Material and Symbolic Circulation between Spain and England, 1554–1604

Anne J. Cruz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754662150
• eBook ISBN: 9781351919180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Separated only by a narrow body of water, Spain and England have had a long history of material and cultural interactions; but this intertwined history is rarely perceived by scholars of one country with a view toward the other. Through their analyses of the various modes of exchange of material goods and the circulation of symbolic systems of meaning, the contributors to the anthology-historians and literary critics-investigate, for the first time, the two nations' express points of contact and conflict during these historically crucial fifty years. Focusing on the half-century period that began with the marriage of Mary Tudor to Prince Philip of Spain, and spanned the reigns of Philip II and Elizabeth I of England, the essays in this anthology demonstrate and problematize, from the perspective of Spanish cultural history, the significant material, cultural, and symbolic contacts between the two countries. The volume shows how the two countries' alliances and clashes, which led to the debacle of the 'Invincible Armada' of 1588 and continued for decades afterwards, held enormous historical significance by shaping the religious, political, and cultural developments of the modern world.

PART I
Material and Symbolic Exchanges

Chapter 1
The Frustrated Unity of Atlantic Europe: The Roles of Spain and England

William D. Phillips, Jr.

In premodern times, the lands of Atlantic Europe had the potential to form a complementary economic system. That system was almost never able to function properly, because of frequent disruptions. Many of the other chapters in this volume deal with specific aspects of what happened in a particularly acute phase of hostility, in the second half of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth, when war, politics, dynastic struggles, and religious differences were all at play and reinforcing one another. The events at the time of Philip II and Elizabeth I are striking and dramatic, highlighted by the Dutch Revolt, Philip’s attempted invasion of England, and the defeat of the Great Armada. It is necessary to remember that these events had long historic antecedents that were at least two centuries old by then. Scholars have addressed some of those features, but larger parts remain to be worked by future scholars.

In the period from the thirteenth century to the early seventeenth, it is possible to see close connections and extensive interchange in Atlantic Europe, which can be defined as the areas of Europe touching the Atlantic Ocean—the Iberian Peninsula, western France, the British Isles, and areas closely connected, including the Low Countries. This group of states—kingdoms and duchies in the period we are examining—had important economic ties and even in the late Middle Ages had wider connections to the North and Baltic Seas and to the Mediterranean. In the fifteenth century, links developed to Atlantic Africa and in the sixteenth to the Americas and even Asia.

Within the area of Atlantic Europe, the lands varied in their physical environment. We can point to differences in a number of measurements: rainfall, sunlight, temperature, and wind and water currents. All those interacted with the underlying geological structures, rocks and soil types. In addition, mineral deposits and mining activities varied over the region. For our purposes, the most important were the metals that were irregularly distributed and the object of extraction and trade from prehistoric times. Throughout the region, there were good agricultural lands, grasslands for pastures, and hilly lands with forests that still had not been cleared by the late Middle Ages. In the Atlantic itself, currents and differences in depth and temperature meant uneven distributions of fish. Complete analyses of the complementary nature of the different physical environments of Atlantic Europe remain to be written.¹

The late medieval inhabitants of these regions took advantage of the conditions nature handed them and tended to produce those crops or animals best suited for their areas. They could augment what they got from local production with the acquisition of imported products, paid for often with the profits they made from exporting their own specialties. Thus trade developed from early times in Atlantic Europe, and by the thirteenth century there was a well-established network of commercial centers tied together by shipping lanes. We should be aware that most long-distance trade in this region was sea trade. Medieval and early modern roads and bridges did not permit the carriage of bulk goods for great distances. For that, ships were more effective carriers, and shippers could avoid the worst features of land transportation. The evolution of ship design over the period has drawn the attention of a number of scholars. The overall picture is one of gradually changing details leading to improvements in handling, maneuverability, and navigation. The Iberians led the way in the fifteenth century by blending aspects of Mediterranean and Atlantic vessels to produce the famous caravels, naos, and galleons familiar on the Indies run but also used in Atlantic trade.² The region was potentially important as an economic unit, because the peoples of its coasts and harbors had developed maritime skills in shipbuilding and sailing and commercial skills in marketing their goods and manufactures.

The items traded constitute a long list. From Iberia to other parts of Atlantic Europe went Spanish and Portuguese wines, including ordinary red and white, but more important the fortified wines such as port and sherry. Another product of the vineyards—vinegar—was also traded. Fruits were popular: citrus fruits, apples, figs, dates, and raisins. Nuts, especially almonds, figured prominently. Fish, fresh and salted, went north. Olive oil and the soap made from it were popular, as were cured hides and leather products. Iron from the mines of Spain reached northern markets in the form of iron bars and manufactured iron products: nails and needles, weapons and armor, anchors, fasteners, ship fittings. Other minerals included mercury and cinnabar as well as salt. The greatest source of export income came from wool from the herds of merino sheep.

Imports included various grains, including wheat and barley. Even though Castile produced large amounts of wheat, it was often cheaper in the Basque country to bring in wheat from France by ship rather than ship it over the Cantabrian Mountains from Old Castile. Castile produced a great amount of its own wool cloth and satisfied local demand in all categories but the finest, which tended to come from England earlier on and later from Flanders. Lead, tin, and silver were among the metals traded southward. From Flanders came tapestries, ivory carvings, and paintings. Herring and hake from northern waters supplemented the harvest of fish by Iberian seamen.

Trade between Castile and England was already well established by the thirteenth century and followed a seasonal pattern. In the winter months, Castilian and English ships brought southern foods to Bristol. In summer, the northbound freight consisted of iron and manufactured goods, from nails and combs to anchors and crossbows, and olive oil and wine, soap and leather, alum for the cloth industry, and salt for fisheries. Some Spanish wool reached England in the later Middle Ages, but never in large amounts, because of the English production of raw wool. Cargoes sent to Spain included woolen cloth and a variety of other products that we mentioned above.³

On the continent, Castilian merchants played more significant roles. Overland trade from Castile into France was less important than maritime commerce. Nonetheless, one important land route ran from Burgos to Paris and Arras via Bayonne, Poitiers, and Orleans. Some trade goods from Castile, mainly alum, reached Toulouse in late medieval times, but the route was difficult and little used.⁴ The great expansion of Hispano-French trade occurred with the growth of maritime trade, and by the thirteenth century, Basques had become prominent in the carrying trade between Spain and northern France, as well as in the trading circuit that connected Castile, France, England, and Flanders.

We could also point to other more complicated commercial features, as, for example, the trade in Gascon wine to England. Gascony, centered on Bordeaux in what is now southwestern France, was a famous wine-producing region, and under control of the English kings until late in the Middle Ages. It supplied a large proportion of the ordinary table wine for English tables. But that wine was not carried in English ships. Instead Gascon and Spanish (by which I mean Basque and other Cantabrian) shippers shared the trade, with the Spaniards carrying the bulk of the wine.⁵

Perhaps the most important connections of Castile with another part of Atlantic Europe were the connections with the county of Flanders. Cantabrian and Basque shippers began to visit Flanders in the thirteenth century, and in the fifteenth century, Castilian merchants began to establish colonies in the principal Flemish weaving centers, principally in the city of Bruges. The main reason for their presence was to manage the sale of fine Spanish merino wool to the weavers of Flanders. In return, the main Flemish exports were fine cloths, tapestries, and paintings. Many of the churches of northern Castile gained their Flemish paintings in this way. Over time, the Castilian families intermarried with Flemish families and gradually blended into the local society.⁶

Merchant communities were important not just in Flanders. Resident merchants aided trade connections elsewhere. There were English and Flemish and to a degree French merchants resident in various parts of Iberia, and there were important colonies of Spanish merchants in Brittany and Normandy and other parts of France.⁷ The Spanish language was commonly spoken in the trading towns of western France and Flanders, and it came to influence the local dialects in places such as Bruges.⁸ Insurance, especially maritime insurance, developed first in the Mediterranean, and Spanish merchants from Burgos and Seville introduced its techniques into northwest Europe.⁹ Because this article concerns Atlantic Europe, we cannot say anything about the important Italian communities in eastern and southern Spain as well as in Portugal.

Trade was probably the most important element of cohesion in the region in this period, but there were certainly other ways that people and ideas circulated through the region. The vast majority of the people in the region were Christian, and until the sixteenth century, the Christians were all Catholic. The common religion facilitated travel and exchanges between people who may have spoken different languages.

Late medieval and early modern Europeans traveled more frequently and over greater distances than scholars may have previously thought. Scholars such as Jean Verdon have grouped medieval travelers into four major categories.¹⁰ Some traveled on their own account. These included merchants and students, monarchs and nobles. Many young noblemen traveled widely as knights errant as they sought to prove their prowess and see a bit of the world. The apt German term for these noble excursions is Rittersreisen. In some cases knights traveled in order to avoid conflict with their fathers as they waited for their inheritances.¹¹ Others traveled throughout Europe at the orders of a king or other lord. These included ambassadors and other envoys, agents, and messengers. Still others had religious motivations, as pilgrims, crusaders, and missionaries. Some few traveled beyond the bounds of Europe and the Mediterranean to seek passages to Asia, beginning with the missionaries and merchants who followed the Mongol routes to Asia—men such as John of Piano Carpini and Marco Polo—or sought ocean pathways to India and Cathay—Columbus and Da Gama were the first successful ones. Farther down the social scale, artisans and peasants sought new and better opportunities by relocating, when the laws that governed them permitted it. Troubadours and other entertainers were almost always on the move, but, like those of the artisans and peasants, their travels left little impression on the written record.

For our purposes, we can see travelers moving about from Spain to England and back for a variety of reasons. Probably the greatest numbers of those from England who went to Spain were pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. Even though the greatest numbers of Santiago pilgrims were French, there were still an appreciable number of English pilgrims who traveled either by land or by sea to the ports of northern Spain and thence by foot to Compostela.¹²

Enterprising scholars could mine literature more than it has been for examples of cosmopolitan travelers. For an example of English knowledge of Spain, we can do no better than to look at Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims of the late fourteenth century. Among those pilgrims, the Knight “had ridden into battle, no man more, / As well in Christian as in heathen places, / And ever honored for his graces.” The Knight had been to Spain at the time of the Christian conquest of Algeciras in 1344. “When, in Granada, Algeciras sank/ Under assault, he had been there.”¹³ Chaucer’s skipper (shipman) “knew all the havens as they were/ From Gottland to Finisterre, and every creek in Brittany and Spain.”¹⁴ The bawdy wife of Bath had made a pilgrimage to Santiago, as well as others to Jerusalem and Rome.¹⁵ The monk’s tale included Pedro el Cruel among the worthies, and Chaucer’s Sir Topaz, though he never left Flanders, had shoes of Spanish leather.¹⁶

University students and professors sought teaching positions and instruction in the famous university centers. Most English and Spanish students went to Paris, though, rather than English scholars attending Salamanca or Alcalá de Henares or Spanish students attending Oxford or Cambridge.¹⁷

Royal marriages took the intended brides and their entourages to the kingdom of their spouses, and brought closer relations between the royal houses as well as exchanges of tastes and styles from the twelfth century onward. Eleanor Plantagenet, daughter of the English king Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, married Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1177 when she was fifteen and four years later gave birth to the first of four royal children.¹⁸

In 1254, Fernando III of Castile’s daughter Eleanor of Castile married Edward I of England. In the course of their life together, she bore him sixteen children, and he was heartbroken when she died at the age of forty-six. To commemorate his love for her, he ordered a cross to be erected at each stopping place along the route of her funeral cortege. The Eleanor Crosses numbered eleven, and the last of them, Charing Cross gave its name to the road at whose beginning it stands. Some say that the name Elephant and Castle, a pub and tube stop in south London, comes from a corruption of Eleanor of Castile.¹⁹

There were also traveling knights, some of them knights errant and others of them mercenaries, especially those who fought in the Castilian civil wars of the fourteenth century. Among the late medieval disruptions was the Hundred Years’ War, which did not finally end until 1453, is usually presented as a conflict between France and England over tw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction—Crossing the Channel
• Part I Material and Symbolic Exchanges
• Part II Circulating Fictions of the Other
• Part III Wars of Discourse, Discourses of War
• Bibliography
• Index