Sir Andrew Barton [Child 167]

DESCRIPTION: Merchants complain to the King that their trade is being disrupted. The King sends a crew to deal with Barton, the pirate. After a difficult battle marked by great courage and skill on both sides, Barton is defeated and killed
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1723; a song with this name was in William Thackeray's broadside catalog by 1690
KEYWORDS: sailor sea battle nobility pirate
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1509-1547 - Reign of Henry VIII (mentioned as king in some texts of the ballad)
1511 - Probable date of the death of Andrew Barton, one of three Scottish brothers named Barton who were involved in creating the navy of Scotland's King James IV
1513 - Battle of Flodden. James IV killed
FOUND IN: US(MA,NE,NW,SE)
REFERENCES (24 citations):
Child 167, "Sir Andrew Barton" (2 texts)
Bronson 167, "Sir Andrew Barton" (10 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 167, "Sir Andrew Barton" (3 versions: #2, #5b, #8)
Hales/Furnival-BishopPercysFolioManuscript, volume III, pp. 399-417, "Sir Andrew Bartton" (1 text)
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry II, pp. 188-207, "Sir Andrew Barton" (3 texts, one from the folio manuscript and the other the completely rewritten version in the _Reliques_)
Ritson-AncientSongsBalladsFromHenrySecondToTheRevolution, pp. 323-331, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text)
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine pp. 248-258, "Andrew Barton" (3 texts); p. 483 (1 tune) {Bronson's #9}
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland4, pp. 15-44, "Sir Andrew Barton" "but including Henry Martyn" (11 texts plus a fragment, 10 tunes; in every text but "L," the robber is Andrew Bardeen or something like that, but many of the texts appear more Henry Martin-like) {K=Bronson's #2 tune for Child #167; B=#46, C=#31 for Child #250}
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 467-475, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text)
Roberts/Agey-InThePine #29, "Three Brothers from Old Scotland" (1 text, which has an opening typical of "Sir Andrew Barton" [Child 167] but ends with a verse of "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" [Child 287]
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 348, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text)
Frank-NewBookOfPirateSongs 2, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text, 2 tunes; the text is composite and neither tune direct associated with it; #2 in the first edition)
Stone-SeaSongsAndBallads XLII, "Andrew Barton" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 130, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 130-141+329-331, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, ZN2850, "When Flora with her fragrant flowere"
Sidgwick-BalladsPoemsIllustratingEnglishHistory, pp. 58-69, "Sir Andrew Barton" (1 text)
DT 167, ANDBART* HENRMRT4*
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1621
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2714
ADDITIONAL: Karin Boklund-Lagopolou, _I have a yong suster: Popular song and Middle English lyric_, Four Courts Press, 2002, pp. 181-190, "(Sir Andrew Barton)" (1 text)
Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; notes to #418, ("But when hee saw his sisters sonne slaine") (1 long but incomplete text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library MS. Additional 27879, page 490
MANUSCRIPT: York Minster MS., number unknown (lost since at least 1890)
Roud #104
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Henry Martyn" [Child 250] (plot, lyrics)
cf. "Captain Ward and the Rainbow" [Child 287] (theme)
SAME TUNE:
My bleeding heart, with grief and care/A Warning to all Lewd Livers (Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex ZN1789)
As I lay musing all alone, Great store of things I thought upon/[Title trimmed. A comparison made upon the Life of Man? Stat. Register, July 16, 1634] (Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex ZN229)
NOTES [2043 words]: In the present state of our knowledge, it is almost impossible to distinguish "Sir Andrew Barton" from "Henry Martyn"; the pirates' names exchange freely, and the basic plot is similar. What is more, the ballads have clearly exchanged elements, especially in America, where mixed versions are the rule. Child did not have to contend with this.
In Child, the basic distinction might almost appear to be length; the versions of "Andrew Barton" are 82 and 64 stanzas, while the texts of "Henry Martyn" do not exceed 13 stanzas. Thus the former looks more literary and the latter more popular. In addition, there are hints of historical background in "Andrew Barton"; more on this below, though much distorted.
Roud originally kept them separate but has now combined the two under #104. I incline to agree but am keeping the distinction for compatibility with Child.
See the notes to "Henry Martin" for a summary of opinions on the issue. Bottom line: it is best to check both ballads for a particular version.
There was a real Scottish captain named Andrew Barton, who was almost certainly the inspiration for this song -- e.g. Ritson-AncientSongsBalladsFromHenrySecondToTheRevolution says that the song describes an event of 1511. Williamson, p. 77, says "The Earl of Oxford had long been lord Admiral, but the office was legal and administrative and not combatant, and Oxford did not go to sea. Henry, with a view to finding a successor with sea experience, picked out the two young Howards, Thomas and Edward, sons of the Earl of Surrey, and sent them to sea in 1511 to bring to account Sir Andrew Barton, a Scottish officer whose piracies were the complaint of English merchants. Barton was a servant of James IV and a commander of the new Scottish navy. The Howards fought and killed him and added his two privateers as prizes to Henry's fleet."
Rodger, p. 169, gives a different account of how the battle came about; "There had been several incidents of hostility [between Scotland and England], notably in June 1511 when the Lord Admiral of England, Sir Edward Howard, escorting a convoy to Zealand, accidentally encountered and killed the Scottish pirate Andrew Barton."
Cosh, p. 45, reports that Scotland's King James IV (died 1513) "set out to build a navy that would impress," though he was short of money, and Scotland was not noted for ship-building; he ended up purchasing ships abroad. Similarly MacDougall, p. 223: "In the middle of August 1506 James IV wrote to Louis XII of France reporting that the building of a fleet to defend Scotland was a project of long standing which he was bent on realizing." According to MacDougall, p. 228, annual spending on the navy increased roughly sixty-fold from the beginning to the end of the reign! Much of the money for it, ironically, came from the dowry he received for marrying Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII of England (MacDougall, p. 155).
MacDougall, p. 243, speculates that building his navy, in addition to giving James IV a shiny new toy, let James play a deep foreign policy game: James was able to maintain his treaty with England, which promised peace on land, while still making himself valuable to Scotland's long-time allies the French by building up a navy that pointed straight at England and could occasionally cause trouble for the English at sea.
Fortunately, James "had able captains, including John Barton and his three sons Robert, John, and Andrew." James actually bought half-ownership of a ship from Robert Barton, and Barton also organized supplies for James's ship-building efforts (Cosh, p. 48). John Barton Jr. captained some of these ships. Andrew was a recipient of lands in Fife (Cosh, pp. 48-49). John and Robert worked to acquire the wood needed for James's ship-building -- not an easy task, since Scotland had little of the sort of wood needed for shipbuilding (MacDougall, p. 232).
(It appears that the Bartons were an old seafaring family: In 1457, a large ship -- 350 tons! -- was at Sluys under the command of a Robert Barton, whom I would guess to be the father of John Barton Sr.)
One of the first services of the Bartons to the king was apparently in 1497, when Robert and Andrew Barton commanded the Cuckoo which took Perkin Warbeck, the pretender to the English throne, out of Scotland (MacDougall, p. 138). They were so close to the king that Andrew is reported to have played cards with his monarch (MacDougall, p. 240).
Originally Andrew Barton (and all his family) fought the Portuguese, not the English, after the Portuguese had attacked John Barton's ships. So James IV gave him a letter of marque to fight the Portuguese in 1507 -- only to suspend it in 1510 when Andrew got mixed up with what sounds like a mixed Portuguese/English fleet. The Bretons were also after him, so he and Robert Barton went to Denmark for a while (Cosh, pp. 49).
"It was... the third of the Barton brothers, Andrew, who caught the headlines. On 16 October 1510, for services which are not specified in the grant, James IV conferred some of the Fife lands of the hapless Earl of Rothes, with the considerable value of 222 marks [148 pounds], on Andrew Barton and his son Alexander [as well as the Letters of Marque].... It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, in renewing these letters of marque, James IV was seeking to reward the Bartons for their services past and to come, providing them, at no cost to himself, with a legitimate means of furthering their already considerable seaborne enterprises" (MacDougall, pp. 238-239).
The problem was that Andrew Barton seems to have enjoyed being a pirate; he refused to stop his activities ("These ground rules seem to have had little effect on the activities of Andrew Barton," according to MacDougall, p. 239, who says that the Danes as well as the Portuguese were after him.).
Apparently Barton was in Denmark in the Lion, a Barton family vessel, when he made off with money that King Hans had intended to use to hire him, and also nabbed another ship, the Jennet of Purwyn. "By this stage Barton had probably gone beyond what even James IV was prepared to contenance, and was threatening to become an international embarassment" (MacDougall, p. 240). James canceled his letter of marque on July 30, 1511.
The English responded by giving Sir Edward Howard more than £600 to fit out escort vessels to guard a convoy to Zealand. Barton was not their target, but he was operating in the vicinity (MacDougall, pp. 240-241). Edward's older brother Lord Thomas Howard was also aboard one of the escorts. So, when Edward Howard encountered Barton and the Lion and the Jennet of Purwyn, Howard attacked with his ships, thought to be the Barbara and the Mary Barking (MacDougall, p. 241), heavier ships than Barton's. He won the battle, killing Barton, and capturing most of his men (Cosh, pp. 49-50). The details of how it happened are not clear; the chronicles give conflicting accounts (MacDougall, p. 241, thinks Edward Hall has the best account, but even Hall embroidered the tale. Given that Hall was a liar and a brazen Tudor propagandist, I leave it to you to imagine what the other accounts are like....)
It should be noted that England and Scotland were officially at peace at this time; James IV had married Henry VIII's sister Margaret Tudor. The peace wouldn't last much longer. (Perry, p. 66, reports that Barton's death was one of the issues that led to a quarrel between England and Scotland -- the quarrel that eventually led to James IV's invasion and the battle of Flodden in 1513.) This makes it hard to determine Barton's true status. In a legal sense, he was probably a pirate, in that he attacked the commerce of a friendly power and had lost his status as a privateer, but he was also an officer of James's navy. Barton himself was dead, but the status of his surviving crew probably should have depended on James's response to Henry's complaints about the attack.
James protested to Henry about the state of Barton's crews, but didn't push too hard for redress (MacDougall, pp. 241-242) -- an indication, perhaps, that James knew Barton had been out of control.
It didn't hurt the other Bartons; John and Robert Barton remain in James IV's service, and Robert Barton was able to replace Andrew's ship Lion, which had been a small 120 ton vessel, with a 300 ton ship of the same name (MacDougall, p. 242)
Additional information about Barton can be found in Child. As for Edward Howard, note that his father Surrey was the man who, two years later, fought and won the Battle of Flodden (and was given back his Dukedom of Norfolk as a reward). The Lord Howard who led the English fleet against the Spanish Armada was also a member of this family. (It was a big family; Norfolk married twice and had more than twenty children in all.) Edward Howard himself, though, did not long survive his exploit. In 1512, he commanded the naval escort that took a British army to attack France, without any success (MacDougall, p. 263); "On 25 April [1513] the manic English Admiral Sir Edward Howard, short of victuals and desperate to bring the French to action, personally boarded [French Admiral] Prégent's galley in a struggle off Brest, was trapped aboard, and was thrown into the sea to his death" (MacDougall, p. 264); James IV wrote a sarcastic letter to Henry VIII about how Howard had been poorly employed. His successor as Admiral was none other than Thomas Howard (MacDougall, p. 273), the other commander in the attack on Andrew Barton. In addition to his naval duties, he served under his father at Flodden, and supposedly sent a message to James IV "that he would be found in the English vanguard and that when the armies clashed he would neither give, nor expect, quarter" (Phillips, pp. 118-119).
Incidentally, although the Bartons were important to the development of James IV's navy, another captain, Andrew Wood, was even more famous at the time -- and justly famous; he seemed to be everywhere, fighting the English and otherwise helping James. When MacDougall, p. 232, lists James's leading captains, he mentions the Bartons second behind Wood. I wonder if there might not have been some confusion between the two Andrews. (They don't seem to have worked together; according to MacDougall, p. 235, the Bartons were based at Leith and Wood at Largo.)
Note further that, although cannon had started to be carried aboard ships at this time, they were not generally the means of victory -- e.g. James's biggest ship, the Margaret (named for his wife Margaret Tudor) had an armament of one cannon, four "falcons" (light cannon), and twenty even lighter guns, probably handguns (MacDougall, p. 233). Even this flagship expected her marines to do most of her fighting, not her gunners.
Broadsides about the event, which one might suspect of being the ancestor of this ballad, go back to the early seventeenth century. Rollins has three candidates:
- p. 213, #2454, "Sir Andrew Barton," registered June 1, 1629
- p. 213, #2453, "Sir Andrew Barton Revived," registered July 16, 1634 by Jno. Wright and partners
- p. 236, #2731, "A true relacon of the life and death of S(i)r A. Barton," registered March 13, 1656
- p. 195, #2255, "A relacon of the life and death of S(i)r A. Barton," registered March 1, 1675
Many American texts refer to Barton fighting a Captain Charles Stuart (replacing the Lord Howard of earlier versions -- "Howard" being a reasonable name, even apart from the Barton battle cited above, since Earl Howard of Norfolk was Admiral of England at the time of the battle with the Armada). Gordon thinks this Charles Stuart was Bonnie Prince Charlie, but Barry et al point to the American Charles Stewart (1778-1869) who commanded the U. S. S. Constitution at the end of the War of 1812.
There is much mystery about the York Minster manuscript that is the presumed earliest copy. David C. Fowler, on p. 1776 of volume 6 of Severs/Hartung, "According to James Raine (Surtees Society 85.64) this manuscript, in a hand of the sixteenth century, 'was originally No. 25 of a ballad-book in small quarto.' Unfortunately the remainder of the collection is apparently lost. But we are fortunate to have here the earliest surviving text of Sir Andrew Barton...." - RBW
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File: C167

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