The English Complaint
The original English complaint about the
Alice and Francis illustrates the various tensions embedded into GA’s multilateral nature. The controversy started in February 1671 with a memorandum addressed to the Grand Duke by the English resident in Florence, Sir John Finch.
1 ASF, MM, 358-17, John Finch to Cosimo III (4 February 1671). On John Finch see Stefano Villani, ‘Between anatomy and politics: John Finch and Italy, 1649–71’, in Gaby Mahlberg and Dirk Wiemann (eds), The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 151–66; Dyble ‘Lex mercatoria’, pp. 691–3. Some London merchants had made a representation to King Charles II, complaining of the ‘exorbitant’ GAs being awarded in Tuscany, and now the king wanted authorities over cases such as these transferred to the English consul in the port.
2 ASF, MM, 358-17, John Finch to Cosimo III (4 February 1671). The complaints came at a sensitive juncture in relations between the two states – a disastrous visit by Charles’s extraordinary ambassador the year before had only exacerbated long-standing tensions between the English in Livorno and the Tuscan authorities.
3 See Maria Fusaro and Andrea Addobbati, ‘The grand tour of mercantilism: Lord Fauconberg and his Italian mission (1669–1671)’, English Historical Review 137 (2022), 692–727. According to these unnamed London merchants, the
Consoli del Mare di Pisa frequently granted outrageous damages to masters.
4 ASF, MM, 358-17, John Finch to Cosimo III (4 February 1671). There were complaints about the frequency of Averages, and the length of time they took to resolve.
5 Ibid. Cases were said to follow an irregular form arbitrarily determined by the
Consoli, and the ‘principal merchants’ were unable to make objections. While these abuses were various, however, the motivation behind them was clear: ‘the same
Consoli, with every ease, agree unto the pretensions of the masters of the vessels to invite them to the port of Livorno, though with damage to those that employ them’.
6 Ibid. The final straw for the London merchants had been a particularly egregious recent case, that of the ship named the
Alice and Francis, whose master had been awarded damages totalling 1,800 pieces of eight for powder expended during a battle with Algerian corsairs, ‘despite being in convoy with other English vessels’.
7 Ibid.What had happened to the
Alice and Francis? As we will see, accounts varied. A broad outline of events is provided by the
London Gazette of mid-August 1670, based on letters received from Cartagena dated 21 July 1670.
8 The London Gazette, n. 495 (11 August–15 August 1670). The ship had left England as part of a small convoy, two men of war,
HMS Advice and
HMS Guernsey, and two other merchant ships, the
Alicant Merchant and the
Summer Island Merchant. On entering the Mediterranean, the group had been attacked off the Cabo del Gatt in south-eastern Spain by seven Algerian men of war, three of them carrying between 56 and 60 guns, and the others ‘no less than 40’. The Algerian Vice-Admiral’s vessel, struck in the hull, had retired from the combat, but the rest of the fleet returned the following morning to exchange cannon fire from afar. Only the oncoming darkness had finally allowed the convoy to escape. The convoy was saved, but the English had suffered losses. The commanders of the naval vessels had been killed, along with seven seamen of the
Advice. Around 20 more had been wounded. Among these latter figures was the master of the
Alice and Francis, ‘struck on the arm with a splinter’.
This master, unnamed by the Gazette, was one ‘Stephen Dring’, a seasoned mariner with many years’ sailing behind him. Beginning life as a simple seaman, Dring had risen to the rank of master six years earlier: a hard, violent individual it would seem, who had spent half or more of his 40 years at sea.
9 Dring obtained his master’s certificate from Trinity House on 28 September 1664: TNA, SP 46/137, f. 476. In 1659, he had appeared as a witness in a case before the Admiralty in London ‘aged 23 years or thereabout’, classified as a simple mariner: TNA, High Court of the Admiralty, 13/73, ff. 720v–721v. If he is the same Stephen Dring who commanded the Elias of London in 1668, he was involved in a court case in Massachusetts in 1668 against his Mate, Charles Thirston: three seamen declared to the court that ‘Mr. Dring told their Mate Thirston that he could take his clothes and things he had in the ship and go ashore when he would for he looked upon him now as a passenger. Thurston said that he would go aboard Mr. Dobbin’s ketch and get passage, to which Mr Dringe replied “Gooe & be Damd; what is due to you I will paye with manie other verrie incomely speeches”’; see Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachussets (1667–1671) (Salem: Essex Institute, 1914), vol. 4, p. 28. The
consolato shows that the
Alice and Francis had scheduled calls at Alicante, Livorno, and Messina, with a final destination at Izmir, where it would deliver cloth for private merchants flouting the monopoly privileges of the English Levant Company in the Ottoman Empire.
10 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30, Consolato; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles II, vol. 10, p. 412, Levant Company to Consul Ricaut (1 September 1670). After the combat, the ship went to Alicante, where it proceeded to make a
consolato. It then continued its voyage to Livorno, apparently alone. There Stephen Dring declared GA and was eventually granted damages: for the damage to the ship and rigging, for the powder and shot expended during combat, and compensation for his broken arm and the exertions of his crew under enemy fire.
Finch was doing more than simply demanding that the
Consoli be brought into line: he demanded that jurisdiction over GAs involving Englishmen be transferred to the English consul in Livorno. Finch claimed that English laws on Averages were quite different to those of the Grand Duchy, never conceding damages worth more than 1.5 per cent of the entire value of the enterprise.
11 ASF, MM, 358-17, John Finch to Cosimo III (4 February 1671). Stephen Dring was awarded damages at the slightly higher rate of 2.28 per cent.
12 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30, Calculation. It was only right, argued Finch, that the English in Livorno should be able to resolve their own GA cases according to their own rules. If the situation continued, warned the letter, the King would not hesitate to overrule future rulings emerging out of Tuscany, such was his commitment to ensuring justice for his subjects.
13 ASF, MM, 358-17, John Finch to Cosimo III (4 February 1671). A routine procedure for redistributing the extraordinary costs of a maritime voyage had captured the attention of princes and become the subject of diplomatic controversy. The claim that GA was being rigged in order to attract traffic to the port shows a clear awareness of Tuscany’s broader economic strategy: encouraging commerce through institutional incentives, among which might be included a certain disregard altogether for rigorous and time-consuming rules and procedures.
14 Tazzara, The Free Port of Livorno, p. 127. At the very least, we can say that Livorno’s reputation was preceding it.
15 Lillie, ‘Commercio, cosmopolitismo e modelli della modernità’.