Inspiration and Source Material

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Historical notes on the background to the novel

The Barbary corsair raids on the south coasts of England which took place intermittently over the course of more than two hundred years during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have been increasingly well documented over the past few years, although when I grew up in Cornwall they were never mentioned, and most people are still ignorant of this particular bloody chapter in England's history.

The majority of corsair attacks targeted shipping, both mercantile and fishing vessels, the corsairs often gulling their victims by flying false colours before revealing their true identity only when it was too late for the unfortunate target to flee or defend itself.

The violent theft of cargoes and crews, and the concomitant sale of captives into slavery, was a common peril faced by those at sea, and was certainly not confined to attacks on British shipping by Muslims and renegades: many of England's finest made fortunes by attacking foreign shipping, whether legally, under official Letter of Marque (announcing the proceeds and splitting the value with the Admiralty in much the same way the Barbary corsairs regulated their own trade) or as pirates, for purely private profit.

However, the Barbary corsairs proved bolder than most, raiding as far and wide as Newfoundland, Iceland, Ireland and southern England as well as Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean coasts.

The corsairs of Salé, known in England as the Sallee Rovers, have a particularly fascinating history.

Pirating for profit had been a way of life throughout the Mediterranean, especially after the flourishing of mercantile trade between the East and Europe meant rich pickings and easy targets; but what had been isolated and entrepreneurial soon became ideological and organised after King Philip III set about reunifying Catholic Spain and expelled by edict all Moors from his kingdom.

Many lost everything, and found themselves cast up homeless and penniless on the North Moroccan shore, harbouring a grudge against Spanish, and by extension, the Christian West. There, an alliance of Moriscos, Hornacheros, fanatics and renegade Europeans refortified Salé and Rabat, whence they launched a holy war against their enemies.

Driven by religious fervour, the corsairs plundered far and wide to the extent that one corsair fleet was able to raise its skull and crossbones flag over Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel in the early summer of 1625, from which they launched innumerable raids on south-west shipping and coastal towns.

The historical document prefacing this novel, that is, the letter from the Mayor of Plymouth to the new king's Privy Council in the spring of 1625, warning of the likelihood not only of corsair raids (which had become a regular summer threat to shipping) but for the first time of attacks on coastal settlements, does not, in the usual bureaucratic fashion, appear to have resulted in raised security.

The attack I have described on the church in Penzance is based on a reference in the state papers to an event in July 1625 when "sixtie men, women and children were taken from the church of Munnigesca in Mounts Bay" (my italics).

No one to this day is sure what 'Munnigesca' refers to; some have speculated that it is the church on St Michael's Mount – but I cannot believe that to be true, since it would have meant that Sir Arthur Harris, who was the Master of the Mount at the time – and his family would have been included in those sixty captives, since only if they had been in residence would a congregation of sixty have been likely; and they never suffered such a fate. Sir Arthur died at home 1628 at Kenegie Manor: his last will and testament is included in the local parish papers.

The only two large enough settlements likely to generate a 60-strong congregation at the time, according to Carew and Leland, would have been Marazion, then known as Market Jew (a corruption of Marghasewe) or Penzance.

I decided on the church at Penzance, which would have stood where St Mary's does today – on a promontory overlooking the bay. It would have been clearly seen from sea, thus presenting a clear and attractive target for attack. It is curious that the Mount did not see and fire upon the corsairs (there is no mention in the CSP of any attempted defence); but Sir Arthur Harris had indeed been lobbying for funds to rearm the Mount for several years.

The smuggling, however, of 4 cannon destined for the rearmament of Pendennis and St Michael's Mount by Sir John Killigrew to the Sidi al-Ayyachi is my own invention; though given the nature of the man and his forebears, it is not a large step of speculation.

I am no great expert on embroidery expert, however, I have researched as thoroughly the methods and styles of the time as well as I can, and am greatly indebted to the works of Caroline Stone, who knows a great deal more about the embroidery of North Africa, and specifically Morocco, than I shall ever know.

It was a great disappointment to me to discover that no records of the captives taken by the Sallee Rovers in 1625 remain in Morocco. A number of firsthand accounts of English captives' misfortunes and experiences have, however, survived; although few from as early as 1625 and none by a woman of that time.

However, I have read many of those accounts and borrowed details here and there for authenticity; though taken with a healthy pinch of salt, since the temptation for captives to embellish their hardships with lurid detail was great, commercial pressures in the seventeenth century being all too similar to those of the twenty-first century.