Tales from the Green Dragon: uncovering lived experiences in HCA records
Examining HCA 1/47 records from The National Archives - now digitised as part of Life At Sea - presents an engaging opportunity to consider the ways in which legal evidence can be used to uncover broader aspects of social history, and historical lived experiences.
In early December 1609, two women - Anne Oatlye and Anne Crayford - visited the Green Dragon Inn in Southwark, London, near what is now Borough Market. The conversation they had there would result in both women being summoned before the High Court of Admiralty to give depositional evidence in an ongoing series of cases against an international network of pirates.1
HCA 1/47 Copyright of The National Archives
Piracy was a difficult political problem in the first decades of James I/VI’s reign, not least because of how deeply maritime depredation was embedded into the social and economic fabric of England’s seafaring and littoral communities.2 Although open conflict with Spain ended in 1604, English seafarers continued to prey on shipping belonging to Spain and other nations; this resulted in something of a diplomatic crisis.3 To assuage this, increasing pressure was put on the Admiralty to visibly suppress piracy – an effort that is seen within the High Court of Admiralty records from the period.4 A high-profile execution of eighteen men charged with piracy, on 21 December 1609, was one culmination of that effort.5 Amongst these pirates was one John Jennings, and it is Jennings to whom Anne Oatlye and Anne Crayford’s conversation turned that night in the Green Dragon Inn.
The two Annes appeared in the High Court of Admiralty on 8 January 1610, by which time Jennings’ body – after his public hanging – would have been on display alongside the nearby Thames.6 However, the Court was still engaged in unpicking the workings of the extensive pirate ‘confederacy’ to which Jennings had belonged, along with its network of terrestrial abettors.7 As such the court took great interest when rumours spread that Anne Oatlye, some weeks prior to Jennings’ execution, had told Anne Crayford – whilst having ‘speeches’ and likely drinks with her in the Green Dragon - that she knew someone was going to profit from his death:
…shee knewe that somebodie shouldbe the better for them if they died by thirtie or fortiepounds and a bale of clothes, but whoe that was the[said] Anne Oatly ment that should be the better bytheir deaths this [examinant] doth not knowe.
HCA/1/47 Copyright of The National Archives
Naturally, the High Court of Admiralty – which was concurrently investigating Jennings’ terrestrial financial support network, which had apparently been managed by his father in Portsmouth – was interested in this information.8 The Court wanted to know – to whom had Crayford told this information? Had she heard anything further from Oatlye since?
The minutiae of John Jennings’ financials, and of those who knew him, are not immediately apparent from either Annes’ deposition – perhaps the court never found out all those details. However, if we approach the depositions from a more lateral angle, we are able to glean information which, although largely irrelevant to the Admiralty, is of great interest to the historian.9 For example, we can learn a lot about Oatlye and Crayford’s lives in early seventeenth century London. We know, for example, that both Annes met socially in inns like Southwark’s Green Dragon. This is further proof that use of drinking establishments, as ‘essential elements’ in early modern social life, also extended to women.10
Geographic mobility is also visible in these depositions. When asked who she told about Oatlye’s piratical revelations, Crayford – a resident of Redrith, now Rotherhithe - happily described speaking to a variety of family, friends and acquaintances who lived around London and its hinterlands, as far as Barnet.11 Elements of class and social standing are also visible in these depositions.
Crayford is described as ‘wife of William Crayford mariner’, where ‘wife of [husband’s name], [husband’s profession]’ typically replaces the formulaic description of an examinant’s profession when HCA depositions were given by women. As a ‘mariner’ (differentiated from a ‘sailor’), William would have been an experienced seafarer who likely held an ‘officer’ (or equivalent) role aboard ship; this places the Crayfords in the ‘middling’ class of seventeenth-century London. Similarly, we learn that Anne Oatlye sent her ‘maide’ to Crayford’s home, again signalling a household of at least middling means.
As a result, we are able to use Crayford and Oatlye as one example to reconstruct the social lives of ‘middle class’ Jacobean women in London – women with mobility, who socialised in drinking establishments and kept up to date with the day’s hot political topics, like piracy and maritime crime. Even though these two short depositions are but small components in the Admiralty’s larger efforts against Jacobean piracy, they still have a lot to tell us about early modern life.
About the author
Graham Moore is a PhD student and Associate Lecturer at the University of Reading and The National Archives, UK.
About the collection
Life at Sea is out now. HCA 1/47 is available for open access for 30 days.
References
1 TNA, HCA 1/47/fo.76r-v.
2 J.C. Appleby, Women and English piracy, 1540-1720: partners and victims of crime (Boydell, 2013), p. 15.
3 C. Kelleher, The Alliance of Pirates: Ireland and Atlantic Piracy in the early seventeenth century (Cork University Press, 2020), pp. 178-182.
4 J.C. Appleby, Under the bloody flag: pirates of the Tudor Age (The History Press, 2011; 2009), p. 13.
5 G. Moore, ‘The Liues, Apprehensions, Arraignments and Executions of the 19 Late Pyrates: Jacobean Piracy in Law and Literature’, Humanities, Vol. 11, No. 82, p. 1.
6 C. Jowitt, The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630: English Literature and Seaborne Crime (Taylor & Francis, 2010), p. 21.
7 C.M. Senior, A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in its Heyday (David & Charles, 1976), pp. 30-35.
8 Deposition of Thomas Burton. TNA, HCA 1/47/fo.74r.
9 Senior, A Nation of Pirates, p. 14.
10 E. Hubbard, City Women: Money, Sex, and the Social Order in Early Modern London (Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 155.
11 Namely ‘one Mr Crayford Parson of Ridge nere Barnett’, presumably a relative by marriage on the side of her husband, William.
Recent posts
In preparation for migration to AM Quartex, the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press had to take stock of and rationalise seven distinct digital collections. Learn about how this was overcome in part three of this guest blog series.
From medieval markets to a global powerhouse, London’s evolution between 1450 and 1750 is vividly documented in the records of its livery companies. Central to the city’s economy, these institutions reveal how London navigated challenges like plagues, the Great Fire, and rapid growth, underscoring their vital role in shaping a thriving metropolis.