came in 1452, when a Dutch ship loaded with illicit goods for export
belonging to merchants from several Dorset towns fell to his diligence. He
was much hated by the local merchants, and was even subjected to a knife
attack by a wool merchant from London.
There were a host of other minor officials responsible for making sure
ships moored where they were supposed to, and did not unload cargo out of
sight of inspectors, people who checked the cargo to make sure it contained
what had been declared, and people to unpack and weigh the cargos. This did
little to stop the illegal export of wool, even when wool smuggling was made
subject to a sentence of death in 1661–by 1700, it has been calculated that
120,000 bales of wool were being smuggled out each year.
Kent was the county most involved in this trade, with gangs of armed men
operating the illegal movements of up to 20,000 packs of wool across the
Romney Marshes, and over to Calais every year. The smuggling began to
badly affect the national economy. In 1671 Charles II set up a Board of
Customs and financed customs cutters to patrol the coasts, and then‘riding
officers’ –mounted men who patrolled the shores and farms. Laws were
passed controlling the sale of wool for up to fifteen miles inland. But there
were only eight riding officers for the whole of the Kent coasts, to control not
just the wool exports, but a rising tide of illegal imports. The smuggling ships
could make a profit on both outward and homeward journeys. The navy had to
be used to patrol the sea until a waterguard was established. By the end of the
century, the number of riding officers had been greatly increased, although
their low level of pay made them very susceptible to threats, bribery and
corruption, especially as they had to live amongst the smugglers themselves in
the coastal villages. Smuggling only got worse in the next century, as we shall
see in the following chapter.
The fate of the‘Batavia’
Some crimes were committed far from European shores. In 1629 the Dutch
East India Company shipBataviastruck a reef off the coast of Western
Australia. Some forty people drowned out of the complement of one
hundred soldiers, the crew and the three hundred passengers aboard. The
rest made it ashore to a tiny island. The captain, Pelsaert, decided to take
two of the ship’s boats and sail north to get help, leaving 223 people to wait
for rescue (Figure 25).
Among the passengers was a troublesome merchant, Jeronimus Cornelisz;
as soon as the captain was gone, he decided that he and his gang would
captured the rescue ships when they appeared, and in the meantime, he would
EARLY MODERN CRIME