Defending England’s Islands
In this excerpt from England’s Islands in a Sea of Troubles, David Cressy considers the vulnerability of England’s islands to foreign invasion and their utility as bases of English power. The excerpt concludes with a section from the last chapter of the book, and explores the problem of anomalous and competing jurisdictions in a world of quickening economy, expanding global ambition, and extended foreign wars.
7 | Fortress Islands
Island isolation allowed inhabitants a measure of security, but also exposed them to danger. Responsible English governments fortified their islands against external threats, and developed them as outliers of dynastic and national power. Frontier islands served the state as bastions and bases, protecting the homeland and its periphery of force. Island harbours and roadsteads sheltered commercial shipping and served as springboards for naval operations. Their castles, garrisons, and munitions represented the kingdom’s honour as well as its strength. Part of their task was to deny such facilities to England’s enemies as the international situation unfolded. Islanders had to acknowledge their place in the imperial dynastic project, though their local view was less strategic than the wider concerns of London. This chapter examines the never-ending effort of councillors, captains, and governors to maintain readiness in islands at risk of attack. It recognizes the difficulties of access, as well as the urgency of supply, that affected both defence and communication from Elizabethan times to the English civil war. Insular martial and material arrangements formed the local face of grand strategy and foreign relations.
The natural fortifications of many islands gave comfort to military planners. ‘Firm against the Gallick inroads’, their cliffs, rocks, and waters inhibited enemy attack. The western part of the Isle of Wight, for example, was ‘fenced about with steep and craggy rocks’, and ‘southward, where it looks to France, it is inaccessible’, though other parts were more exposed.¹ Guernsey was likewise ‘encompassed around with a pale of rocks, being very defensible . . . from the attempting invasion of enemies’.² Other islands similarly took advantage of their natural mottes and moats. ‘Being divided from all other countries by the ocean’, as one seventeenth-century commentator observed, they were ‘not subject to those incursions that contiguous countries are’.³ There seemed little likelihood of islanders facing foreign cavalry. By the same token, most islands lay beyond the speedy reach of reinforcement. Their situation, as defenders of the Scillies and the Channel Islands understood, was ‘so remote as it cannot be seasonably seconded from the main’.⁴
Military architecture, military hardware, and military leadership stood between the islands and their enemies. The authorities had responsibility for infrastructure, weaponry, manpower, and supplies, as well as intelligence and training. The insular terrain generally gave advantage to defenders. Any intending invader faced the hazard of tides and currents, cliffs and shoals, as well as the prospect of landing under fire. Even the smallest of islands had defensive breastworks and platforms, sconces and walls, with musketry, cannon, and forces to man them. Although island militias, in a pinch, could mount some resistance, it took professional soldiers to operate heavy ordnance and to perform the duties of garrisons. Every island governor wanted culverins and gunpowder, as well as well-paid and well-victualled soldiers. Sometimes the politicians contributed more by lobbying in London than by resident service in the locality. When governor Danby of Guernsey sought reinforcements in 1627, he advised the Privy Council that his garrison was ‘subject to divers delays and casualties of weather, both to be brought and sent for’, though he himself had little interest in crossing the Channel to join them.⁵
Military architecture, military hardware, and military leadership stood between the islands and their enemies.
Available weaponry ranged from demi-cannons, which could fire a six-inch shot over half a mile, down to hand pieces and bows and arrows. Defenders on Lundy threw stones. The most commonly deployed ordnance in garrisoned island castles were demi-culverins, ten to twelve feet in length, with a bore of four and a half inches, firing a ten-pound ball; sakers or quarter-culverins, around eight-foot long, with a three-inch bore, firing six-pound shot; minions, slightly smaller, firing three-to-four-pound balls; and six-foot falconets, with a two-inch bore for one-and-a-half-pound bullets.⁶ ‘Brass’ ordnance (actually bronze) was preferable to iron guns, which were cheaper to make but rust-prone and brittle. All relied on gunpowder brought from mainland stores, which was subject to deterioration (although there were some local efforts to make saltpetre).
Artillery and its ancillary equipment needed regular maintenance and skilful handling, neither of which could be guaranteed in remote offshore facilities. Experienced gunners knew that ‘it chanceth many times through the negligence or fault of the founders, that some pieces are not truly bored’ and that such weapons were ‘very dangerous to shoot for fear of breaking’.⁷ Oxidization and neglect had similar consequences. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that an armourer on Guernsey was ‘like to have been slain, the piece breaking in divers pieces’, when he tested one of the castle guns in 1600.⁸
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15 | Islands in an Island Empire
England’s islands faced the eighteenth century with more ships in their roadsteads, more soldiers in their castles, and more guns on their walls than ever before. As forward bases of the fiscal–military state, they were resources as well as responsibilities in a growing global struggle. Royal officials at their quaysides as well as in their castles attended to the ligaments and sinews of power. Recurrent war with France put the islands in peril, but also made them indispensable for sheltering warships and staging troops. London needed them to be loyal, and firmly under control, with no prospect of falling into enemy hands. Tensions between local authority and imperial oversight continued unresolved, so managing the heritage of difference required patience and understanding.¹
Oceanic traffic brought the merchants and merchantmen of the Americas and the orient to island harbours, while local commerce quickened their connections to domestic and nearby hinterlands.
As commercial nodes and military assets, the islands commanded continuing attention at Whitehall and Westminster. Their importance was unabated as maritime havens and outposts of power. Oceanic traffic brought the merchants and merchantmen of the Americas and the orient to island harbours, while local commerce quickened their connections to domestic and nearby hinterlands. Channel Island mariners in particular were active in the Newfoundland fisheries, and in the carrying trade with England’s plantations. Customs officers kept busy in the Isles of Scilly, the Isle of Wight, Guernsey, and Jersey. Even the Earl of Derby’s Isle of Man felt pressure to allow agents of the crown to scrutinize its trade. The invigoration of imperial commerce energized the entire archipelagic perimeter, enriching its participants but also drawing the attention of boards, councils, and commissions based in London.
From 1689 to 1815, with varying intervals of peace, England’s islands were threatened by war with France. The international situation, wrote John Shebbeare in 1771, ‘renders them the peculiar objects of British vigilance’, as England’s enemies commanded greater resources.² The central government assumed a greater role in island affairs, as fortifications were hardened and garrisons expanded to guard against attack. Militarization and anglicization were among the cultural consequences of this strategic shift. Increasing numbers of British troops saw service in England’s islands, where some of them subsequently settled. The Guernsey garrison, rarely more than 500 strong before the seventeenth century, comprised as many as 4,000 infantrymen and a company of artillery by 1805.³ Other islands saw comparable infusions of British military force.
Chapter 7:
1. Henry Jones, Vectis. The Isle of Wight: A Poem in Three Cantos (1766), 22; Baptista Boazio, The True Description or Drafte of That Famous Ile of Wighte (1591); Guy Miege, The New State of England under Their Majesties K. William and Q. Mary (1691), 97.
2. John Speed, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1632), 94.
3. Slingsby Bethel, The Interest of Princes and States (1680), 1.
4. Sir Francis Godolphin to Robert Cecil, 17 May 1599, HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of … the Marquis of Salisbury, 24 vols (1883–1976), ix. 171.
5. SP 16/526, fos 2v–3.
6. Robert Norton, The Gunner: Shewing the Whole Practice of Artillerie (1629), 51–3; Nathaniel Nye, The Art of Gunnery (1647), 71–8.
7. William Bourne, The Arte of Shooting in Great Ordnaunce (1587), 45–6, 62.
8. BL, MS Egerton 2812, fo. 6.
Chapter 15:
1. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (Cambridge, MA., 1990); Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, 2010), 35.
2. John Shebbeare, An Authentic Narrative of the Oppressions of the Islanders of Jersey,
2 vols (1771), i. 318.
3. Allan Brodie, ‘The Garrison Defences on St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, English Heritage Historical Review, 7 (2012), 36–65; Jonathan Duncan, The History of Guernsey; with Occasional Notices of Jersey, Alderney, and Sark (1841), 176, 213–14.
Born and educated in England, David Cressy built his career in the United States, where he taught in California and Ohio, most recently as the George III Professor of British History and Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University. A frequent visitor to English archives and universities, he may also be found exploring the deserts and beaches of the American west.
