ABSTRACT

In Chapter 1 it was suggested that in the two-part Caroline representation of Purser and Clinton, A True Relation, of the Lives and Deaths of the two most Famous English Pyrats (1639), these charismatic and economically powerful figures might be considered an ideal in terms of empire-building. Braver than merchants, more financially astute than gentlemen, the two pirates created and controlled a vast trading network which outperformed England in the global economy. As a result, the criminal pirates’ seaborne empire could be seen as one kind of model for England to emulate. Chapter 2 further explores the connections and cross-currents between piracy and empire through a focus on another Elizabethan ‘pirate’, Sir Francis Drake. Historically Purser and Clinton’s treatment contrasts with Drake’s at every level; they were hung for their crimes and smeared in pitch, whilst Drake was celebrated and rewarded. Purser and Clinton have become a footnote in history, critically neglected, their activities viewed as culturally marginal. In comparison, Drake has been the subject of numerous biographies and critical studies, and had his reputation championed by nineteenth-century historians as one of the architects of the emergent English empire and a Protestant worthy.1 The purpose of this chapter is not to dispute Drake’s treatment by later generations. Instead it analyses the ways ‘piracy’ is used rhetorically in accounts of Drake’s circumnavigation, undertaken between 1577 and 1580, in order to explore the ways seaborne crime was, in certain circumstances, represented as central to the cultural construction of English imperial aspirations. Focus on the semantics of the highly-flexible term ‘piracy’ allows us to see the ways Drake’s seaborne activities provided an important model for imperial achievement during the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and early Caroline periods.