Smuggling Ships: An Analysis of the Lord Admiral’s Deputation to Bristol Preventing the Sale of Ships to Foreigners, 1624/5

A previously unexamined document within the Society of Merchant Venturers’ (SMV) Book of Trade, dated the 16th of March 1625, constitutes the centrepiece of this study. Using personal transcriptions, this document reveals a seventeenth-century deputation dispatched by George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Lord Admiral, to Bristol's mayor and a prominent city merchant. Buckingham’s directive had a precise aim: preventing the sale of ships over 50 tons in Bristol to ‘any forraigne partes’ without provision of a substantial bond. Drawing from a wealth of sources, including state papers, proclamations, and contemporary accounts, the paper explores why an in-depth primary source analysis renders this initially relatively unassuming document highly fascinating. The analysis proves particularly fascinating in three respects: it refines existing historiography on the clandestine world of smuggling in early modern Bristol by illuminating a form of illicit trade – the smuggling of ships – which has been overlooked in existing accounts; it accentuates the indispensable value of the merchant class and their ships amidst contemporary challenges of piracy and fragile statecraft; and importantly, it unveils an overlooked facet of early national preparations for the Anglo-Spanish war of 1625. In doing so, the paper enriches our understanding of a colourful period of maritime history defined by geopolitical turbulence and economic ambition.