both the Azores and the Cape Verdes became
targets for English assault. A news ballad of 1587 and a semiofficial account
published in English in 1589 referred to Drake's aaivities in the Canaries
and Cape Verdes; and Hakluyt in 1589 noted that three years earlier
Grenville had landed in the Azores «and spoyled the Townes of al1 such
thinges as were worth cariagen50.
47. Hakluyt 1589, p. 643 (Mrnrn 4, 4v); Hakluyt 1598, vol. 3, p. 750; M.F. Keeler, Sir
Francií Drake's West Ina'ian voyage 1581-1586, Hakluyt Society, London, 1981, pp. 27-28,
Parker, op. cit., pp. 158-161, 166-7.
48. See D.B. Quinn, England and tbe Azores 1581-2582: tbree letten, Série separatas
123, Centro de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga, Lisbon, 1979 (also Revista da Universidade de
Coirnbra, 27, 1979, pp. 205-217).
49. Rel&ion ofihe expongnaibie attcmpi an$conquest of tbe Yiande ojWe~c e~aan,d aij
tbe Ylands tbereto adZoyn/ing: don by Don Alba70 de Bacan, Marques of Santa C m . . . Done
in An. 1583. At London, Printed by Thomas Purfoote; A discourse oftbat whicbihappenedin
tbe battellfougbt betweenltbe two Navies of Spaine and Port/ugall, at tbe Ilands of Azores.
Anno Dom. 1582, Irnprinted at London by Thomas Purfoote. The British Library has a copy of
each.
50. Keeler, op. cit., pp. 223, 225-8: Hakluyt 1589, p. 748.
It was perhaps a recognition of the widening strategy of English
expansion that Ied Hakluyt, when preparing his second edition (published
1598-1600), to pay more attention to the early stages of English Southward
expansion, and hence to the Atlantic islands, than he had in his first edition.
In his 1599 ((Epistle Dedicatorien he proudly announced; ((1 have here set
downe the very original and infancie of our trades to the Canarian Ilands»
and to Morocco. He now included Nichols account of the Canaries and
Madeira c.1560, supplying the author's narne; he docurnented the earliest
English voyages to Barbary, in the 1550s; and he prefaced Nichols' account
with a note on English trade to the Canaries in the 1520s, based on Bristol
business records searched apparently by Hakluyt himself5'. Thus the
long-term economic aspea of Engl~sh contact with the islands was
emphasised.
But on the Cape Verdes and Azores Hakluyt could still offer nothing
specific; and references to these islands in his newer material only
strengthened the record of hostility, dramatic episodes and bloodshed. He
reprinted the account of Drake's 1585 assault on the Cape Verdes and
published for the first time an account of Sir Anthony Shirley's voyage
which set out in 1598 intending to sack Madeira and then sail to S. Tomé
but instead sacked Santiago in the Cape Verdes, in imitation of ~ r a k eT~he~ .
Azores was the scene of raids in 1586 and 1589 and of the figth of the
«Revenge» in 1591: Hakluyt reprinted accounts of the latter episodes
published in 1591 and 1 5 9 9 ~ P~u.e rto Santo in the Madeira group was
raided in 1 5 9 6 ~F~in. a lly, the unsuccessful attack on the Canaries by Drake
and Hawkins in 1595, widely reported in instant Spanish printed sources,
went alrnost un-noticed in England at the time, but was briefly referred to
in the account published by ~ a k l u ~Itt c~an~no.t be said that from this war
material we learn much about the Atlantic islands.
51. Haklzyt 1598, vol. 2, second numeration. p. 2.
52. HaRluyt 1598, vol. 3, pp. 599-600.
53. Hakluyt 1598, vol. 2, second numeration. p. 120: the account of the 1589 Cumber-land
voyage to rhe Azores first appeared in E.W(right). , Certain Errors in Navigation.. .,
London 1599 (reprinted Amsterdam, 1974): rhe «Revenge» story first appeared in Sir Walrer
Ralegh. A report of the tmtb of thehght about the iles ofAcores, London, 1591.
54. IíaRhyt iW8, VOL 3, p. 578. Many orher Engjisb navai contacts wirh Macieira, rhe
Canaries and particularly the Azores were recorded in sources unpublished at the rime: see
K.R. Andrews, Englzih privateering voyages to the B'e~t Indies 1588-95, Hakluyt Sociery,
Cambridge, 1959.
55. See K.R. Andrews, The last voyage ofDraRe andHawbins, Hakluyr Society, London.
1972, PP. 125-148; Hakhyt 1598, vol. 3. p. 583.
Four translations which Hadluyt organised also contained material on
the islands. Abraham Hartweli's immediate translation of Pigafetta's 1591
account of the Congo, published in 1597, contained short descriptions of the
Cape Verdes and S. Tomé. John Pory's A Geographical Histoire of Africa
published in 1600, was basically a translation of Leo Africanus' work on
North and West Africa, but the translator added a long seaion on the other
parts of Africa, compiled from various sources. This included descriptions,
mainly from Ramusio, of the Canaries, Madeira, the Cape Verdes and the
Equatorial islands (S. Tomé, Principe, Annobon and Fernando Po). Pory
added brief references to recent English and Dutch assaults, the latter on
Principe in 1598 and on the Canaries and S. Tomé in 1599. The third
translation, «correde& by Hakluyt, and published in 1601, was of Antonio
Galvio's Tratado (originally published 1563) and included references to the
discovery of the various islands. Finally, the 1598 instant translation from
Dutch of Linschoten's invaluable Itinerario presented much inforrnation on
the islands, including a very full seaion on the Azores later reprinted by
~ u r c h a s ~M~e.an while interest c. 1600 in contemprary events in the
Atlantic was shown by the instant translation and publication of a Dutch
printed account of Tbe Conquest of tbe Grand Canaries in 1599 by a Dutch
fleet 57.
Though Hakluyt had swept into his two editions most of the material
referring to the Atlantic islands whch became available before 1600, more
material surfaced during the next two decades and (partly due to Hakluyt's
own efforts) became available to his successor, Samuel Purchas, particulary
for his 1625 compilation, Purcbas bis Pi&ves. Apart from translations of
more foreign sources and additional accounts of voyages already
documented by Hakluyt, Purchas printed or reprinted accounts of additional
English voyages tothe islands. The account of Cumberland's 1596 voyage
inciuded an originai description of Lanzarote in the Canaries, by tthe
chaplain; and the accounts of Essex dslands voyage» of 1597 included a fair
amount of original material on the Azores. Sir Richard Hawkins' generous
Observations (published 1662, reprinted by Purchas), describing a 1590s
voyage, included unusually lengthy passages on Madeira, the Canaries and
56. For these translations organised by Hakluyt, see Quinn, Hahlzlyt handbooh, pp. 40-
41 ; R. Brown, ed.. , The histoq anddescription ofAfnca.. . done znto Englzsh.. . by John Poo.
vol. 1 , Hakluyt Society. London. 1896, pp. 93-102.
57. The Conqzlest of the Gmnd Canarzes.. . with the taking ofa towne in the Ile of Gomr-m
. . . London, 1599.
Cape Verdes, with particular attention paid to exotic items of natural
h i ~ t o r y ~Al~1 .i n all, however, the new material on the islands in this work
does not amount to very much, and it derived from the 1590s, a very well
documented decade. After 1600, partly because the wars fe11 off, partly
because routine contaas expended and helped to limit more exciting
episodes, and paaly because the islands were now more familiar to the
English, the original material becomes sparser, but more specialised and
detailed.
As the seventeenth century advanced, compilations on the general
geography or ethnography of the world began to appear with increasing
regularity (e.g. Abbot's Desmption of tbe World, 1599, 1600. 1605, etc;
D'Avity's Estates of tbe World, a traslation, 1 6 1 5; Heylin's Mimocosmos, 162 1);
but the inforrnation on the islands in such works was wholly unoriginal,
being generally borrowed from Hakluyt or Purchase. We shall therefore
disregard the dispersa1 after 1600 of unoriginal information, and confine our
attention to original information. In 1613, in his Pi&rimage, Purchase
published extraas from an account of Teneriffe written c.1600, and this
opened up a new theme by provinding instruaions for climbing the peak5?
Thomas Herbea's account ot his travels in the East, published 1634 (and
then re-issued at later dates with added derived material), made reference to
his sailing through the Canaries in 1626 and commented grandiloqiíently on
the Peak. The work was illustrated with original drawings, three of them
relating to the Canaries, and the drawing of the Peak seems to have been the
earliest representation of this curious natural feature in an English printed
sourcebO. Mere curiosity was the historical progenitor of scientific interest.
In 1652 a party of English traders climbed the Peak and the account of their
ascent was thought significant enough to appear in Thomas Sprat's serninal
History oftbe Roya¿ Society of 1667". Another aspea of the m-in to the Age
V-6I CU,;,~PLP _ ..~wrnr _U~ +LI~-h e ~UACVL IV P ~ ~ =f PnarIigac~iun~a! t~ecbz~iyue~s. l~i, 1 539 &,
author of a work entitled Cettain Errors in Navigatioe wrote: «I was...
58. S. Purchas, Purchas bis Pil'grimes, London, 1625, pan. 2, book 1, pp. 1935-74; book
6, pp. 1155-56, book7, pp. 1369.73.
59. S. Purchas, Punhas his Pi&Pimage, London, 161 3, pp. 785-9.
60. T.H., A Relation ofsomeyeares Travaile, begunne Anno 1626, London, 1634. pp. 3-
4. Earlier English drawings of the Canaries and Azores were made on the 1595 Drake and
Hawkins voyage: see Andrews, Last voyage, p. 264.
61. Sprat, Thomas, History oftbe RoyaLSocléty, London, 1667, pp. 200-202: cf. R. Davies,
ed., Tbelife ofMaarmaduLeRawdo of York. London, 1863, pp. 48-52.
moved ... to divert my mathematicall studies, from a theoretical speculation
in the Universities, to the practica11 demonstration thereof in Navigation, by
experience at sea and this especially in the voyage to the Azores, happily
perforrned in the year 1589)). The writer, Edmund Wright, published a map
of the voyage to the Azores, to demonstrate the cartographical application of
his theoretical k n ~ w l e d ~ e ~ ~ .
(c.. And in the Iles which wee
Seeke, when wee can move, our ships rooted bee».
Like the mathematician, Edmund Wright, hs contemporary, the poet
John Donne, sailed to the Azores, in his case in 1597 on the famous dslands
Voyage)). En route, Donne wrote the poems entitled «The Stormen and «The
Calme)) -though these are more metaphysical in content than nautical or
geographical. Other references to the islands can be found in English
imaginativa literature. «As the Canary Isles were thine ... » sang the poet
Herrick, for instance. Shakespeare referred to the wild dance known as a
«canary»-«Make you dance canaqm. But the vast majority of references were
not to the islands by name but to their principai export commo&ties. cdf
sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked!)) said Falstaff. References to
«sack», the wine procured increasingly from the Canaries, abound in
Shakespeare and in other Elizabethan and early seventeenth century
dramatis&. And «sugar» too was frequently mentioned.
Thus, imaginative literature to some extent reflected reality better than
did factual literature. It is significant that our survey of the latter ends with
resident English merchants climbing the Peak of Teneriffe, partly as
recreation (pointing fonvard to «tourism) partly out of curiosity (pointing. .
62. Wright, op. cit., introduction and map. The map is entitled <A Particular Plattfor
. f . A T / A D . C . : L A . . A Juurrdg b u &a&~ U C J U ,, LI*.UICJ.Y. 111 IU- J ~ C L CJIL CLILUU I L.ULIUUII ~ L I I I L C~UI I U L L I CnLL u I c > 111ap. u11
particular sea chnrt for the Islands Azores». Otherwise there appear to have been no English
pre-1650 printed maps specifically devoted to any of the islands: cf. C. Broekema, Maps of the
Canary IslandspzlbLishedbefore 18S0: a checklist, London, 1971. However a map illustrating
Drake's 1585 assault on Santiago in the Cape Verdes appeared in accounts of 1588 and 158?
(see Keeler, o#. cit., p. 313 and Plate IIIb), and this was rhe first map to show the Santiago
region in such detail. Mota, A. Teixeira da, Cinco sécdos de cartográfiu das ilhas de Cabo Ver-a'e,
Lisbon, i96i. offprinr from Garcia a2 Grza, 9, i v b i j .
63. See Andres de Lorenzo-Cáceres, MaLvasíay Falstafl Instituto de Estudios Canarios, La
Laguna, 1941, pp. 11, 37-8; and on Canary wines, J. Rodriguez Rodriguez, La vidy los vinos
de Canarias, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, (1973). The former work 1 was unable to locate in Britain
and 1 am much indebted to the Librarian of the Casa de Colon, Las Palmas, for carrying out a
search for the work and allowing me to consult it.
forward to scientific inquiry). But the factual literature we have cited deals
very little with the central circumstance of pre-1650 English connection
with the islands, economic interest. It tells us little about commodities,
shippers and traders (for these we must turn to the archives), and it
concentrates on dramatic episodes, mainly within a few decades, illustrating
the arts of war, not the arts of peace.
Few of the works we have cited have been edited by modern historians
and their material on the Atlantic islands carefully assessed: it is therefore
difficult to say precisely what contribution the English descriptions of the
islands make to their historical documentation. However it would seem that
in general, while English printed literature made a not insignificant
contribution to the contemporary view of the islands, partly because
contemporary printed material in Portuguese and Spanish was limited, it is
do~jhtfi! if it war read and had miich influence outside Rritain. As a
contribution to our modern understanding of the history of the islands, the
English printed literature is useful at only a few points: the opening of the
archives of Portugal, Spain and Britain has shown how fragmentary and
sometimes inaccurate contemporary printed references could be. Thus it is
arguable that the pre-1650 English printed literature on the Atantic islands
is more valuable for the history of Britain, its expansion and earlier world
attitudes, than it is for the history of the Atlantic islands.
* * *
HISTORIOGRAPHY
In tailpiece, a word about British historiographical interest. In the
1780s Viera y Clavijo cited some 20 English authors in his history of the
Canaries, some of them general works on the classics, theology and
geography but the remainder historical surces, including Nichols, Hakluyt,
Purchas and Sprat. Viera y eiavijo also cited the remafkabie contribution to
Canarian historiography of Georges Glas, an English trader who in 1764
translated an early Spanish source and published it with other material inhis
Acconnt of the Discovery and History of the Canaries. At the end of the next
century, the Marquis of Bute, wintering in the Canaries, became interested
:- &LAL i-*--i--l d--.---+A+:m- ,4 +l.- íL.,,-,-h- 1~--.o*-- A-A +n $II++L~+h:-e
1 1 1 LIIC I U U L V I I C * , U " C L U I , L I I L a C I " I , "L L I I L UU'%llLl,L Ia'lsu'%fj\-o> aliu L" LULLLiLL Lila
work purchased and revomed to Britain a substantial quantity of the records
of the Canaries Inquisition. The catalogue of these records, published in
1903 by W. de Gray Birch, brought home to scholars the great value of
Inquisition documents for the study of social relations in the islands -for
instance, the social relations of the later sixteenth century Engiish traders.
The Inquisition records, now happily reassembled in the Canaries, provided
a major source for Rurneu de Armas' discussion of English naval attacks;
2nd they inspired eariier a most significant study, L.B. Wolfs Jews in tbe
Canary Idands (1926). Finally, the most recent monograph on the history of
the Canaries, Dr. Felipe Fernándet-Armesto's brilliant study of The Canaly
Idands afer the Conqgest (1982), testifies to continuing British-based and
English-language intered4. However the Portuguese islands have received
much less specific attention from English-language historiansó5: indeed
alrnost total neglect of their pre-1650 history has only been redeemed by
Bentley Duncan's comprehensive 1972 work.
64. It is worth noting that under a scheme for allocating arnong British universitv libraries
priorities in the purchase of material on Africa. the library of the University of Liverpool was
between 1965 and 1980 responsible for assembling material on Spanish Africa. which was
taken ro include the Canaries. See J.C. Talbot, nThe acquirition of libraly rnaterials of Span-irh-
speaking A frica by Liveqool Univenigy Libraryn. Africana Research and Documentation.
7. 1975, pp. 7-8. Despite recent economies affecting purchases. rhis library conrinues to build
up a collection of Canariana.
65. 1 rnention here m? own contribution to the PortugueselEnglish edition of rhe 1625
account of western Guinea by the Cape Verde Islands, writer, André Donelha: the edition was
published in 1977. the principal editor being the late Avelino Teixeira da Mota. Ar the time of
his death earlier this year (1982). Teixeira da Mota was preparing. in collaboration with myself.
an edition of the 1594 account of western Guinea by another Cape Verde Islands writer. André
Alvares de Alrnada.