Tobacco Trade: part Two. The Bideford Connection

by Helen Hollick

The Devonshire town of Bideford was of little consequence until Elizabethan era. It developed beside a ford over the Torridge, and was given by William Rufus  to the Grenville family in the early 12th century. From then until 1744, Bideford remained their property.

The town was granted a Market Charter in 1272, but prosperity began to develop when Later, Bideford became a thriving port trading with the American Colonies under the Grenvilles family. From 1550 for almost 200 years Bideford thrived on importing timber from Newfoundland for shipbuilding, the production and export of wollens and cloth and importing tobacco. Supposedly, the first commercial cargo of tobacco carried by Sir Walter Raleigh was unloaded at Bideford.

Sir Richard Greville

After the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 colonial settlement was centred around the planting of tobacco to ply the European markets, presided over by a consortium of London merchants and West Country mariners, who could see the potential of making a profit from  tobacco. The function of the Virginia Company  was to create settlements to grow tobacco, .

Jamestown was founded in 1607, a settlement owned entirely by the Virginia Company; all settlers were employed by the Company or dependents of the employees. Disease was rampant and the colony was close to starvation. In 1608 John Smith (of Pochahontas fame) sustained the settlers through a harsh winter and promoted further development in North Virginia. Smith returned to England in 1609 following a serious injury, but in the summer of 1616 he visited the West Country sea-port towns, handing out maps and books of shipping routes to North America. 

Tobacco rapidly became an economically viable commodity. Exports rose from 20,000 pounds in 1617 to 4,000,000 pounds in 1640. Bideford had many experienced ship owners and merchants who took out blankets and returned with tobacco.  

The English Civil War began in 1642 and left the Virginian planters to develop crops and settlements. When the Civil War ended and the Monarchy was restored in 1660, Bideford enlarged a fleet of tobacco ships and built  the Quay in 1663, funded by the corporation of Bideford.

Bideford merchants built tobacco trading links with Northern Europe where good quality Maryland tobacco was popular.  Bideford earthenware and wools were traded along the Maryland and Virginia rivers directly to settlers - their return voyages laden with fresh, early tobacco, which fetched a high price.  Goods would be paid for in tobacco and the trade was one of the reasons of Bideford’s success. Many colonial ships’ masters were related to  prominent tobacco merchants, further strengthening trade. In 1676, one ship, the Bideford Merchant, brought home 135,000 lbs of tobacco.

As a result of the prosperity improvements were made to the town. Bridgeland Street was built in 1692 and the Quay was extended to it from the bottom of Cooper Street, but wars with France from 1689 to 1697 and 1702 to 1713 caused disruption to shipping. European markets were cut off, causing heavy losses. Financial burdens, brought about by increases in tobacco duty became too heavy for many merchants and finally, the American War of Independence (1775 – 1783) ended colonial trading for Bideford forever.

see also Part One That Obnoxious Weed

Bideford

Alice Tankerfelde -

A woman who was found guilty of murder in 1534 !

As author Mari Watson explains….

Alice Tankerfelde is unknown to most of us. She is neither Royal nor likely to go down in History in but a minor way. She is, however, a slice of life in the Tudor Era not generally covered -  that is Women who Murder! 

In 1534 Alice was guilty of participation in two murders, two seductions and one escape from the Tower.

 Her exact origins are unknown but by the time of her sad demise “by the Devil’s instigation” she was married to John Wolfe. Together with her husband, “ a Merchant of the Steelyard” on July 16, 1533 Alice participated in the murder of two foreign merchants, Jerome de George and Charles Benche. Her co-conspirators, besides her husband, were a London gentleman named John Westall, and two yeomen, Robert Garrard and John Litchfield.

Pretending to be a whore Alice lured the two foreigners into a house in Durham Rents in the Savoy section of London, where they “kept company” all afternoon and into the night. Around ten o’clock the two Jerome de George and Charles Benche who were probably drunk and unfamiliar with London were  escorted by Alice and Westall to their lodgings at St. Benet Gracechurch at the house of  a Florentine Merchant, John Gerrald.

The easiest way to travel was by water

The two Gentlemen  along with Alice and Westall boarded a boat at Strand Stairs,

Garrard and Lichfield took the position of the Watermen, Wolfe, hid in the stern and waited until they were in middle of the Thames. He jumped out of hiding and stabbed Charles in the back. He died instantly. Then all four men attacked Jerome de George breaking his neck. Putting chains on the two bodies after they had stripped them of clothes and valuables, they threw them overboard.

Alice, Wolfe, Westfall, and another gentleman named Stanley then broke into John Gerrald’s house to rob the dead men’s rooms. Caught in the act they were arrested.

Wolfe supposedly escaped and went to Ireland. The other men are not mentioned.

Because the murders occurred on water Alice was tried by the

Admiralty Court

and sentenced to hang on the pirates’ gallows at Wapping Old Stairs.

After hanging, her body would be set in chains, the tide coming in three times to make sure she was dead. Until the day of her execution, Alice was held in the Tower of London in Cold Harbor Tower. It had a gatehouse into the inmost ward and a porter’s lodge  nearby.

By late March 1534, Alice had  seduced many of those charged with keeping her. William Denys, a servant of the Lord Lieutenant, Sir Edmund Walsingham, was a frequent visitor and “showed her a secret way how she might be conveyed out of the Tower.”

He was dismissed for fraternizing with the prisoner; Alice then charmed another of the Lord Lieutenant’s servants, John Bawde. Alice may have already met him in 1532 when her husband was in the Tower for another offense. Notes claim “when her Husband went to Ireland he asked  Bawde to keep an eye on her.”

When Alice “heard there was no remedy with her but death” she begged Bawde to help her escape “for the honour and passion of Christ”. Bawde bought two hair ropes for 13d., made a ladder and carried it into the Tower concealed beneath his cloak. Alice was given a key he had filed down so that it would open the back of the outer prison door, giving access to St. Thomas’s Tower, which is over what is now known as Traitor’s Gate. The moat, at this point, was narrow and at low tide, often dry.

On Saturday March 28 1534 the confession by Alice states that the door to the inner ward was “shut and hasped with a bone.” In a letter written by John Grenville during the Confession, “the staple, which door she saith she did shake and so the bone fell out.”

She made her way to the outer ward and used the key Bawde had given her. They met on the leads of St. Thomas’s Tower at about ten at night.

 Grenville’s writing of the Confession  by Bawde  is a little different. He says “On Friday about  (two) of the clock in the morning one Bawde, the Lord Lieutenant’s servant came with counterfeit keys and opened the prison door where Wolfe’s wife was, and conveyed her out of the Tower with  ropes tied to the embattlements: and after he had conveyed her down, went down himself.”

 On the wharf  below they hid for an hour. Then Bawde found a boat and rowed them to the water-stairs at the end of the Tower causeway. They were walking up Tower Hill toward a Mrs. Jenyn’s house, where Bawde had left two horses, when they encountered the Watch. By Grenville’s account, Alice was “apparelled like a man” and for that reason the Watch was suspicious and took both Alice and Bawde into custody and took them to the Lord Lieutenant.” He continued writing that, on Tuesday, “Wolfe and his wife shall hang upon Thames at low water mark in chains. And Bawde is in Little Ease, and after he hath been in the Rack shall be hanged.”

 In his Confession Bawde states he participated in the escape “for the very love and affection that he bear to the Woman .”

 Notes:

The Lisle letters an abridgement p.273-275

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=79304   British History Online

Tower of London by Richard Davy