Ancestors of Captain Arthur Fenner

George Fenner

George Fenner, son of John Fenner and Eleanor Goring of Crawley, was born ca. 1530. He is often credited with marrying Agnes Smith [1540–1605] and/or Elizabeth Norland. In 1561, he took possession of Earnley Manor in West Sussex from Edward Barttelot, but he transferred it to its namesake, Richard Erneley, in 1564, and took possession of a manor at Whitwell, Isle of Wight. He is sometimes described as a resident of Chichester.

George’s exploits as a sea captain are often mentioned in books about the British Navy during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and his name appears in letters preserved in the National Archives, Kew, as part of the State Papers collection (series SP). In one of his earliest recorded voyages, 1566–1567, he assumed leadership of a convoy to the Azores, apparently in place of John Hawkins, being specifically ordered “not to spoil any of the Queen’s subjects, nor to traffic into India, or any other places privileged by the King of Spain.”[1] While there, helming the Castle of Comfort, he was confronted in a surprise attack by a Spanish fleet, but his ships escaped by cutting their cables. A couple of days later, his ship was confronted by three Portuguese vessels, later aided by two more, “but by superb gunnery, the little English craft held her own and so mauled her opponents that they drew off for a while and so let the Castle of Comfort slip.”[2] His skill as a captain in outfoxing the Portuguese is credited by historians as being the first demonstration of the superiority of British tactics over their competition in that time period.

Piracy (“privateering”) was a constant problem in the Atlantic. One historian noted:

An early victim of the successes of the Spanish privateers was George Fenner of Chichester, who petitioned that, within eighteen months, they had taken four of his ships, and that some men belonging to them had been sent to the galleys. The English and Dutch pirates and privateersmen used the home ports, secretly or openly, with an almost complete indifference to proclamations, and, it is to be suspected, with the connivance of mayors and vice-admirals.[3]

Around 1570, he entered a petition of “redress for great losses, by spoils and robberies committed on divers ships by the Spaniards in the Low Countries.”[4] A similar complaint was made in 1575. In 1584, he reported the capture of his ship at Newhaven, France, and his eventual release on the north shore of England.

In 1587, he in the Leicester and his brother Thomas in the Nonpareil were sent to patrol the waters of Northern France to watch for the coming of the Spanish Armada, but they came not. By 1588, he had not risen to the rank of admiral like his brothers Thomas and Edward and cousin William, but he had a special charge as the captain of one of three ships tasked with guarding the English Channel. The series of skirmishes with the Spanish in July 1588 were later depicted in The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords Representing the Several Engagements Between the English and Spanish Fleets (John Pine, 1739). Some of George’s other exploits are detailed in the works listed below.

Late in life, he was taken into the newly founded Sutton Hospital Charterhouse, a hostel for elderly Englishmen made from a former Carthusian Monastery in London, as one of its first inhabitants, entering 3 Oct. 1614. He died there 26 Oct. 1618 and was buried in the chapel.

1. Mary [b 1554].

2. William [b ca. 1555; d 1614].

3. John [b 1558].

4. George [b ca. 1560; d 1621].

Lineage:
John | Thomas | John | Thomas | John | George

Sources:
1. Calendar of State Papers (1856), vol. 1, p. 280: HathiTrust
2. Gerald S. Davies, “The Romance of a forgotten seaman,” Cornhill Magazine, vol. 49 (1920), pp. 668–676: HathiTrust
3. William Page, The Victoria History of the County of Sussex, vol. 2 (London: Archibald Constable, 1907), p. 148: Archive.org
4. Calendar of State Papers (1856), vol. 1, p. 398: HathiTrust
5. Information from the work of Jen Blyth on Ancestry.com
6. Sidney Lee, ed., “George Fenner,” Dictionary of National Biography, suppl. vol. 2 (NY: MacMillan, 1901), pp. 206–207: Archive.org
7. Julian S. Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (1912), pp. 94–95: Archive.org
8. Julian S. Corbett, The Successors of Drake (London: Longmans, Green, 1900), p. 172: Archive.org
9. Julian S. Corbett, Papers Relating to the Navy During the Spanish War, 1585–1587 (1898), p. 297: Archive.org
10. John Pine, The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords Representing the Several Engagements Between the English and Spanish Fleets (1739): TheMet
11. Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Nauigations, Voiages and Discoueries of the English Nation Made by Sea or Ouer Land (London: George Bishop & Ralph Newberie, 1589).
12. K.R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, 1585–1603 (1964).

FENNER, GEORGE, naval commander, was apparently, like his relative Thomas Fenner, a native of Chichester. Early in Elizabeth’s reign he appears to have made a voyage to the Gold Coast, and in October 1566 he was engaged in fitting out ships for another. The Spanish ambassador, hearing of the project, requested Elizabeth to prevent his sailing, and on the 28th he was required to give bonds that he would not “spoil any of the queen’s subjects, nor traffic into India, or any other places privileged by the king of Spain” (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, pp. 279, 280; Cal. Simancas MSS. 1558–67, pp. 588, 593). Fenner probably interpreted his engagements somewhat freely, and in the Azores he was treated by the Portuguese like a pirate; he was attacked by a royal squadron consisting of a galleon of four hundred tons and two caravels. He beat them off three times, and when on the following day the Portuguese were joined by two more caravels, Fenner handled them so roughly that they drew off and allowed him to escape; this action is claimed as the first revelation of the superiority of English gunnery (Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, i. 93–5; Drake’s Successors, pp. 172, 254).

After his return Fenner occupied himself with trading in the Low Countries, and in 1570 he petitioned Elizabeth for redress for the pillage of his ships by the Spaniards; again, in 1575, he complained of similar conduct on the part of the Flushingers. He was, however, given to freebooting on his own account, and in November of the latter year he captured two French ships and brought them into Portsmouth, where they were seized by the government. In September 1584 he complained of the pillage of his ships while lying in the harbour of Havre-de-Grace, but in March 1590–1 he was summoned before the council for robbing Captain Boileau of Rochelle and neglecting to deliver up the goods, as he had promised, to the French ambassador.

Fenner does not appear to have accompanied Drake on any of his expeditions, but in 1588 he commanded the galleon Leicester under Howard, whom, in 1591, he was ordered to join in command of the Lion in the proposed expedition to the coast of Brittany. In May 1593 he was sent by the council to report on the condition of Boulogne, which was threatened by the Spaniards and the catholic league. In 1597 he accompanied Essex on the Islands voyage, Essex being commanded to seek his advice in certain contingencies.

In 1597, during the alarm of the “invisible” armada, Fenner was ordered to cruise off the north coast of Spain to pick up intelligence of Spanish movements, and on 14 July he brought into Plymouth news of the approach of the armada, which occasioned the famous naval mobilisation of that year. The news was false, the only force threatening England being Federigo Spinola’s six galleys. To intercept these Fenner sailed in the Dreadnought on 31 July for La Hogue Bay, but Spinola had left before Fenner started, and in the chase up the channel Fenner was days behind Spinola’s galleys.

—Sidney Lee (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography, Suppl. Vol. 2 (1901)

George Fenner, of the famous Chichester family of shipowners and seamen. Like the Hawkynses of Plymouth, they were among the first to endeavour as a matter of right to force a trade with the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. He commanded expeditions to this end in the [fifteen-]sixties, mainly to the Gold Coast. Though less known than some, he was one of the finest of the Elizabethan captains, and certainly was the first to demonstrate the superiority of English tactics and seamanship by his action off the Azores in 1567, when with his flagship the Castle of Comfort and two small consorts, he fought seven Portuguese men-of-war all one day, and drove them off the next.

—Julian S. Corbett, Papers Relating to the Navy During the Spanish War, 1585–1587 (1898), p. 297.

Fenner having, as it seems, no intention of going beyond Guinea proceeded on his voyage, but only to find the Portuguese as hostile and determined as the Spaniards. Everywhere he was treated as a pirate. At Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands he only escaped a night surprise from galleys by cutting his cables; and at the Azores, while, as the narrator innocently relates, he was following a Portuguese vessel to see if she could spare him a cable, he was caught by a royal squadron consisting of a galleon of 400 tons and two caravels. Fenner was alone in the Castle of Comfort, and his consort far away to leeward. Three times they engaged him and three times he beat them off. On the following day the Portuguese commander, being joined by four other caravels, renewed the action. It was now seven to one; yet so roughly did Fenner handle them that with night fall they drew off and allowed him to escape. The success of the Castle of Comfort seems to have been due to her overmastering fire, and the action is memorable not only as being the first appearance of the Fenners of Chichester on the scene, but also as the earliest revelation to English seamen of the power their superiority in gunnery was to give them.

—Julian S. Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (1912), pp. 94–95.

In the second week of January [1899] orders were issued to mobilise ten of the Queen’s ships. They were to be ready in three weeks and were to be victualled for two months. But after all the stores had been collected the mobilisation for some reason was stopped, and all but three of the ships remained in harbour. There can be little doubt that the intention was to cover the transport of Essex’s troops to Ireland and to prevent the despatch of the long-promised assistance in Spain by a demonstration on the Spanish coast. The reason the idea was carried no further is not far to seek. For the Queen received an assurance from the Dutch that they were going to operate against the Spanish and Portuguese ports with a powerful fleet of their own. . . . Domestic Calendar, 1599, January 6, 10, 16, and June 14. The galleons specified were the Garland, Defiance, Mary Rose, Hope, Bonaventure, Nonpareil, Lion, Dreadnought, and Swiftsure. These last three were retained in commission under the command respectively of Sir Richard Leveson, George Fenner, and Matthew Bredgate. With others they formed the Channel guard of which Leveson had the command.

—Julian S. Corbett, The Successors of Drake (1900), p. 254.

Though with his first independent command the young officer [Richard Leveson] had thus only covered himself with ridicule, his interest was proof against it. and a really powerful force was now put under his orders. It consisted of at least three galleons and four crompsters, besides pinnaces, and included the Lion, his flagship, and the Rainbow, carrying the flag of his vice-admiral, Sir Alexander Clifford, a much abler man than himself if we judge by his record. Besides these, two other galleons, the Dreadnought and Swiftsure, with the Advice pinnace, were also in commission. Though nominally perhaps under Leveson’s flag as Admiral of the Narrow Seas, these three vessels formed an independent observation squadron which was committed to George Fenner. Long ago in the [fifteen-]sixties, before Drake’s rise, this veteran officer had commanded expeditions to the Gold Coast, and while there engaged in asserting the treaty rights of English merchants to trade with Portuguese and Spanish colonies he had been the first demonstrate in his brilliant action off the Azores in 1567 the superiority of the new English tactics over those of the Mediterranean school.

—Julian S. Corbett, The Successors of Drake (1900), p. 258.