r-
 
 1 
 

 
 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 HOWARD, CLIFFORD, HAWKINS, DRAKE 
 CAVENDISH 
 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 BY 
 
 DAVID HANNAY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 STONE AND KIMBALL 
 
 1895 
 LONDON: METHUEN & COMPANY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 1 
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND- - 101 
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE - - 170 
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH - - - 359
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 WHITING to his friend Mrs. Hodson, on the 20th January, 
 1830, Southey tells her, " I have engaged to compose a 
 volume of Naval History in biographical form for the 
 Cabinet Cyclopaedia, not for love but for lucre, though it 
 will be done lovingly when in hand ". The volume grew 
 into volumes. In 1838 he had still to write that he was 
 " getting through the admirals ". Next year his strength 
 broke down under the strain of incessant writing, and 
 what was more fatal still, of reading continually through 
 the walks which he was, with some difficulty, persuaded to 
 take for the good of his health. The admirals remained a 
 fragment. The whole work was to have included an in- 
 troductory sketch of the Naval History of England down 
 to the reign of Elizabeth. From that point, in the words 
 of Southey's Preface, " it may be best continued in a bio- 
 graphical form ; because there are then materials for such 
 biography, whereby we are enabled to understand how 
 much depended upon the character of individual com- 
 manders'". The introduction filled the whole of one 
 volume, and overflowed much the greater part of a 
 second. The biographies had extended into a fifth volume 
 when the failure of Southey's intellect stopped his share of 
 the work, at the end of the life of Sir William Monson. 
 A life of the first Earl of Sandwich was added by Mr. 
 Robert Bell, and then in accordance with the evil fate 
 which has ordained that all histories of the Navy above the 
 rank of mere compilations shall be partial or fragmentary,
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 there was an end of the effort of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia 
 to make good a discreditable defect in English literature. 
 
 Some portion of the blame for this want of complete- 
 ness must, even by those who are least inclined to find 
 fault with him, he allowed to rest on Southey. From a 
 passage in a letter written to John May on the 20th 7 
 January, 1836, he appears to have had an uneasy con- 
 sciousness that he had not so executed his work as to 
 leave him the possibility of rounding it fairly off in good 
 proportions. 
 
 " The fourth volume," he writes, " will contain the lives 
 of Essex, Raleigh, Sir William Monson, Blake, and Monk. 
 Then, not to extend unreasonably a work which was not 
 intended by the publisher at first for more than two 
 volumes, I shall drop the biography and wind up in one 
 volume more, with the Naval History from the Revolution 
 in continuous narrative. A good pretext for this is, that 
 the age of naval enterprise and adventure, and conse- 
 quently of personal interest, was past ; and the interest 
 henceforth becomes political, events are regarded, not 
 with reference to the principal actors, as in Drake's time, 
 but to their bearings upon the national affairs." 
 
 The word pretext is used, as was indeed uniformly the 
 case with Southey's English, in the most strictly accurate 
 sense. The distinction which he draws here is quite 
 arbitrary, and must be taken to be a species of confession 
 on the part of the writer, that he had allowed his work to 
 break far beyond all reasonable bounds, and must make 
 an effort to reduce it. Even if he had kept to the limits 
 which he set himself in this letter, his scheme would have 
 been out of all proportion. A Naval History of England in 
 which nearly two volumes were given to the period before 
 Elizabeth, more than two volumes to the lives of the men
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 of her reign, of whom several were little at sea, and others 
 were mainly privateersmen and explorers, while one poor 
 volume was left for all the great series of naval events 
 between 1660 and 1815, would have been egregiously out 
 of drawing. But Southey did not even keep to the scheme 
 he sketched to Mr. May. His biographies ran beyond 
 the fourth volume as far as the middle of the fifth. He 
 would assuredly have been at the end of a seventh before he 
 was done with Monk ; and not five volumes, but five and 
 twenty, if not five and fifty woidd have been required to com- 
 plete the work on the scale on which it had been begun. 
 No publisher of any cyclopaedia has the purse or the patience 
 for such colossal enterprise, not even "the Long-Man of 
 the Row," who knew Southey of old and was his friend. 
 So the " British Admirals " was doomed by the act of the 
 author to be cut short. It was easy for Southey to talk 
 of giving one volume to the history of the Navy after 1660. 
 Such promises pass well in a letter, but it was not in his 
 nature to tie himself down to these narrow limits. 
 
 This attempt at a history of the English Navy was de- 
 prived of all hope of ever being a complete work by the fact 
 that the author had to the full the defect of his qualities. 
 Whoever has gone over the authorities on whom Southey 
 drew, must have noticed the unerring tact with which he 
 quoted. It is commonly impossible to find anything which 
 he passed over, and which is yet conspicuously worth 
 quotation. But this fine quality of seeing, which in his 
 case was accompanied by an extraordinary dexterity in ex- 
 tracting and weaving together, has also its shadow from 
 which the possessor cannot jump. He who can see what is 
 worth quoting is sorely tempted to quote every worthy thing- 
 he sees. When he is, as Southey was, a man of enormous 
 circumambient reading (if the expression may pass) ; when
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 he has not only read but remembers ; when all his know- 
 ledge has always been noted, marked for reference, extracted 
 into common-place books, docketed and indexed so that 
 it lies ready to the " wet finger " when wanted, it is odds 
 but he will find it hard to keep within bounds. The 
 temptation to bring out all that bears on the case, or even 
 only illustrates by comparison, is not all the writer has to 
 fight against, though in this, legitimate as it is, there may 
 be excess. He is very likely to be drawn into speaking of 
 things only indirectly bearing on his subject, but none the 
 less picturesque, or pathetic, or perhaps only quaint and for- 
 gotten, which he has met in his reading, and are brought to 
 his memory by his writing. Southey certainly found it hard 
 not to be prodigal of his learning. Old chronicles, old 
 narrative poems of Spaniards and Portuguese, lives of the 
 saints, stories of shipwreck, and of savage life which he had 
 read, in sober truth, by the thousand, and reading had 
 marked for reference, were habitually drawn upon by him. 
 It is never mere compilation. It is always an extracting, 
 arranging and fitting together of the pure ore of his matter 
 into something which is emphatically Southey 's own. 
 What would be bookmaking in a mere compiler is in his 
 case the making of literature. But at its best this pouring 
 out of the stores of knowledge is hard to reconcile with 
 brevity, and Southey could not be brief. He could tell 
 a story in the minimum of words, but he could not limit 
 himself in the number of stories he wished to tell. In his 
 Preface, he gravely promised that " no more of our general 
 history is included than was necessary for forming a con- 
 nected narrative, and for tracing the causes and conse- 
 quences of those events which are the proper subject of the 
 work ". In his text he observes his own excellent rule so 
 laxly that he cannot refrain from giving pages to the
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 adventures in love and war of the Conde Don Pero Nino, 
 which he has to confess " are matters with which this 
 history has no concern". But they were picturesque; 
 they came from a romantic old Spanish chronicle ; they 
 supplied vivid little pictures of the life and the men of old ; 
 they were little known. Pero Nino plundered on our coast 
 about 1405, and with that excuse to give him countenance 
 Southey could do no other than decant the best of the 
 chronicle written by the Alferez Gutierre Diez into his 
 own pages. 
 
 This inability to turn from the picturesque, which was 
 not immediately gennaine to the matter, may have stopped 
 " The Lives of the British Admirals ^ from becoming a 
 history of the Navy, but it gives their charm and much of 
 their merit to the biographies from which this selection is 
 taken. One criticism which has been made on the naval 
 portions of Southey's vast literary work, must be noticed for 
 the purpose of estimating it at its real value. It is said that 
 he was ignorant of sea affairs, and therefore incapable of 
 either understanding them himself, or making them clear 
 to others. Now Soutiiey was perfectly well aware of his 
 deficiencies in this respect. When he was engaged in ex- 
 tending his quarterly article on Clarke and McArthur's com- 
 pilation into the immortal Life of Nelson, he wrote to his 
 brother, Captain Thomas Southey of the Navy, who had 
 fought at Copenhagen, a letter containing a string of 
 questions, and this paragraph : 
 
 " I am such a sad lubber that I feel half ashamed of 
 myself for being persuaded ever even to review the Life of 
 Nelson, much more to write one. Had I not been a 
 thorough lubber, I should have remembered half a hundred 
 things worthy of remembrance which have all been lost, 
 because though I do indeed know the binnacle from the
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 mainmast, I know little more ; tackle and sheets, and 
 tally and belay are alike to me ; and if you ask me about 
 the lee-clue garnets, I can only tell that they are not the 
 same kind of garnets as are worn in necklaces and bracelets, 
 and so fine facts have been lost because I did not know 
 where to store them in the ship, or in my recollection-closet 
 upstairs. There is something ridiculous, and something 
 like quackery in writing thus about what I so little under- 
 stand. I walk among sea terms as a cat does in a china 
 pantry, in bodily fear of doing mischief and betraying 
 myself ; and yet there will come a good book of it I verily 
 believe." 
 
 Southey knew wherein he was deficient, and knew also 
 where to go for help to make his deficiencies good. He 
 had many naval officers among his acquaintance, and 
 applied to them, to his brother, and to his friend Admiral 
 Burney, the author of the Discoveries in tJie South Seas, for 
 help. Moreover he had what was better than this, namely, 
 a literary honesty which kept him from writing about 
 those technical things which he knew he did not under- 
 stand, and a literary instinct which taught him to extract 
 what is of universal interest from amid a mass of techni- 
 calities. Human character and the motives of human 
 action in what is general to the race, were the matters 
 possessing interest to him. No doubt his work would 
 have been better still if he could have added his brother's 
 professional knowledge to his own vast reading and artistic 
 faculty. Then indeed we might have obtained a History 
 of the English Navy such as we can hardly hope to have. 
 But the combination is yet to seek. Only pedantry (and 
 it is quite possible to be pedantic about the bobstay and 
 the brailing of the lee yard-arm) will prefer the merely 
 particular and technical to the universal and human. If
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 any one wishes to see how little professional knowledge will 
 avail of itself, let him turn from Southey's Nelson, or any 
 of the lives given here, to Schomberg or Brenton. If he 
 wishes to see how poor a guarantee it is for mere 
 mechanical accuracy let him read Captain White's 
 strictures on Admiral Elans' 1 account of the fighting in 
 the Basse Terre of St. Kitts. He will find one experienced 
 naval officer accusing another of grossly misunderstanding 
 the meaning of a simple sea term. 
 
 Accuracy in technical matters is no doubt one of the 
 virtues of the author of biographies, but at the risk of ap- 
 pearing to speak lightly of the expert, it may be affirmed 
 to belong distinctly to the minor class. The first duty of 
 the biographer is to give a living and credible picture 
 of his man. To do this he must possess the general 
 knowledge which gives him a fair understanding of the 
 surroundings of that man's life, and the sanity of judg- 
 ment which makes him a safe critic of character or conduct. 
 The general knowledge brought by Southey to these 
 studies of the Elizabethan seamen has never been equalled 
 by any other English writer on the subject. He was 
 minutely familiar with the history of the Spaniards and 
 Portuguese. With the colonial and maritime sides he 
 was perhaps better acquainted than with any other. He 
 had therefore always at command a vast stock of instances 
 with which to illustrate the actions of our own adventurers, 
 and to complete the picture by showing against what manner 
 of men it was they fought. When he has to tell of the cap- 
 ture of Portuguese carracks he draws on his learning for tales 
 of their disasters in Eastern Seas, in the beginning of the 
 voyage which ended with the attack of the English rovers. 
 When his story takes him to the Straits of Magellan he 
 seizes the first plausible excuse to recount the dreadful fate
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of Sarmiento de Gamboa^s settlement. These digressions 
 may be proofs of his tendency, of which he was himself fully 
 conscious, to " allow his steed to expatiate on the fields of 
 prolixity," but they fill up the picture, and complete its 
 general truth. 
 
 The sanity of judgment which Southey brought to 
 these studies of the Elizabethan heroes is hardly less rare, 
 and is assuredly not less necessary, than his learning. 
 
 Writers on this, the most romantic period in the 
 history of our adventures at sea, have commonly found it 
 difficult to avoid one of two kinds of excess. Some have 
 condemned the generation of Drake and Hawkins as mere 
 slavers and pirates. These have been the smaller number, 
 and in our time they have fallen silent. There is therefore 
 no call to insist upon their error. Of late the tendency has 
 been to go into the other extreme, and to maintain, by im- 
 plication if not in so many words, that slave-hunting and 
 piracy were intrinsically very noble occupations when they 
 had as their consequence the doing of a damage to the 
 Spaniards or Portuguese. They are excused, or even gloried 
 in, as parbs of the strife between the children of Light 
 and the children of Darkness. In a sense perhaps they 
 were; but it must be confessed that the methods of the 
 children of Light, and their motives as they are to be 
 gathered from their own words, were curiously like those of 
 their enemies. Both indeed could appeal to religion as sancti- 
 fying their gold-hunting adventures. Cortes and Pizarro 
 had the extension of the true faitli much in their mouths, 
 and in some measure in their hearts. Hawkins, sailing from 
 the coast of Senegambia with a holdful of kidnapped negroes, 
 on his way to a smuggling venture on the Spanish main, 
 supported himself amid the miseries of a tropical calm, by 
 remembering that the Lord will not suffer His elect to
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 perish. AVe need not think him a hypocrite, but we shall 
 be very credulous if we see more in his religious faith 
 than a proof of the happy facility with which men can 
 persuade themselves that what is agreeable to their in- 
 terests or passions is also acceptable to God. There is a 
 sentence in Raleigh's Discoverie of Guiana which throws a 
 most instructive light on the motives of the Elizabethan 
 adventurer. Sir Walter had been descanting at length on 
 the many advantages which El Dorado, the gilded king 
 of Manoa, would derive from the protection to be afforded 
 him by a garrison of English " younger brothers, and all 
 chieftaines, and captains that want employment". He 
 ends with the following significant sentence : " In which 
 respects no doubt he will be brought to tribute with great 
 gladnesse ; if not, he hath neither shot nor yron weapon in 
 all his empire and therefore may easily be conquered "". 
 Let me protect you, for a consideration, or I will plunder 
 you. It may be doubted whether the great " Inga " of 
 Manoa would have found much to choose between Sir 
 Walter Raleigh of the county of Devon, and Don Gonzalo 
 de Pizarro of the kingdom of Estremadura. 
 
 Southey never forgot such revelations as this, and his 
 picture of the Elizabethans is the better for it. He drew 
 them the more like what they unquestionably were, namely, 
 such men as the Spanish " conquistadores," with the advan- 
 tage of belonging to a more many-sided and capable race ; 
 as lovers of adventure and lovers of gold, with a business 
 and governing faculty, which the Spaniard had possessed 
 in an eminent degree, but was losing rapidly as the six- 
 teenth century drew to its close. The picture agrees better 
 with the evidence than that figure of the Protestant hero 
 or humane knight-errant which has been made to do duty 
 for that slave-hunter and intrepid liar, Hawkins, or the
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 self-seeking intriguer who was Raleigh. Yet Southey 
 knew that a man may be a slave-hunter, may be greedy 
 for gold, may intrigue, and still be brave, be patriotic, be 
 loyal to his comrades, magnanimous at times, and ready to 
 risk life and fortune for a cause. There are some who 
 cannot be taught by any evidence that this combination of 
 apparently incompatible qualities is not only possible but 
 very human. It is too what supplies the humour of life. 
 
 Some few words may be said on the style of these lives. 
 Southey himself denied that he had any style. " As for 
 composition,"" he wrote to his son-in-law Warter, " it has 
 no difficulties for one who will ' read, mark, learn and 
 inwardly digest ' the materials upon which he is to work. 
 I do not mean to say that it Is easy to write well, but of 
 this I am sure, that most men would write better if they 
 did not take hah the pains they do. For myself, I con- 
 sider it no compliment when any one praises the simplicity 
 of my prose writings ; they are written, indeed, without 
 any other immediate object than that of expressing what 
 is to be said in the readiest, and most perspicuous manner. 
 But in the transcript (if I make one) and always in the 
 proof sheet, every sentence is then weighed upon the ear, 
 euphony becomes a second object, and ambiguities are 
 removed. But of what is now called style not a thought 
 enters my head at any time." 
 
 By what "is now called style, 1 ' it is to be presumed 
 that Mr. Warter was understood by his father-in-law to 
 mean mannerism. Southey could with complete truth 
 protest that no wish to write differently from the accepted 
 standard of English had at any time entered his head. To 
 write "English such as every one from Chaucer to Sir 
 Thomas More, and from More to Cowper, could under- 
 stand," to write it with perspicuity as a first " and with
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 euphony as a second " object was his aim. But to succeed 
 in doing so much was to attain to a style, and not only 
 so, but it was to write in the only way which it is safe 
 to take as a model. Those whose style is individual are 
 some of them among the greatest of men of letters ; but 
 though they may be delightful to read, and great to inspire, 
 it is fatal to follow them. Now when, as at some other 
 times, what is called style is too often only a deliberate 
 attempt to be peculiar, the prose of Southey cannot be too 
 carefully read. It will show those who may be in danger 
 of being misled by the popularity of certain models that 
 it is possible to be perspicuous without being pedestrian, 
 to consider euphony and yet not to be precious, to be 
 manly and yet not violent. They may be sure, at least, 
 that in following his path they will be in no danger of 
 falling into absurdity. 
 
 The lives contained in this volume have been chosen for 
 reasons which perhaps ought to be given. No excuse 
 need be assigned for reprinting the "Hawkins and Drake". 
 The life of Lord Howard of Effingham contains as full an 
 account of the Armada as could be written on the evidence 
 accessible to Southey. The Earl of Cumberland was an 
 accomplished and adventurous noble, which would of itself 
 entitle him to a place among the typical heroes of an 
 aristocratic age, but his voyages to the isles also show the 
 character of the naval warfare of the time exceptionally 
 well. Of Cavendish we cannot say that he was one of the 
 greatest in achievement, still less that he was one of the 
 highest in character of the Elizabethans, yet he was the 
 third captain of any race, the second among Englishmen, who 
 circumnavigated the globe, and his life has this value, that 
 it shows the cruel and greedy side of that aristocratic spirit 
 of which Cumberland was the chivalrous representative.
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 A few notes are appended merely to point out what 
 research has added to Southey^s knowledge. It is but 
 little, and no part modifies in any way the estimates of 
 characters which are to be found in this selection from what 
 I will venture to describe as on the whole the finest 
 portrait gallery of the Elizabethan sea heroes in the 
 English language. 
 
 DAVID HANNAY.
 
 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 
 
 /^~>HARLES, eldest son of Lord William Howard, and 
 \^_^ grandson of Thomas, second Duke of Norfolk, was born 
 in 1536. Margaret, his mother, was daughter of Sir 
 Thomas Gamage of Coity, in Glamorganshire. His father 
 was one of the courtiers who accompanied King Henry to the 
 Field of the Cloth of Gold, having (it is recorded) in his 
 retinue eleven servants and two horsekeepers ; he assisted as 
 proxy for his brother, the duke and earl marshal, at the 
 coronation of Anne Boleyn ; and, after the conviction of his 
 niece, Queen Catherine Howard, was found guilty, with his 
 lady, of misprision of treason, for not having revealed what 
 they knew of her misconduct, and condemned to perpetual im- 
 prisonment, with forfeiture of their goods, and of the profits 
 of their lands during life. This sentence was soon remitted, 
 in consideration of his services, " and it may be of his inno- 
 cence ". He attended on Henry at the siege of Boulogne ; 
 and, in the ensuing reign, was " one of the first favourers and 
 furtherers, with his purse and countenance, of" what Fuller 
 calls " the strange and wonderful discovery of Russia," being 
 one of those who were incorporated as merchant-adventurers 
 to Moscovy ; and, " at their own cost and charges, provided 
 those ships to discover territories unknown, northwards, north- 
 eastwards, and north-westwards ". The expedition is memor- 
 able botli in naval and commercial history: for the commander,
 
 2 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Sir Hugh Willoughby, after discovering Greenland, was frozen 
 to death, with all his ship's company, in a haven on the coast 
 of Lapland ; and the second in command, Richard Chancellor, 
 who had fortunately parted company with him, entered the 
 river of St. Nicholas, travelled to the court of the Czar Ivan 
 Basilowitz, delivered the king's letters to that sovereign, and 
 obtained for the English the privilege of a free trade in any 
 part of his dominions, being their first entrance into Russia. 
 On the accession of Queen Mary, he was created a peer of the 
 realm, by the title of Lord Howard of Effingham, and ap- 
 pointed High Admiral of England and Wales, Ireland, Gascony, 
 and Aquitaine ; the queen, " in consideration of his fidelity, 
 prudence, valour and industry," constituting him "her lieu- 
 tenant-general and chief commander of her whole fleet and 
 royal army going to sea for the defence of her friends ". In 
 the discharge of this office, he kept the seas about three 
 months ; and having met with Philip, then Prince of Asturius, 
 escorted him to Southampton, and attended his marriage with 
 the queen. At the commencement of the following reign, he 
 was one of the persons empowered to conclude peace with 
 France. 
 
 Under such a father Charles Howard was trained, serving 
 under him by land and sea. He was about twenty-two years 
 of age at the accession of Elizabeth ; and his " most proper 
 person " is said to have been one reason why that queen 
 "(who, though she did not value a jewel by, valued it the 
 more for, a fair case) reflected so much upon him ". * She sent 
 him to France, after the death of Henry II., on an embassy 
 of condolence and congratulation to the young king. He was 
 elected one of the knights for his native county of Surrey, 
 in the Parliament of 1562-3 ; and afterwards distinguished 
 himself as general of the horse in quelling the rebellion of the 
 Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. In the ensuing 
 
 * Fuller.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 3 
 
 year, he commanded ten ships of Her Majesty's " navy royal" ; 
 which, when the Emperor Maximilian's daughter, Anne, 
 sailed from Zealand to marry her uncle, Philip II., were 
 ordered to convoy her through the British seas, as a singular 
 testimony of the queen's respect for the house of Austria ; 
 and on this occasion it is said that he enforced the Spanish 
 fleet, " to stoop gallant, and to veil their bonnets to the Queen 
 of England ". It was probably at this time that he received 
 the honour of knighthood. Having a second time been elected 
 for Surrey, he was installed Knight of the Garter in 1574, and 
 made Lord Chamberlain of the Household, an office which 
 had been held by his father, who, dying in 1572-3, had be- 
 queathed to him his collar of gold, and all his robes belonging 
 to the order of the garter. Upon the death of the Earl of 
 Lincoln, he was raised to the office of Lord High Admiral of 
 England ; in which capacity he was called upon to perform 
 a more serious service with regard to the Spaniards than when 
 he required from them in peace a recognition of the queen's 
 sovereignty in the English seas. 
 
 Elizabeth, when she succeeded in happy hour to the Eng- 
 lish throne, was far from entertaining any sentiments of ill-will 
 toward the King of Spain. " Whatsoever," saith Fox * the 
 martyrologist, " can be recited touching the admirable working 
 of God's present hand in defending and delivering any one 
 person out of thraldom, never was there, since the memory of 
 our fathers, any example to be showed, wherein the Lord's 
 mighty power hath more admirably and blessedly showed 
 itself, to the glory of His own name, to the comfort of all good 
 hearts, and to the public felicity of this whole realm, than in 
 the miraculous custody and out-scape of the then Lady Eliza- 
 beth, in the strict time of Queen Mary ". To be near the 
 throne was almost as perilous in the Plantagenet and Tudor 
 families as in the Ottoman house ; and in her case the danger 
 
 * Vol. iii., 792.
 
 4 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 was fearfully enhanced by a clear apprehension, on the part 
 of the Romish hierarchy, that the reformed religion, which 
 they were labouring to extirpate by fire and sword, would be 
 re-established if Elizabeth would succeed to her sister. Some 
 of the laity, who in their station forwarded the persecution 
 which has rendered Queen Mary's reign for ever infamous, 
 entered fully into this fear ; and if Elizabeth was not brought 
 to the scaffold, or made away with in confinement, it was not 
 for want of wicked counsellors, or fitting keepers. One who 
 was in authority is said to have declared in his place that 
 there would never be " any quiet commonwealth in England 
 unless her head were stricken from the shoulders " ; * and " it 
 would make a pitiful story to recite what examinations and 
 rackings of poor men there were to find out that knife which 
 should cut her throat ". To the honour of the Spaniards, in 
 that persecuting age, it ought never to be forgotten in this 
 country, that their good offices were effectually interposed in 
 her behalf, and that Philip " showed himself in that matter a 
 very friend ". Nor will it be regarded by an equitable mind 
 as any impeachment of his motives, that the part which he 
 took on this occasion was that of sound policy, if policy alone 
 had influenced him. Let him have credit for justice in this in- 
 stance, if not for humanity ! He had some great qualities, and 
 some good ones ; and his worst actions must be imputed to a 
 deluded conscience, acting under a mistaken sense of religious 
 duty. 
 
 If Elizabeth had been at that time cut off, Mary Stuart, 
 
 * Fox, iii. , 794, 797, 798. The queen's feelings towards her sister are 
 truly stated by Ribadeneira, who had opportunity of knowing them well, 
 and who may be believed when he had no motive for writing falsely : 
 " Una muger," he says, speaking of Elizabeth, " que ella nunca tuvo por 
 hermana, sino por bastarda y enemiga suya, y de la religion catolica ; y 
 que siempre temio que la avia de arruynar y destruyr, y a quien por estas 
 causas desseo y procure excluyr de la succession del reyno " (Hist. Eccl. 
 de Inglaterra, 1. ii., c. xix.).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 5 
 
 then dauphiness, would have become presumptive heiress to 
 the crown of England ; and her succession, by uniting Eng- 
 land, Scotland and Ireland to the crown of France, would 
 have been, of all possible contingencies, the most injurious to 
 the interests of Spain. That contingency became more prob- 
 able upon Queen Mary's death ; and it seemed as if the 
 French Government, in pursuit of its ambitious hopes, was too 
 impatient to wait for it, for Henry II. commanded that the 
 dauphin and dauphiness should, in all public instruments, 
 style themselves by the grace of God King and Queen of 
 Scotland, England and Ireland.* The arms of England, 
 quartered with those of Scotland, were set forth everywhere 
 in their household stuff, and painted upon the walls, and 
 wrought into the heralds' coats of arms ; and by his agents at 
 Rome, Henry ceased not to importune the Pope that he would 
 pronounce Elizabeth a heretic and illegitimate, and Mary of 
 Scotland to be the lawful Queen of England. But here both 
 Philip and the emperor earnestly, though closely, interfered. 
 The question of illegitimacy no longer touched the pride, or 
 affected the interests, of their house ; and that of heresy even, 
 Spain and Austria could be contented to postpone, rather 
 than allow the power of France to be aggrandised. Philip, 
 therefore, ceased not secretly to oppose the practices of the 
 French at the papal court, even when he refused to renew 
 the league made of old between the kings of England and 
 
 * Pollini, Istoria Eccles. dellaRevol. d'lnghilterra, p. 406. " In very 
 deed from this title and arms, which through the persuasion of the Guises, 
 Henry, King of France, had imposed upon the Queen of Scots, being now 
 in her tender age, flowed as from a fountain all the calamities wherein 
 she was afterwards wrapt. For hereupon Queen Elizabeth bare both 
 enmity to the Guises, and secret grudge against her, which the subtle 
 malice of men on both sides cherished, emulation growing betwixt them, 
 and new occasions daily arising, in such sort that it could not be extin- 
 guished but by death. For a kingdom brooketh no companion ; and 
 majesty more heavily taketh injuries to heart " (Camden, 34).
 
 6 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 his forefathers, and sent back his insignia of the garter, 
 whereby he seemed quite to renounce amity with the Eng- 
 lish. Still there remained the bond of mutual interest between 
 Philip and Elizabeth, and not, it may be believed, without 
 some sense of grateful remembrance on one part, and of 
 personal respect on both. That bond was broken by the 
 decease of Francis II., a few months after his succeeding to 
 the throne ; and no kindly feelings, in a man of Philip's 
 temperament, could long withstand that bigotry which was in 
 him a principle and passion, a principle, indeed, to which, 
 under a dreadful persuasion of duty, he would have made any 
 sacrifice. The first animosity that he felt was excited by a 
 trifling circumstance. He requested, through his ambassador, 
 that four persons, who had withdrawn themselves without 
 licence into his dominions, for religion's sake, might be 
 exempted from the existing laws, and permitted to remain 
 there.* One of these persons was grandmother to the Condesa 
 de Feria ; another was an old lady who had been much in 
 Queen Mary's confidence, and used to distribute her private 
 alms to those of her own sex ; the other two were men " most 
 devoted to the popish religion, and most dear to the Spaniard". 
 A distinction might well have been made between these 
 persons, especially in the first instance, where there existed 
 so valid a plea. Elizabeth, however, replied, it was without 
 example that such a licence of perpetual absence from their 
 own country should be granted to women ; and though it 
 seemed in itself a matter of no moment, yet she thought it a 
 thing not to be granted, " seeing the private benefit to the 
 
 * " For by the ancient laws of England it was provided, under pain of 
 confiscation of goods and lands, that none but the great noblemen of the 
 land and merchants should without the king's special licence depart the 
 realm, nor abide in foreign countries beyond a time prefixed, and this, 
 either for the recovery of their health in a hotter climate, or for the more 
 plentiful adorning of their wits in the universities, or else to learn the 
 discipline of the wars" (Camden, 46).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 7 
 
 individuals would not be so great as the hurt to the community, 
 when others should take courage by their example ". The 
 Conde de Feria * resented this refusal as a private injury, 
 though made upon public grounds : he caused a servant of 
 the English ambassador to be seized by the Inquisition, and 
 " kindled the coals of the displeased king's mind, his wife in 
 vain labouring to the contrary ".t 
 
 But though Philip became more and more estranged from 
 Elizabeth, that wise queen avoided all occasion for a breach 
 with Spain ; and when her ambassador, Sir Thomas Chaloner, 
 who when employed in Germany found nothing but courtesy 
 there, requested to be recalled, because his coffers had been 
 searched, she admonished him, that an ambassador must take 
 all things in good part, so as his prince's honour were not 
 directly violated. Early, however, in her reign, " finding the 
 realm greatly unfurnished of armour, munitions, and powder," 
 she began to provide against war, that she " might the more 
 quietly enjoy peace ". Arms and weapons were purchased for 
 her at Antwerp, but the Spaniards refused to allow the ex- 
 portation, in policy, not with any hostile disposition at that 
 time. They were procured, therefore, from Germany, at great 
 cost, but so largely that the land was said never to have been 
 
 * No doubt he felt that he had rendered himself personally obnoxious to 
 Elizabeth, for refusing, though residing in London as Philip's representa- 
 tive, to be present at her coronation ; which refusal, Ribadeneira says, he 
 made " como cavallero catolico y valeroso". For he inquired : " Si se avian 
 de guardar en la coronacion todas las ceremonias de los otros reyes 
 Christianos conforme al uso de nuestra santa madre yglesia Romana, y 
 como supiesse que avia de aver alguna alteracion, nunca se pudo acabar 
 con el que assistiesse a la solennedad, ni estuviesse en la yglesia, ni en 
 publico, ni encubierto, ni con los otros grandes del reyno, ni aparte en 
 un tablado que le quisieron hazer, por no autorizar con su presencia aquel 
 auto impio, y dar exemplo del recato y circunspecion que en semejantes 
 cosas, por pequenas que parezcan, deven tener los catolicos para no 
 contaminarse " (1. ii. c. xxii.). 
 
 t Camden, 46.
 
 8 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 so amply stored at any former time with "all kinds of con- 
 venient armour and weapons ". "Very many pieces of great 
 ordnance of brass and iron she cast ; and God/' says Camden, 
 " as if He favoured what she undertook, discovered a most 
 rich vein of pure and native brass, which had been long time 
 neglected, near Keswick,* in Cumberland, which abundantly 
 sufficed for that use, and afforded brass to other countries also. 
 The stone, also, called lapis calaminaris, which is most necessary 
 for the brass works, was now, by God's favour, first found in 
 England, and that in abundance. And she, also, was the 
 first that procured gunpowder to be made in England, that 
 she might not both pray and pay for it too to her neighbours. 
 The noblemen, too, and common people, with no less cheerful 
 diligence, provided them arms everywhere ; so as in noble- 
 men's houses most complete armouries were furnished. 
 Musters and views of arms were often kept, and the youth 
 trained to the science of war, and audacity of skirmishing. In 
 those days, also, the queen restrained, by a strict proclamation, 
 the covetousness of merchants, which supplied munition for 
 war to the Emperor of Russia against the Polonians, and also 
 to the enemies of Christendom. 1 ' t For the better maintenance 
 and increase of the navy, the free exportation of herrings and 
 all other sea fish, in English bottoms, was allowed for four 
 years, and so further during pleasure : a partial exemption 
 from impressment was granted to all fishermen ; and for their 
 encouragement and " the repairing of port towns and naviga- 
 tion," Wednesdays, as well as Saturdays, were ordered to be 
 
 * In his Britannia Camden says that " this place was formerly noted 
 for mines, as appears by a certain charter of Edward IV.". And Philemon 
 Holland adds that the miners " have here their smelting-house by 
 Derwent side, which with his forcible stream and their ingenious inven- 
 tions serveth them in notable stead for easy bellows-works, hammer- 
 works, forge-works, and saving of boards, not without admiration of those 
 that behold it ". These works, however, were on the side of the Greta, 
 not the Derwent. 
 
 t Camden, 56. Holinshed, 202.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 9 
 
 observed as fish-days, under penalty of a heavy tine ; and this, 
 it was stated, " was meant politicly, not for any superstition, 
 to be maintained in the choice of meats".* Her navy was, 
 ere long, so well appointed, that she had no need (like her 
 father and predecessors) to hire ships from Hamburgh, Lubeck, 
 Dantzic, Genoa, and Venice. "Foreigners named her the 
 restorer of the glory of shipping, and the queen of the North 
 Sea." For the protection of the fleet she built Upnore Castle ; 
 and she increased the sailors' pay. " The wealthier inhabitants 
 of the sea coast," says Camden, " in imitation of their princess, 
 built ships of war, striving who should exceed ; insomuch that 
 the queen's navy, joined with her subjects' shipping, was, in 
 short time, so puissant, that it was able to bring forth 20,000 
 fighting men for sea service." f 
 
 The world in those days offered occupation enough to 
 restless spirits. At one time many of the young English 
 gentry " who, according to their innate courage, thought 
 themselves born to arms, not to idleness," repaired to Hungary, 
 as volunteers against the Turks. A few years later they 
 began to flock into the Low Countries, taking different sides, 
 some for principle, others preferring that service in which 
 best entertainment was to be found ; the far greater number, 
 however, engaged in the Protestant cause, the strong feeling 
 that had been excited by the Marian persecution in their own 
 country being roused by the cruelty of the Spanish Govern- 
 ment under Alva, a great but merciless man, who in his last 
 illness accounted those actions which have entailed an ever- 
 lasting reproach on his name among his good works ! He had 
 used his influence in Spain to restrain J the violence with 
 which the English in that country were persecuted on the 
 score of their religion, either because that persecution was 
 urged by a rival statesman, or because he deemed it politic at 
 that time to keep up a friendly understanding with England, 
 
 * Eliz., c. v. t Camden, 56. J Ibid., 61.
 
 10 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 certainly not from any toleration or feeling of compassion. 
 But when Governor of the Netherlands he clearly saw that 
 in England lay the strength of that Protestant cause, for the 
 extirpation of which he was exerting all the energies of his 
 strong head and obdurate heart. No direct or open offence 
 had as yet been offered by either party, when some French 
 privateers whom the Prince of Conde had equipped, but who 
 infested the seas as pirates, fell in with five Spanish vessels 
 which with difficulty escaped, some getting into Falmouth, 
 the others into Plymouth and the Southampton River. 
 The French also put into an English port, waiting to renew 
 the pursuit, whenever the Spaniards should depart from their 
 asylum. 
 
 The Spanish ambassador, being apprised of this, applied to 
 the queen : he informed her that there was money on board, 
 for the payment of the king's troops in the Low Countries, 
 and requested that she would protect it in her harbours, and 
 grant it a safe convoy to Antwerp ; or, if advisable, let it be 
 carried through the country to a port where it might be safely 
 re-embarked. This the queen granted, and promised security 
 both by sea and land. Even in harbour the freebooters would 
 have mastered one of these ships, if they had not been beaten 
 off by the English : and after this danger, the money was 
 landed. No sooner had this been done than the Spanish 
 resident began to fear that it was trusted to dangerous hands, 
 and he imparted his suspicions to Alva. Meantime Cardinal 
 Chastillon, who was then in England, assured the queen that 
 the money was not in fact the King of Spain's, but belonged 
 to certain Genoese, from whom Alva intended to take it as a 
 loan, against their will. The matter was then laid before the 
 council, and it was debated whether this money, which was 
 to be employed for the destruction of the Protestants in the 
 Low Countries, should not be borrowed by the queen, security 
 being given ; a practice then usual among princes, and to 
 which Philip himself had sometimes resorted ; and upon
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 11 
 
 this the queen resolved, though most of her advisers were 
 of a different opinion, and feared to exasperate a power- 
 ful king who was already sufficiently incensed against the 
 English. This resolution was communicated to the Spanish 
 ambassador, with a solemn engagement to restore the money, 
 if it should prove to belong not to the merchants but to the 
 King of Spain. Alva, on the very day that this communica- 
 tion was made to the resident, upon the first suspicion seized 
 the goods of all the English in the Netherlands, and arrested 
 the owners. He thought to intimidate a Government, the 
 strength of which had not been tried, and the foundations of 
 which he was then working to undermine. But the courageous 
 queen immediately made reprisals upon the ships and property 
 belonging to the Netherlanders.* 
 
 Ships were now sent out to cruise against the English, not 
 only from the Netherlands, but from the ports of Spain, where 
 the English merchants and mariners were arrested by the 
 Inquisition, and condemned to the galleys, and their goods 
 confiscated. When this was known in England, privateers 
 were fitted out with the utmost activity ; but they acted with 
 such indiscriminating rapacity, that it became necessary to 
 issue proclamations forbidding all men from purchasing any 
 merchandise from sea rovers. Meantime Alva was prosecut- 
 ing what he hoped would prove a far more effectual plan of 
 operations against Elizabeth, and in her person against the 
 Protestant religion, whereof she was the chief earthly support. 
 The hostile disposition of Philip towards England was such, 
 that he had reprimanded this minister not long before for 
 having written as if he were well inclined towards what the king 
 
 * Camden, 120. Pieter Bor, Oorsprongk. etc., dcr Ncthcrlandsche 
 Oorlogen, i., 272. 
 
 The property embargoed here is said to have far exceeded in value 
 what was seized in the Netherlands, though Pieter Bor states the yearly 
 value of our exports to those countries at more than 12,000,000 crowns 
 of gold (i., 69).
 
 12 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 called that " lost and undone kingdom " ; * for the Inquisition 
 had now obtained as much influence over the councils of that 
 monarch, prudent as he was deemed, as over his conscience. 
 The language of the Pope was, that for the diseases which 
 then afflicted Christendom fiery cauteries were required ; that 
 corrupt members must be cut off; that nothing was more 
 cruel than to show mercy to the heretics ; that all who fell 
 into the hands of the true servants of the Church ought im- 
 mediately to be put to death, and that no king who suffered 
 himself to be entreated in their favour could satisfy his Re- 
 deemer.f They acted themselves in the spirit of these 
 exhortations. Pius V. laid a plot for restoring the Romish 
 religion in England by taking off Elizabeth, J and raising the 
 Queen of Scots to the throne. Her agents in this country 
 conducted it with great dexterity, so as to engage in it some 
 who were in Elizabeth's council, and in her favour as well as 
 confidence, but who were now actuated by ambition, or by 
 envy and hatred of their rivals, or by a dreadful persuasion of 
 duty to the Papal Church ; and all things seemed ripe when 
 the dispute concerning the money which the English Govern- 
 ment had retained afforded Pius a favourable opportunity for 
 engaging Philip in the conspiracy. Philip lent an obedient 
 ear. Alva was ordered to hold 3000 harquebussiers in readi- 
 ness for embarkation : the Marquis Vitelli was sent to London 
 under the pretext of an embassy, but with the intent that he 
 should take the command of those troops as soon as they 
 should have landed near London, where an understanding 
 
 * Turner's Elizabeth, 454, n. 2. 
 
 [Ibid., 461, 480, n. 45 ; 481, n. 56. 
 
 J " Una quidem ex parte ipsi Scotorum reginaa opem ferre, eamque 
 omnino liberare ; ex altera vero lapsam in Anglia religionem renovare 
 cogitabat, simul et illam malorum omnium sentinam, seu, ut appellabat 
 ipse, flagitiorum servam de media tollcre, si minus posset ad sanitatem 
 revocari " (Gabutius, Vita B. Pii. V . Ada SS., 2. Mar., t. i., p. 658). 
 
 " Oblatam occasionem baud contemnendam esseratus " (Ibid.).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 13 
 
 had been established with the Tower, at the palace, and among 
 the queen's guards.* 
 
 These arrangements having been made, the Pope fulminated 
 that memorable bull, wherein, as one whom the Lord had 
 made prince over all people and all kingdoms, to pluck up, 
 destroy, scatter, consume, plant, and build, he passed sentence 
 of excommunication against Elizabeth, as being a heretic, and 
 a favourer of heretics ; pronounced that she was cut off from 
 the unity of the body of Christ, and deprived of her pretended 
 title to the kingdom ; absolved her subjects from the oath of 
 allegiance, and all manner of duty towards her, and included 
 all who should obey her in the same sentence of anathema. 
 It was thought imprudent to let this bull appear in Spain or 
 France before it had been published in England, lest it should 
 provoke the queen f to take more active measures against the 
 Spaniards, and to appear decidedly in support of the French 
 Protestants. Its first appearance, therefore, was in London, 
 where Felton nailed it upon the Bishop of London's palace 
 gate. But an earlier insurrection in the north had broken 
 the strength and abated the hopes of the more eager Papists ; 
 and secret information of the conspiracy was given to the 
 English ministers by the French Government, J which, though 
 possessed with the most deadly hatred against the Protestant 
 cause, dreaded the union of England and Scotland under one 
 sovereign, and the subjugation of this country to the influence, 
 
 * Turner, 505, 509. 
 
 + Ada Sanctorum, 658. Pollini, 458. 
 
 I Turner, 509. This most diligent historian, whose industry and in- 
 tegrity, and perfect fairness, entitle him always to be trusted, has shown 
 that this information was given by Catherine de Medicis, upon the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine's advice. 
 
 "... divino judicio permissum est (Gabutius says) ut de rerum seria tota 
 ad Elizabetham referretur a nonnullis, Gallise regno politice magis quam 
 pie consulentibus, statusque jure (quod Pius diabolicum jus appellare 
 solebat) atque vana suspicione implicitis, ne scilicet Anglia recepa, Gallia- 
 rum regno potirentur Hispani " (Acta SS., 658).
 
 14 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 or possibly * to the power of Spain. Thus did France, at this 
 critical time, interpose in favour of Elizabeth against the 
 Spaniards, upon motives precisely similar to those by which 
 Spain had before been led to interfere for her against the 
 French ; and the conspiracy was frustrated, t though its extent 
 was not discovered, nor the magnitude of the danger as yet 
 fully understood. 
 
 But though the treason had failed, and the Duke of Norfolk, 
 who was to have been the Catholic husband of a second Queen 
 Mary, suffered death, the design was still pursued by the 
 Spaniards and the Pope : the latter spared no money for this 
 pious purpose, as it was deemed at the Vatican, and declared 
 that, were it necessary, for such an object he would expend 
 the whole revenues of the apostolic see, and sell the chalices 
 and the crosses, and even the very vestments. J That the 
 blow might more surely be struck, the semblance of peace, if not 
 of amity, was still maintained ; not with sincerity, indeed, on 
 
 *"Verentes nimirum ne Anglia in Hispanorum caderet potestatem." 
 
 f Pollini imputes the delay to Alva's fear of bringing about a league 
 between France and England in aid of the Protestants in the Netherlands ; 
 and afterwards to his desire that his son D. Fadrique should command 
 the expedition instead of Vitelli. The first fear he ascribes to the sugges- 
 tion of the devil, and insinuates (falsely beyond all doubt) that, owing to 
 his resentment at being disappointed in his views for his son, Elizabeth 
 was made acquainted with the plot ; whereby " hebbe finalmente quello 
 che desiderava il diavolo " (471, 472). 
 
 Philip is asserted to have said to the legate : " Nullam unquam hoc ipso 
 vel preclarius vel sanctius compositum stratagema fuisse ; neque vero 
 majorem unquam visam esse conjuratorum sive concordiam, sive con- 
 stantiam ; siquidem per tot dies nihil unquam ab ipsis temere enuntiatum 
 erat, magnaque res bene gerendas atque opportuna sese offerebat occasio. 
 Sed enim summus ille mundi Opifex, cujus nutu omnia gubernantur, 
 seu mortalium peccatis id emerentibus, seu ut ex Anglia vigente perse- 
 cutione plures interim Christi martyres, uti deinceps factum est, in 
 ccelum volarent, nos alioqui pios conatus irritos esse permissit " (Ada 
 SS., 659). 
 
 \ Ibid.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 15 
 
 Elizabeth's part ; but on the part of Philip perfidiously. She did 
 not restrain her subjects from those maritime adventures which 
 nourished her naval strength ; and he, in conformity to what was 
 then the avowed doctrine of the Romish Church, acted upon the 
 principle that all means were justifiable whereby the interests 
 of that Church could be promoted. The Spanish ambassador 
 complained that the rebellious Netherlanders were supplied 
 with warlike stores from England, and harboured in the Eng- 
 lish ports ; and, in consequence of his complaint, she ordered 
 their ships of war to be detained, and those persons who were 
 suspected of being implicated in the disturbances to leave the 
 land. The most important events in public affairs, as well as 
 in private life, often arise from circumstances which, when 
 they occur, appear of little moment. The ships which the 
 Prince of Orange had commissioned, though they were expressly 
 enjoined not to injure any but their enemies, had brought a 
 scandal upon his cause * by their piracies : insomuch that he 
 had displaced the admiral and appointed the Lord of Lumey, 
 William Graave van der Marck, in his stead. That officer, 
 acting either from timely apprehension, or upon secret intima- 
 tion, collected his ships, twenty-four in number, and sailed 
 from England, entered the Maas, and by a sudden assault got 
 possession of the Briel. This was the first town in Holland 
 which was delivered from the Spaniards, and with this enter- 
 prise, the naval power of the United Provinces commenced. 
 The Water-Geusen, as the Prince of Orange's sailors were 
 called, had before this time deserved no better appellation ; 
 they were mere pirates, and by their ill name had done more 
 injury to him, than by their ill deeds to his enemies. But 
 after this adventure, which had been undertaken by the ex- 
 hortation of a better man than Lumey,+ one success followed 
 
 * Pieter Bor, 289, 323. 
 
 f He was a mere freebooter, and most of his company little .better : 
 " Animi ferox, idque illi unum pro virtute erat," says Grotius ; " et comi- 
 tum plerisque consilium, aut animus, non nisi in praedam " (Ann., 1. ii., 
 P- 35)-
 
 16 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 another. They obtained ports, entered earnestly into the 
 national cause, and acquired character as they gathered 
 strength.* Within four months after the capture of the Briel, 
 they were joined by so many adventurers, French and Eng- 
 lish, that a fleet of 150 sail+ was collected at Flushing, and by 
 this fleet the project of an intended invasion of England was 
 defeated, J at a time when no apprehension of any such 
 danger was entertained there. For the Duque del Medina 
 Celi, coming to succeed Alva in the Government, and bringing 
 with him reinforcements and orders to put in execution the 
 design of entering the Thames and surprising London, ap- 
 proached the coast of Flanders, supposing it to be still in 
 possession of the Spaniards, and that they were masters as well 
 of the sea as of the shores. But the Admiral of Zeeland, 
 Boudewijn Ewoutzoon, having intelligence of his approach, 
 met and attacked him, and captured the far greater part of 
 his richly laden fleet, the duque himself hardly escaping in a 
 small vessel into Sluys. Dispirited at the unexpected aspect 
 of affairs on his arrival, he solicited and obtained his recall ; 
 and Alva seeing that the scheme of foreign invasion, as well 
 as of domestic treason, had been frustrated, deemed it advisable 
 to dissemble still further with England, and renewed the com- 
 mercial intercourse which had then for four years been 
 suspended. By mutual agreement it was opened for two 
 years, and among the articles was a clause, that " if this mutual 
 good understanding and close amity should happen for a time 
 to be disturbed, yet should it in no wise be construed to be 
 broken and dissolved. But if the matter could not be com- 
 
 * Tcgenwoordige Staat der Ver. Netherlander*, vol. v., pp. 330-336. 
 Pieter Bor, 365. 
 
 f Strada, Dec. i., 1. vii., p. 393. 
 
 \ Camden, 191. 
 
 Pieter Bor, 393. T'Vervolgh der. Chron. van de Netherlanden, p. 
 64.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 17 
 
 pounded by commissioners, within the time prescribed, the 
 intercourse was to cease at the end of the two years." * 
 
 The good faith and honour of the realm was upon this 
 occasion well maintained. Elizabeth made a full agreement 
 with the Genoese merchants, concerning the money which 
 was the first declared cause of difference : she indemnified 
 the English merchants for their losses in the Netherlands, out 
 of the produce of the Netherlanders' goods which had been 
 embargoed here ; and the residue was restored to Alva, 
 who made no such restitution to his subjects out of the 
 English property that he had detained. f It had never been 
 Elizabeth's wish that the Netherlands should throw off their 
 allegiance to Philip. Not contemplating the possibility, which, 
 at that time, was not contemplated by themselves, that they 
 could ever maintain themselves as an independent State, she 
 knew that, as it regarded England, it was better they should 
 be annexed to Spain than to France ; and there was no other 
 apparent alternative. Nor, if their independence had seemed 
 feasible, could she, a sovereign princess, have desired that 
 what she could not but deem a dangerous precedent should 
 be established. As a Protestant, she sympathised with their 
 sufferings for religion's sake ; as the queen of a free people, 
 whose rights and privileges she respected as she ought, she 
 acknowledged that they complained justly of the breach of 
 their fundamental laws. But, on the other hand, Elizabeth 
 felt that the cause of the Reformation had been disgraced and 
 injured by the excesses the Netherlanders had committed 
 under its name, by spoliation and havoc, and by cruelties 
 which afforded the persecutors a recriminating plea, and 
 which were not to be excused for having been exercised in 
 retaliation. Moreover, she was sensible that, in such com- 
 motions, the foundations of civil society are loosened and 
 endangered. These equitable views were fairly stated, both 
 
 * Camden, 191. \ Ibid.
 
 18 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 to the Spanish Government and to the States. When Re- 
 quesens sent an agent into England to obtain her permission 
 for engaging ships and seamen there, to act against the 
 Hollanders and Zeelanders, she refused, and prohibited 
 English seamen from serving under foreign powers, and all 
 men from setting out ships of war without her licence : " her 
 ships and sailors," she said, " should not be hazarded in 
 foreign quarrels ". The agent then requested that she would 
 not be displeased if those English whom he called exiles, but 
 whom she termed rebels, served at sea against the Hollanders; 
 but that she would allow them free access to any of her ports. 
 Her answer was, " that she could in no wise allow them to 
 serve under the Spaniards ; and that to give the use of her 
 ports to rebels and sworn enemies would be nothing short of 
 madness ". One other request the agent made, that the Low 
 Country emigrants might be expelled from her dominions. 
 To this she replied, " that her consenting to a like request, 
 three years before, had proved most prejudicial to the Spanish 
 affairs ; for from thence that maritime power had arisen, 
 against which the Spaniards now found it so difficult to con- 
 tend ". In proof that she had neither forgotten nor disre- 
 garded the ancient league with the house of Burgundy, she 
 forbade the Netherlander' ships of war, which were then in 
 her havens, from leaving them ; and would, by public pro- 
 clamation, give orders that none who were in arms against 
 the Spaniards should be admitted into them, specifying by 
 name the Prince of Orange, and some fifty of the most con- 
 spicuous persons of his party ; but she would not expel the 
 fugitives who had taken shelter upon her shores, ..." poor, 
 simple people, who had forsaken their country and their 
 inheritance for peace ; and whom it were inhuman, and 
 against the laws of hospitality, to deliver into the hands of 
 their enemies".* 
 
 On the other hand, she endeavoured to dissuade the Prince 
 * Camden, 20.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 19 
 
 of Orange from inviting France to protect the States ; and 
 when she was entreated by Holland and Zeeland to take them 
 into her own possession, or at least under her protection, as 
 the person to whom, in defeasance of the Spanish line, the 
 right of inheritance reverted (that line deriving it from a sister 
 of Philippa of Hainault, Edward III.'s queen), she answered, 
 that she esteemed nothing more glorious than to act with 
 faith and honour as beseemeth a prince : in this case, she 
 could not be satisfied that she could, consistently with 
 honour and conscience, take those provinces under her 
 protection, much less into her possession ; but that she would 
 earnestly endeavour to procure for them a happy peace. 
 When Requesens died, and there were movements which 
 indicated a disposition in the other States to recover their 
 ancient liberties, she exhorted them to bend their minds to 
 peace, desiring nothing so much as the restoration of order in 
 their provinces, and good government. This, indeed, her 
 subjects had great reason to desire ; for while many of those 
 unquiet spirits, who followed war as a trade, engaged on either 
 side, the English merchants, seeking their own gain by less 
 exceptionable means, were plundered by both. They who 
 were resident in Antwerp, when that city was sacked by the 
 mutinous Spaniards, were not only spoiled of their goods, but 
 compelled to pay a large ransom for their lives. And the 
 Dutch and Zeeland ships of war, with the connivance, if not 
 the sanction of the States, detained English ships upon the 
 plea that they imported provisions to their enemies the 
 Dunkirkers, and that the trade from Flanders to Spain was 
 now carried on in English bottoms, and boarded them "smally 
 to the profit of those to whom the ships and goods apper- 
 tained," even when they were not boldly seized and earned 
 away as prizes. A breach had nearly been made between the 
 States and England, when the States blockaded the Scheldt, 
 and prohibited the English from trading by that river with 
 Antwerp : the merchants, finding themselves thus damnified,
 
 20 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 complained to their own Government, reprisals took place, 
 and the dispute M r as not adjusted till after much mutual 
 injury and ill-will. The arrangement was facilitated by 
 sending four vessels under the comptroller of the queen's 
 ships, William Holstocke, to scour the narrow seas from the 
 North Foreland to Falmouth. In that course, he recaptured 
 fifteen merchantmen of sundry nations, took twenty ships and 
 barques, " English, French, and Flemings, but all pirates, and 
 in fashion of war " ; and brought home 200 men prisoners for 
 piracy, some thirty of whom were condemned to death.* 
 
 Such was the desire of Elizabeth that the Low Countries 
 should remain united to Spain, rather than be annexed to 
 France, that when Don John of Austria arrived as governor, 
 she offered him her assistance in case the States should call 
 in the French. At the same time when, upon the impor- 
 tunate entreaties of the States, she assisted them with 20,000/ v 
 it was upon condition that they should neither change their 
 religion nor their prince, nor receive the French into the 
 Netherlands, nor refuse a peace if Don John would con- 
 descend to reasonable conditions ; and that, if such a peace 
 were obtained, this money should go toward the payment of 
 the Spanish soldiers, who were then in a state of mutiny 
 because of their arrears, f But it was with no amicable 
 intentions towards the Queen of England that Don John took 
 upon himself the command in the Netherlands. He had been 
 bred up in ignorance that Charles V. was his father, but in 
 a manner which qualified him for any rank to which he might 
 be advanced ; and Philip, after acknowledging him as his 
 brother, though illegitimate, had placed him in circumstances 
 the most favourable to an ambitious mind, by appointing him to 
 the command of that fleet with which he achieved at Lepanto 
 a naval victory more important and more famous than any 
 
 * Holinshed, 321-323, 329-332. Camden, 214. 
 t Camden, 208, 210, 215.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 21 
 
 preceding one in modern history. Having taken possession 
 of Tunis, he conceived the hope of becoming the founder of a 
 Christian kingdom, which might one day vie in power and 
 prosperity with ancient Carthage : * and when Philip refused 
 his consent to a project the difficulties of which were well 
 understood by Spanish statesmen, Don John, with the appro- 
 bation of the Pope, fixed upon England as the seat of the 
 kingdom to which he imagined himself born. A marriage 
 with the Queen of Scots was to provide him with a claim to 
 it, and possession was to be taken by force of arms. The 
 English emigrants encouraged him in this design ; and he re- 
 presented to Philip that England might be conquered more 
 easily than Zeeland, and urged him to grant him some port in 
 the north of Spain from whence he might invade it with a 
 fleet. Meantime he had privately communicated with the 
 Guises ; and this part of his negotiation was discovered and 
 made known to Elizabeth by the Prince of Orange, as also 
 that the intention was to occupy the Isle of Man, and that the 
 aid of Mary's partisans in the south of Scotland was counted 
 on, and assistance from Ireland, and an insurrection of the 
 Papists in the northern counties and in North Wales. When 
 the truth of this information had been ascertained, Elizabeth 
 entered into a league with the States, f 
 
 That league she notified by an ambassador to the King of 
 Spain, praying him and the governors of the Netherlands to 
 call to mind how often and how earnestly, and in how friendly 
 an intent, she had long forewarned them of the evils impend- 
 ing over those countries ; how carefully she had endeavoured 
 to keep them within their duty to the king ; how she had 
 refused to take possession of the rich provinces which had 
 been offered to her, and refused also to protect them ; and 
 how she had supplied them largely with money, when all 
 
 * Memorial de Ant. Perez, 298. 
 t Camden, 220.
 
 22 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 things were in a most desperate and deplorable state, that 
 they might not, for want thereof, be necessitated to call in 
 another power, and break the design of peace which had lately 
 been set on foot ; whether these things were unbeseeming a 
 Christian queen, who affected peace, and was most desirous to 
 deserve well of her confederate the Spaniard, let the Spaniard 
 himself and all Christian princes judge ! And now that the 
 wars might cease, and the Netherlanders again be at his 
 devotion, she advised him to receive his afflicted people into 
 former grace and favour, to restore their privileges, to observe 
 the conditions of the last agreement, and to appoint them 
 another governor of his own family : for no peace could be 
 concluded or observed unless Don John of Austria were 
 removed, whom the States distrusted and hated, and whom 
 she certainly knew, by his secret practices with the Queen of 
 Scots, to be her most mortal enemy, insomuch that she could 
 expect nothing from the Netherlands but assured danger, so 
 long as he was governor there. It was because she knew 
 what great forces Don John had raised, and how many 
 auxiliary companies of French were ready to join him, that 
 she, to preserve the Netherlands and Spain, and avert the 
 danger from England, had now engaged to assist the States, 
 they having promised on their part that they would continue 
 in the king's obedience, and alter nothing in religion. If, 
 however, the king would not listen to these representations, 
 but was resolved to abrogate their rights and privileges, and 
 reduce those miserable provinces into slavery, as if he had 
 obtained possession of them by right of war, she in that case 
 would not neglect to defend her neighbours, and provide for 
 her own security.* 
 
 This was no palatable language to Philip ; but that deep 
 dissembler, feeling its force, and conscious of its truth, brooked 
 it, and with simulated good-will besought her to continue her 
 
 * Camden, 221.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 23 
 
 endeavours for bringing about a peace, and not hastily to 
 credit false reports, nor believe that he attempted anything 
 unbecoming a prince in amity with her. How far he favoured 
 the designs of Don John as conformable to his own Catholic 
 views, or discouraged them as tending more to the advantage 
 of France than Spain, is uncertain.* But after the death of 
 
 * Strada says that when the Pope proposed a marriage between Don 
 John and the Queen of Scots, " Cum dotali Angliae regno, ad cujus aggres- 
 sionem honestior inde titulus armis Austriacis adderetur " ; Philip did not 
 refuse his consent: " Xeque rex abnuebat, immo licet expeditionem 
 magis quam ducem probaret," are his cautious words (1. viii., p. 445). 
 
 There is a mystery about the fate of Don John. " Nam super natalium 
 sortem Tunetense quondam regnum, tune et Angliam sperasse manifestus, 
 et cum Lotharingis in Gallica aula praepotentibus, clam Philippum, 
 sociasse consilia, facile et res Belgicas in se versurus timebatur. Unde 
 nee veneni suspicio abfuit, incertum tamen unde dati, quippe inventis 
 sacerdotibus Romanas professionis, qui suam in hoc operam patriae im- 
 putarent. Anglos alii suspectabant, non ita dudum supplicio affectis, 
 qui inde immissi in ipsum percursores dicebantur" (Grotius, p. 61). 
 
 The Englishmen here spoken of were Egremont Ratcliffe, and one 
 Grey, the former son to the Earl of Sussex by a second wife, a man of a 
 turbulent spirit, and one of the chiefs of the northern rebellion. The Eng- 
 lish emigrants accused him of intending to assassinate Don John, in 
 whose army he was serving, and he and Grey were executed upon this. 
 "The Spaniards," says Camden, " give out that Ratcliffe at his death 
 voluntarily confessed he had been released from the Tower purposely 
 to commit this murder, and encouraged to it by Walsingham with 
 great promises. The English that were there present deny that he made 
 any such confession, though the emigrants did what they could to extort 
 it from him" (p. 227). They were put to the torture after Don John's 
 death, by the Prince of Parma, and executed upon the confession thus 
 extorted (Strada, 557). If Don John were poisoned, the cause of their 
 execution is evident enough. 
 
 This was an absurd charge, and could be believed only by that party 
 spirit which will believe anything. Common as the employment of 
 assassins was in that age for party motives, the English Government 
 stands free from all reproach on that score ; and if it had been less 
 scrupulous, Don John was no object of its jealousy or of its fear. There 
 is a strange tale of'his intriguing for a marriage with Elizabeth ; this is
 
 24 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 that ambitious chief, whose story is more like a fiction of 
 romance or tragedy than a tale of real life, the plots against 
 Elizabeth were renewed. Pope Gregory XIII. and Philip, by 
 whom the scheme was now concerted, had each their separate 
 views ; the latter saw that he could not reduce the Nether- 
 lands to subjection unless he were master of the sea, and that 
 he could not be master of the sea till he should have subdued 
 England. The Pope, in the plenitude of his authority, was 
 willing to confer upon him an apostolical title to that kingdom, 
 giving Ireland at the same time to his own bastard son, whom 
 he had made Marchese de Vineola. The notorious adventurer 
 Stukely undertook to conquer Ireland for this king-aspirant, 
 and to burn the ships in the Thames. For this service, he 
 asked only 3000 men, while a larger force of Spaniards and 
 Portuguese were to land in England. To show on what 
 grounds he proceeded, this arch-traitor presented an instru- 
 ment to Philip, " subscribed with the names of most of the 
 Irish nobility, and of divers in England of good quality, ready 
 
 said to have been seriously affirmed by letters from the Low Countries, 
 and it has also been affirmed that Escovedo passed two months in England 
 endeavouring to bring about a negotiation for this end ; but nothing that 
 in the slightest degree supports this, appears in all that has come to light 
 concerning Escovedo's fate, nor in any English documents. It is only 
 not impossible, because Don John seems to have loved danger and dis- 
 simulation for their own sakes. Instead of taking a safe course to the 
 Netherlands, when he went to assume the government, he chose to pass 
 through France in the disguise of a negro servant, " infuscato ore, vibrato 
 capillo ac barba" (Strada, Dec. iv., 1. ix., p. 460). The man who could 
 choose such a disguise, would think no plot too extravagant in which he 
 was to perform a conspicuous part. 
 
 Strada suspects that the story was devised by the Prince of Orange, 
 for the purpose of exasperating Philip against his brother (p. 556). But 
 the Prince of Orange was a good man, engaged in a good cause, . . . too 
 good a man ever to have served it by wicked means. When he charged 
 Philip in his declaration, with the death of Don Carlos, I am as con- 
 fident that he believed the charge as I am convinced that the charge itself 
 was an atrocious calumny.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 25 
 
 to be at his devotion ". In order to diminish the queen's 
 means of naval defence, foreign merchants were employed to 
 hire for distant voyages the greater part of those merchant 
 ships which were built and furnished for sea-service.* 
 
 It is said that Sebastian of Portugal was intended for the 
 command of this expedition. Such an undertaking would 
 have well accorded with his temper, and with the principles 
 wherewith his pernicious education had thoroughly imbued 
 him. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's had been concerted 
 with his knowledge : an armament, which he had prepared 
 ostensibly against the Turks, was to have sailed in aid of the 
 French Government, if that massacre had failed ; and when 
 the news of its perpetration arrived, Lisbon was illuminated, 
 and processions made, and a thanksgiving sermon preached 
 by the most eloquent of the Spanish preachers, Frey Luiz de 
 Granada ; and an ambassador was sent to congratulate Charles 
 IX. | upon a crime for which, as it regards himself, it may 
 be hoped that the horror and remorse which speedily brought 
 him to an untimely death may have atoned. But though 
 Sebastian had proffered to the Pope his utmost services 
 against Mahommedans and heretics, early impressions and 
 national feeling led him to tread in the steps of his heroic 
 ancestors, and endeavour to recover that dominion in Africa 
 which they had unwisely abandoned for the sake of more 
 distant and less tenable conquests. Though the Pope offered 
 him a consecrated banner as for a holy war, he was not to be 
 diverted from his purpose ; and Stukely, who arrived in the 
 Tagus with 800 men, raised for the invasion of Ireland, was 
 induced to postpone that purpose, and accompany Sebastian 
 to Barbary. Stukely met his death there, ... in better 
 company than he deserved to die in ; for braver or nobler- 
 minded men never fell in battle than some of those Portu- 
 / 
 
 * Camden, 230. Turner, 574. 
 
 t Bayam, Portugal Cuidadoso y Lastimoso, 271, 272.
 
 26 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 guese who perished on that disastrous day. Whether Sebastian 
 perished with them, is one of those secrets over which the 
 grave has closed. But as his wilfulness had been the means 
 of averting the intended invasion of England, so by the con- 
 sequences of his defeat and disappearance Portugal became 
 the immediate object of Philip's designs : his chief care was 
 devoted to obtaining the succession for himself; and the 
 forces which had been levied against Elizabeth were employed 
 in establishing his ill-founded claim against a pretender whose 
 pretensions were weaker than his own, and who had nothing 
 to support them but the favour of the populace. 
 
 A few years earlier, Cecil, the greatest of English statesmen, 
 thought that if an enemy were at hand to assail the realm 
 it were a fearful thing to consider, because of its growing 
 weakness, what the resistance might be. The cause of that 
 weakness he perceived " in the queen's celibacy, and the 
 want of a suitable successor, and the lack of foreign alliances ; 
 in the feebleness which long peace had induced, the weakness 
 of the frontier, the ignorance of martial knowledge in the 
 subjects, the lack of meet captains and trained soldiers, the 
 rebellion which had then recently broken out in Ireland, the 
 over-much boldness which the mildness of the queen's govern- 
 ment had encouraged, the want of treasure, the excess of the 
 ordinary charges, the poverty of the nobility and gentlemen 
 of service (the wealth being in the meaner sort), the lack of 
 mariners and munition, and the decay of morals and religion " ; 
 but the greatest danger he considered to be that which arose 
 from " the determination of the two monarchies, next neigh- 
 bours to England, to subvert not only their own subjects, but 
 also all others refusing the tyranny of Rome, and their earnest 
 desire to have the Queen of Scots possess this throne of 
 England ". * One alone of these causes of danger had been 
 remedied, the lack of mariners : a race of seamen such as no 
 
 * Memorial of the state of the realm, quoted by Turner, 513.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF RFFINGHAM 27 
 
 former times had equalled, and no after ones have surpassed, 
 was then training in voyages of discovery and of mercantile 
 adventure. For the predatory spirit by which the speculators 
 at home, as well as the adventurers themselves, were influenced, 
 some provocation had been given ; and when Elizabeth, in 
 answer to the demand made by the Spanish ambassador for 
 restitution of the treasure which Drake had brought home 
 from that voyage which has immortalised his name, told him 
 that Drake should be forthcoming to answer according to law, 
 if he were convicted by good evidence of having committed 
 anything against law or right ; and that the property was 
 set apart in order that it might be restored to its just 
 claimants ; she reminded him that a greater sum than Drake 
 had brought home she had been compelled to expend in 
 putting down those rebellions which the Spaniards had raised 
 and encouraged both in Ireland and England : and as to the 
 complaint which he preferred against the English for sailing 
 in the Indian Ocean, she answered, she could not persuade 
 herself that the Bishop of Rome's donation had conferred upon 
 the kings of Spain any just title to the Indies : she acknow- 
 ledged no prerogative in that bishop to lay any restriction 
 upon princes who owed him no obedience ; nor could she 
 allow that he had any authority to enfeofF, as it were, the 
 Spaniard in that new world, and invest him with the posses- 
 sion thereof. Neither was their only other claim to be 
 admitted, which was no more than that they had touched 
 here and there upon the coast, built huts there, and given 
 names to a river or a cape. This donation of that which was 
 another's, and this imaginary propriety, did not preclude other 
 princes from trading to those countries, nor from transporting 
 colonies (without breach of the law of nations) into those 
 parts which were not inhabited by Spaniards (for prescription 
 without possession was little worth) ; nor from navigating that 
 vast ocean, seeing that the sea and air are common to all. A 
 title to the ocean belonged not to any people or private
 
 28 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public custom 
 warranted any possession thereof. She observed, also, that 
 the Spaniards, by their hard dealing with the English, whom 
 they had, contrary to the law of nations, prohibited from 
 commerce, had drawn upon themselves the mischiefs which 
 they now complained of.* 
 
 The charge against the Spanish Government, of having 
 instigated rebellion, was incontestable. Stukely's preparations 
 had not been secret, and an English fleet had been stationed 
 on the Irish coast to intercept him ; and that fleet had not 
 long returned to England, in the belief that all present danger 
 was past, before a body of Spaniards were landed in Ireland, 
 in aid of the first Irish rebellion into which the Romish 
 religion entered as an exciting cause, ... a cause from 
 whence have arisen the greatest evils that have [afflicted, and 
 are afflicting, and will long continue to afflict, that unhappy 
 island. The Spaniards fortified themselves in Kerry ; and 
 when the lord deputy, Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton, marched 
 against them, and sent a trumpet " to demand who they were, 
 what they had to do in Ireland, who sent them, and wherefore 
 they had built a fort in Queen Elizabeth's dominions, and 
 withal to command them to depart with speed," they 
 answered, that they were sent " some from the most holy 
 father, the Pope, and some from the King of Spain, to whom 
 the Pope had given Ireland, Queen Elizabeth having, as a 
 heretic, forfeited her title to it. They would, therefore, hold 
 what they had gotten, and get more if they could." The con- 
 fidence which seemed to themselves to justify this language 
 soon failed them ; they discovered too late the vanity of the 
 promises which had been held out to them, the condition of 
 the people with whom they were to act, and the dreadful 
 character of the war which, in reliance upon their support, 
 had been begun. They were besieged by land ; the protect- 
 
 * Camden, 255.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 29 
 
 ing squadron was remanded from England, and cut off their 
 escape by sea : they were compelled to surrender at discretion, 
 and were put to the sword ; a measure which grieved Eliza- 
 beth, and which she disapproved, even when she admitted 
 that the plea of stern necessity was strongly urged in its 
 vindication.* 
 
 It was easy for Elizabeth to justify the views of her Govern- 
 ment, and the peaceable course which it had hitherto pur- 
 sued. Upon general principles, too, the right of her subjects 
 to explore distant seas and countries might well be asserted 
 and maintained, but she made no attempt to defend what was 
 not strictly defensible, and a great part of the money which 
 Drake had brought home was restored to the Spaniards ; f and 
 some of the chief persons belonging to the court refused to 
 accept the money which he offered them, because they con- 
 sidered it to have been gained by piracy. This is said to have 
 troubled him greatly, for he no doubt was of opinion that the 
 conduct of the Spaniards in their American conquests war- 
 ranted any hostile proceedings against them ; and he had this 
 to encourage him, that, while statesmen openly condemned 
 his conduct, or only covertly protected him, " the common 
 sort of people admired and extolled his actions, as deeming it 
 no less honourable to have enlarged the bounds of the Eng- 
 lish name and glory, than of their empire ". J Indeed, how- 
 ever desirous Elizabeth's ministers were of avoiding a war, 
 they saw what the people felt, that it must soon be forced 
 upon them, and that overt acts on the part of Philip would 
 
 Camden, 243. 
 
 t It was paid to a certain Pedro Sebura, of whom Camden says, that he 
 " pretended himself an agent for retrieving the gold and silver," though he 
 had no letters of evidence or commission so to do; and that he " never 
 repaid it to the right owners, but employed it against the queen, and con- 
 verted it to the pay of the Spaniards in the Netherlands, as was at length 
 when it was too late, understood " (p. 255). 
 
 Fuller's Church History, sixteenth century, 180-182.
 
 30 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 soon follow the covert hostility which had long been carried 
 on. The Jesuits, who were now the moving spirits in every 
 conspiracy, were at that time (to use a word current in that 
 age) completely hispamolised, and this was not because the 
 founder, and the architect, and the great thaumaturgic saint 
 of their order were Spaniards, but because the chimerical 
 hope was entertained of establishing a universal monarchy of 
 which Spain was to be the temporal and Rome the spiritual 
 head. The important step of rendering Spain in all spiritual 
 affairs absolutely subservient to Rome had been effected ; and 
 they who laboured to extend the Spanish dominion perceived 
 that the succession of the Scottish line to the throne of 
 England must be unfavourable to the interests of Spain, 
 because of Mary's connection with the Guises ; that of her 
 son would be detrimental to the Romish Church, because he 
 had been carefully and well educated in the principles of the 
 Protestant faith, and it was now evident that those principles 
 were well rooted in his mind. They set up, therefore, a title 
 of the King of Spain to the English crown, by which, pre- 
 posterous as it was, not a few of the English Papists were 
 deluded.* Some of the queen's counsellors proposed to her, 
 as a counter-project, that she should foment the difference 
 which then existed between Philip and the Pope concerning 
 the kingdom of Naples, and assist Gregory not as Pope, but 
 
 * This title, Fuller says (180), was " as much admired by their o\vn 
 party, as slighted by the queen and her loyal subjects. Indeed it is easy 
 for any indifferent herald so to devise a pedigree, as in some seeming 
 probability to entitle any prince in Christendom to any principality in 
 Christendom ; but such will shrink on serious examination. Yea, I believe 
 Queen Elizabeth might pretend a better title to the kingdoms of Leon 
 and Castile in Spain, as descended, by the House of York, from Edmond 
 Earl of Cambridge, and his lady, co-heir to King Pedro, than any claim 
 that the King of Spain could make out to the kingdom of England. How- 
 ever, much mischief was done hereby, many Papists paying their good 
 wishes where they were not due, and defrauding the queen (their true 
 creditor) of the allegiance belonging unto her."
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 31 
 
 in his character of temporal prince, with ships ; thus, they 
 argued, she might bring about a diversion of the Spanish 
 forces, and prevent an invasion of her own dominions. It 
 might have been a sufficient objection to any such proposal 
 that the Papal claim rested upon Papal grounds, and was 
 not maintainable as a political question. But Elizabeth 
 saw it at once in the right point of view as a question of 
 honour and of conscience : she refused to " entertain compli- 
 ance with the Pope in any capacity, or any conditions, as 
 dishonourable to herself, and distasteful to the Protestant 
 princes ; nor would she," says our good Church historian, 
 " touch pitch in jest, for fear of being defiled in earnest ".* 
 
 Part of the system which the hispaniolised faction pursued 
 was to blacken the character of Elizabeth by every imaginable 
 calumny, knowing that no calumnies can be too absurd for 
 itching ears, and hearts that are prepossessed with hatred for 
 the person whom it is proposed to injure. Not contented with 
 contending that she was of illegitimate birth, they affirmed 
 that she was the offspring of an incestuous intercourse between 
 Henry VIII. and his own daughter ! They arraigned her of 
 the vilest ingratitude towards Philip, to whose intercession, 
 they asserted, she had been three times beholden for her life, 
 when sentence of death had been passed against her for 
 treason against her sister. They represented the punishment 
 of convicted traitors, and the preventive measures against 
 preparatory treason, which for self-preservation her Govern- 
 ment w r as compelled to pursue, in a religious persecution, 
 against which the advocates and agents of the Inquisition, 
 yea, the very men who had kindled the fires in Smithfield, 
 filled Europe with their complaints. Books were set forth, 
 wherein it was not contended, but dogmatically taught, that 
 princes, when excommunicated for heresy, were to be deprived 
 of kingdom and life. This doctrine received the sanction of 
 
 * Fuller's Church History, sixteenth century, 180-182.
 
 32 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the censorial authorities in Romish countries ; and, by a libel 
 which was secretly printed in England, the ladies of Eliza- 
 beth's household were exhorted to deal with her as Judith 
 had dealt with Holofernes.* Bernardino de Mendoza, the 
 Spanish ambassador in England, was detected in a corre- 
 spondence with those Papists whose object it was, by foreign 
 aid, to depose the queen and re-establish the Romish religion. 
 He was ordered to depart the land, though he had rendered 
 himself liable to the utmost severity of the law ; and the 
 queen was still so desirous of continuing at peace with Spain, 
 that she sent the clerk of her council into that countiy, to 
 inform the King of Spain for what just cause his minister had 
 been sent away, and withal to assure him, lest, by having thus 
 dismissed Mendoza, she " might seem to renounce the ancient 
 amity that had subsisted between both kingdoms," that all 
 amicable offices should still be shown by her, if Philip would 
 send any other minister who should be desirous of preserving 
 friendship, provided only that a like reception might be 
 given to her ambassador. But this minister could not obtain 
 a hearing, f 
 
 Meantime the Prince of Orange, who had recovered after 
 being desperately wounded by one assassin, perished by the 
 hand of another ; and the war in the Netherlands was 
 vigorously prosecuted by the Prince of Parma, a general 
 whose martial genius had then never been equalled in modern 
 warfare, and, perhaps, has never since been surpassed. Eliza- 
 beth, in her cautious policy, hesitated at entering into any direct 
 alliance with the united States, till he had taken Antwerp, 
 after one of the most memorable sieges in military history. 
 She then hesitated no longer, lest the war should be brought 
 home to her own doors ; and concluded a treaty, whereby she 
 contracted to aid the States with 5000 foot and 1000 horse 
 during the war, the States engaging to repay the expense thus 
 
 * Camden, 295, 307. t Ibid., 296.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 33 
 
 incurred, in the course of five years after the conclusion of a 
 peace. Flushing, Rammakens, and the Briel, were to be 
 occupied by English troops as caution towns. The contracting 
 parties were to enter into no league, but on common consent ; 
 and ships for their mutual defence were to be equipped in 
 equal numbers by both parties, at their common charge, and 
 to be commanded by the admiral of England. The Zeelanders, 
 in honour of this alliance, coined money with the arms of that 
 province on one side, a lion rising out of the waves, and the 
 motto Luctor et emergo ; and on the other the arms of the 
 several cities, with the motto, Authore Deo,favente Regina.* 
 A declaration was published in the queen's name, " of the 
 causes which had moved her to give aid to the defence of the 
 people afflicted and oppressed in the Low Countries " ; for 
 " although kings and princes sovereign, it was said, were not 
 bound to render account of their actions to any but to God, 
 their only sovereign Lord, we are, notwithstanding this our 
 prerogative, at this time specially moved to publish, not only 
 unto our own natural loving subjects, but also to all others our 
 neighbours, what our intention is at this time, and upon what 
 just and reasonable grounds we are moved to give aid unto 
 our next neighbours, the natural people of the Low Countries 
 being, by long wars and persecutions of strange nations there, 
 lamentably afflicted, and in present danger to be brought 
 into a perpetual servitude ". 
 
 " First," said this declaration, " it is to be understood that 
 there hath been, time out of mind, even by the natural 
 situation of those Low Countries and our realm of England, 
 one directly opposite to the other, and by reason of the ready 
 crossing of the seas, andjnultitudes of large and commodious 
 havens respectively on both sides, a continual traffic and com- 
 merce betwixt the people of England and the natural people 
 of those countries, and so continued in all ancient times, when 
 
 Camden, 324. 
 3
 
 34 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the several provinces thereof, as Flanders, Holland, and 
 Zeeland, and other countries to them adjoining, were pos- 
 sessed by several lords, and not united together as of late 
 years they have been by inter-marriages, and at length by 
 concurrence of many and sundry titles, reduced to be under 
 the government of those lords that succeeded to the Dukedom 
 of Burgundy : whereby there had been many special confede- 
 rations, not only betwixt the kings of England and the lords 
 of the said countries, but also betwixt the very natural subjects 
 of both, as the prelates, noblemen, citizens, burgesses and 
 other commonalties of the great cities and port towns of 
 either country reciprocally, by special obligations and stipula- 
 tions under their seals interchangeably, for maintenance of 
 commerce and intercourse of merchants, and also of special 
 mutual amity to be observed ; and very express provision for 
 mutual favours, affections, and all other friendly offices to be 
 used and prosecuted by the people of the one nation towards 
 the other. By which mutual bonds there hath continued 
 perpetual union of the people's hearts together ; and so, by 
 way of continual intercourse, from age to age, the same mutual 
 love hath been inviolably kept and exercised, as it had been 
 by the will of nature, and never utterly dissolved, nor yet for 
 any long time discontinued, howsoever the kings and the lords 
 of the countries sometimes (though very rarely) have been at 
 difference, by sinister means of some other princes, their 
 neighbours, envying the felicity of these two countries. And 
 so had the same mutual and natural concourse and commerce 
 been continued in many ages, far above the like example of 
 any other countries in Christendom, to the honour and strength 
 of the princes, and to the singular great benefit and enriching 
 of their people, until of late years the King of Spain had been 
 (as it is to be thought) counselled by his counsellors of Spain 
 to appoint Spaniards, foreigners, and strangers of strange 
 blood, men more exercised in war than in peaceful govern- 
 ment, and some of them notably delighted in blood, as had
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 35 
 
 appeared by their actions, to be the chiefest governors of 
 all his said Low Countries, contrary to the ancient laws and 
 customs thereof. The Spaniards, having no natural regard to 
 the maintenance of those people in their ancient manner of 
 peaceable living, but being exalted to absolute government 
 by ambition, and for private lucre, have violently broken the 
 ancient laws and liberties, and, in a tyrannous sort, have 
 banished, killed, and destroyed, without order of law, many of 
 the most ancient and principal persons of the natural nobility, 
 that were most worthy of government. And howsoever, in 
 the beginning of these cruel persecutions, the pretence 
 thereof was for maintenance of Romish religion, yet they 
 spared not to deprive very many Catholics and ecclesiastical 
 persons of their franchises and privileges ; and of the chiefest 
 that were executed of the nobility, none was in the whole 
 country more affected to that religion than was the noble and 
 valiant Count of Egmond, the very glory of that country, 
 who neither for his singular victories in the service of the 
 King of Spain can be forgotten in true histories, nor yet for 
 the cruelty used for his destruction be but for ever lamented 
 in the hearts of the people of that country." 
 
 The declaration proceeded to show how the horrible 
 calamities thus brought upon the Low Countries had moved 
 to compassion even such of their neighbours as had been at 
 frequent discord with them in former times, insomuch that 
 the French king thought, very many years ago, to have taken 
 them under his protection, had not (as the deputies of the 
 States were answered) the " complots of the house of Guise, 
 stirred and maintained by money out of Spain, disturbed the 
 peace of France, and thereby urged the king to forbear from 
 the resolution he had made, not to aid those oppressed people 
 of the Low Countries against the Spaniards, but also to have 
 accepted them as his own subjects. But, in very truth, how- 
 ever, they were comforted and kept in hope by the French 
 king, who had oftentimes solicited us, as Queen of England,
 
 36 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 both by message and writing, to be careful of their defence ; 
 yet, in respect that they were more strictly knit in ancient 
 friendship to this realm than to any other country, we are 
 sure that they could be pitied of none with more cause of 
 grief generally than of our subjects, being their most ancient 
 allies and familiar neighbours ; and that in such manner that 
 this our realm of England and those countries have been of 
 long time resembled and termed as man and wife. For these 
 urgent causes, and many others, we have by many friendly 
 messages and ambassadors, by many letters and writings, to 
 the said King of Spain, our brother and ally, declared our 
 compassion of this so evil and cruel usage of his natural and 
 loyal people. And furthermore, as a good loving sister to 
 him, and a natural good neighbour to his Low Countries, we 
 have often and often again most friendly warned him, that if 
 he did not by his wisdom and princely clemency, restrain the 
 tyranny of his governors, and cruelty of his men of war, we 
 feared that the people should be forced, for safety of their 
 lives, and for continuance of their native country in the 
 former state of their liberties, to seek the protection of some 
 other foreign lord, or rather to yield themselves wholly to the 
 sovereignty of some mighty prince ; as by the ancient laws, 
 and by special privileges granted by some of the lords and 
 dukes to the people, they do pretend and affirm that in such 
 cases of general injustice, and upon such violent breaking of 
 their privileges, they are free from their former homage, and 
 at liberty to make choice of any other prince to be their 
 head. By some such alteration, as stories testify, Philip, the 
 Duke of Burgundy, came to his title, from which the King of 
 Spain's interest is derived. And now, to stay them from 
 yielding themselves in any like sort to the sovereignty of any 
 other strange prince, we yielded some years past to the im- 
 portunate requests of some of the greatest persons of degree 
 and most obedient subjects to the king, and granted them 
 prests of money, only to continue them as his subjects, and to
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 37 
 
 maintain themselves in their just defence against the violence 
 of the Spaniards, their oppressors ; and during the time of 
 that our aid thus given, and their stay in their obedience to 
 the King of Spain, we did freely acquaint the same king with 
 our actions, and did still continue our friendly advices to him, 
 to move him to command his governors and men of war not 
 to use such insolent cruelties against his people as might make 
 them to despair of his favour, and seek some other lord. 
 
 " For we did manifestly see if the nation of Spain should 
 make a conquest of those countries, as was and yet is ap- 
 parently intended, and plant themselves there as they have 
 done in Naples and other countries, adding thereto the late 
 examples of the hostile enterprise of a power of Spaniards, 
 sent by the King of Spain and the Pope into our realm of 
 Ireland, with an intent, confessed by the captains, that their 
 number was sent to seize upon some strength there, and with 
 other great forces to pursue a conquest thereof, we did mani- 
 festly see in what danger our ourself, country and people 
 might shortly be, if in convenient time we did not speedily 
 otherwise regard to prevent or stay the same." The queen 
 then complained, that notwithstanding her often requests and 
 advices, the king's governors in the Low Countries increased 
 their cruelties toward his own afflicted people, and his officers 
 in Spain offered daily greater injuries to the English resorting 
 thither for traffic : yea, her express messengers with her 
 letters were not permitted to come to the king's presence, 
 " a matter very strange, and against the law of nations". She 
 contrasted the unworthy treatment of her ambassadors in 
 Spain, with her conduct towards the Spanish ambassadors, 
 and especially Bernardino de Mendoza, " one," said she, 
 " whom we did accept and use with great favour a long time, 
 as was seen in our court, and we think cannot be denied by 
 himself : but yet of late years (we know not by what direc- 
 tion), we found him to be a secret great favourer to sundry 
 our evil-disposed and seditious subjects, not only to such as
 
 38 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 lurked in our realm, but also to such as fled the same, being 
 notoriously condemned as open rebels and traitors, with whom, 
 by his letters, messages, and secret counsels, he did in the end 
 devise how, with a power of men, partly to come out of Spain, 
 partly out of the Low Countries (whereof he gave them great 
 comfort in the king's name), an invasion might be made into 
 our realm ; setting down in writing the manner how the same 
 should be done, with what number of men and ships, and upon 
 what coasts, ports, and places of our realm, and who the 
 persons should be, therein of no small account, that should 
 favour this invasion, and take part with the invaders : facts 
 which have been most clearly proved, and confessed by such 
 as were in that confederacy with him ; yet when he had been 
 charged with these practices, and it had been made patent 
 to him how and by whom, with many other circumstances, we 
 knew it, he was caused, in very gentle sort, to depart out of 
 our realm, the rather for his own safety, as one in very deed 
 mortally hated of our people ". 
 
 The declaration proceeded to state what the queen had 
 done for delivering Scotland from the servitude into which 
 the house of Guise meant to have brought it, and that by her 
 means only it had been restored to its ancient freedom, and 
 was so possessed by the present king, whereby Scotland had 
 remained in better amity and peace with England than could 
 be remembered for many hundred years before. It concluded 
 by saying how, upon the continued and lamentable requests 
 of the States of Holland, Zeeland, Gueldres, and other pro- 
 vinces with them united, the queen had, with good advice, 
 and after long deliberation, determined to aid them, " only to 
 defend them and their towns from sacking and desolation, 
 and to procure them safety, to the honour of God, whom they 
 desire to serve sincerely as Christian people, according to His 
 holy word, and to enjoy their ancient liberties, for them and 
 their posterity, and so, consequently, to preserve the lawful 
 and ancient commerce betwixt those countries and ours. And
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 39 
 
 so," said this magnanimous queen, "we hope our intentions 
 herein, and our subsequent actions, will be, by God's favour, 
 honourably interpreted of all persons (saving of the oppressors 
 themselves and their partisans), in that we mean not hereby 
 either for ambition or malice, the two roots of all injustice, 
 to make any particular profit hereof to ourself or to our 
 people ; only desiring at this time to obtain, by God's favour, 
 for these countries a deliverance of them from war by the 
 Spaniards and foreigners, a restitution of their ancient liberties, 
 and government by some Christian peace, and thereby a surety 
 for ourselves and our realm to be free from invading neigh- 
 bours, and our people to enjoy their lawful intercourse of 
 friendship and merchandise, according to the ancient usage 
 and treaties of intercourse made betwixt our progenitors and 
 the lords and earls of those countries, and betwixt our people 
 and theirs. And though our further intention also is, or may 
 be, to take into our guard some few towns upon the sea-side, 
 next opposite to our realm, which otherwise might be in 
 danger to be taken by the strangers, enemies of the country ; 
 yet therein considering we have no meaning at this time to 
 take and retain the same to our own proper use, we hope all 
 persons will think it agreeable with good reason and princely 
 policy that we should have the guard and use of some such 
 places, for sure access and recess of our people and soldiers 
 in safety, and for furniture of them with victuals and other 
 things requisite and necessary, whilst it shall be needful for 
 them to continue in those countries, for the aiding thereof in 
 these their great calamities, miseries, and imminent danger, 
 and until the countries may be delivered of such strange forces 
 as do now oppress them, and recover their ancient lawful 
 liberties and manner of government, to live in peace as they 
 have heretofore done, and do now most earnestly in lament- 
 able manner desire to do, which are the very only true ends 
 of all our actions now intended." 
 
 At the conclusion, the queen alluded to the " cankered con-
 
 40 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ceits/' uttered by malicious tongues, and blasphemous reports, 
 in such infamous libels, that in no age had the devil employed 
 more spirits replenished with all wickedness to utter his rage. 
 An appendix was added to this declaration, in consequence of 
 an account of the siege of Antwerp, printed at Milan, in which 
 said she : " We found ourselves most maliciously charged with 
 two notable crimes, no less hateful to the world than most 
 repugnant and contrary to our own natural inclination. The 
 one with ingratitude towards the King of Spain, who, as the 
 author saith, saved our life, being justly by sentence adjudged 
 to death in our sister's time ; the other, that there were 
 persons corrupted with great promises, and that with our 
 intelligence, to take away the Prince of Parma's life. Now, 
 knowing how men are maliciously bent, in this declining age 
 of the world, both to judge, speak, and write maliciously, 
 falsely, and unreverently of princes, and holding nothing so 
 dear unto us as the conservation of our reputation and honour 
 to be blameless, we found it very expedient not to suffer two 
 such horrible imputations to pass under silence. And for 
 answer of the first point, touching our ingratitude towards the 
 King of Spain, as we do most willingly acknowledge that we 
 were beholden unto him in the time of our late sister, which 
 we then did acknowledge very thankfully, and have sought 
 many ways since in like sort to requite, so do we utterly deny 
 as a most manifest untruth, that ever he was the cause of the 
 saving of our life, as a person by course of justice sentenced 
 unto death, who ever carried ourself towards our said sister in 
 such dutiful sort, as our loyalty was never called in question, 
 much less any sentence of death * pronounced against us : a 
 
 * This accusation was not made by pamphleteers and mere libellers 
 only. Herrera, the royal chronicler, in his Historia General del Mundo 
 for the first seventeen years of Philip's reign, asserts that Elizabeth was 
 on three several occasions condemned to death for treason against her 
 sister, and as often pardoned through the king's intercession : " Y el 
 librarla los Espanoles con tanto cuydado de la muerte, dezian los Fran-
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 41 
 
 matter such as in respect of the ordinary course of proceeding, 
 as by process in law, by place of trial, by the judge that 
 should pronounce such sentence, and other necessary circum- 
 stances in like cases usual, especially against one of our 
 quality, as it could not but have been publicly known, if any 
 such thing had been put in execution. This, then, being true, 
 we leave to the world to judge how maliciously and in- 
 juriously the author of the said pamphlet dealeth with us in 
 charging us with a vice that of all others we do most hate and 
 abhor. And by the manifest untruth of this imputation, men, 
 not transported with passion, may easily discern what untruth 
 is contained in the second, by which we are charged with an 
 intended attempt against the life of the Prince of Parma. He 
 is one of whom we have ever had an honourable conceit, in 
 respect of those singular rare parts we always have noted in 
 him, which hath won unto him as great a reputation as any 
 man this day living carrieth of his degree and quality ; and so 
 have we always delivered out by speech unto the world, when 
 any occasion hath been offered to make mention of him. And 
 touching the prosecution, committed unto him, of the wars in 
 the Low Countries, as all men of judgment know, that the 
 
 ceses que se hazia porque no sucediesse en la corona de Inglaterra Maria 
 reyna de Escocia, casada con Francisco delfin de Francia ; y los Espa- 
 noles dezian contra los Franceses que procuravan de enganar a Ysabel, 
 metiendola en estos trabajos, para que muriendo por ellos, quedasse de- 
 sembarazada la sucession a la reyna de Escocia " (Let. vi., c. xiii., p. 399). 
 Herrera probably believed what he asswted, if what Strada affirms be 
 true, that the statement was made by Pnk'p himself! That king, the 
 Jesuit says, was incensed against Elizabeth, * "antoquidem acriore sensu, 
 quanto pro beneficiis, proque vita ipsa, quam ei bis terque se dedisse rex 
 affirmabat, dum conspirationum insimulatam, e carcere, capitalique 
 judicio liberaverat ; pro his aliisque promeritis alias super alias accepisse 
 se indesinenter injurias agnoscebat " (p. 526). The chronicler adds that 
 Calais was betrayed, with Elizabeth's consent, she hoping thereby to 
 break her sister's heart, " para acabar con estos enojos tanto mas presto 
 la vida de su hermana ".
 
 42 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 taking away of his life carrieth no likelihood that the same 
 shall work any end of the said prosecution, so is it manifestly 
 known that no man hath dealt more honourably than the 
 said prince, either in duly observing of his promise, or extend- 
 ing grace and mercy where merit and desert hath craved the 
 same ; and, therefore, no greater impiety by any could be 
 wrought, nor nothing more prejudicial to ourself (so long as 
 the king shall continue the prosecution of the cause in that 
 forcible sort he now doth), than to be an instrument to take 
 him away from thence by such violent means, that hath dealt 
 in a more honourable and gracious sort in the charge com- 
 mitted unto him, than any other that hath ever gone before 
 him, or is likely to succeed after him. Now, therefore, how 
 unlikely it is that we should be either author, or any way 
 assenting to so horrible a fact, we refer to the judgment of 
 such as look into causes, not with the eyes of their affection, 
 but do measure and weigh things according to honour and 
 reason. The best course, therefore, that both we and all 
 other princes can hold, in this unfortunate age, that over- 
 floweth with malignant spirits, is, through the grace and 
 goodness of Almighty God, to direct our course in such sort, 
 as they may rather show their wills through malice, than with 
 just cause by desert to say ill either by speech or writing ; 
 assuring ourselves, that besides the punishment that such 
 wicked libellers shall receive at the hands of the Almighty 
 for depraving of princes and lawful magistrates, who are God's 
 ministers, they both are and always shall be thought by all 
 good men unworthy to live upon the face of the earth." * 
 
 When Elizabeth thus openly allied herself with the united 
 States, which were, in fact, declaring war against Spain, the 
 other Christian princes " admired such manly fortitude in a 
 woman ; and the King of Sweden said, she had taken the 
 crown from her head and adventured it upon the chance of 
 
 * Holinshed, 621-630.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 43 
 
 war ". * But no new or additional danger was drawn upon 
 her by this declaration. The plan of invasion which Se- 
 bastian's expedition to Africa had frustrated, and which had 
 been suspended in consequence of the subsequent events in 
 Portugal, had been resumed two years before this treaty with 
 the States was concluded. The Prince of Parma had at that 
 time been ordered to obtain accurate information respecting 
 the English ports and their means of defence : the Milanese 
 engineer, Battista Piatti, who constructed the bridge over 
 the Scheldt during the siege of Antwerp, was one of the 
 persons thus employed ; he had drawn up a report accordingly, 
 and proceeded to Spain to give what further information might 
 be required, f A negotiation pending with the Queen of 
 Scots, for her release, upon her engagement that her agents 
 should attempt nothing to the injury of Elizabeth or of Eng- 
 land, was broken off, partly, says Camden, because of certain 
 fears cast in the way by those who knew how to increase 
 suspicions between women already displeased with one 
 another ; but chiefly in consequence of certain papers, which 
 a Scotch Jesuit, on his passage to Scotland, when captured by 
 some Netherlander, tore in pieces and cast overboard : the 
 wind blew them back into the ship, and from these fragments 
 the designs of the Pope, the Spaniard, and the Guises, for 
 invading England, were discovered.^ The detection of a 
 nearer treason led to the death of the Queen of Scots, an act 
 by which Elizabeth, if she lessened her own immediate danger 
 and that of the nation (which may well be doubted), brought 
 upon herself an ineffaceable stain,;; purchasing self-preservation 
 
 * Camden, 321. fStrada, 526. Camden, 299. 
 
 Parry in a letter to the queen, after his condemnation, says : " The 
 Queen of Scots is your prisoner. Let her be honourably entreated, but 
 yet surely guarded. She may do you good ; she will do you no harm, if 
 the fault be not English. It importeth you much ; so long as it is well 
 with her, it is safe with you. When she is in fear, you are not without 
 peril. Cherish and love her. She is of your blood, and your undoubted 
 heir in succession. It is so taken abroad, and will be found so at home " 
 (Strype's Annals, App. No. 46).
 
 44 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 at a greater price than it is worth. But it is not upon Eliza- 
 beth that the blackest stigma should be affixed. The English 
 Parliament called upon her for blood. Not a voice in either 
 House was raised against the popular cry. The Commons came 
 to a resolution, " that no other way, device, or means whatso- 
 ever could possibly be found or imagined, that safety could in 
 any wise be had as long as the Queen of Scots were living.* 
 To spare her," they said, " were nothing else but to spill the 
 people, who would take all impunity in this case very much to 
 heart, and would not think themselves discharged of their 
 oath of association, unless she were punished according to her 
 deserts. And they called upon Elizabeth to remember the 
 fearful examples of God's vengeance upon King Saul for 
 sparing Agag, and upon King Ahab for sparing Benhadad." I 
 To such purposes can public feeling be directed, and Scripture 
 perverted ! Some of those great personages who had corre- 
 sponded with the royal prisoner, and were implicated more or 
 less in the treasonable practices which under her name and 
 with her concurrence were continually carried on, began now 
 to act as her deadly enemies, thereby the better to conceal 
 their own guilt.J The Spanish party thrust her forward to 
 her own danger, that by her destruction the way might be 
 cleared for the pretended title of the King of Spain. They 
 had persuaded themselves that nothing but an absolute con- 
 quest of the island, like that by William of Normandy, could 
 establish a Catholic prince here, and reinstate the Romish 
 religion in its full powers. And when the French king, 
 Henry III.,|| sent a special ambassador publicly to speak in the 
 
 * Parliamentary History, 844. t Camden, 363. 
 
 llbid., 344. Ibid., 331. 
 
 || Parry says of him, in the remarkable letter above quoted, in which 
 he speaks with the freedom as well as the sincerity of a dying man : " The 
 French king is French ; you know that well enough. You will find him 
 occupied when he should do you good. He will not lose a pilgrimage to 
 save vour crown."
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 45 
 
 Queen of Scots behalf, that ambassador was charged with 
 secret instructions to press upon Elizabeth the necessity of 
 putting her to death as an enemy, who, if she succeeded to 
 the English throne, would, through her connection with the 
 Guises, be as dangerous to him as she now was to the Queen of 
 England ! * 
 
 The death of Mary may have preserved England from the 
 religious struggle which would have ensued upon her succes- 
 sion to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth from only one, 
 and that the weakest, of her enemies ; and it exposed her to 
 a charge of injustice and cruelty, which, being itself well 
 founded, obtained belief for any other accusation, however 
 extravagantly false. It was not Philip alone who prepared 
 for making war upon her with a feeling of personal hatred : 
 throughout Romish Christendom she was represented as a 
 monster of iniquity ; that representation was assiduously set 
 forth, not only in ephemeral libels, but in histories, in dramas, 
 in poems and in hawkers' pamphlets ; f and when the King 
 of Spain equipped an armament for the invasion of England, 
 volunteers entered it with a passionate persuasion that they 
 were about to bear apart in a holy war against the wickedest and 
 most inhuman of tyrants. The Pope exhorted Philip to engage 
 in this great enterprise for the sake of the Roman Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church, which could not be more effectually 
 nor more meritoriously extended than by the conquest of 
 England ; so should he avenge his own private and public 
 wrongs ; so should he indeed prove himself most worthy of the 
 glorious title of Most Catholic King. And he promised, as 
 soon as his troops should have set foot in that island, to supply 
 him with a million of crowns of gold | towards the expenses 
 
 * Turner, 643. Bayle's critique on Maimbourg's Hist, of Calvinism 
 there quoted. 
 
 t They are circulated to this day in Spain and Portugal. 
 
 The money, however, was not forthcoming. Strada, when he relates 
 the offer, adds : "Quod magis Xysti magnanimitatem ostendit, quam belli
 
 46 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 of the expedition. Opportunity could never be more favour- 
 able : he had concluded a truce with the Turk ; the French 
 were embroiled in civil war, and could offer to him no opposi- 
 tion. England was without forts or defences : long peace had 
 left it unprovided of commanders or soldiers ; and it was full 
 of Catholics, who would joyfully flock to his standard. The 
 conquest of Portugal had not been easier than that of 
 England would be found ; and when England was once con- 
 quered, the Low Countries would presently be reduced to 
 obedience. 
 
 Such exhortations accorded with the ambition, the passions, 
 and the rooted principles of the King of Spain. The under- 
 taking was resolved on ; and while preparations were making 
 upon the most formidable scale, it was deliberated on what 
 plan to proceed. Sir William Stanley, the most noted of 
 those persons who for conscience' sake betrayed their trust, 
 deserted to the enemy, and bore arms against this country, 
 advised that Ireland should be the first point of attack. He 
 knew that country well, having served in it fifteen years ; 
 and if Waterford, he said, were once taken and fortified, the 
 Spaniards might from thence reduce the one island and invade 
 the other. Piatti was of opinion that it were better to begin 
 with Scotland, where he was led to believe the king might 
 be induced to join with them for the sake of revenging 
 his mother's death. Having established a footing there, he 
 thought the Isle of Wight should next be occupied. A noble 
 inhabitant of that island had promised the Prince of Parma to 
 show him a place known only to himself, by Avhich ships could 
 approach, and in four and twenty hours obtain possession of 
 it; and he laid before Philip a plan of the island, and a 
 memoir concerning it, which had been drawn up at the Prince 
 
 subsidium fuit : quippe, ut partem hujus summas aliquam pontifex elargi- 
 retur ante praefinitum hoc tempus, nullis adduci potuit aut Hispani legati, 
 aut Caesii comitis a Parmensi duce propterea Romam missi, persuasioni- 
 bus" (p. 527).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 47 
 
 of Parma's desire. The Marquis of Santa Cruz, who was to 
 be commander-in-chief, objected to neither of these plans, 
 but he urged the necessity of perpending all things well 
 before an expedition should be sent out, in which Spain put 
 forth all her strength : and he advised that a port should 
 previously be secured, either in Ireland, or, which he thought 
 more desirable, in Holland or Zeeland. The enterprise might 
 safely be undertaken, if the fleet were thus rendered secure 
 on that side. This was the opinion which the Prince of 
 Parma supported in his letters. He represented the danger 
 of venturing such a fleet in the British seas without providing 
 a harbour into which it might retreat ; and Flushing, he said, 
 was the only one in the Low Countries capacious enough for 
 so great a force. Now that he had taken Sluys, Flushing 
 might more easily be captured ; and he strongly advised that 
 the capture of this place should be effected before the Armada 
 ventured into those seas. It was a conquest which, with 
 God's help, he undertook to make. But, in thus advising, 
 the prince had a further object ; he was not willing that 
 Spain should divert its attention from the Low Countries, 
 which he had no doubt of subjugating, if only a part of the 
 force designed for England were employed for that purpose. 
 Those countries once subdued, England would be open to 
 invasion ; and of this, which he saw clearly himself, he hoped 
 to convince the king, if he could first persuade him to let the 
 siege of Flushing be undertaken.* 
 
 But Philip would hear of no delay. The troubles in France 
 and the treaty with the Turks allowed him at this time to 
 direct his whole attention towards England : it was even less 
 costly to punish that country by an invasion than to defend 
 the coasts of his own empire against her piratical enterprises ; 
 and he felt himself bound to exact vengeance for the death of 
 the Queen of Scots, in which cause all sovereign princes were 
 
 * Strada, 528-531.
 
 48 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 concerned. Objecting, therefore, to any attempt upon 
 Ireland, which would be opening a new theatre of war, or to 
 any delay, which would allow the enemy time to prepare for 
 defence, he directed the prince to take what measures he 
 thought best for exciting the Scotch to arms ; but meantime 
 to make ready with all speed for co-operating with the expedi- 
 tion, which would set sail as soon as he should be in readi- 
 ness.* Upon another point, also, there had been a difference 
 of opinion among Philip's advisers : some of whom thought 
 that war should be proclaimed against England, both to 
 remove suspicion from other powers, and to alarm Elizabeth, 
 who might then be induced to levy foreign troops for her 
 defence ; which, if she did, it was to be expected that those 
 troops, according to the usual insolence of mercenaries, would 
 so demean themselves, as to excite discontent among the 
 English people, and consequent confusion. f The formality of 
 declaring war was however disregarded as a mere form on 
 both sides ; and on the part of the Spaniards it was deemed 
 more politic to disturb the English with apprehensions of some 
 great but indefinite danger, and at the same time divert them 
 from making any effectual preparation for defence, by carrying 
 on negotiations in the Low Countries, without the slightest 
 intention of assenting to any terms of reconciliation that 
 could be proposed. 
 
 The Prince of Parma, therefore, while he prepared for the 
 invasion with his characteristic diligence, which left nothing 
 undone, opened a negotiation with England, to which Eliza- 
 beth, notwithstanding the urgent remonstrances of the States, 
 gave ear, yet with a just suspicion that the proposal was 
 insincerely made. Leicester, who had unwisely been 
 entrusted with the command of the English auxiliaries, had 
 conducted himself neither to the satisfaction of the States nor 
 of his own Government : the English and Dutch had not been 
 
 * Strada, 582. t Camden, 404.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 49 
 
 found to agree when they came to act together, under circum- 
 stances that brought their national qualities into close and 
 unamiable contrast : * the Dutch, too, were divided among 
 themselves ; so that there seemed little hope that England 
 could afford them any such assistance as might enable them 
 to obtain the objects for which they had taken up arms, 
 and still less of any such happy termination, if they were left 
 to themselves. With regard to England, it was the opinion 
 of her greatest statesman, Cecil, that a peace was not only 
 desirable, but most necessary ; but it must be such a peace as 
 should be clear and assured, leaving no such occasion of 
 quarrel as had hitherto existed ; the queen's subjects must 
 be free from the Inquisition ; and the people of the Low 
 Countries not impeached for anything which had passed ; but 
 allowed to enjoy their liberties and franchises, and to have 
 the use of their religion, now openly professed in their 
 churches, for which they had so long stood to their defence. t 
 The Dutch were well convinced that all negotiation was 
 useless, and therefore refused to take any part : the English 
 commissioners, however, met those of the King of Spain at 
 Ostend : they first proposed a suspension of arms, " thereby 
 to stay the coming of the Spanish fleet " ; and to this the 
 Spanish commissioners seemed to incline, craftily thereby 
 seeking to persuade them that it was not intended against 
 England. They asked for the renewal of old treaties and 
 intercourse ; the repayment of such sums as the queen had 
 advanced to the States, not requiring this from the king, but 
 that he should authorise the States to collect money for this 
 purpose : further, they required that foreign governors and 
 
 * " Plurimum autem differunt harum nationum ingenia et mores ; nam 
 Angli, ut addicte serviunt, ita evecti ad dignitates priorem humilitatem 
 insolentia rependunt ; Belgarum est parere et imperare cum modo, nee 
 gens ulla fidelius amat eminentes, aut iisdem, si contemtus adsit, impla- 
 cabilius irascitur " (Grotius, 95). 
 
 t Strype's Annals, vol. iii. , part ii., p. 5. 
 
 4
 
 50 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 foreign troops should, for the queen's safety, be withdrawn 
 from the Low Countries ; that the people might enjoy their 
 ancient liberties and privileges, and be governed by their 
 countrymen, not by strangers ; and that there might be a 
 toleration for two years at least, during which time the matter 
 of religion should be ordered and established by the States. 
 If these terms were concluded, the queen would agree to any 
 reasonable conditions concerning the cautionary towns, that all 
 the world might know she had taken possession of them not to 
 aggrandise herself, but for her own necessary assurance and 
 defence.* 
 
 To the more important of these proposals it was replied, 
 that the king could not withdraw his troops till the States had 
 submitted themselves, nor while the French were in arms : 
 that the Queen of England had nothing to do with the 
 privileges of the Low Countries ; nor was she to prescribe a 
 law to him how he should govern his subjects ; and that he 
 would not hear of the free exercise of religion, but would 
 grant a toleration, such as had been allowed to the towns 
 that had yielded themselves to his obedience. The English 
 commissioners made answer, that neither the queen nor the 
 Netherlanders could be assured of any peace while foreign 
 troops were maintained in that country : that in the privileges 
 of these countries she had a special interest ; first, in regard 
 of neighbourhood ; secondly, as being specially named in 
 several pacifications ; and thirdly, because it was not possible 
 for her subjects to enjoy their privileges there, unless the 
 provinces themselves were allowed them. And for the point 
 of religion, if the king would not hear of any toleration of the 
 exercise thereof, then must the Protestants be forced either 
 to forsake the religion in which they had been born and bred, 
 or go into perpetual exile. Not with any reason could the 
 king refuse his subjects what in times past had been by his 
 
 * Grimestone, 986.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 51 
 
 father, the Emperor Charles, accorded to the Germans, and 
 by other princes, and namely by himself, in his perpetual 
 edict. None but dilatory replies were made to this replica- 
 tion, the object of either party being to gain time ; for Philip 
 would have consented to no other terms than such as an 
 absolute conquest of the revolted States might have enabled 
 him to impose ; and Elizabeth, though she sincerely wished 
 for peace, knew that it could not possibly be obtained. At 
 this time the Pope issued his bull, declaring that the Catholic 
 king was about to direct his power against England, and 
 enjoining the queen's subjects, by their obedience to the 
 Church, to hold themselves in readiness for assisting the army 
 which, under the Prince of Parma, was preparing for their 
 deliverance. Allen, also, who had now been made a cardinal, 
 published a book at Antwerp, which, for the audacity of its 
 unhesitating falsehood, its vituperation, and its treason, may 
 vie with any libel that ever issued from the press.* He called 
 Elizabeth heretic, rebel, and usurper ; an incestuous bastard, 
 the bane of Christendom, and firebrand of all mischief; one 
 who deserved not deposition alone, but all vengeance both of 
 God and man ; and he reproached the English Papists for 
 their effeminate dastardy in suffering such a creature to reign 
 almost thirty years, both over their bodies and their souls.f 
 Nor was sophistry wanting in a composition thus highly 
 seasoned with insolence and slander. He argued, that if there 
 were no power by which apostate princes might be deposed, God 
 would not have sufficiently provided for our salvation,, and the 
 preservation of His Church and holy laws. Our obligation 
 to the Church far exceedeth all other that we owe to any 
 human creature. The wife may depart from her husband, if 
 he be an infidel or a heretic ; the bond-slave, if his master 
 become a heretic, may refuse to serve him ; yea, ipso facto, 
 he is made free ; parents, if they become heretic, lose their 
 
 * Turner, 671. t Strype, iii., p. 2, App. No. 54.
 
 52 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 natural authority over their children. " Therefore/' said the 
 cardinal, "let no man marvel that, in case of heresy, the 
 sovereign loseth the superiority over his people and kingdom. 
 The Pope," he added, " acting on a special canon of the great 
 Council of Lateran, touching the chastisement of princes that 
 will not purge their dominions of heresy and heretics, hath 
 specially entreated the King of Spain to take upon him this 
 sacred and glorious enterprise ; who, by this his Holiness's 
 authority and exhortation, moved also not a little by my 
 humble and continual suit, hath consented and commanded 
 sufficient royal forces to be gathered and conducted into our 
 country."* The publication of this book at Antwerp was an 
 
 *Yet this very man had but a few years before protested, "that 
 neither the reverend fathers of the Society of the Holy Name of Jesus, 
 whom the people called Jesuits (an express clause being in the instruc- 
 tions of their mission into England, that they deal not in matters of State, 
 which is to be showed, signed with their late general's hand, of worthy 
 memory), neither the priests, either of the seminaries, or others, have any 
 commission, direction, instruction, or insinuation, from his Holiness or 
 any other their superior, either in religion, or of the colleges, to move 
 sedition, or to deal against the State or temporal Government ; but only 
 by their priesthood and the functions thereof, to do such duties as be 
 requisite for Christian men's souls, which consist in preaching, teaching, 
 catechising, ministering the Sacraments, and the like " (Apology of the 
 English Seminaries, p. 71). 
 
 In the same apology, alluding to a publication, very similar both in 
 matter and spirit to that which he now fulminated in his capacity of 
 cardinal, Allen says : " Touching some of our late repairing to the city of 
 Rome, wherewith we are charged, the principal of that voyage (meaning 
 himself) doth protest that he neither joined with rebel nor traitor, nor any 
 one or other against the queen or realm ; or traitorously sought or 
 practised any prince or potentate to hostility against the same : further 
 invocating upon his soul, that he never knew, saw, nor heard, during his 
 abode in the court there, of any such writings as are mentioned in the 
 proclamation of July, containing certain articles of confederation of 
 the Pope, King of Spain, and other princes for the invasion of the realm ; 
 nor ever afterward gave counsel to publish any such thing, though he 
 were at Rome at the day of the date, that some of those copies which
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 53 
 
 overt act of hostility ; that of the bull amounted to nothing 
 less than a declaration of war on the part of Spain.* The 
 queen, therefore, directed Dr. Valentine Dale, who was one 
 of her commissioners, to speak with the prince in person, 
 charge him in good sort with the things contained in this 
 publication, and require from him a direct answer, whether he 
 were not appointed general of the army which was then pre- 
 paring in Spain, and, as there publicly stated, for the invasion 
 of England, t 
 
 The prince made answer, that he knew nothing either of 
 the book or bull; nor had he undertaken anything in obedience 
 to the Pope, nor attempted anything of himself but honour- 
 ably, in the service of the king his master, whom, as his own 
 sovereign, he must obey. And for the Queen of England, he 
 had so high an esteem for her, for her royal virtues, that, 
 next his own king, he honoured her above all persons, and 
 desired to do her service. With that desire, he had persuaded 
 the king to enter upon this treaty, which would be more 
 
 afterwards he saw when they were common to all the world, do bear. 
 Being also most assured that no other English Catholic would or could 
 be the author thereof, nor (as it may be thought), any other of those 
 princes or their ministers, that are pretended to be of the foresaid 
 league ; being neither wisdom nor policy, if any such thing were intended 
 (as we verily think there was not), much less if it were never meant, to 
 publish any such libels to give the realm warning to provide for it ; speci- 
 ally all the world knowing that the pinching of the poor Catholics at 
 home (a lamentable case) is their fence to repay for all adverse accidents 
 abroad. And it may verily be thought (and so it is certain that some of 
 the principal ministers of the forenamed princes have answered, being 
 reminded thereof), that the Protestants, having exercised skill and auda- 
 city in such practices and counter-practices (of which France, Flanders, 
 Scotland, and other countries have had so lamentable experience), did 
 contrive them, to alter her Majesty's accustomed benignity and mercy 
 towards the Catholics, into such rigour of justice as in the said edict is 
 threatened " (pp. 15-16). 
 
 * Turner, 672. 
 
 t Bor, 320. Grimestone, 996. Camden, 409.
 
 54 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 advantageous for the English than the Spaniards. " For if the 
 Spaniards be overcome/' said he, " they will soon repair their 
 loss ; but if you are once vanquished, your kingdom is lost." 
 Dale made answer : "Our queen is provided of strength suf- 
 ficient to defend her kingdom : and you yourself, in your 
 wisdom, may judge that a kingdom cannot easily be won by 
 the fortune of one battle, seeing that in so many years of war 
 the King of Spain has not yet been able to recover his ancient 
 inheritance of the Netherlands ". " Be it so," replied the 
 prince : " these things are in the disposal of the Almighty."* 
 This consummate general practised a duplicity more conform- 
 able to his religion than his own better nature, when he denied 
 all knowledge of a bull then circulating throughout the 
 States which he governed, and a book which had been printed 
 at Antwerp, with the knowledge and approbation of the 
 authorities that he had himself established there. In fin-ward- 
 ing with the utmost activity the preparations for invasion 
 during the negotiations, he did no more than circumstances 
 fairly warranted, and his plain sense of duty required : in this 
 point, neither party was duped into any loss of irretrievable 
 time. Most happily for England, the provinces which the 
 Prince of Parma had reduced were not the maritime ones ; 
 Flanders alone excepted. He had to seek, therefore, for 
 shipwrights and for seamen : the former were brought from 
 Italy, which still retained its reputation in this branch : the 
 latter from Hamburgh, Bremen, and Embden. He thought 
 also to obtain both ships and sailors from Denmark. The 
 Danish king had endeavoured to act as mediator for bringing 
 about, if that were possible, an accommodation between Philip 
 and the States : but his ambassador, proceeding in company 
 with some of the prince's soldiers, had been made prisoner by 
 the Dutch in a skirmish ; and as they either disbelieved or 
 disregarded his pretensions to the character which he assumed, 
 
 * Camden, 409,
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 55 
 
 his papers had been opened. This so incensed the king, that 
 he immediately detained 700 vessels which were bringing 
 grain from the Baltic ; for even if former experience had 
 taught the Dutch to provide against such a danger, in the 
 present circumstances of their country means and leisure for 
 such provision were alike wanting, and they must have been 
 reduced to immediate distress for food, if they had not, as 
 necessity compelled, brought into their ports the French and 
 English vessels * coming from the same sea. Spain, there- 
 fore, had less difficulty in contracting with the Danes for 
 ships, mariners, and " soldiers upon the seas " ; but the Eng- 
 lish resident at Copenhagen, having intelligence of this, 
 represented to the governors of the king (for he was a minor), 
 that this was contrary to the league between the two crowns, 
 and nothing conformable to the sincere friendship which had 
 subsisted between Queen Elizabeth and the king their master. 
 This icmonstrance prevailed ; and though the parties pleaded 
 their privileges, severe order was taken that no subjects of 
 Denmark or Norway, or other parts appertaining to the king's 
 dominions, should either then or thereafter serve against the 
 queen.f 
 
 But in what was to be effected by human exertions under 
 his own superintendence, the prince was in no danger of being 
 disappointed. Two and thirty war ships he made ready at 
 Dunkirk, hired for the same purpose five foreign vessels in 
 that harbour, and engaged five more from Hamburgh to 
 rendezvous there. Seventy flat-bottomed boats were fitted 
 out in the little river Watene, each to carry thirty horses, 
 with bridges for embarking and landing them ; and at Nieu- 
 port about 200 similar vessels, but of smaller size. Here, too, 
 
 * " Ita vitatum discrimen sola pecunias a Danis expressae jactura ; 
 quod ipsum tamen et quia rex missos ad se legates audire dedignabatur, 
 hssit altius multorum animis judicantium minora regna majorum opibus 
 obnoxia teneri " (Grotius, 105). 
 
 tStrype, 25.
 
 56 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 he collected store of fascines, and all other materials for throw- 
 ing up entrenchments and constructing sconces. At Grave- 
 lines many thousand casks were got together, with cordage or 
 chain-work to connect them, for forming bridges or blocking 
 havens. Stakes for palisades also were provided, horse 
 furniture of every kind, and horses for draught, " with ord- 
 nance and all other necessary provision for the war". With 
 such neighbours as the Zeelanders and the English at Flush- 
 ing, even Antwerp did not give him the command of the 
 Scheldt ; and he was fain, therefore, to deepen and w:'den 
 some of those channels by which Flanders is intersected, that 
 ships might be brought from Antwerp by way of Ghent to 
 Bruges, and so to Sluys ; or by the Yperlee, which had also 
 been deepened, to the other Flemish ports. At Nieuport he 
 had thirty companies of Italian troops, two of Walloon, and 
 eight of Burgundian. At Dixmude, eighty of Netherlander, 
 sixty Spanish, sixty German, and seven of English deserters, 
 under Sir William Stanley, the traitor : each company con- 
 sisted of 100 men, and better troops were never brought into 
 the field than those who served under the Prince of Parma : 
 4000 horse were quartered at Courtray, 900 at Watene. "To 
 this great enterprise and imaginary conquest divers princes 
 and noblemen came from divers countries ; out of Spain came 
 the Duke of Pestrana, who was said to be the son of Ruy 
 Gomez de Silva, but was held to be the king's bastard ; the 
 Marquis of Bourgou, one of the Archduke Ferdinand's sons 
 by Philippina Welserine ; Don Vespasian Gonzagua, of the 
 house of Mantua, a great soldier, who had been viceroy in 
 Spain ; Giovanni de Medici, bastard of Florence ; Amedeo, 
 bastard of Savoy, with many such like, besides others :>f 
 meaner quality." * 
 
 These preparations held the States in alarm, the more jo 
 because the prince endeavoured to make them apprehend that 
 
 * Grimestone, 999, 1000. 601,317.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 57 
 
 his intention was to attack Goes, or Walcheren, or Tholen ; 
 on all these points they prepared for defence, and some were 
 for cutting dykes, and drowning one part of the country for 
 the sake of preserving the other. But the wiser opinion pre- 
 vailed, not to incur this certain evil, till its necessity became 
 evident ; and the Dutch statesmen inferred that no move- 
 ment would be made here till the great Spanish Armada, 
 news of which was now bruited abroad, should arrive in the 
 narrow seas ; then they judged it would be joined by the 
 Prince of Parma's forces, whether the expedition was intended 
 against them, or against England first ; whichever were 
 attacked, they knew that the subjugation of both was in 
 view. For themselves, they stood in little fear of the Spanish 
 fleet, from which the nature of their coast, in great measure, 
 would protect them ; but they were in much greater danger 
 from the prince's flotilla, against which their shoals and diffi- 
 cult harbours could afford them no security. Straitened as 
 they were for means, and with the disadvantage of an un- 
 settled Government, they exerted themselves manfully and 
 wisely. All the vessels that they could muster were equipped ; 
 and after due consultation it was resolved that the larger 
 vessels should be stationed between England at the coast of 
 Flanders, outside the shoals, the smaller within the shoals, 
 and the flotilla of smacks ofFKleeyenburg, or between Ramme- 
 kens and Flushing, according to circumstances. Their feelings 
 toward England, notwithstanding the ill blood that had been 
 stirred during Leicester's administration, was shown by a 
 medal which they struck at this time. On the one side were 
 the arms of England and of the united States, and two oxen 
 ploughing, the motto Trahite cequo jugo draw evenly ; on 
 the reverse two earthen pots floating upon the waves, the 
 motto Frangimur si collidimur if we strike we break.* 
 
 Meantime, though the negotiations at Ostend were still 
 
 * Grimestone, 994. Bor, 318,
 
 58 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 carried on in policy by the Spanish commissioners, there was on 
 the part of the Spanish Government a disdainful disregard of 
 secrecy as to its intentions, or rather a proud manifestation of 
 them, which, if they had been successful, might have been called 
 magnanimous. The great king had determined upon putting 
 forth his strength, and so confident were his subjects of 
 success, that in the accounts which were ostentatiously pub- 
 lished of its force, they termed it " The most fortunate and 
 invincible Armada". The fleet, according to the official 
 statement, consisted of 130 ships, having on board 19,2Q5 
 soldiers, 8450 mariners, 2088 galley-slaves, and 2630 great 
 pieces of brass ; there were, moreover, twenty caravels for the 
 service of the fleet, and ten six-oared falua-s. The names of 
 the most popular Romish saints and invocations appeared in 
 the nomenclature of the ships ; and holier appellations, which 
 ought never to be thus applied, were strangely associated with 
 the Great Griffin and the Sea Dog, the Cat and the White 
 Falcon. There were in the fleet 124 volunteers of noble 
 family, having among them 456 armed servants. There was 
 no noble house in Spain but had a son, a brother, or a nephew 
 in the voyage, embarked either at their own cost or in the 
 king's pay. The religioners who embarked for the service of 
 the fleet, and for after operations, were 180, consisting of 
 Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits. Don 
 Martin Alarcon embarked, for the good of the heretics, as 
 vicar-general of the holy Inquisition ; and implements of con- 
 version of a more cogent kind than argument or persuasion 
 are said to have been embarked in sufficient quantity. The 
 business of reconciling England to the Romish see was com- 
 mitted to Cardinal Allen, as it had formerly been to Cardinal 
 Pole, and an English translation of the Pope's bull was ready 
 for circulation as soon as a landing should be effected. The 
 galleons, being above sixty in number, were " exceeding great, 
 fair, and strong, and built high above the water, like castles, 
 easy, says a contemporary writer, to be fought withal, but
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 59 
 
 not so easy to board as the English and the Netherland ships ; 
 their upper decks were musket-proof, and beneath they were 
 four or five feet thick, so as no bullet could pass them. Their 
 masts were bound about with oakum, or pieces of fazeled ropes, 
 and armed against all shot. The galleasses were goodly great 
 vessels, furnished with chambers, chapels, towers, pulpits, and 
 such like : they rowed like galleys, with exceeding great oars, 
 each having 300 slaves, and were able to do much harm with 
 their great ordnance." In place of the Marquez de Santa 
 Cruz, who was dead, the Duque del Medina Sidonia was 
 general of this great armament ; Don Juan Martinez de 
 Ricalde, admiral.* 
 
 In whatever spirit of vengeance this expedition was under- 
 taken, and with whatever ambitious views on the part of 
 Philip, it cannot be doubted but that he believed himself 
 to be engaged in a religious Avar, and that a great proportion 
 of the army embarked with as full a persuasion that they 
 were engaging in God's service, as the first crusaders felt 
 when they set forth for the Holy Land. The Duque of 
 Medina Sidonia, in the general orders issued before his em- 
 barkation, said : " First, and before all things, it is to be under- 
 stood by all in this army, from the highest to the lowest, that 
 the principal cause which hath moved the king his Majesty to 
 undertake this voyage, hath been and is to serve God, and to 
 bring back unto His Church a great many contrite souls, now 
 oppressed by the heretics, enemies to our holy Catholic faith. 
 And for that every one may fix his eyes upon this mark, as we 
 are bound, 1 do command, and much desire every one to 
 enjoin those who are under his charge, that before they 
 embark, they be shriven and receive the sacrament, with due 
 contrition for their sins; which, if it be done, and we are 
 zealous to do unto Him such great service, God will be with us, 
 and conduct us to His great glory, which is what particularly 
 
 * (jrimestone, 998.
 
 60 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and principally is intended." Strict command was given that 
 no one should blaspheme or rage against God, or Our Lady, 
 or any of the saints, on pain of condign punishment ; " oaths 
 of less quality " were to be punished by deprivation of wine, 
 or otherwise, as might seem fitting. Gaming was forbidden, 
 as a provocation to this and other sins ; and all quarrels 
 between any persons of what quality soever, were to be sup- 
 pressed and suspended, as well by sea as by land, even though 
 they were old quarrels, so long as the expedition lasted. Any 
 breach of this truce and forbearance of arms was to be 
 accounted as high treason, and punished with death. For 
 further security, it was declared that on board the ships 
 nothing should be offered to the disgrace of any man, and 
 that whatever happened on board, no disgrace nor reproach 
 should be imputed to any one on that account ; moreover, no 
 one might wear a dagger, nor thwart any one, nor give any 
 provocation. " And for that it was known that great incon- 
 venience and offence unto God arose from consenting that 
 common women, and such like, went in such armies," none 
 were to be embarked ; if any person sought to carry them, the 
 captains and masters of the ships were ordered not to consent 
 thereto : whosoever did thus, or dissembled therewith, was to 
 be grievously punished. Every ship's company was to give 
 the good-morrow at day-break, by the main-mast, according 
 to custom ; and at evening, the Ave Maria, and some days the 
 Salve Regina, or, at least on Saturdays, with a litany. A litany 
 had been composed for the occasion, in which all archangels, 
 angels, and saints were invoked to assist with their prayers 
 against the English heretics and enemies of the faith. Should 
 it happen because of the wind, that the word could not be 
 given by the admiral, in such case the following words were 
 appointed for the days of the week in order, Jesus, the Holy 
 Ghost, the Holy Trinity, Santiago, the Angels, All Saints, 
 Our Lady. No men ever set forth upon a bad cause with 
 better will, nor under a stronger delusion of perverted faith.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 61 
 
 As needful preparations for action, the gunners were in- 
 structed to have half-butts, filled with water and vinegar * as 
 usual, " with bonnets, old sails, and wet mantles, to defend 
 fire " ; and to have shot made in good quantity, and powder 
 and match " ready, by weight, measure, and length " ; and all 
 soldiers to have " their room clean and uiipestered of chests " ; 
 " and for that the mariners must resort unto their work, tackle, 
 and navigation," their lodgings were to be on the upper works 
 of the poop and forecastle, otherwise the soldiers would 
 trouble them on the voyage. " The artillery," said the in- 
 structions, "must stand in very good order, and reparted 
 among the gunners, being all charged with their balls ; and 
 nigh unto every piece his locker, wherein to put his shot and 
 necessaries ; and to have great care to the cartridges of every 
 piece, for not changing, and not taking fire ; and that the 
 ladles and sponges be ready at hand. Every ship shall carry 
 two boats-lading of stones, to throw to profit, in the time of 
 fight, on the deck, forecastle, or tops, according to his burden ; 
 and shall carry two half-pipes, to fill them with water in the 
 day of battle, and repart them among the ordnance, or other 
 places as shall be thought necessary, and nigh unto them old 
 clothes and coverings, which, with wetting, may destroy any 
 kind of fire." The wildfire was to be entrusted only to those who 
 understood well how to use it, " otherwise it might happen to 
 great danger ". That there might be no excuse for neglecting 
 these orders on pretence of ignorance concerning them, they 
 were to be publicly read, thrice a week, in every ship, by the 
 purser. 
 
 Meantime Elizabeth and her wakeful ministers were well 
 aware of the danger, and seeing it in its whole extent, they 
 prepared to meet it with right English spirit. The lord lieu- 
 
 * Had then the wildfire, which was still in use, been derived from 
 that of the Greeks, that vinegar was thought necessary for quenching 
 it?
 
 62 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 tenants of the several counties were required, by circular 
 letters from the queen, to "call together the best sort of 
 gentlemen under their lieutenancy, and to declare unto them 
 these great preparations and arrogant threatenings, now burst 
 forth in action upon the seas, wherein every man's particular 
 state, in the highest degree, could be touched in respect of 
 country, liberty, wives, children, lands, lives, and (which was 
 specially to be regarded) the profession of the true and sincere 
 religion of Christ. And to lay before them the infinite and un- 
 speakable miseries that would fall out upon any such change, 
 which miseries were evidently seen by the fruits of that hard 
 and cruel government holden in countries not far distant. We 
 do look," said the queen, " that the most part of them should 
 have, upon this instant extraordinary occasion, a larger pro- 
 portion of furniture, both for horsemen and footmen, but 
 especially horsemen, than hath been certified ; thereby to be 
 in their best strength against any attempt, or to be employed 
 about our own person, or otherwise. Hereunto as we doubt 
 not but by your good endeavours they will be the rather con- 
 formable, so also we assure ourselves, that Almighty God will 
 so bless these their loyal hearts borne towards us, their loving 
 sovereign, and their natural country, that all the attempts of 
 any enemy whatsoever shall be made void and frustrate, to 
 their confusion, your comfort, and to God's high glory." * 
 Letters also were addressed by the council to the nobility, 
 because, in the directions given of late years for mustering, 
 arming, and training all persons, there had been no special 
 ones to the nobles, her Majesty having " certainly supposed 
 that it was the natural disposition of the nobility, without 
 direction, to be armed, both for themselves and for furniture 
 of horsemen and footmen, according to their ability. The 
 council, therefore, having a more certain knowledge than by 
 common report, of what preparations were made beyond the 
 
 * Strype, App. L.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 63 
 
 seas, very likely for the offence of this realm, required each 
 lord, to whom this communication was addressed, to receive it 
 as one whom her Majesty trusted, and as an argument of 
 special love. And in regard thereof," the letter proceeds, 
 " we do not doubt but that your lordship, with all the speed 
 you can possible, will be furnished with armour and weapon 
 meet for your calling ; and of your servants and able tenants 
 that are not already enrolled in the general musters of the 
 country as special trained persons, to make as many horsemen 
 as you can, both for lances and light horsemen. And for the 
 more increase of horsemen, for want of sufficient number of 
 great horse or geldings, we think your lordship may do well 
 to increase your number, if you shall provide able men with 
 petronels upon horses of smaller stature." * 
 
 A contemporary relates, that " all the noblemen in the 
 realm, from east to west, from north to south, excepting such 
 only as could not be absent from their charge in the country, 
 and some few that were not able to make forces according to 
 their desire, came to the queen, bringing with them, according 
 to their degrees, and to the uttermost of their power, goodly 
 bands of horsemen, both lances, light horsemen, and such 
 other as are termed carbines or argelatiers, lodging their bands 
 round about London, and maintaining them in pay at their 
 own charges. And of these noblemen, many showed the 
 bands of their horsemen before the queen, in the fields afore 
 her own gate, to the great marvel of men ; for that the 
 number of them was so great, and so well armed and horsed, 
 that, knowing they were no parcel of the horsemen limited 
 in every country, it was thought there had not been so many 
 spare horses of such valour in the whole realm, except the 
 north part towards Scotland, whose forces consist chiefly of 
 horse." The first who presented himself and his retainers to 
 the queen was a Roman Catholic peer, the Viscount Moun- 
 
 * Strype, iii., part ii., pp. 13, 14.
 
 64 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 tague, who at this time professed his resolution, " though he 
 was very sickly, and in age, to live and die in defence of the 
 queen and of his country, against all invaders, whether it were 
 pope, king, or potentate whatsoever ; and in that quarrel to 
 hazard his life, his children, his lands, and goods. And to 
 show his mind agreeably thereto, he came personally himself 
 before the queen with his band of horsemen, being almost 200, 
 the same being led by his own sons ; and with them a young 
 child, very comely, seated on horseback, being the heir of his 
 house, that is, the eldest son to his son and heir : a matter 
 much noted of many, to see a grandfather, father and son at 
 one time on horseback, afore a queen, for her service." * 
 
 The clergy also were called upon by the primate, Arch- 
 bishop Whitgift. " Being members," he said, " of one and 
 the self-same commonweal, and embarked in the like common 
 danger with others, if not more, in respect of our calling and 
 public profession of religion, whereby we are also bound to go 
 before others, as well in word as good example ; we are, 
 therefore, to remember, and advisedly to weigh with our- 
 selves what dutiful forwardness against these extraordinary 
 imminent dangers, of very congruence, is expected at our 
 hands for the defence of our gracious sovereign, ourselves, our 
 families, and country. And, beside the very good expecta- 
 tion of the best, the stirring up of those which otherwise are 
 but slow to further such service, and the discouraging of the 
 common enemy, our willing readiness herein will be a good 
 means also to stop the mouths of such as do think those 
 temporal blessings, which God hath in mercy bestowed upon 
 us, to be too much ; and, therefore, spare not in grudging 
 manner to say that themselves are forced, to their great 
 charges, to fight for us, while we live quietly at home, without 
 providing any munition in these public perils." He required 
 the bishops, therefore, as the letter of the council required 
 
 * Copy of a letter, etc. (Harl. Muse., 8vo ed. , ii., p. 76).
 
 65 
 
 him, "effectually to deal with those of their cathedral churches, 
 and other beneficed men in their dioceses, but especially such 
 as were of better ability, for the furnishing of themselves with 
 lances, light horses, petronels on horseback, muskets, calivers, 
 pikes, halberds, bills, or bows and arrows, as in regard of their 
 several abilities might be thought most convenient : and he 
 desired them, by all good persuasions, to move such ecclesias- 
 tical persons to be ready with all free and voluntary provision 
 of man, horse, and furniture. This present necessary service," 
 he said, " being no great charge, and so expedient for every 
 one to have in readiness, for the defence of his own person, 
 house, and family, upon any sudden occasion." * 
 
 The appeal from such a queen to such a nation was an- 
 swered with just and enthusiastic loyalty. The city of London 
 set an example worthy of London, such as the metropolis then 
 was. When its aid was asked, the Lord Mayor requested that 
 the council would state what would be deemed requisite. Ac- 
 cordingly, 5000 men and fifteen ships were required. The 
 Lord Mayor asked two days for deliberation, and then, in the 
 name of the city, prayed that the queen would accept of 
 twice those numbers. Six thousand were immediately trained 
 arid regimented, being armed with muskets, pikes, calivers, 
 and bills : the other 4000 were armed and put in readiness, 
 and 10,000 more were reported as able men. The artillery 
 company, which had originated about three years before, 
 proved singularly useful now. At that time, " certain gallant, 
 active, and forward citizens," says the old historian of London, 
 " having had experience, both abroad and at home, voluntarily 
 exercised themselves and trained others, for the ready use of 
 war ; so that there were almost 300 merchants, and others of 
 the like quality, very sufficient and skilful to train and teach 
 common soldiers the managing of their pieces, pikes, and 
 halberds, and to march, countermarch, and ring. These 
 
 * Strype's Whitgift, book iii., App. No. 38. 
 5
 
 66 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 merchants met every Tuesday to practise all points of war. 
 Every man by turn bore orderly office, from the corporal to 
 the captain. Some of them had now charge of men in the 
 great camp, and were generally called captains of the artillery 
 garden." Most erroneously had Cardinal Allen, and the King 
 of Spain, and the Pope judged, when they thought that 
 Elizabeth and the English nation were to be intimidated by a 
 display of overpowering force, and denunciations " that the 
 realm should be invaded and conquered, that the queen 
 should be destroyed, and all the nobility and men of reputation, 
 of honour, and wealth, who should obey her, and defend her, 
 and would withstand the invasion, should, with all their 
 families, be rooted out, and their places, their honours, their 
 houses, and their lands bestowed upon the conquerors ! " For 
 " these things were universally so odiously taken, that the 
 hearts of all sorts of people were inflamed, some with ire, 
 some with fear ; but all sorts, almost without exception, re- 
 solved to venture their lives for the withstanding of all 
 manner of conquest ". The people, firmly devoted as they 
 were to their magnanimous and excellent queen, were, by such 
 insolent threats, " thoroughly irritated," says a contemporary, 
 " to stir up their whole forces for their defence against such 
 prognosticated conquests: so that, in a very short time, all 
 her whole realm, and every corner, were furnished with armed 
 men, on horseback and on foot ; and those continually trained, 
 exercised, and put into bands, in warlike manner, as in no 
 age ever was before in this realm. There was no sparing of 
 money to provide horse, armour, weapons, powder, and all 
 necessaries ; no, nor want of provision of pioneers, carriages, 
 and victuals, in every county of the realm, without exception, 
 to attend upon the armies. And to this general furniture 
 every man voluntarily offered, very many their services person- 
 ally without wages, others money for armour and weapons, and 
 to wage soldiers : a matter strange, and never the like heard 
 of in this realm or elsewhere. And this general reason moved
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 67 
 
 all men to large contributions, that when a conquest was to 
 be withstood wherein all should be lost, it was no time to 
 spare a portion." * 
 
 There were some who advised the queen to place no reli- 
 ance upon any means of maritime defence, but to expect the 
 enemy's coming, and "welcome him with a land battle," as 
 her father had resolved to do when he was threatened with 
 invasion by a superior fleet ; and as was intended in the time 
 of the French Armada, in Richard II. 's reign. But Elizabeth, 
 though her reliance was not upon any human strength, knew 
 the worth of her seamen, and omitted none of those means 
 of defence with which God and nature had provided her. 
 The command of the whole fleet she gave to Charles, Lord 
 Howard of Effingham, who had been appointed lord high 
 admiral three years before, on the death of the Earl of Lin- 
 coln, Edward Clinton. t That office "seemed to have become 
 almost hereditary in the Howard family. The queen had a 
 great persuasion of his fortunate conduct, and knew him to be 
 of a moderate and noble courage, skilful in sea matters, wary 
 and provident, valiant and courageous, industrious and active, 
 and of great authority and esteem among the sailors." Him 
 she sent early in the year to the western coast with the main 
 body of the fleet ; Drake, who was her vice-admiral, joined 
 him here, and Hawkins and Frobisher (great names in naval 
 history) were in this division. Lord Henry Seymour, second 
 
 *Copy of a letter sent out of England (Harl. Muse., 8vo ed., vol. ii., 
 63, 64). The editor of this collection must have cast a careless eye over 
 this letter, or he would not have supposed that it had really been written 
 by a Papist in the Spanish interest. 
 
 "One strange speech," says the writer, " that I heard spoken, may be 
 marvelled at, but it was avowed to me for a truth, that one gentleman in 
 Kent had a band of 150 footmen which were worth in goods above 1 50,000 J. 
 sterling, besides their lands. Such men would fight stoutly before they 
 would lose their goods " (p. 65). 
 
 t Camden, 325.
 
 68 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 son of the Duke of Somerset, was ordered to lie off the coast 
 of Flanders with forty ships, Dutch and English ; blockade 
 the enemy's ports there ; and prevent the Prince of Parma 
 from forming a j unction with the Armada from Spain. Ten years 
 before this time the royal navy consisted of no more than twenty- 
 four ships of all sizes, the largest being of 1000 tons, the smallest 
 under 60 ; all the ships throughout England of 100 tons and 
 upwards were but 135, and all under 100 and above 40 tons 
 were 656.* But if the ten years which had elapsed had done 
 little toward the augmentation of the royal navy, it had added 
 more than any preceding century to the maritime strength 
 of the country in that race of sailors which had been trained 
 up in adventurous expeditions to the new world. The whole 
 number of ships collected for the defence of the country on 
 this great occasion was 191, the number of seamen 17,472, 
 the amount of tonnage 31,985. Eighteen of these ships were 
 volunteers. There was one ship in the fleet (the Triumph) 
 of 1100 tons, one of 1000, one of 900, two of 800 each, three 
 of 600, and five of 500, five of 400, six of 300, six of 250, 
 twenty of 200 : all the rest were smaller. But, in the 
 Armada, though there were only three ships that exceeded in 
 size the Triumph, there were no fewer than 45 between 600 
 and 1000 tons burden ; and though the English fleet out- 
 numbered the Armada nearly by sixty sail, its tonnage 
 amounted not to one-half of that of the enemy, t 
 
 For the land defence, somewhat more that 100,000 men 
 were called out, regimented and armed, but only half of them 
 were trained. Of these the cavalry, with the pioneers, 
 amounted to 14,000. This was exclusive of the force upon 
 the borders, and of the Yorkshire force, which was reserved 
 for service northward. Twenty thousand men were disposed 
 along the southern coast ; an army of 45,000 was collected 
 
 * Campbell, i., 334. 
 
 t Charnock, vol. ii., 15, 17. Turner, 667.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM (59 
 
 under the Earl of Hunsdon to guard the queen's person, who, 
 in case of the invaders' success, if she escaped from that 
 malignant treason which had so often threatened her life, was 
 to have been placed at the Pope's disposal. The band of 
 pensioners was attached to this army. Another was formed 
 at Tilbury under Leicester : it consisted of 1000 horse, and 
 22,000 foot ; and 2000 troops were requested and obtained 
 from Holland to act with this force, which was specially 
 intended to engage the Prince of Parma, it being understood 
 that London was the point for which he would immediately 
 aim. " The Hollanders," says Stowe, " came roundly in, with 
 threescore sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, 
 not so much for England's aid, as in just occasion for their 
 own defence ; these men foreseeing the greatness of the 
 danger that might ensue, if the Spaniards should chance to 
 win the day, and get the mastery over them ; in due regard 
 whereof their manly courage was inferior to none." Both 
 sides of the river were fortified under the direction of Federico 
 Giambelli, an Italian deserter from the Spanish service, who 
 invented the famous fire-ships, or rather floating mines, 
 employed against the Prince of Parma over the Scheldt at 
 the siege of Antwerp. Gravesend was fortified, and western 
 barges brought thither with the twofold intent of constructing 
 a bridge like that of Antwerp, for blocking the river, and 
 affording a passage for horse and foot between Kent and 
 Essex, as occasion might require. Arthur, Lord Grey of 
 Wilton, Sir Francis Knolles, Sir John Norris, Sir Richard 
 Bingham, and Sir Roger Williams were appointed, as ex- 
 perienced soldiers, to consult upon the best means of defence. 
 They advised that the most convenient landing-places for the 
 enemy, whether coming from Spain, or from, the Low Countries, 
 should be well manned and fortified, " namely, Milford Haven, 
 Falmouth, Plymouth, Portland, the Isle of Wight, Ports- 
 mouth, that open coast of Kent which we call the Downs, 
 the Thames mouth, Harwich, Yarmouth, Hull. And that the
 
 70 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 trained bands all along the maritime counties should meet in 
 arms upon a signal given, to defend the said parts, and do 
 their best to prohibit the enemy's landing. And if the enemy 
 did land, to lay all the country waste round about, and spoil 
 all things that might be of any use to them ; that so they 
 might find no food but what they brought with them on their 
 shoulders ; and to busy the enemy night and day with con- 
 tinual alarms, so as to give them no rest ; but not to put it to 
 the hazard of a battle, till more commanders with their com- 
 panies were come to them one commander being nominated 
 in every shire." * 
 
 The bull, Cardinal Allen's treasonable appeal to the English 
 Romanists, and the opinion confidently expressed in Spain, 
 that they would, as soon as Spanish aid afforded them 
 opportunity, cast off the queen's yoke, and attempt something 
 memorable for her destruction, f had rendered them objects of 
 suspicion ; and there were evil counsellors who argued that 
 the Spaniards abroad were not so much to be feared as the 
 Papists at home ; that no invasion would be attempted were 
 it not in reliance upon their co-operation ; and, therefore, that 
 for the sake of public safety, the heads of this dangerous party 
 ought to be taken off; alleging, as an example, that in Henry 
 VIII. 's time, when, at the v Pope's instigation, the emperor 
 and the King of France were about to invade England, their 
 intention was abandoned as soon as he had put to death the 
 persons whom he suspected of favouring it. This Elizabeth 
 justly condemned as wicked counsel : on account, however, of 
 the general murmurs, she thought it prudent not only to 
 secure the priests and seminarists, but to commit some of the 
 principal laity to custody, part in Wisbeach Castle, others in 
 the bishop's palace at Ely. | This was not an indiscriminate 
 
 * Camden, 406. f Strype, vol. iii., p. 33. 
 
 J Camden, 406. Copy of a letter, etc., 66. Strype's Whitgift, i., 528- 
 530.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 71 
 
 measure, nor can it be judged from the event to have been a 
 needless one ; for, after the failure of the Armada, when they 
 might have been enlarged upon signing a bond, they took 
 exception at a clause in it, engaging " for their good behaviour 
 to the queen and the state," because, they said, it seemed to 
 touch them in credit ; they offered a form of their own, which 
 was properly suspected of some mental reservation ; and, in 
 fact, three of the persons who were thus committed were 
 afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 While all human means for defence were provided by the 
 queen and her wise ministers, they did not neglect to implore 
 that aid without which all human means would have been un- 
 availing. A form of prayer, " necessary for the present time 
 and state,'' was set forth, and enjoined to be used on Wednes- 
 days and Fridays every week, in all parish churches. " One of 
 these prayers deserves," says Strype, " to be recorded, in 
 eternal memory of this imminent national danger : " it ran 
 thus : " O Lord God of Hosts, most loving and merciful 
 Father, we, Thy humble servants, prostrate ourselves before 
 Thy Divine Majesty, most heartily beseeching Thee to grant 
 unto us true repentance for our sins past ; namely, for our un- 
 thankfulness, contempt of Thy word, lack of compassion 
 toward the afflicted, envy, malice, strife and contention among 
 ourselves, and for all other our iniquities. Lord, deal not 
 with us as we have deserved : but of Thy great goodness and 
 mercy do away our offences ; and give us grace to confess and 
 acknowledge, O Lord, with all humble and hearty thanks, 
 Thy wonder iiil and great benefits which Thou hast bestowed 
 upon this Thy Church and people of England, in giving unto 
 us, without all desert on our part, not only peace and quiet- 
 ness, but also in preserving our most gracious queen, Thine 
 handmaid, so miraculously from so many conspiracies, perils, 
 and dangers. We do instantly beseech Thee, of Thy gracious 
 goodness, to be merciful to Thy Church militant here upon 
 earth ; and, as at this time, compassed about with most strong
 
 72 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and subtle adversaries. And, especially, O Lord, let Thine 
 enemies know, and make them confess, that Thou hast re- 
 ceived England (which they, most of all for Thy Gospel's 
 sake, do malign) into Thine own protection. Set, we pray 
 Thee, O Lord, a wall about it, and evermore mightily defend 
 it. Let it be a comfort to the afflicted, a help to the oppressed, 
 a defence to Thy Church and people persecuted abroad. And, 
 forasmuch as Thy cause is now in hand, we beseech Thee to 
 direct and go before our armies, both by sea and land. Bless 
 and prosper them, and grant unto them, O Lord, Thy good 
 and honourable success and victory, as Thou didst to Abraham 
 and his company against the four mighty kings ; to Joshua, 
 against the five kings, and against Amalek ; and to David, 
 against the strong and mighty-armed Goliath ; and as Thou 
 usest to do to Thy children when they please Thee. We ac- 
 knowledge all power, strength, and victory to come from 
 Thee. Some put their trust in chariots, and some in 
 horses ; but we will remember Thy name, O Lord our God ! 
 Thou bringest the counsel of the heathen to nought, and 
 makest the devices of the people to be of none effect. There 
 is no king that can be saved by the multitude of an host ; 
 neither is any mighty man delivered by much strength. 
 Therefore we pray unto Thee, O Lord ! Thou art our help 
 and our shield ! " * " This," says Strype, " we may call a 
 prayer of faith, in regard of the strong hopes of success to be 
 granted to this kingdom professing the Gospel." And such 
 is the emphatic and scriptural language in which the prayers 
 of the Church of England have always been composed ; such 
 the sober and earnest devotion which they breathe ; such the 
 spirit of Christian humility in which they are conceived. 
 
 History never impresses itself so strongly on the imagination 
 as when, in great emergencies, it presents us with the hopes 
 and feelings of the people in their own words. Never, indeed, 
 
 * Strype, vol. iii., p. ii., 15-17.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 73 
 
 had England been threatened with an equal danger since the 
 Norman conquest ; that was a danger of which there was no 
 general apprehension throughout the nation ; nor was it in 
 itself so formidable ; and even the evils which it brought upon 
 the Anglo-Saxon people were light in comparison with the 
 horrors of a Romish persecution, and a war such as that which 
 was then raging in the Netherlands, when there were no 
 such defensive advantages as the Netherlanders possessed in 
 their strong places and the nature of their country. If ever 
 national prayers proceeded from the heart of a nation, it was 
 at this momentous crisis. One of the most passionate was 
 framed in these words : " For Preservation and Success against 
 the Spanish Navy and Forces. O Lord God, Heavenly 
 Father, without whose providence nothing proceedeth, and 
 without whose mercy nothing is saved ; in whose power lie 
 the hearts of princes, and the end of all their actions ; have 
 mercy upon Thine afflicted Church, and especially regard 
 Elizabeth, our most excellent queen, to whom Thy dispersed 
 flock do fly, in the anguish of their souls, and in the zeal of 
 Thy truth. Behold how the princes of the nations do band 
 themselves against her, because she laboureth to purge Thy 
 sanctuary, and that Thy holy Church may live in security. 
 Consider, O Lord, how long Thy servant hath laboured to 
 them for peace, but how proudly they prepare themselves 
 unto battle. Arise, therefore, maintain Thine own cause, and 
 judge Thou between her and her enemies. She seeketh not 
 her own honour, but Thine ; nor the dominions of others, but 
 a just defence of herself ; not the shedding of Christian blood, 
 but the saving of poor afflicted souls. Come down, therefore, 
 come down, and deliver Thy people by her. To vanquish is 
 all one with Thee, by few or by many, by want or by wealth, 
 by weakness or by strength. Oh ! possess the hearts of our 
 enemies with a fear of Thy servants. The cause is Thine, the 
 enemies Thine, the afflicted Thine : the honour, victory, and 
 triumph shall be Thine. Consider, Lord, the end of our
 
 74 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 enterprises. Be present with us in our armies, and make a 
 joyful peace for Thy Christians. And now, since in this 
 extreme necessity Thou hast put into the heart of Thy 
 servant Deborah, to provide strength to withstand the pride 
 of Sisera and his adherents, bless Thou all her forces by sea 
 and land. Grant all her people one heart, one mind, and one 
 strength, to defend her person, her kingdom, and Thy true 
 religion. Give unto all her council and captains wisdom, 
 wariness and courage, that they may speedily prevent the 
 devices, and valiantly withstand the forces of all our enemies ; 
 that the fame of Thy Gospel may be spread unto the ends of 
 the world. We crave this in Thy mercy, O Heavenly Father, 
 for the precious death of Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ. 
 Amen." * 
 
 In this faith, with these preparations, and with a national 
 spirit thus roused, the queen and the English people awaited 
 the coming of the enemy. It was towards the latter end of 
 May t that the then called Invincible Armada sailed from the 
 Tagus for Corunna, there to take on board the remainder of 
 the land forces and stores. Cardinal Albert of Austria, then 
 Viceroy of Portugal, gave it his solemn blessing before it 
 departed, and it set forth with all the confidence J that could 
 be derived from military and naval strength, and an entire 
 belief that all the saints in the Romish Litany would befriend 
 it. On the 30th, the lord admiral and Sir Francis Drake 
 sailed from Plymouth: their fleet "amounted to 100 sail, 
 whereof fifteen were victuallers, and nine voluntaries of Devon- 
 shire gentlemen, many a serviceable man returning back for 
 
 * Strype, book ii., App. No. 54. 
 
 t Most of the old accounts say the igth. One which Mr. Turner 
 follows makes it the 25th. The Dutch writers say the 2gth or 3oth, and 
 with this Camden agrees ; but the earliest date accords with the account 
 given to Drake by the hulk from S. Lucar. 
 
 I " With the greatest pride and glory," says Sir W. Monsey, " and least 
 doubt of victory that ever any nation did" (p. 156).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 75 
 
 lack of employment or place ". The easterly wind with which 
 they set forth " continued but a short time ; yet, neverthe- 
 less," says Drake, "all men were so willing of service, and none 
 more than my lord admiral himself, that we endured a great 
 storm (considering the time of the year), with the wind 
 southerly and at south-west, for seven days ; and longer we 
 had, had not the wind come westwardly, and that so much, 
 as in keeping sea, we should have been put to leeward off 
 Plymouth, either for Portland or Wight, which places had not 
 been so meet, either for the meeting of the enemy, or reliev- 
 ing ourselves of those wants which daily will be in so great 
 an army of ships ''. He had met with intelligence that the 
 enemy were at sea, and he inferred that either they would 
 very shortly be heard of, or else go to Corunna, and there 
 " make their full rendezvous ". " I assure your good lord- 
 ship," said he in his letter to Burleigh, "and protest it before 
 God, that I find my lord admiral so well affected for all 
 honourable services in this action, as it doth assure all his 
 followers of good success and hope of victory. Thus humbly 
 taking my leave of your good lordship, I daily pray to God to 
 bless her Majesty, and to give us grace to fear Him. So shall 
 we not need to doubt the enemy, although they be many. 
 From aboard her Majesty's good ship the Revenge, riding in 
 Plymouth Sound, this 6th of June, 1588. Your good lord- 
 ship's very ready to be commanded, Francis Drake." This was 
 the first despatch relating to the operations of this great 
 campaign. 
 
 The storm which the English encountered dismasted some 
 of the enemy's ships, dispersed others, and occasioned the loss 
 of four Portuguese galleys. One sunk ; a Welshman, David 
 Gwynne * by name, who had been a galley-slave among these 
 merciless people eleven years, took the opportunity of regain- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 596. Speed, 859. Bor, 321, 322. In the latter author the 
 details are given.
 
 76 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ing his liberty, and made himself master of another, captured 
 one galley with it, was joined by a third, in which the slaves 
 were encouraged to rise by his example, and carried the three 
 into a French port. The Armada, after this ominous com- 
 mencement of the voyage, put back to Corunna ; the lord 
 admiral having received intelligence that it was broken in the 
 storm, concluded rightly that its " storm-shaken " ships would 
 return thither, and he set sail with the first fair wind, hoping 
 to attack them in the harbour. But when he was not far 
 from the coast of Spain, the wind came suddenly about into 
 the south ; and he, lest they should effect their passage with 
 that wind, unperceived, returned to the entrance of the 
 channel. "1 myself," he wrote, "do lie in the midst of the 
 channel, with the greatest force ; Sir Francis Drake hath 
 twenty ships, and four or five pinnaces, which lie towards 
 Ushant ; and Mr. Hawkins, with as many more, lieth towards 
 Scilly. Thus we are fain to do, or else with this wind they 
 might pass us by, and we never the wiser. The Sleeve is 
 another manner of thing than it was taken for : we find it by 
 experience and daily observation to be 100 miles over: a 
 large room for me to look unto ! " * Yet the delay of the 
 enemy, and the report of what they had suffered, not from 
 the storm alone, but also from sickness, deceived both the 
 admiral and the Government ; the ships withdrew, some to 
 the coast of Ireland, the admiral, with the greater part of the 
 fleet, to Plymouth, where the men were allowed to come 
 ashore. Many of them were discharged, t and the officers 
 amused themselves with revels, dancing, bowling, and making 
 merry. The queen was verily persuaded that the invasion 
 was not to be looked for this year ; and in that rash confi- 
 dence the secretary Walsingham wrote to the admiral to send 
 back four of the tallest ships royal, as if the war for that 
 season were surely at an end. Happily for England, and 
 
 * Turner, 675, n, f Monson, 157.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 77 
 
 most honourably for himself, the Lord Effingham, though he 
 had relaxed his vigilance, saw how perilous it was to act as if 
 all were safe. He humbly entreated that nothing might be 
 lightly credited in so weighty a matter, and that he might 
 retain these ships, though it should be at his own cost. This 
 was no empty show of disinterested zeal ; for if the service of 
 those ships had not been called for, there can be little doubt, 
 that in the rigid parsimony of Elizabeth's Government, he 
 would have been called upon to pay the costs.* 
 
 Meantime the Armada, having completely refitted, sailed 
 from Corunna on the 12th of July. The Duque de Medina 
 Sidonia f had been ordered to keep along the coasts of 
 Bretagne and Normandy ; and if he met with the English 
 fleet, to keep on the defensive, and avoid an action ; and to 
 repair to the road of Calais, there to wait for the Prince of 
 Parma : when their junction should have been affected, he 
 was then to open the sealed instructions, which were directed 
 to both. But as the news of the damage which he had sus- 
 tained misled the English Government, so did the information 
 which he received that the English were off their guard in- 
 duce him to depart from his orders ; " yet this was not done 
 without some difficulty, for the council was divided in opinion ; 
 some held it best to observe the king's commands, others not 
 to lose the opportunity of surprising our fleet in harbour, and 
 burning and destroying it". This course was strongly advised 
 by Diego Flores de Valdez, on whom the duke most relied, 
 because of his experience ; and with that determination they 
 steered their course for England. The first land with which 
 they fell in was the Lizard : they mistook it for the Ram's- 
 head ; and "night being at hand, they tacked off to sea, making 
 
 * " A man employed rather for his birth than experience ; for so many 
 dukes, marquises, and earls voluntarily going, would have repined to 
 have been commanded by a man of less quality than themselves " 
 (Monson). 
 
 t Camden, 410.
 
 78 ENGLISm'SEAMEN 
 
 account in the morning to attempt the ships in Plymouth".* 
 One Thomas Fleming, a lucky pirate, had got sight of them 
 off the Lizard, and hastened to Plymouth with the intelligence ; 
 it was of such importance, that he obtained his pardon for 
 it, and a pension during life. It had been little looked for, 
 and the wind at that time "blew stiffly into the harbour". 
 All hands were got on board with all speed ; the ships were 
 warped out with great difficulty, "but indeed with singular 
 diligence and industry, and with admirable alacrity of the 
 seamen, whom the lord admiral encouraged at their halser- 
 work, towing at a cable with his own hands. " I dare boldly 
 say," says Fuller, "that he drew more, though not by his 
 person, by his presence and example, than any ten in the 
 place." He got out himself that night, with only six ships ; 
 some four and twenty came out on the morrow, and with these, 
 though they were some of the smallest of the fleet, he stood 
 out to meet the enemy, resolving to impede their progress at 
 all hazards. 
 
 The next day the Armada was seen, "with lofty turrets 
 like castles, in front like a half-moon ; the wings thereof 
 spreading out about the length of seven miles, sailing very 
 slowly, though with full sails, the winds," says Camden, 
 "being as it were weary with wafting them, and the ocean 
 groaning under their weight". The intent of surprising the 
 fleet in harbour being frustrated, they passed Plymouth, the 
 English willingly suffering them to pass, that they might chase 
 
 * Monson. In a discourse of Sir Robert Slingsby's it is said : " Had it 
 not been for the English privateer Fleming, Valdez's counsel to burn 
 our fleet as they lay in harbour without men had taken effect. The 
 Spaniards' ignorance in sea affairs taking the Lizard for the Ram's-head, 
 and tacking off that night, lost their opportunity of destroying our fleet 
 in Plymouth Sound. And although King Philip's counsel for his fleet to 
 sail along the coast of France was great and good, yet being to be put in 
 practice by gentlemen ignorant in sea affairs, and preferred only for their 
 birth, it lost the effect it might have had, and totally overthrew all their 
 design " (Charnock, Preface, Ixxvi.).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 79 
 
 them in the rear, with a foreright wind. And on the morrow, 
 the lord admiral sending the Defiance pinnace forward, de- 
 nounced war * by discharging her ordnance, and presently his 
 own ship, the Ark Royal, thundered thick and furiously upon 
 what he supposed to be the general's ship, but it proved to 
 be the vice-admiral's, Alonso de Leyva's. Soon after, Drake, 
 Hawkins, and Frobisher played stoutly with their ordnance 
 upon the rear of the enemy, where Ricalde, the admiral, com- 
 manded ; that officer endeavoured to prevent his ships from 
 flying to the main fleet, till his own ship was rendered nearly 
 unserviceable, and he was then fain, "with much ado," to 
 hasten thither himself. "The duque then gathered together 
 his fleet, which was scattered this way and that way, and 
 hoisting more sail, held on his course with what speed he 
 could. Neither could he do any other, seeing both the wind 
 favoured the English, and their ships would turn about with 
 incredible celerity which way soever they pleased to charge, 
 wind, and tack about again." The Spaniards then felt a 
 cause of weakness in their excess of strength, "their great 
 ships being powerful to defend but not to offend, to stand but 
 not to move, and therefore far unfit for fight in those narrow 
 seas ; their enemies nimble, and ready at all sides to annoy 
 them, and as apt to escape harm themselves, by being low 
 built, and easily shot over. Therefore they gathered them- 
 selves close in form of a half-moon, and slackened sail, that 
 their whole fleet might keep together. After a smart fight, 
 in which he had injured the enemy much, and suffered little 
 or no hurt himself, Lord Effingham gave over the action, be- 
 cause forty of his ships were not yet come up, having scarcely 
 indeed got out of the haven." t 
 
 During the night, the St. Catalina, which had suffered 
 
 *"Fire, smoke, and echoing cannons," says Speed, "began the 
 parley ; and bullets, most freely interchanged between them, were mes- 
 sengers of each other's mind." 
 
 f Hakluyt, 595. Speed, 860. Camden, 411.
 
 80 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 greatly, was taken into the midst of the fleet to be repaired ; 
 and Oquendo's ship (of 800 tons) was set on fire (it is said) 
 by a Flemish gunner, whose wife had been abused and him- 
 self outraged by the commanding officer of the troops on 
 board. It was part of their general orders, that if any ship 
 took fire, those that were near were to make from her, send- 
 ing, however, their boats to succour her ; this was so well 
 observed that no other ship was injured, and the fire was 
 quenched, though not before the upper works were consumed ; 
 but more diligence than humanity was shown in this, for after 
 taking out whatever was of value that could be saved, when 
 they abandoned the hulk they left in it some fifty of their 
 countrymen, "miserably hurt". That night, also, in the con- 
 fusion which this fire occasioned, Valdez's galleon ran foul of 
 another ship, broke her foremast, and was left behind, and 
 none coming to her assistance, "the sea being tempestuous 
 and the night dark," the lord admiral supposed that the men 
 had been taken out, and without tarrying to take possession 
 of the prize, passed on with the Bear and the Mary Wolf, 
 that he might not lose sight of the enemy in the darkness. 
 He thought that he was following Drake's ship, which ought 
 to have carried the lantern that night ; it proved to be a 
 Spanish light, and in the morning he found himself in the 
 midst of the enemy's fleet, "but when he perceived it, he 
 cleanly conveyed himself out of that great danger". In the 
 eagerness of hope Drake had forgotten or disregarded his 
 orders, and engaged in close pursuit of five great ships, which 
 he supposed to be enemies, but which, when he came up with 
 them, proved to be Easterlings, holding their course by these 
 contending fleets, and protected by them from all danger of 
 pirates. But the whole of the English ships, except the two 
 which followed the admiral into so perilous a situation, lay to 
 during the night, because the lantern was not to be seen, 
 nor did they recover sight of the admiral till the following 
 evening. Drake himself had the good fortune to fall in with
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 81 
 
 Valdez, who, after some parley, surrendered, seeing that re- 
 sistance must have been vain. The prize was sent into Ply- 
 mouth ; and Drake's men paid themselves well with the spoil 
 of the ship, wherein were 55,000 ducats in gold, which they 
 shared merrily among them. The hulk of the galleon was 
 also carried into Weymouth, to the great joy of the beholders ; 
 though the upper works had been consumed, and most of the 
 crew burned. The gunpowder in the hold had not taken fire, 
 "to the great admiration of all men".* 
 
 On Tuesday, the 23rd, the Spaniards were off Portland, and 
 the wind came about into the north, so that they " had a 
 fortunate and fit gale for invading the English ". But the 
 English, " agile and foreseeing all harms, recovered the 
 vantage of the wind ". After they had for some time 
 manoeuvred for this object, they prepared on both sides for 
 action, the Spaniards " seeming more incensed to fight than 
 before. And fight they did, confusedly, and with variable 
 fortune ; for on the one side the English manfully rescued 
 some London ships that were hemmed in by the Spaniards, 
 and on the other the Spaniards as stoutly rescued their 
 admiral, Ricalde, when he was in danger." " On this day was 
 the sorest fight, yet with no memorable loss on either side." 
 A great Venetian ship and some smaller ones were surprised 
 and taken by the English. On their part Captain Cock died 
 with honour in the midst of the enemies, in a small ship of 
 his own. Though this was the most furious and bloody 
 skirmish of all, the loss was little, because the English, having 
 given their broadsides, presently stood off, never exposing 
 themselves in close action, but satisfied with levelling their 
 guns with sure aim against those great ships, " which were 
 heavy and altogether unwieldy. Neither did the lord admiral 
 think good to adventure grappling with them, as some unad- 
 visedly persuaded him. For the enemy had a strong army in 
 
 * Hakluyt, 597, 598. Speed, 860. Camden, 412. 
 6
 
 82 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 his fleet, but he had none : their ships were of bigger 
 burden, stronger and higher built, so as their men fighting 
 from those lofty hatches must inevitably destroy those who 
 should charge them from beneath. And he knew that an 
 overthrow would endamage him much more than a victory 
 would advantage him. For if he were vanquished he should 
 very much endanger all England ; and if he conquered he 
 should only gain a little honour for beating the enemy." On 
 the other hand the Spaniards were not less wary: they 
 " gathered themselves close into a roundel, their best and 
 greatest ships without, securing the smaller and those which 
 had suffered most " ; so that it was apparent that they meant 
 as much as possible to avoid fighting, and hold on to the place 
 appointed for their junction with the Prince of Parma.* 
 
 There was no wind stirring on the morrow, and only the 
 four great galleasses were engaged, these having much ad- 
 vantage, by reason of their oars, while the English were 
 becalmed ; the English, however, galled the enemy with 
 chain-shot, therewith cutting asunder their tacklings and 
 cordage. But they were now constrained to send ashore for 
 gunpowder, the want of which ministered displeasure, it is 
 said, if not suspicion to many, that a scarcity should thus be 
 felt on our own coast. Those persons did not reflect how 
 freely it had been expended during the three preceding days. 
 The same day a council of war was held, and it was resolved 
 that the fleet should be divided into four squadrons under the 
 command of the four " most skilful navigators, whereof the 
 lord admiral in the Ark Royal was chief, Drake in the Revenge 
 led the second, Hawkins the third, and Frobisher the fourth. 
 Out of every squadron, also, small vessels were appointed to 
 give the onset and attack the enemy on all sides simul- 
 taneously in the dead of the night." This design took no 
 effect for want of wind. The Spaniards, meantime, " observed 
 
 * Hakluyt, 598. Speed, 860. Camden, 412.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 83 
 
 very diligent and good order, sailing three and four, and 
 sometimes more, in a rank, and following close up one after 
 another, and the stronger and greater ships protecting the 
 lesser ". The morrow was Santiago's day, and the Spaniards 
 not improbably were animated by the hope that their patron 
 saint might exert himself as visibly that day on their behalf 
 as they had been taught to believe he had so often done 
 against the Moors. The St. Anna not being able to keep up 
 with the rest was set upon by some small ships : three gal- 
 leasses came to her rescue ; against these the lord admiral 
 himself advanced, and Lord Thomas Howard in the Golden 
 Lion: their ships being towed, because of the calm, they plied 
 their guns with such effect that the galleon was not brought 
 off without much difficulty, and from that time no galleasses 
 would venture to engage. By this time they were off the 
 Isle of Wight ; and according to the Spaniards, the English, 
 encouraged as it seems by success in the last encounter, 
 battered the Spanish admiral (then in the rear of his fleet) 
 with their great ordnance, approached closer than they had 
 before done, and shot away his mainmast ; but other ships came 
 to his assistance, beat them off, and set upon the English 
 admiral, who escaped only by favour of the wind which sprung 
 up when he most needed it.* The English relate that they 
 shot away the lantern from one of the enemy's ships, and the 
 beak-head from a second, and did much hurt to a third, and 
 that Frobisher extricated himself with great ability from a 
 situation of great danger. The lord admiral knighted the 
 Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Roger Townsend, 
 Hawkins and Frobisher for their behaviour on that day. Both 
 parties appear to have demeaned themselves gallantly, and 
 both to have been rendered more cautious. The Spaniards 
 say that from that time they gave over what they call the 
 pursuit of their enemy; and they despatched a fresh messenger 
 
 * Camden, 413. Turner, 679.
 
 84 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 to the Prince of Parma, urging him to effect his junction with 
 them as soon as possible, and withal to send them some great 
 shot, for they had expended theirs with more prodigality than 
 effect. Without knowing of this intention on their part, the 
 English also came to a resolution that they would make no 
 further attack upon the Spaniards, till they should arrive in 
 the Straits of Calais, where they should be joined by Lord 
 Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter, with their squad- 
 rons.* 
 
 That same day the lord admiral received welcome assurances 
 from Havre that no attempt in aid of the enemy would be 
 made by the Guises, which there had been reason to ap- 
 prehend. His own force now was continually increased by 
 ships and men, resorting to him " out of all havens of the 
 realm ; for the gentlemen of England hired ships from all 
 parts at their own charge, and with one accord came flocking 
 thither as to a set field, where glory was to be attained and 
 faithful service performed unto their prince and their country". 
 Among the volunteers who thus came out were the Earls of 
 Oxford, Northumberland, and Cumberland, with many others, 
 whose names are conspicuous in Elizabeth's famous reign, the 
 most illustrious of them being Walter Raleigh. So with a 
 clear sky and a fair south-west wind the Armada held on its 
 course, closely followed by the English fleet. On the evening 
 of the 27th the Spaniards came to anchor before Calais just at 
 sunset : their intention had been to hold on for Dunkirk in 
 expectation of being joined there by the prince ; but they 
 were told by the pilots that if they proceeded any further 
 they would be in danger of being carried by force of the tide 
 into the northern sea. The English, also, anchored here, and 
 within cannon shot. Seymour and Winter had joined with 
 their squadrons. " And now were there in the English fleet 
 140 sail, all of them ships fit for fight, good sailors, nimble and 
 
 * Camden, 144. Hakluyt, 599.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 85 
 
 tight for tacking about which way they would." Hitherto the 
 whole brunt had been borne by not more than fifteen of 
 them. 
 
 The conferences at Ostend had continued up to this time ; 
 but when the firing was heard at sea " all dissembling was laid 
 aside ". The Prince of Parma has been accused of more dis- 
 simulation than was consistent with his honourable character, 
 for having solemnly assured the English commissioners that 
 the Armada was not intended against England, if the terms 
 for which they were treating should be agreed on. There 
 seems to have been no duplicity in this, because in that case 
 it would immediately have been directed against the united 
 provinces. Honourable dealing, however, was so little 
 practised, or so little understood, in those times, that these 
 commissioners thought themselves in danger, because no 
 hostages had been taken for their safety ; and when they 
 obtained a passport and a convoy to the frontiers, " they gave 
 great thanks to the Spanish commissioners, and much com- 
 mended the prince's honourable disposition in that he had so 
 justly kept his word with them".* That prince, as soon 
 as he was assured that the Armada was on its way, had 
 made over his command in the Netherlands to the old Lord 
 of Mansfelt ; and in that same spirit of Romish devotion, in 
 which the expedition was set forth, went in pilgrimage to our 
 Lady of Halle, the most noted idol in those countries, that 
 he might obtain her patronage and protection in this great 
 attempt at the conquest of England. Returning from thence 
 he repaired to Dunkirk, where he was to embark : there he 
 heard the firing on the coast, found that Stanley's regiment 
 of deserters was the only one which had embarked, and that 
 the other troops were as little willing to go on board the ships 
 as the ships themselves were likely to get out of the har- 
 bour, t 
 
 * Grimestone, 996. t Ibid., 1003.
 
 86 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 It had been concerted with the States, that a squadron of 
 about thirty ships, under Cornelius Lonke van Rosendael, 
 should unite with Seymour's squadron, and take its station 
 between Dover and Calais. It had sailed with this intention, 
 but a storm had compelled it to put back to Zeeland ; and 
 some of the English, too prone to put a sinister interpretation 
 upon all the actions of their allies, complained of this, as 
 if there had been an intentional breach of faith. But the 
 squadron performed better service than if the original plan 
 had been carried into effect ; for, when the weather allowed 
 of its again coming forth, it joined the Admiral of Zeeland, 
 Justinus van Nassau, and the Vice-Admiral of Holland, Jonker 
 Pieter van der Does, who had with them about five and thirty 
 sail of from 80 to 250 tons : 1200 soldiers were on board, 
 selected from all the regiments in the service of the States, as 
 good soldiers, accustomed to sea-service ; and with part of 
 this fleet they watched every creek and haven in Flanders, 
 and with the remainder blockaded Dunkirk.* In vain did 
 the Duke of Medina Sidonia despatch messenger after mes- 
 senger to the prince, urging him to send forty light vessels 
 for the immediate protection of the Armada, cumbered as it 
 was by the unwieldy strength of its own ships, and entreating 
 him to put to sea with his army, that they might proceed to- 
 gether to the Thames. His flat-bottomed boats were leaky ; 
 his provisions were not ready ; his men were not willing : the 
 sailors had been brought together by compulsion, and were 
 deserting as fast as they could from what they knew to be a 
 desperate service : the galleys which might have cleared the 
 way for him (if it could have been cleared) had been lost on 
 the voyage ; and the great general of his age knew that if he 
 attempted to sail from Dunkirk in the face of the Dutch fleet 
 it would be wilfully exposing himself and his army to imminent 
 and certain destruction.t Yet, unless some effort were made, 
 
 * Bor, 321, 323. f Ibid.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 87 
 
 all these mighty preparations would be frustrated, and Spain 
 would suffer a loss of reputation not to be repaired ; and he 
 promised, if wind and tide permitted, to join them within 
 three days.* 
 
 Fair as the hopes of the English were at this time, and 
 admirable as their conduct had been from the hour that the 
 Armada came in sight, it has been justly observed f that the 
 Spanish duke had thus far conducted his great expedition with 
 as little evil and annoyance as could have been reasonably 
 expected. The danger to England was still undiminished. 
 The Armada had arrived unbroken at the point intended for 
 its junction with the force from Flanders : it still appeared 
 invincible to all except the English and the Dutch, and except 
 those also who, in the confidence of its invincibility, had em- 
 barked in it. While it lay off Calais, in this anxious interval 
 of expectation, " Flemings, Walloons, and French came thick 
 and threefold to behold it, admiring the exceeding greatness 
 of the ships and their warlike order. The greatest kept the 
 outside next the enemy, like strong castles, fearing no assault ; 
 the lesser placed in the middle ward."]: At this time the 
 English might regret the loss of Calais ; but never were the 
 councils of England more wisely directed. The Spanish ships, 
 " as castles pitched in the sea, had their bulks so planked 
 with great beams, that bullets might strike and stick, but never 
 pass through, so that little availed the English cannon, except 
 only in playing on their masts and tackling ". In this respect 
 they seemed as invulnerable as the floating batteries employed 
 against Gibraltar. And their height was such, that our 
 bravest seamen were against any attempt at boarding them. 
 
 * Camden, 414. Grimestone, 1003. Turner, 680. 
 
 t Turner, 679. 
 
 J Stowe, 748. " Fresh victuals were straight brought abroad. Captains 
 and cavaliers might have what they would for their money, and gave the 
 French so liberally, that within twelve hours an egg was worth sixpence, 
 besides thanks."
 
 88 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 These things had been well prepended by Elizabeth's ministers, 
 and the lord admiral was instructed to convert eight of his 
 worst vessels into fire-ships. The orders arrived in such good 
 time, and were obeyed with such alacrity, that within thirty 
 hours after the enemy had cast anchor off Calais these ships 
 were disburdened of all that was worth saving, filled with 
 combustibles, and all their ordnance charged ; and their 
 sides being smeared with pitch, rosin, and wildfire, they were 
 sent, in the dead of the night, with wind and tide, against 
 the Spanish fleet ; " which when the Spaniards saw the whole 
 sea glittering and shining with the flames thereof, they 
 remembered those terrible fire-ships which had been used in 
 the Scheldt, and the fearful cry of ' The fire of Antwerp ! ' ' 
 ran through the fleet. They apprehended not the danger of 
 fire alone, but all the evils that "deadly engines and murderous 
 inventions " could inflict : some cut their cables ; others let 
 their hawsers slip, and in haste, fear, and confusion, put to 
 sea, " happiest they who could first be gone, though few or 
 none could tell which course to take ".* 
 
 In this confusion, the largest of the galleasses, commanded 
 by D. Hugo de Moncada, ran foul of another ship, lost her 
 rudder, floated about at the mercy of the tide, and making 
 the next morning for Calais, as well as she could, ran upon 
 the sands. There she was presently assailed by the English 
 small craft, who lay battering her with their guns, but dared 
 not attempt to board, till the admiral sent a hundred men in 
 his boats, under Sir Amias Preston. The Spaniards made a 
 brave resistance, hoping presently to be succoured by the 
 Prince of Parma, and the action was for a long time doubtful. 
 At length Moncada was shot through the head, the galleass 
 was carried by boarding, and most of the Spaniards, leaping 
 into the sea, were drowned. The Veedor of the fleet, D. 
 
 * Hakluyt, 601. Strype, 861. Camden,4i5. Grimestone, 1003. Bor, 
 324-
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 89 
 
 Antonio de Manrique, was one of those who reached the 
 shore ; and he was the first person that carried certain news 
 to Spain of their " now vincible navy ". This huge bottom, 
 manned with 400 soldiers and 300 galley-slaves, had also 
 50,000 ducats on board ; "a booty," says Speed, "well fitting 
 the English soldiers' affections ". Having ransacked all, and 
 freed the slaves from their miserable fetters, they were about 
 to set that vessel of emptiness on fire ; but the Governor of 
 Calais would not permit this, fearing, it is said, the damage 
 that might thereupon ensue to the town and haven. He fired 
 therefore, upon the captors, and the ship and ordnance 
 became his prize.* 
 
 The duke, when the fire-ships were first perceived, had 
 ordered the whole fleet to weigh anchor and stand off to 
 sea, and when the danger was over, return every ship to its 
 former station. The latter part of this order they were too 
 much alarmed to wait for or to heed ; and when he returned 
 himself, and fired a signal for others to follow his example, 
 the gun was heard by few, " because they were scattered all 
 about, and driven by fear, some of them into the wide sea, 
 and some among the shoals of Flanders ". Little broken yet 
 in strength, though now losing fast the hope and the confi- 
 dence with which they had set forth, they ranged themselves 
 again in order off Gravelines ; and there they were bravely 
 attacked. Drake and Fenner were the first who assailed 
 them : Fen ton, Southwell, Beeston, Cross and Reyman 
 followed ; and then the lord admiral came up, with Lord 
 Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield. They got the wind of 
 the enemy, who were now cut off from Calais Roads, and pre- 
 ferred any inconvenience rather than change their array or 
 separate their force, standing only upon their defence. " And 
 albeit there were many excellent and warlike ships in the 
 English fleet, yet scarce were there two or three and twenty 
 
 * Hakluyt, Strype, Camden, ut supra.
 
 90 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 among them all which matched ninety of the Spanish ships 
 in bigness, or could conveniently assault them. Wherefore, 
 using their prerogative of nimble steerage, whereby they could 
 turn and wield themselves with the wind which way they 
 listed, they came oftentimes very near upon the Spaniards, 
 and charged them so sore, that now and then they were but 
 a pike's length asunder ; and so continually giving them one 
 broadside after another, they discharged all their shot, both 
 great and small, upon them, spending a whole day, from 
 morning till night, in that violent kind of conflict."* " We 
 had such advantage," says Lord Monmouth, "both of wind 
 and tide, that we had a glorious day of them, continuing 
 fight from four o'clock in the morning till five or six at night." 
 During this action the Spaniards, " lying close under their 
 fighting sails," passed Dunkirk with a south-west wind, close 
 followed by their enemies. Their great ships were found 
 vulnerable in the close action of that day ; many of them 
 were pierced through and through between wind and water : 
 one was sunk by Captain Cross, in the Hope: from the few 
 of her people who were saved, it was learnt that one of her 
 officers, having proposed to strike, was put to death by 
 another ; the brother of the slain instantly avenged his death, 
 and then the ship went down. Two others are believed to 
 have sunk. The St. Philip and the St. Matthew, both Portu- 
 guese galleons, were much shattered. D. Diego de Pimentel, 
 in the latter, endeavoured to assist the former, but in vain ; 
 for being "sore battered with many great shot by Seymour 
 and Winter," and the mast shot away, the St. Philip was 
 driven near Ostend : as a last chance, the officers endeavoured 
 to make for a Flemish port ; but finding it impossible to bring 
 the ship into any friendly harbour, they got to Ostend in the 
 boats, and the galleon was taken possession of from Flushing. 
 The St. Matthew suffered so much, and leaked so fast, that the 
 
 * Hakluyt, 602.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 91 
 
 duke sent a boat to bring Pimentel and some of the chief 
 persons on board his own ship. A sense of honour withheld 
 them from abandoning their men, and looking solely to the 
 preservation of their own lives. The duke then charged 
 them to keep company with him ; but this was impossible : 
 in that danger the one vessel could not slacken its course, 
 and the other could make little way ; for the water came in 
 so fast that fifty men were employed at the pumps. Seeing 
 himself thus necessarily forsaken, Pimentel resolved to run 
 aground on the Flemish coast ; but here he was discovered by 
 some of the Dutch ships, which had their station upon that 
 coast ; and, after losing some forty of his men in vain resist- 
 ance, struck to Pieter van der Does. The ship sunk in one 
 of the Zeeland ports ; and its flag was suspended as a trophy 
 in St. Peter's Church at Leyden ; a city which had been in no 
 light degree beholden for its own glorious deliverance to the 
 illustrious family of Dousa.* 
 
 Still the duke did not despair of eventual success : an un- 
 expected respite was afforded him ; for the English had 
 expended their ammunition, and were forced to send for a 
 supply ; and taking advantage of a strong west-north-wester, 
 the Armada made an effort to regain his position in the straits, 
 that the prince might join them. The spirit in which this 
 resolution was taken was better than the seamanship : that 
 wind carried them towards the shallows and sands on the 
 Zeeland coast ; and glad were they when it came to the south 
 and enabled them to avoid the dangers by which they must 
 otherwise soon have found themselves surrounded. That day 
 Drake wrote to Walsingham : " We have the army of Spain 
 before us, and mind to wrestle a pull with him. There was 
 never anything pleased better than seeing the enemy flying 
 with a southerly wind to the northward. I doubt not, but 
 ere it be long, so to handle the matter with the Duke of 
 
 * Bor, 325. Hakluyt, 602, 603. Camden, 415. Grimestone, 1004.
 
 92 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Sidonia, that he shall wish himself at St. Mary's Port, among 
 his vine trees. God give us grace to depend upon Him ; so 
 shall we not doubt victory, for our cause is good." But the 
 hopes which Drake entertained of a brilliant victory * were 
 not to be fulfilled. Enough had been achieved by the councils 
 and the hand of man. That providence which had confounded 
 the devices of the enemy effected by the agency of the 
 elements the rest. The duke advised with his officers in the 
 evening what course, after these unexpected disasters, should 
 be pursued. They were now experimentally convinced that 
 the English excelled them in naval strength. Several of their 
 largest ships had been lost, others were greatly damaged : 
 there was no port to which they could repair ; and to force 
 their way through the victorious English fleet, then in sight 
 and amounting to 140 sail, was plainly and confessedly im- 
 possible. They resolved, therefore, upon returning to Spain 
 
 * "And here," says Sir William Monson, " was opportunity offered us 
 to have followed the victory upon them ; for if we had once more offered 
 them fight, the general, it was thought, by persuasion of his confessor, 
 was determined to yield; whose example, 'tis very likely, would have 
 made the rest to have done the like. But this opportunity was lost ; not 
 through the negligence or backwardness of the lord admiral, but merely 
 through the want of providence in those that had the charge of furnishing 
 and providing for the fleet. For at that time of so great advantage, when 
 they came to examine their provisions, they found a general scarcity of 
 powder and shot, for want whereof they were forced to return home. 
 Another opportunity was lost, not much inferior to the other, by not 
 sending part of our fleet to the west of Ireland, where the Spaniards, of 
 necessity, were to pass, after so many dangers and disasters as they had 
 endured. If we had been so happy as to have followed their course, as it 
 was both thought and discoursed of, we had been absolutely victorious 
 over this great and formidable navy, for they were brought to that neces- 
 sity, that they would willingly have yielded, as divers of them confessed 
 that were shipwrecked in Ireland. By this we may see how weak and 
 feeble the designs of man are in respect of the Creator ; and how indif- 
 ferently He dealt betwixt the two nations, sometimes giving one, some- 
 times the other, the advantage, yet so that He only ordered the battle " 
 (Churchill's Collection, iii., 159).
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 93 
 
 by a northern course ; and in that determination, "having 
 gotten more sea room for their huge-bodied bulks, spread 
 their mainsails, and made away as fast as wind and water 
 would give them leave. But surely/' says Speed, " if they 
 had known the want of powder that our fleet sustained (a 
 fault inexcusable upon our own coasts), they no doubt would 
 have stood longer to their tacklings. But God, in this, as in 
 the rest, would have us to acknowledge, that we were only 
 delivered by His own gracious providence and arm, and not 
 by any policy or poM'er of our own." The lord admiral left 
 Seymour to blockade the Prince of Parma's force, and followed 
 what our chroniclers now call the Vincible Armada, not with- 
 out some apprehension that they might put into Scotland ; 
 but leaving Scotland on the west, they bent towards Norway, 
 " ill-advised, but that necessity urged, and God had infatuated 
 their councils, to put their shaken and battered bottoms into 
 those black and dangerous seas ". And the English having, 
 in Drake's words, " cast them so far to the northward, that 
 they could neither recover England nor Scotland, thought it 
 best to leave them to those boisterous and uncouth northern 
 seas ".* 
 
 But while the loss which they had hitherto sustained was 
 as yet uncertain, and the opinion on shore was that they 
 would return to the straits, it was still thought probable that 
 the Prince of Parma might effect a landing. Elizabeth, who 
 had not easily been dissuaded from her intention of being 
 present in the battle wherever it should be fought, went to 
 the camp at Tilbury. From the time that camp was formed, 
 a true English spirit had been shown there. " It was a 
 pleasant sight," says the good London chronicler, t who him- 
 self had seen it, " to behold the soldiers as they marched 
 towards Tilbury, their cheerful countenances, courageous 
 
 * Hakluyt, 603. Speed, 862. Turner, 681. 
 t Stowe, 744.
 
 94 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 words and gestures, dancing and leaping wheresoever they 
 came. In the camp their most felicity was the hope of 
 fighting with the enemy, where, ofttimes, divers rumours ran 
 of their foes' approach, and that present battle would be 
 given them ; then were they as joyful at such news as if 
 lusty giants were to run a race." When the queen came 
 among them, " full of princely resolution, and more than 
 feminine courage," she rode through the ranks with a 
 general's truncheon in her hand, and sometimes with a martial 
 pace, another while gently, like a woman : " Incredible it is," 
 says Camden, "how much she encouraged the hearts of her 
 captains and soldiers by her presence and her words ". "I 
 think," says Leicester, " the weakest person among them is 
 able to match the proudest Spaniards that dare land in 
 England ! " Her speech at this memorable time has been 
 preserved,* and well might it animate them. " My loving 
 people," she said, "we have been persuaded by some that are 
 careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves 
 to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery ; but I assure you 
 I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving 
 people. Let tyrants fear ! I have always so behaved my- 
 self, that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and 
 safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects ; 
 and, therefore, I am come amongst you, as you see, at this 
 time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved 
 in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you 
 all, to lay down, for my God, for my kingdom, and for my 
 people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know 
 I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have 
 the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England 
 too ; and think it foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince 
 of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm ; 
 to which rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I 
 
 * Somer's Tracts (Scott's edition), i., 429.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 95 
 
 myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, 
 and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I 
 know already for your forwardness you have deserved rewards 
 and crowns ; and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, 
 they shall be duly paid you. In the meantime my lieutenant- 
 general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince com- 
 manded a more noble or worthy subject, not doubting but 
 by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the 
 camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a 
 famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, 
 and of my people." 
 
 While she was at dinner that day in the general's tent, 
 there came a post with tidings that the Prince of Parma and 
 all his forces had embarked for England, and that his arrival 
 with all possible speed was to be looked for. The news was 
 immediately published through the camp ;* and assuredly, if 
 the enemy had set foot upon our shores, they would have 
 sped no better than they had done at sea, such was the spirit 
 of the nation. This intelligence was soon disproved ; but 
 after it was certain that by God's mercy the danger had been 
 averted, some time elapsed before the fate of the Armada 
 was ascertained. Statements of its success were confidently 
 circulated upon the continent, and credited according to the 
 wishes of the hearer. It was affirmed that great part of 
 the English fleet had been taken, great part sunk, and the 
 poor remainder driven into the Thames "all rent and torn" ; 
 that they were utterly discomfited, and that Drake was 
 made prisoner, t Poems were composed in honour of the 
 victory, as poems had been composed to predict it. It was 
 
 * Turner, 682, note. 
 
 t " And that there was found in his ship a piece of twenty-five spans, 
 or one quintal of munition, made on purpose, of one only shot, to sink 
 the Admiral of Spain ; but it pleased God, though she was hurt therewith, 
 yet she was repaired again, and overcame the English fleet " (Strype, 
 App. B, ii., No. 55).
 
 96 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 believed at Rome that Elizabeth was taken, and England 
 conquered ; and Cardinal Allen is said to have made a feast 
 in honour of the event, and invited to it the Scotch, Irish, 
 and English who were in that city ! But in vain, meantime, 
 was the ship looked for in the Spanish ports that should 
 bring good tidings home ! The unhappy fleet, after the 
 English had given over the pursuit, threw their mules and 
 horses overboard lest their water should fail. They knew 
 that they had no relief to expect in Scotland, and that 
 Norway could not supply their wants ; so taking some 
 captured fishermen for pilots, they sailed between the 
 Orkney and the Feroe Islands ; and when they had reached 
 the latitude of sixty-two, and were some 200 miles from any 
 land, the duke ordered them each to take the best course 
 they could for Spain. He, himself, with some five and 
 twenty of the ships that were best provided, steered a 
 straight course, and arrived in safety. The others, about 
 forty in number, made for Cape Clear, hoping to water there ; 
 but a storm from the south-west overtook and wrecked many 
 of them upon the Irish coast. Their treatment there is the 
 only circumstance in the whole history of this enterprise 
 which is disgraceful to an English name. For the lord 
 deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, fearing they should join 
 the rebels, and seeing that Bingham, the Governor of Con- 
 naught, refused to obey his merciless orders concerning them, 
 sent his deputy marshal, "who drove them out of their 
 hiding-places, and beheaded about 200 of them ". The 
 queen condemned this cruelty from her heart, though no 
 such punishment as he deserved was inflicted upon Fitzwilliam. 
 Terrified at this, the other Spaniards, " sick and starved as 
 they were, committed themselves to the sea in their shattered 
 vessels, and very many of them were swallowed up by the 
 waves ".* But with some of the officers who escaped this 
 
 *Camden, 417.
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 97 
 
 butchery Tyrone concerted his rebellion.* It is supposed 
 that more than thirty of their ships perished off the coast of 
 Ireland, with the greater part of their crews. Two vessels 
 were cast away on the coast of Norway. Some few, having a 
 westerly wind, got again into the English seas ; of these, two 
 were taken by the cruisers off Rochelle, and one (a great 
 galleass) put into Havre. About 700 men who were cast 
 ashore in Scotland were there humanely treated ; and, with 
 Elizabeth's consent, were, at the Prince of Parma's request, 
 sent over to the Netherlands. Relics of this great destruction 
 are still sometimes brought to light. It is not long since the 
 remains of an anchor, which appeared to have belonged to 
 the Armada, was picked up in a fisherman's trawl off Dover ; 
 and in 1832 one of their cannon f was found on the coast 
 of Mayo. Of the whole Armada, only fifty-three vessels 
 returned to Spain ; eighty-one were lost ; and of 30,000 
 soldiers who were embarked, nearly 14,000 were missing, the 
 prisoners being about 2000. 
 
 Philip's behaviour when the whole of this great calamity 
 was known should always be recorded to his honour. He 
 received it as a dispensation of Providence ; and gave, and 
 commanded to be given, throughout Spain, thanks to God 
 and the saints that it was no greater. 
 
 England having thus been " delivered by the hand of the 
 Omnipotent, and the boar put back that sought to lay her 
 vineyard waste," Elizabeth ordered a solemn thanksgiving 
 to be celebrated at St. Paul's, where eleven of the Spanish 
 ensigns were hung upon the lower battlements, " as palms of 
 praise," says Speed, "for England's deliverance, a show, no 
 doubt, more acceptable to God than when their spread colours 
 did set out the pride of their ships, threatening the blood of 
 
 * Fiennes Moryson, 8. Carte's Ormond, i., 58. 
 f It is now in Lord Sligo's possession. 
 
 7
 
 98 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 so many innocent and faithful Christians ". On the following 
 day, which was Southwark fair, the same flags were displayed 
 upon London bridge. They were finally suspended in St. 
 Paul's. Less perishable trophies were deposited in the 
 Tower, where many of the arms taken in the captured ships 
 are still preserved ; and not a few instruments of torture, 
 wickedly devised, but more probably intended for the punish- 
 ment of offences on board, than for the use of their inquisitors, 
 who, if the conquest had been effected, might have found 
 racks in England, and would have had fire and faggot at 
 command. Another great thanksgiving day was celebrated 
 on the anniversary of the queen's succession, which was long 
 and most fitly observed as a holiday in these kingdoms : one 
 of greater solemnity, two days after, throughout the realm ; 
 and, on the Sunday following, the queen repaired as in public, 
 but Christian triumph, to St. Paul's. Her privy council, her 
 nobility, the French ambassador, the judges, and the heralds, 
 attended her. The streets were hung with blue cloth, " the 
 several companies, in their liveries, being drawn up on both 
 sides the way, with their banners in becoming and gallant 
 order ". Her chariot * was made in the form of a throne with 
 four pillars, and drawn by four white horses ; alighting from it 
 at the west door of St. Paul's, she there knelt, and, with 
 great devotion, audibly praised God, acknowledging Him her 
 only defender, who had thus delivered the land from the rage 
 of the enemy. Pierce, Bishop of Salisbury, who was her lord 
 almoner, preached a sermon, "wherein none other argument 
 was handled, but only of praise and glory to be rendered 
 unto God. And, when he had concluded, the queen herself 
 (like unto another Joshua, David and Josias), with most 
 princely and Christian speeches, exhorted the people to the 
 due performance of those religious services of thankfulness 
 
 *" Coaches," says Camden, " were not then so much in use among 
 princes as now they are amongst private men."
 
 LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 99 
 
 unto God."* It was manifest, indeed, that over-ruling 
 Providence had preserved them. Well and properly has it 
 been observed by the ablest of our naval biographers, t that, 
 great as were the exploits of the English fleet, they were as 
 nothing compared with what the elements wrought for Eng- 
 land ; and that this our ancestors proclaimed with one accord, 
 "breathing the pure spirit of that blessed Reformation which 
 had been so recently achieved for them ". The people of 
 England have never, since the Norman conquest, been 
 chastised by the hand of a foreign enemy : when their own 
 folly and their own sins have brought upon them God's 
 judgments, the instructive punishment has been administered 
 by their own hands. 
 
 Lord Effingham was rewarded with a pension. The queen 
 many times commended him and the captains of her ships, 
 as men born for the preservation of their country. A greater 
 service it has never fallen to the lot of any Englishman to 
 perform. " True it is," says Fuller, " he was no deep sea- 
 man (not to be expected from one of his extraction) ; but he 
 had skill enough to know those who had more skill than 
 himself, and to follow their instructions, and would not starve 
 the queen's service by feeding his own sturdy wilfulness, but 
 was ruled by the experienced in sea matters ; the queen 
 having a navy of oak, and an admiral of osier." He did 
 good service afterwards at Cadiz, being joint commander 
 with the Earl of Essex in that famous expedition, and, for 
 that service, was advanced to the title of Earl of Nottingham, 
 as descended from the Mowbrays, some of whom had been 
 
 * Memoirs of Celebrated Naval Commanders, illustrated by engravings 
 from original pictures in the Naval Gallery of Greenwich Hospital, by 
 Edward Hawke Locker, Esq. I cannot refer to this work without re- 
 gretting that Mr. Locker should have been compelled by ill health to 
 limit to a single volume a work for which he was in every respect so 
 eminently qualified. 
 
 f Speed, 862. Camden, 418. Strype, 27.
 
 100 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 earls of that county. On the apprehension of another 
 invasion, at a time when it was known that Essex entertained 
 rash and dangerous designs, Lord Nottingham was entrusted 
 with the command of both fleet and army, " with the high 
 and very unusual title of Lord Lieutenant-General of all 
 England ; an office scarcely known to former, never owned 
 of succeeding times, and which he held with almost regal 
 authority for the space of six weeks, being sometimes with 
 the fleet in the Downs, and sometimes on shore with the 
 forces ".* It was to him, who, the queen said, was "born to 
 serve and save his country," that Essex, after his insane 
 insurrection, yielded himself a prisoner ; and to him that 
 the queen, upon her death, made that wise and constitutional 
 declaration concerning her successor : " My throne has been 
 held by princes in the way of succession, and ought not to go 
 to any but my next and immediate heir ". 
 
 James continued him in his post of lord admiral, appointed 
 him lord high steward at his coronation, sent him ambassador 
 to Spain, and chose him for one of the commissioners to treat 
 of a union between England and Scotland. The last honour 
 which fell to his lot was that of conveying the elector palatine 
 and his bride, the Princess Elizabeth, to Flushing. At the 
 age of eighty-three he resigned his post, retaining, by special 
 patent, the precedence which it had given him ; and, in his 
 eighty-seventh year, dying in peace at Haling House, in 
 Surrey, was buried in the family vault under the chancel of 
 Ryegate Church. His office had been " of great profit, prizes 
 being so frequent in that age ; but great," says Fuller, " his 
 necessary, and vast his voluntary, expenses ; keeping seven 
 standing houses at the same time : so that the wonder is not 
 great if he died not very wealthy ". 
 
 * Campbell, i.,377-
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 
 
 AMONG the naval adventurers who distinguished them- 
 selves during Queen Elizabeth's reign, there was no 
 one who took to the seas so much in the spirit of a 
 northern sea king as the Earl of Cumberland. Some of his 
 most noted contemporaries were sailors by their vocation, 
 some became so incidentally when called upon in the queen's 
 service, and others pursued that course with the hope of 
 repairing a broken fortune, or of raising one ; but it was this 
 nobleman's mere choice, which he followed to the great 
 injury of his own ample estates, and to the neglect of all 
 his private and domestic duties. 
 
 George Clifford, in the male line of his family, fourteenth 
 Baron Clifford of Westmoreland, and sheriff of that county 
 by inheritance, and in the same descent thirteenth Lord of 
 the Honour of Skipton in Craven, and also Lord Vipont and 
 Baron Vesey, was born in his father's castle at Brougham, on 
 the 8th of August, 1558. Few names are more conspicuous 
 than that of Clifford in the York and Lancaster wars, none 
 more distinguished for fidelity to the cause it had espoused ; 
 and Shakespeare has given it a wider renown than could 
 have been conferred by genealogists and chroniclers. To this 
 family, also, Fair Rosamond belongs ; and the Shepherd Lord, 
 whose memory is embalmed in everlasting verse. Lord 
 Clifford was yet a boy when his father began to treat concern- 
 ing his marriage with a daughter of Francis, second Earl of 
 Bedford ; and he was in the twelfth year of his age when his 
 father died. Upon the first intelligence that such an event
 
 102 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 was likely, Bedford, upon the alleged ground of this marriage- 
 treaty, made suit to the queen for the wardship, and it was 
 granted him. The boy was at Battle Abbey when the earl 
 died at Brougham : no doubt he had been placed there to 
 receive the first part of his education in the family by whom 
 that venerable edifice was then possessed. It seems not to 
 have been unusual in those days for youths of rank to connect 
 themselves with both universities ; thus this earl is said to 
 have been educated at Peter House, Cambridge, and also to. 
 have studied at Oxford, under the tuition of Whitgift, after- 
 wards archbishop ; " and here he obtained some knowledge 
 in the arts, and especially in the mathematics, which did not 
 only incline him thereto, but rendered him more fit for mari- 
 time employment ". Before he was nineteen he was married 
 in St. Mary Overy's Church, Southwark, to his long-engaged 
 spouse, the Lady Margaret Russell, who was some two years 
 younger. 
 
 The earl is said to have excelled all the nobles of his time 
 in tilting, so that in such exhibitions he was always the 
 queen's champion ; and in this and other costly recreations 
 he consumed much of his ample patrimony. Elizabeth made 
 him Knight of the Garter, and appointed him to be one of the 
 forty peers by whom the Queen of Scots was tried, and one of 
 the four earls who were present at the catastrophe of that 
 tragedy. His first maritime adventure was designed for the 
 South Seas : he did not embark in it himself, but fitted out at 
 his own cost the Red Dragon of 260 tons, and the barque 
 Clifford of 130: a pinnace of Raleigh's and another ship 
 completed the force, and Master Robert Withrington was the 
 commander. Instead of passing the Straits of Magellan, 
 Withrington thought he might make a more profitable venture 
 by plundering Bahia ; but the Jesuits, with their Indian 
 archers, preserved that city ; and the expedition having 
 committed much havoc upon the coast of Brazil, with little 
 gain, he resolved upon returning home, a resolution which
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 103 
 
 was " taken heavily of all the company/' and heard by them 
 in silence, " for very grief to see my lord's hopes thus 
 deceived, and his great expenses cast away ".* 
 
 In the ensuing year he sailed for Sluys, hoping to assist 
 Sir Roger Williams in the defence of that town against the 
 Duke of Parma ; but it had surrendered before his arrival. 
 He bore his part in the defeat of the Armada, on board the 
 Bonadventure, Captain George Raymond, when, says Purchas, 
 " they won that honour that no sea can drown, no age wear 
 out ". The queen was so satisfied with his behaviour, that 
 she gave him a commission to go the same year to the Spanish 
 coast as general ; and for his greater honour and ability, was 
 pleased to lend him the Golden Lion, one of the ships royal, 
 to be the admiral ; but he victualled and furnished it at 
 his own cost. After some fight he took a merchant ship 
 in the narrow seas ; but it was now late in the autumn : 
 contrary winds baffled his course : he was compelled to cut 
 away his mainmast in a storm, and returned when it was 
 impossible for him to prosecute what Purchas calls his true 
 designs.f 
 
 " His spirit remaining, nevertheless, higher than the winds, 
 and more resolutely by storms compact and united in itself/' 
 he obtained of the queen one of the royal navy called the 
 Viciory ; with which, two small ships, the Meg or Margaret 
 and a caravel, set forth at his charges, and with 400 men on 
 board, he sailed from Plymouth in June, 1 589- The Margaret, 
 being not able to endure the sea, was sent home in a few days, 
 with two French ships, which, belonging to the party of the 
 League, were deemed fair prizes. The earl was not very 
 scrupulous on such occasions. He fell in with eleven ships 
 from Hamburgh and the Baltic : after a few shot, they sent 
 
 * Sarracoll, 100. Hakluyt, iii., 769-778. History of Brazil, i., 377, 
 378. 
 
 f- Purchas, part iv., 1142.
 
 104 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 their masters on board, showing their passports ; these were 
 respected for themselves, but not for some property belonging 
 to a Jew of Lisbon, which they confessed was on board, and 
 which was valued at 4500/. He then made for the Azores, 
 hoisted Spanish colours when he came in sight of St. Michael's, 
 and in a night expedition succeeded in cutting four ships out 
 of the road ; one of them, however, proved to be a Londoner, 
 trading there under the Scotch flag, and with a Scotch pilot. 
 His great object was to intercept the carracks, and so reim- 
 burse himself for all his costs. At Flores he manned his 
 boats, and obtained refreshments as being a friend to the 
 prior, Don Antonio, whose pretended title to the Portuguese 
 crown was acknowledged by England. " From thence rowing 
 a ship-board, the boat was pursued two miles by a monstrous 
 fish, whose fins many times appeared about the gills above 
 water four or five yards asunder, and his jaws gaping a yard 
 and a half wide, not without great danger of overturning the 
 pinnace, and devouring some of the company." But from 
 this, which was as formidable to the earl's boat as his ship 
 was to a harmless trader, they at last escaped. Here he met 
 and " accepted into consort " Captain Davies, with his ship 
 and pinnace, Captain Markesbury, in a ship of Raleigh's, and 
 the barque Lime. 
 
 The earl knew not at this time how narrowly the home- 
 ward-bound fleet from the East Indies had escaped him. 
 Seven of its huge and richly laden vessels had sailed for 
 Europe early in the year, separately, as they were ready, but 
 with orders to rendezvous at St. Helena, and from thence to 
 proceed in company, -no danger being apprehended from 
 cruisers on the first part of the voyage, but much afterwards. 
 The richest of these vessels suffered, on the coast of Natal, 
 one of the most lamentable shipwrecks of which the details 
 have been recorded ; the others reached the Azores in the 
 middle of July ; and some of the smaller cruisers fell in with 
 them when they were ill able to defend themselves. What
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 105 
 
 with the length of the voyage (for they had been six months 
 on the way), the scarcity of water and of provisions, and the 
 bad quality of the stores that were left (for every kind of 
 knavery was practised in the equipment of the Portuguese 
 ships), the scurvy was making great ravages on board ; and 
 every day men who had been some days dead were discovered 
 in the places whither they had crept that they might lie 
 down and die in peace.* If the light vessels which played 
 about them and harassed them, in the hope, as it seemed, 
 of delaying them till others should come up, had been aware of 
 their condition, they might have carried some of them almost 
 without resistance ; for there was the utmost confusion as well 
 as misery on board. Those who were in the best plight showed 
 no disposition to assist their weaker comrades, all seeking 
 to secure themselves with all speed under some of their own 
 fortresses ; while the English insulted them with reproaches 
 for their cowardice, and annoyed them with musketry, and 
 with such small pieces as vessels of thirty tons could carry. 
 The Portuguese, however, made their way good to Tercera, 
 and anchored in the road before the city of Angra : there, to 
 their dismay, they found that the island was in arms, expecting 
 to be attacked by Drake, and that instructions had arrived 
 from Portugal, ordering them to remain there till they should 
 receive further directions. The alarm occasioned by the 
 destruction of the Armada, the attempt upon Lisbon, and the 
 activity of the English privateers, was such, that it was thought 
 better to expose these rich ships to the danger of an un- 
 sheltered road in the worst season of the year than let them 
 run for the Tagus. Luckily for the Portuguese officers they 
 were not expected to render more obedience to the Govern- 
 ment than they could exact from their men ; after a gale 
 from the south had driven one of the ships on shore, the 
 
 * Linschoten, c. xcvi.
 
 106 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 other captains ventured to act upon their own judgment, and 
 sail for Lisbon, where they happily arrived.* 
 
 Some English prisoners who stole from Tercera in a small 
 boat, having no other yard for their mainsail than two pipe 
 staves, fell in with the earl, and gave him the unwelcome 
 tidings that these carracks had sailed from that island a 
 week before. This induced him to return to Fayal (where he 
 had just taken some small Guinea ships and sent them to 
 England) : he now landed there, and took possession of the 
 town, consisting of about 500 well-built houses. It was 
 abandoned at his approach. He set a guard to preserve the 
 churches and monasteries, and stayed there four days, till a 
 ransom of 2000 ducats was brought him, mostly in church 
 plate. He shipped from the platform fifty-eight pieces of 
 iron ordnance; and the Governor of Graciosa, as if to deprecate 
 such a visit, sent him sixty butts of wine. Here a Weymouth 
 privateer, which arrived with a Spanish prize worth I6,000l. } 
 brought news that ^the West India fleet was expected; and 
 after plying three or four days to and fro in rough weather, 
 he saw it,?fifteen sail in number, enter Angra Roads ; but he 
 being " too far to]leeward, and they being strong and fortified 
 with castle and fort," he could make no attempt upon them ; 
 and the pinnace which he left to observe them returned with 
 information that they had " taken off their sails and down 
 their topmasts, with the intention of longer stay". The earl 
 then made; for j ; St. Michael's, and was there repelled from 
 watering ; next he went to St. Mary's, where he found two 
 Brazilian ships laden with sugar. The islanders endeavoured 
 to bring them ashore; but Lister, the earl's captain, 
 "hastening the attempt in the face of the enemy, and in 
 danger of continual shoreshot, boarded the one, cut her cables 
 
 * Linschoten, Schip vaert naer Oost, ofte Portugaels Indien, c. xcvi. 
 Linschoten was .in the fleet, and he congratulates himself on having 
 escaped mlllort Commerlandt, p. 146.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 107 
 
 and hawser, and rowed her away". Captain Davies entered 
 the other, which was aground, and had been abandoned ; but 
 he was forced to forsake her by a fire from the shore, with the 
 loss of two slain and sixteen wounded. In bringing out their 
 prize the bar detained them in a position exposed to an 
 enemy whose force had been rashly undervalued : eighty 
 men were killed ; the earl received three shot upon his 
 target, a fourth wounded him slightly in the side, "his head, 
 also, was broken with stones, so that the blood covered his 
 face," and both his face and legs were burnt with fire-balls. 
 The prize, however, was brought off, and "the Meg being 
 leaky " was sent with it to England. 
 
 The earl himself held his course for Spain. On the way 
 he fell in with a Portuguese ship laden with sugar, from 
 Brazil, and afterwards with one of the fleet which had taken 
 shelter from him in Angra Roads. It proved to be a ship of 
 400 tons, from St. Juan de Ulloa, laden with hides, cochineal, 
 sugar and silver, and the captain had with him a venture to 
 the amount of 25,000 ducats. Full of joy at their good speed, 
 they now resolved upon returning home. " But sea-fortunes," 
 says Purchas, "are variable, having two inconstant parents, 
 air and water " ; and, in the words of one of the adventurers,* 
 " these summer services and ships of sugar proved not so sweet 
 and pleasant as the winter was afterwards sharp and painful ". 
 Captain Lister was sent in the Mexican prize for Portsmouth. 
 She was wrecked at Helcliff, in Cornwall : everything was 
 lost in her, and five or six only of the people were saved. 
 Contrary weather delayed the earl so long upon his home- 
 ward passage that drink began to fail, and he endeavoured 
 to make some Irish harbour, but there, too, was beaten off by 
 the wind ; and, the beer and water being by that time all 
 spent, three spoonfuls of vinegar were allowed to each man at a 
 meal, with some small relief, squeezed out of the lees of their 
 
 * Sir William Monson, Churchill's Coll., iii., 161.
 
 108 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 wine vessels. During fourteen days they had no other drink 
 than this, except what they could collect in rain and hail 
 storms in their sheets and napkins. " Some drank up the 
 soiled running water at the scupper holes ; others saved, by 
 device, the running down the masts and tarred ropes ; and 
 many licked the moist boards, rails and masts with their 
 tongues, like dogs. Yet was that rain so intermingled with 
 the spray of the foaming sea, in that extreme storm, that it 
 could not be healthful ; yea, some in their extremity of thirst, 
 drank themselves to death, with their cans of salt water in 
 their hands." " By this time, the lamentable cries of the 
 sick and hurt men for drink were heard in every corner of 
 the ship." Many perished for want of it "tenor twelve 
 every night " ; and in this] manner more were lost " than 
 otherwise had miscarried in the whole voyage ". The mortality, 
 indeed, was so great " that the like befell not any other fleet 
 during the war.* The storm continuing added to their 
 misery, tearing the ship in such sort that his lordship's cabin, 
 the dining-room, and the half-deck became all one, and he 
 was forced to seek a new lodging in the hold." Such circum- 
 stances call forth, in such men, the qualities by which alone, 
 with God's blessing, they can be overcome ; the earl, upon 
 all occasions, encouraged his men by his promptitude, his 
 presence of mind, and his example ; and the small store of 
 provisions was distributed equally to the prisoners and to his 
 
 * Sir William Monson, Churchill's Coll., iii., 162. " All these disasters," 
 Monson says, " must be imputed to Capt. Lister's rashness, upon whom 
 my Lord of Cumberland chiefly relied, wanting experience himself. He 
 was the man that advised the sending the ships of wine for England ; 
 otherwise we had not known the want of drink. He was as earnest in 
 persuading our landing in the face of the fortifications of St. Mary's, 
 against all reason and sense. As he was rash, so was he valiant : but 
 paid dearly for his unadvised counsel ; for he was the first man hurt, 
 and that cruelly, in the attempt of St. Mary's, and afterwards drowned 
 in the rich ship cast away at Mount's Bay." He values that ship at 
 
 IOO,OOO/.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 109 
 
 own people. On the last of November they spoke a vessel, 
 which promised them some barrels of wine the next morning; 
 but their hopes were disappointed, for the vessel went on 
 shore during the night. The next day, however, he fell in 
 with another, which helped him with some beer, but not 
 enough for him to venture upon making for England : so as 
 the wind served, he put into Ventre haven, on the west coast 
 of Ireland. There their sufferings ended, and on the 20th of 
 December he sailed for England. On arriving in London, 
 he learned the recent death of his eldest son ; but was com- 
 forted a few weeks after by the birth of a daughter, the Lady 
 Anne Clifford, afterwards the famous Countess of Pembroke. 
 
 In this voyage he had taken thirteen prizes ; and although 
 the one which was lost was worth more than all the rest, yet 
 the profit doubled the outlay of his adventure. Encouraged 
 by this success, as well as inflamed by former disappointments, 
 and being thoroughly possessed by the spirit of the age, he 
 obtained a ship of 600 tons from the queen, with which, and 
 with four other vessels, he set forth in 1591, at his own charge, 
 for the coast of Spain. On the way he met with several 
 Dutch ships, coming from Lisbon, and with spices on board, 
 which were Portuguese property : " So greatly," says Monson, 
 " were we abused by that nation of Holland, who, though 
 they were the first that engaged us in the war with Spain, 
 yet still maintained their own trade into those ports, and 
 supplied the Spaniards with ammunition, victuals, shipping, 
 and intelligence against us". They who regarded the conduct 
 of the Dutch merchants in this point of view, and made it a 
 ground for reproaching the nation, did not bear in mind that 
 the struggle in which the Low Countries were engaged with 
 Spain was, in its origin, purely a religious war, and that many 
 of these merchants might be of the Romish religion, conse- 
 quently Spanish at heart, and acting as much in conformity 
 with their own sense of duty, as Roman Catholic Christians 
 and loyal subjects, as with their own immediate interest.
 
 110 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Still less were Englishmen likely to consider, what certainly 
 was the case, that some of the Dutch, who thus endeavoured 
 to save Portuguese property from the privateers, were Jews 
 of Portuguese birth or blood, trading with their brethren who 
 secretly held the same faith, and many of whom were desirous 
 of removing themselves, as well as their property, from a land 
 where they were in perpetual danger of the Inquisition. 
 Least of all did our licensed sea rovers make allowance for 
 the views of commercial men, who, in continuing a long- 
 established trade with their old connections, had fair intentions, 
 though they were compelled to use false colours, and knew 
 that the commerce which they carried on was beneficial to 
 their own Government, and, in fact, received from that Govern- 
 ment all the secret encouragement that it could give.* 
 
 * Charnock, who hated the Dutch, says the rapid progress of their 
 naval power "was effected by a steady and uniform perseverance in one 
 system, from which they never suffered themselves to be diverted for a 
 single moment by any supposed and imaginary evil attendant on the 
 prosecution of it. This fundamental principle (for so it might truly be 
 deemed, being the point or centre stone from whence all their maxims of 
 government sprang, and on which alone, according to the mode in which 
 the fabric was constructed, they depended for support) consisted in an 
 unalterable resolution, that public hostilities should never be permitted, 
 even for a single moment, to interrupt private commerce. So completely 
 bigoted were the people and the Government to this opinion, that in the 
 very height of the war the Dutch vessels entered the Spanish ports with 
 their commodities (the want of which would have distressed their enemies 
 extremely) with as much cordiality and unconcern as though they had 
 been in perfect amity with them. They are even reported to have carried 
 this idea, which by all other nations has been deemed extravagant and 
 improper, to such an extent, as to have supplied their antagonists with 
 ammunition and stores of different kinds, which, had they not obtained 
 from some quarter or other, it would not have been possible for them to 
 have carried on the war " (Hist, of Marine Arch., ii., 168). 
 
 Charnock did not perceive how much might be alleged in defence of 
 the system which he thus condemns ; and he has altogether overlooked 
 the other motives noticed in the text, powerfully as they must have 
 influenced the Dutch at that time.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 111 
 
 Proceeding to the coast of Spain, the earl " took good 
 purchase," but to little profit. One prize, laden with sugar 
 from St. Thomas's, he was forced to cast off because of an 
 irremediable leak : another, which he sent for England, was, 
 after long contrary winds, compelled to put into Corunna for 
 want of victuals, and his men to render themselves to the 
 enemy's mercy. He was not more fortunate with the spices 
 which had been taken from the Hollanders. These were put 
 on board a ship for England, the squadron convoyed her to 
 the Berlings, from whence Captain Monson, who was on 
 board, was to see her safely despatched. But the other ships 
 did not observe the directions given them : the night fell 
 calm ; and in the morning six galleys from Peniche, seeing 
 that this vessel was at a distance from her companions, and 
 that, by reason of the calm, they could not come up to her 
 assistance, attacked her. A brave resistance was made : but 
 Captain Bayly and the principal men being slain, both ship 
 and spices were taken ; and Monson, with all the others who 
 survived, made prisoners. Luckily for himself, Monson, but a 
 little before, having surprised two vessels, merely for the sake 
 of obtaining information, had let them go again without 
 offering any injury to the people on board. His reason for 
 dismissing the ships was, that they w,ere not worth taking ; 
 but the men, thankful for their deliverance, made a favourable 
 report of the usage which they had received at his hand,* 
 and he now found the benefit of this good character. 
 " Whether it was," he says, " the respect they had to the 
 queen's ship, which was admiral of that fleet, or honour to 
 my lord that commanded it, or hope by good usage of our 
 men to receive the like again, I know not ; but true it is, that 
 the ordinary men were treated with more courtesy than they 
 had been from the beginning of thewar."t Some effect may 
 also have been produced by a letter which the earl sent to 
 
 * Monson, 460. t Ibid., 164.
 
 112 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the Archduke Albert, at that time Governor of Portugal, 
 requesting that the prisoners might be well used ; and 
 intimating that upon their treatment would depend that of 
 the Spaniards and Portuguese, "of whom, he presumed, he 
 should take store ".* This led to an agreement, by which 
 the other prisoners were released upon terms, for the per- 
 formance of which Monson was detained as hostage. 
 
 The intelligence which the earl had obtained was of some 
 importance. The Spaniards had, with great exertions, fitted 
 out a formidable fleet.t As soon as he learnt this, he 
 despatched one of his ships with the advice to Lord Thomas 
 Howard, who was then off the Western Islands, waiting to 
 intercept the West Indian fleet ; and it arrived just in time to 
 put him upon his guard, and enable him to avoid the danger. J 
 But having sent off this vessel, and being weakened by the 
 loss of another with its crew, and especially finding the 
 queen's ship " but ill of sail, it being the first voyage she had 
 had to sea, he durst not abide the coast of Spain, but thought 
 it more discretion to return to England. Thus ended the 
 third of his maritime adventures, and nothing whatever was 
 taken in it toward defraying the great charges of its outfit." 
 
 The naval history of England is so much beholden to Sir 
 William Monson that it would be treating him with ingratitude, 
 as well as disrespect, if the story of his captivity were pretermitted. 
 For some months he was kept on board the galleys at Cascaes 
 and Lisbon, which "was most grievous to him" ; and while 
 lying in the Tagus, he planned means of escaping, by aid of a 
 good-natured Dutchman, the master of a Dutch vessel, which 
 had come from Brazil ; " for at that time the Portuguese 
 freighted Holland ships in most of their long voyages, though 
 they pretended to be in war one with another ". The war, 
 
 * Purchas, iv., 1144. 
 
 t " Little inferior," Monson says, " to that of 1588." 
 
 \ Monson, 163, 164. Purchas, 1144.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 113 
 
 however, was more than a pretence, as both nations found to 
 their cost, and nowhere more dearly than in Brazil itself. But 
 the day before this scheme was to have been put in execution, 
 the galleys were ordered to sea. In September, when the 
 galleys were commonly laid up for the winter, he and eight 
 other Englishmen were sent to the castle at Lisbon, " there 
 to be imprisoned till a course was taken for their redemption ". 
 Each man had for his maintenance a daily allowance of 1\d., 
 "A proportion," he says, "that did not equal three-pence 
 according to the rate of things in England". The humanities 
 of war will always be in proportion to the established standard 
 of military honour, one as it were regulating the other ; and 
 in wars which are exasperated by religious hatred both are 
 disregarded. Monson and his comrades in captivity were 
 closely confined all the time of their imprisonment ; only in 
 the morning they resorted to the castle walls, with a guard 
 of soldiers, even decent privacy being refused them. " It 
 happened," says this officer, " on St. Andrew's Day, being 
 upon the walls at our usual hour, we beheld a great galleon 
 of the king's turning up the river in her fighting sails, being 
 sumptuously decked with ancients, streamers, and pendants, 
 with all other ornaments, to show her bravery. She let fly 
 all her ordnance in a triumphant manner for the taking Sir 
 Richard Grenville in the Revenge, at the Island of Flores, 
 she being one of that fleet, and the first voyage she ever 
 made. I confess it was one of the greatest and sorrowfullest 
 sights that ever my eyes beheld, to see the cause the 
 Spaniards had to boast, and no remedy in me to revenge it 
 but in my tongue." He expressed, however, to his country- 
 men a hope of such future comfort, and offered to give them 
 one on condition of receiving ten, should he live to be at the 
 taking of that triumphal galleon : its name was not likely to 
 escape his memory, for it was St. Andrew, and some of the 
 gala bravery which he attributed to the joy of this victory was 
 no doubt intended in honour of its patron saint upon his
 
 114 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 festival. This passed only as an idle desire to see his word 
 come to effect : to effect, however, it came, five years after- 
 wards, in the Cadiz expedition ; for the St. Andrew was one of 
 the five galleons which were run ashore, and one of the two 
 that were brought off by the conquerors, and Monson com- 
 manded in the boat that saved and took possession of her.* 
 
 A Portuguese, by name Manoel Fernandes, was at this 
 time a prisoner in the castle. He had been in the service of 
 the prior, Don Antonio, and having emigrated with him, had 
 returned, as his emissary, to encourage the hopes of his party, 
 and prepare them for taking up arms in his favour when 
 opportunity might offer : in this he was discovered, and must 
 have suffered death, if influence and money, which have 
 always been all but all-powerful in Portugal, had not been 
 employed with such effect in his behalf that, after seven years' 
 imprisonment, he was now on the point of being enlarged. 
 Among the persons who visited him in prison was a pilot, who 
 was usually employed to meet the Indian fleets, with letters 
 directing them what course they should hold, according as 
 information had been obtained concerning the English 
 cruisers. It occurred to Monson that, by means of Fernandes, 
 it might be possible to corrupt this man, and give such 
 intelligence to the queen's ships, as should enable them to 
 fall in with the treasure fleet. He made no scruple of pro- 
 posing this design to Fernandes, whose political feelings were 
 in no degree mitigated either by time or the mercy that had 
 been shown him ; and the pilot, who, if he were an Antonian 
 at heart, would be hardly the less villain for betraying his 
 trust, entered into the scheme. Monson then wrote letters to 
 Lord Burleigh, and to the lord admiral, informing them of 
 the train which he had thus laid. As he had a page who 
 was allowed to wait on him in his confinement this boy was 
 to convey the letters, and they were secreted in the soles of 
 
 * Monson, 466.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 115 
 
 his shoes. Unfortunately for all parties, Monson had been 
 obliged to use an Englishman as an interpreter. No English- 
 man could then reside in Portugal unless he professed the 
 Portuguese religion ; and this person thought that he consulted 
 best for his conscience and safety, and interest at the same time, 
 by disclosing the plot. The boy was seized, and marched to 
 Belem Castle, through one of those violent rains, which can 
 hardly be imagined by those who have never witnessed 
 them : to that rain both he and his master were indebted for 
 their lives ; for it was not till they had lodged their prisoner 
 at Belem that they ripped the soles of his shoes, and the 
 letters had by that time been so thoroughly soaked that they 
 were quite illegible, so that no proof whatever could be drawn 
 from them. 
 
 The Government, however, had such good reason for 
 believing the informer's story, that they proceeded against 
 Fernandes for his old treason, and a day was appointed for 
 executing his sentence of death. He consulted with Monson, 
 and was provided with a cudgel and a rope : by fixing the 
 cudgel across two of the battlements of the wall, he might 
 let himself down by the rope, and thus, it was hoped, take 
 sanctuary in a church hard by : but upon closer inquiry it was 
 found that this could not be done in the day-time. They 
 then called to mind, that over the room in which he lay was 
 a chamber wherein soldiers had been lodged, but which had 
 been just left unoccupied. They cut a trap door through the 
 ceiling of the one room, which was the floor of the other ; 
 and when night came, Fernandes, who had procured a scab- 
 bard and a wooden sword, ventured from the upper apart- 
 ment, passed through the guards, who seeing the sword by 
 his side took him for a soldier, to the wall, let himself down, 
 and reached a place of concealment. Ere long the watch, 
 or round as it is called, passing about the castle, espied the 
 rope by which he had descended ; the alarm was given ; the 
 prisoners were questioned ; all agreed that Monson was the
 
 116 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 likeliest person to have been privy to the escape, and Monson 
 accordingly was brought before a judge to be examined on 
 the following morning. Every artifice was used that could 
 either intimidate or tempt him to confess his part of the trans- 
 action ; but he denied all knowledge of it ; pretended that it 
 was impossible for him to plot with a man with whom he 
 could carry on no conversation, because each was ignorant of 
 the other's language ; and argued, that if he had done what 
 he was accused of it could not be deemed an offence, for not 
 having come into that land by his own will to carry on any 
 designs against the state, but having been brought there as a 
 prisoner of war, it was lawful for him to seek his own liberty, 
 and to neglect no occasion wherein he might do service to 
 his own prince and country. They could prove nothing 
 against him that deserved punishment by the universal law of 
 honour and arms ; and he bade them be wary what violence 
 they offered him, for he had friends in England, and was of a 
 nation that both could and would revenge any cruelty that 
 might be used towards him. The boldest defence was the 
 best, and Monson took the right ground when he spoke of 
 the strength and spirit of the English people ; though the 
 plea would have availed little if Fernandes had been taken, 
 for he had provided him with a letter addressed to all English 
 captains at sea ; the design being that the fugitive should put 
 himself into a fishing-boat and look out for a man-of-war to 
 transport him to England. When the judge found that 
 nothing could be drawn from him, he was remanded to the 
 castle, with orders to be more strictly watched : no violence 
 was used towards him, but no art left unattempted by which 
 he might be entrapped. 
 
 Fernandes had faithful friends : among them he was con- 
 cealed till the eagerness of the search for him had abated, and 
 means could be taken for engaging a fishing-boat. At length 
 he embarked, but with such ill fortune, that, having been a 
 fortnight at sea without meeting an English ship, and wearied
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 117 
 
 with sea-sickness, he was forced to return to shore, where he 
 "lived some time among poor shepherds and herdsmen/' till 
 he thought that, disfigured as he was by fatigue, and sufferings, 
 and exposure, and disguised also, he might venture to show 
 himself, and ask alms. It so happened, however, that he 
 begged at the house of one who had been fellow-prisoner 
 with him. This person recognised him, and immediately 
 called a servant ; and Fernandes, not waiting to ascertain with 
 what intention his old comrade had done this, ran into the 
 church thereby, and took sanctuary, thus betraying himself 
 by his own fears. Information was immediately despatched 
 to the cardinal prince, and he, paying no regard to the 
 sanctuary, ordered him to be reconveyed to his old lodging in 
 the castle ; the law then proceeded against him, and he was 
 condemned to death, not without grief to many of the 
 beholders ; for Monson says : " He was a man of much good- 
 ness and great charity ". The day of execution arrived, the 
 last acts of religion were perfonned, and he was brought out 
 of prison "with a winding-sheet lapped bandelier fashion 
 about him ". Many gathered around to give him their last 
 adieu ; and on taking leave of the soldiers he requested that 
 in return for all his former kindness to them, one of them 
 would with all speed hasten to the Misericordia, and inform 
 the brethren of that institution of the injury done to God, 
 themselves, and the Holy Church, by taking perforce a 
 penitent sinner out of sanctuary. Fernandes had made him- 
 self so well liked during his long imprisonment, that happy 
 was he who could make most speed upon this errand ; and 
 some of the brethren making no delay hastened on horseback 
 to the place of execution, " where they found poor Senhor 
 Fernandes ready to commend his spirit to God, and the 
 hangman as ready to perform his office ". Their interference 
 was effectual, under a Government which implicitly conformed 
 to whatever was required of it in the name of the Church ; 
 and thus his life was saved. Before this occurred Monson had
 
 118 ENGLISH fSEAMEN 
 
 been released ; the conditions, for the performance of which 
 he was detained in pledge, having been performed.* 
 
 The queen had given command " not to lay any Spanish 
 vessel aboard with her ships, lest both might together be 
 destroyed by fire '' ; and in this injunction the earl found so 
 much inconvenience, that he chose rather "to seek out 
 amongst the merchants than to make further use of the ships 
 royal ". So he hired the Tiger of 600 tons, for 300/. a month 
 wages, in which, and with his own ship the Samson, the 
 Golden Noble, and two small vessels, he set forth. The winds 
 proved so adverse, that three months' victuals were spent in 
 harbours before they could get to the westward of Plymouth. 
 This frustrated his chief design, which was to intercept the 
 outward-bound carracks, and it consumed also the stores 
 that had been provided for a West India voyage : the earl 
 therefore transferred the command to Captain Norton, with 
 orders to go for the Azores, and returned to London. The 
 voyage proved a most eventful one. They called at Flores, 
 where the English cruisers used to take in water and refresh- 
 ments at will, because the islanders had no means of resisting 
 them ; learning there that the homeward-bound East India 
 ships must be near, they spread themselves in quest, and ere 
 long came in sight of the Santa Cruz, which was some days' 
 sail a-head of her comrades. The Portuguese made all sail 
 for Angra ; and the pursuers, when within half a league of 
 her, discovered an English ship standing to cross her way, so 
 that she was fain to luff up, the wind being westerly, and 
 make for the road of Lagens on the south of the Isle of 
 Flores. The English vessel proved to be the Roebuck of 200 
 tons, Sir John Burroughs, commander, the admiral of a 
 squadron which Raleigh had fitted out. The wind soon fell, 
 so as not to yield breath for spreading a sail ; and, as no way 
 could then be made on either side, Burroughs took his boat 
 
 * Monson, 461, 462.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 119 
 
 and rowed near enough the enemy to ascertain what she was, 
 of what burden, force, and countenance ; having " made her 
 exactly/' he consulted with Norton, and they agreed to board 
 her in the morning. A storm in the night forced them all 
 to weigh anchor. " Yet their care was such in wrestling with 
 the weather, not to lose the carrack, that in the morning, 
 the tempest being qualified," they recovered the road and saw 
 the carrack warped as near the shore as she could be brought, 
 with all her sails up and flags flying. The Portuguese had 
 carried all they could on shore, and then, at sight of the 
 English, set fire to her, "that neither glory of victory nor 
 benefit of ship might remain to their enemies ". The guns 
 went off as the fire reached them ; and lest the English should 
 endeavour to extinguish the fire, some of the Portuguese 
 entrenched themselves near enough for defending the 
 approach. Burroughs ordered 100 men to disperse them : the 
 surge was so high that, for fear of losing their boats, the men 
 were up to the neck in water, and some over head and ears, 
 before they could reach the shore ; and then they were 
 forced to climb on hands and knees up a steep hill, from the 
 top of which the islanders rolled great stones upon them ; but 
 all difficulties were overcome by resolution and hope : they 
 entered the town without further opposition, and then 
 possessed themselves of what little had been landed, or was 
 drifted on shore from the wreck. 
 
 What was of more consequence, they obtained from some 
 prisoners, by threats of torture, information that three larger 
 carracks, at little distance, were holding the same course. By 
 this time more of Raleigh's vessels had come up, with Sir 
 Robert Cross in the Foresight, a queen's ship ; their united 
 numbers were now sufficient, by spreading from north to 
 south, yet keeping in sight of one another, to discover the 
 space of two whole degrees. On the fifth day the Mad re 
 de Dios came in sight, one of the largest carracks belonging 
 to the crown of Portugal. Thomson, who came up with her
 
 120 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 first, in a ship of Sir John Hawkins's, "again and again 
 delivered his peals as fast as he could fire, and fall astern to 
 load again, thus hindering her way, though somewhat to his 
 own cost, till the others could come up ". Burroughs and the 
 Golden Dragon came up next, and the former received a shot 
 under water in the bread-room, which made him bear up to 
 stop the leak. Sir Robert Cross then "coming to give his 
 broadside, came so near, that, becalming his sail, he un- 
 willingly fell aboard the carrack, which lashed his ship fast 
 by the shrouds, and sailed away with her by her side ". The 
 earl's ships, being the worst sailers, came up last, about 
 eleven at night, and Captain Norton had no intention to 
 board the enemy before daylight, if there had not been a cry 
 from the Foresight, " An you be men save the queen's ship ! " 
 Upon this he laid the carrack aboard on one side, while the 
 Tiger boarded her on the other, through the Foresight. That 
 ship took the opportunity to free herself. A desperate 
 struggle ensued when the men had entered into the fore- 
 chains, " the forecastle being so high, that without any 
 resistance the getting up had been difficult ; but here was 
 strong resistance, some irrecoverably falling by the board, and 
 the assault continued an hour and half, so brave a booty 
 making the men fight like dragons ". But when the fore- 
 castle was won, the Portuguese sought where to hide them- 
 selves. The English turned to pillage, "and were ready to 
 go to the ears about it, each man lighting a candle " ; and by 
 this they had nearly lost their prize, for by their carelessness 
 they fired a cabin, in which were some hundred cartridges, 
 and they were as eager then to forsake the carrack as they 
 had been to board her, if Norton and some others had not 
 "adventured the quenching of that flame ". 
 
 When the prisoners were secured, the general "first had 
 presented to his eyes the true proportion of the vast body of 
 this carrack, which," says the writer in Hakluyt, "did then, 
 and may still, justly provoke the admiration of all men not
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 121 
 
 formerly acquainted with such a sight. But albeit this first 
 appearance of the hugeness thereof yielded sights enough to 
 entertain our men's eyes, yet the pitiful object of so many 
 bodies slain and dismembered could not but draw each man's 
 eye to see, and heart to lament, and hands to help, those 
 miserable people, whose limbs were torn with the violence of 
 shot. No man could almost step but upon a dead carcass or 
 a bloody floor, but especially about the helm ; for the great- 
 ness of the steerage requiring the labour of twelve or fourteen 
 men at once, and some of our ships beating her in at the 
 stern with her ordnance, oftentimes with one shot slew four or 
 five labouring on either side of the helm ; whose room being 
 still furnished with fresh supplies, and our artillery still 
 playing upon them with continual volleys, it could not be but 
 that much blood should be shed in that place. Whereupon 
 our general, moved with singular commiseration of their 
 misery, sent them his own chirurgeons, denying them no 
 possible help or relief that he or any of his company could 
 afford them." It may be feared that such humanity, at that 
 time, deserved this special commendation ; but Sir John 
 Burroughs acted towards his prisoners with a generosity which 
 was not less rare ; for, " moved with compassion of human 
 misery, and not to add too much affliction to the afflicted, he 
 dismissed the captain and most of his followers freely to 
 their own country, and for that purpose bestowed them in 
 one of the earl's vessels, furnished with all things necessary ". 
 The captain, Don Fernando de Mendoza, was " a gentleman 
 of noble birth, well stricken in years, well spoken, of comely 
 personage, of good stature, but of hard fortune. Twice he 
 had been taken prisoner by the Moors and ransomed by the 
 king ; and he had been wrecked on the coast of Sofala, in a 
 carrack which he commanded, and, having escaped the sea 
 danger, fell into the hands of infidels on shore, who kept him 
 under long and grievous servitude." The prisoners who were 
 thus released were not searched : so rich a prize, indeed,
 
 122 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 might well content the captors ; and they who had lost so 
 much might be permitted to carry with them such of their 
 own valuables as they could. They had, however, the ill hap 
 to fall in with other English cruisers, who took from them, 
 " thus negligently dismissed," says our narrator, " 900 diamonds, 
 besides other odd ends ". 
 
 About 800 black men (if that number be not overstated) 
 were landed on the Island of Corvo. ^Having thus disposed 
 of their prisoners, contention about the prize was " well-nigh 
 kindling in the commanders, being so many and so diversely 
 employed ". But Burroughs, " to fcut foff the unprofitable 
 spoil and pillage," to which he saw that many were inclined, 
 promptly and prudently took charge of the whole in the 
 queen's name, the others consenting ; for, indeed, it appeared, 
 upon " a slender rummaging of such things as first came to 
 hand, that the wealth would arise nothing disanswerable 
 to expectation, but that the variety and grandeur of all 
 rich commodities would be more than sufficient to content 
 both the adventurer's desire and the soldier's travail. And 
 here," says our narrator, " I cannot but enter into the con- 
 sideration and acknowledgment of God's great favour towards 
 our nation, who, by putting this purchase into our hands, 
 hath manifestly discovered those secret trades and Indian 
 riches, which hitherto lay strangely hidden and cunningly 
 concealed from us ; whereof there was among some few of us 
 some small and imperfect glimpse only which now is turned 
 into the broad light of full and perfect knowledge. Whereby 
 it should seem that the will of God for our good is (if our 
 weakness could apprehend it) to have us communicate with 
 them in those East Indian treasures, and, by the erection 
 of a lawful traffic, to better our means to advance true religion 
 and His holy service. The carrack being in burden, by the 
 estimation of the wise and experienced, no less than 
 1600 tons, had full 900 of those stowed with the gross bulk 
 of merchandise ; the rest of the tonnage being allowed, partly
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 123 
 
 to the ordnance, which were thirty-two pieces of brass of all 
 sorts, partly to the passengers and the victuals, which could 
 not be any small quantity, considering the number of persons, 
 between 600 and 700, and the length of the navigation. 
 To give you a taste, as it were, of the commodities, it shall 
 suffice to deliver you a general particularity of them, according 
 to the catalogue taken at Leadenhall, the 15th of September, 
 1592. (It is remarkable that this should have been the place 
 where an account was taken of the first East Indian cargo 
 that was ever brought to England.) Upon good view it was 
 found that the principal wares, after the jewels (which were 
 no doubt of great value, though they never came to light), 
 consisted of spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, quilts, carpets, and 
 colours, etc. The spices were pepper, cloves, maces, nutmegs, 
 cinnamon, green ginger. The drugs were benjamin, frank- 
 incense, galingale, mirabolans, aloes, socotrina, camphire. 
 The silks, damasks, taffatas, sarcenets, altobassos, that is, 
 counterfeit cloth of gold, unwrought China silk, sleaved silk, 
 white twisted silk, curled cypress. The calicoes were book 
 calicoes, calico-lawns, broad white calicoes, fine starched 
 calicoes, coarse white calicoes, brown broad calicoes, brown 
 coarse calicoes. There were also canopies and coarse diaper 
 towels, quilts of coarse sarcenet and of calico, carpets like 
 those of Turkey ; whereunto are to be added the pearl, musk, 
 civet, and ambergris. The rest of the wares were many in 
 number, but less in value, as elephants' teeth, porcelain vessels 
 of China, cocoa-nuts, hides, ebon wood as black as jet, bed- 
 steads of the same, cloth of the rinds of trees, very strange 
 for the matter, and artificial in workmanship. All which piles 
 of commodities, being by men of approved judgment rated but 
 in reasonable sort, amounted to no less than 150,000/., which 
 being divided among the adventurers, whereof her Majesty 
 was the chief, was sufficient to yield contentment to all 
 parties." * 
 
 * Hakluyt, ii., 198.
 
 124 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 But, in truth, the parties were not contented : they had 
 expected far too much, and they received somewhat too 
 little. The Earl of Cumberland's share had been estimated 
 by his friends, "according to his employment of ships and 
 men," to two or three millions, so extravagant were their 
 notions ! " But because his commission, large enough other- 
 wise, had not provided for the case of his return, and substi- 
 tuting another in his place, some adjudged it to depend on 
 the queen's mercy and bounty." * The queen's adventure in 
 this voyage was only two ships, one only of which, and that 
 the least, was at the capture, and would have been carried 
 off by the carrack, like a lark in a hawk's talons, if the earl's 
 ships had not come to the rescue ; yet of this title, "joined 
 with her royal authority," she made such use, that the 
 adventurers were fain to submit themselves to her pleasure, 
 and " she dealt but indifferently with them," says Morison ; f 
 rather, indeed, anything but indifferently. The lioness 
 took her share ; and the jackals also helped themselves well, 
 as well at her cost as that of the other claimants. The queen 
 had not " the account of the fifth part of her value, by reason 
 of some men's embezzling, and the earl was fain to accept 
 of 36,000/., for him and his, as out of gift ".$ 
 
 The size of the carrack excited great admiration. She had 
 nearly been wrecked on the Scilly rocks, and having put 
 into Dartmouth, was unladen there, and the goods sent to 
 London in ten vessels. " But to the end that the bigness, 
 height, length, breadth, and other dimensions, of so huge a 
 vessel might by the exact rules of geometrical observations be 
 truly taken, both for present knowledge and derivation also 
 of the same unto posterity, one M. Robert Adams, a man, in 
 his faculty, of excellent skill, omitted nothing in the descrip- 
 tion which either his art could demonstrate, or any man's 
 judgment think worthy the memory. After an exquisite 
 
 * Purchas, 1145. f P. 165. J Purchas.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 125 
 
 survey of the whole frame, he found the length from the 
 beak-head to the stern (whereupon was erected a lantern) to 
 contain 1 65 foot. The breadth in the second close deck (whereof 
 she had three), this being the place where there was most 
 extension of breadth, was forty-six foot ten inches. She 
 drew in water thirty-one foot at her departure from Cochim 
 in India, but not above twenty-six at her arrival in Dartmouth, 
 being lightened in her voyage by divers means some five foot. 
 She carried in height seven several stories, one main orlop, 
 three close decks, one fore-castle, and a spar-deck of two 
 floors apiece. The length of the keel was 100 foot, of the 
 main mast 121, and the circuit about at the partners ten 
 foot seven ; the main yard was 106 foot long. By which 
 perfect commensuration of the parts appeareth the hugeness 
 of the whole, far beyond the mould of the biggest shipping 
 used among us either for war or receit."* " Being so 
 huge and unwieldy a ship," says another writer, " she was 
 never removed from Dartmouth, but there laid up her 
 bones."t 
 
 The success of this last voyage encouraged the earl to more 
 adventures ; and he imputed his former failures more to the 
 negligence or unfaithfulness of those whom he had employed 
 to lay in his stores, than to any other cause. His objections 
 to the queen's ships seem to have been removed by the 
 bravery with which the Foresight had run aboard the great 
 Madre dc Dios ; and planning now two expeditions at the 
 same time, he obtained two ships royal, which he victualled 
 himself, and with seven others in company sailed for the coast 
 of Spain, from whence he despatched three of these to the 
 West Indies. On the Spanish coast he had the good fortune 
 to fall in with two French vessels from St. Maloes : that port 
 held for the League ; the ships therefore were accounted 
 Spaniards, and they were rich enough to repay the costs of 
 
 * Hakluyt, 199. t Purchas, 1145.
 
 126 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 his voyage more than threefold. One day, being separated 
 from the rest of his fleet, off Peniche, he met with twelve 
 hulks in the same place where Monson had been captured 
 by the galleys exactly two years before on the same day. 
 He required from them that respect which was due to her 
 Majesty's ship ; and they, presuming upon the strength of 
 twelve against one, not considering how much better that 
 one was prepared for war, refused to render it. After two 
 hours' fight he brought them to his mercy ; and they to 
 obtain it delivered up a great quantity of ammunition which 
 they carried for the King of Spain's service. And here the 
 earl committed an error that might have cost him dear ; for, 
 standing out to sea with some of these hulks, he left Monson 
 in his long boat with fifty men to rummage the others. 
 Towards evening, those which he had under his custody gave 
 him the slip, and returned to their comrades ; and Monson 
 would again have been made prisoner in his turn if he had 
 not leaped out of the vessel into his boat on one side as they 
 boarded him on the other ; and in so doing he received a hurt 
 in the leg, which annoyed him during the remainder of his 
 life. 
 
 The earl, upon the intelligence which he obtained here, 
 made for the Western Islands, hoping to fall in with the 
 carracks before they should meet the Portuguese fleet which 
 had been ordered thither to convoy them. One of that fleet 
 he captured off the Isle of Flores ; but being far too weak to 
 encounter their whole force, of which he obtained sight the 
 next day, he stood off to avoid them, and hovered about for 
 three weeks, till he learned that the carracks had passed 
 safely. By this time he had been taken ill ; and life is said 
 to have been saved by cow's milk, Monson having ventured 
 ashore in Corvo, and there obtained a milch cow, what with 
 threats and what with promises of reward. They then made 
 homeward ; and the whole fleet were so parted during a 
 calm, which lasted several days, that they never saw each
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 127 
 
 other again till they met in England some four or five weeks 
 afterwards. This was the most gainful voyage that the earl 
 made "before or after".* 
 
 Meantime the three ships which had been despatched 
 to the West Indies reached St. Lucia, refreshed themselves 
 there, and made for the pearl fishery at Margarita. That 
 fishery was carried on in four rancheries, or assemblages of 
 huts : six or seven such villages were erected on different 
 parts of the coast, though only one at a time was occupied ; 
 and when the fishery failed in one place, the persons engaged 
 in it removed to another, the empty huts being always ready 
 for them. The pearls, for safety, were carried monthly to 
 Margarita, which stood about three leagues from the shore. 
 Langton, who commanded the privateers, having taken a 
 Spaniard, and learned from him the situation of the inhabited 
 rancheria, surprised it by a night march with twenty-eight 
 men, and carried off about 2000/. worth of pearls. After- 
 wards, he brought the ships there, and compelled the inhabit- 
 ants to ransom their huts and canoes for as many pearls as 
 were valued at 2000 ducats. The alarm had now been given, 
 and when they tried a landing at Cumana they were fain to 
 retire, not without loss. They had no better fortune on any 
 part of the Spanish main. Making then for Hispaniola, they 
 were glad to provide themselves with water upon the little 
 Island of Savona, procured by digging a hole not twenty paces 
 from the wash of the sea, and setting a hogshead therein 
 with the head knocked out, by which means, water, "losing 
 its saltness in that passage," was plentifully taken. They 
 now coasted along, exacting contributions from the different 
 estancias and ingenios, that is to say, breeding farms and sugar 
 works, as they went. After eight months spent to little 
 profit in hovering about Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Cuba, they 
 made for the Bay of Honduras, and within four leagues of 
 
 * Monson, 166. Purchas, 1146.
 
 128 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Porto Cavallo descried seven ships in the road. Though they 
 were then only two in company they anchored within caliver 
 shot, moored their ships head and stern, and bent their 
 broadsides unto them, and there fought all that day with 
 those seven ships, and all night now and then a shot. The 
 next day they brought a vessel of twenty tons from the shore, 
 set her on fire, and endeavoured with their boats to bring 
 her across the Admiral ; but when the Spaniards saw their 
 intent they got into their boats and made for the land, carry- 
 ing the rudders with them, that none should sail away with 
 the ships. The English laded the Admiral with the best out 
 of the other vessels, and sent ashore to ask if the Spaniards 
 would ransom the rest ; and as the answer was delayed, they 
 first fired one which was laden with hides and logwood, and 
 then another with a cargo of sarsaparilla ; but all such ransom- 
 ing had been forbidden by the king, and the privateers were 
 left to take their own course. Nothing more is related of 
 their proceedings, except that they heaved the ordnance 
 overboard, saving two or three brass pieces, in hope some 
 Englishmen might be the better for them afterwards, brought 
 away the Admiral of 250 tons, and carried this prize safely 
 to Plymouth.* 
 
 In the ensuing year, the earl set forth on his eighth voyage, 
 at his own charge, with the help of some adventurers. The 
 force consisted of the Royal Exchange, 250, Captain George 
 Cave ; the May Flower, of the same burden, Vice-Admiral 
 Captain William Antony ; the Samson, Rear- Admiral Captain 
 Nicholas Downton ; a caravel, and a small pinnace. Early 
 in April they sailed from Plymouth, came in sight of St. 
 Michael's at the beginning of June, and ten days afterwards 
 they descried a great Indian ship, whose burden they estimated 
 at 2000 tons ; and which, indeed, was one of the largest ships 
 ever employed in the Indian trade.f The fate of this 
 
 * Purchas, 1147. t Ibid.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 129 
 
 unhappy ship has been fully recorded by the Portuguese as 
 well as by the English. 
 
 The name of this carrack was the Cinco Chagas, or Five 
 Wounds, in reverential honour of which it had, with the usual 
 Romish ceremonies on such occasions, been named. The 
 Capitam Mor Francisco de Mello embarked in her from Goa, 
 in 1593, at the same time that the other ships of the fleet 
 sailed from Cochim ; all, according to the customary and fatal 
 improvidence of the Portuguese, deeply overladen. After 
 vainly endeavouring to make the Cape, the Chagas, with much 
 difficulty, put back to Mozambique, and wintered there. 
 Thither also the Nazareth put back, arriving in such a state 
 that it was found impossible to repair her. She had been 
 built of ill-seasoned timber, and, in consequence of over-freight, 
 had suffered so much in bad weather that her reaching the 
 island was considered little less than miraculous ; and there 
 also arrived 117 Portuguese and 65 slaves, being the remainder 
 of the crew of the ship St. Alberto: that ship had been 
 wrecked upon the Penedo dos Fontes ; and Nuno Velho, 
 formerly commandant at Sofala, taking command of the 
 people, directed their course so well, that, by an inland 
 journey of 300 leagues, he brought them in three months to 
 the Isle of Inhaca, and from thence found means of em- 
 barking them for Mozambique. Of all the other Portuguese 
 ships, many as they were, which had been wrecked upon that 
 fatal coast, the people, though in very many cases they got 
 to shore, had always perished ; and there are no tales of 
 shipwreck more deeply distressful than the faithful relations 
 which have been preserved respecting their sufferings. 
 Many of these people deemed it better to return to India 
 than pursue a voyage which had so miserably begun. For 
 others who persevered room was made in the Chagas; and 
 that ship, taking on board the jewels of the other two 
 vessels (for this part of the St. Alberto's treasures had 
 been saved), and the whole lading of the Nazareth, sailed 
 
 9
 
 130 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 once more for Europe, her crew consisting of about 1400 
 persons, of whom 270 were slaves.* 
 
 Before this ill-fated vessel passed the Cape it encountered 
 long and frequent storms, which compelled it to throw over- 
 board much of its cargo, and some of its provisions also. All 
 on board expected that they should have made for St. Helena, 
 when the captain produced his instructions, whereby, upon a 
 report that the English would be there, he was forbidden to 
 touch at that place ; and ordered, in case his food or water 
 ran low, to put into St. Paulo de Loanda. These orders, 
 though against his own judgment, he thought it his duty to 
 obey : to Loanda therefore he went, remained there a few 
 days, took many slaves on board, and meeting soon afterwards 
 with the usual calms in that pestilential region, the fatal 
 disease known by the name of the mal de Loanda carried off 
 about half the crew, and left the survivors in a state of 
 miserable weakness. His further instructions were to make 
 for the Isle of Corvo, where there would be a fleet to protect 
 him : but at Mozambique he had learnt the destruction of 
 the Santa Cruz, and the capture of the Madre de Dios ; and 
 having held a council when they came in the latitude of the 
 Azores, it was resolved that they should avoid those islands 
 altogether. Before, however, three days had elapsed, a 
 mutinous representation against this determination was got 
 up among the soldiers ; and upon inquiring into the state of 
 the stores the report was, that it was absolutely necessary 
 to touch at the islands, and there take in provisions and 
 water. Accordingly they steered for Corvo ; and being fully 
 aware that privateers would be cruising in that direction, they 
 prepared, as well as their debilitated state would permit, for 
 
 * Historia Tragico-Maritima, ii., 507-511. In the same volume (pp. 217- 
 313) there is a full and most interesting relation of the shipwreck of 
 the Santo Alberto, and the subsequent march of the crew, till they 
 embarked for Mozambique : the account was drawn up by Joam Baptista 
 Lavanha, the king's chief cosmographer.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 131 
 
 battle. A little while fortune favoured them. They came 
 in sight of Corvo ; but the wind prevented them from coming 
 to anchor there : they stood therefore for Fayal, and off that 
 island fell in with the Earl of Cumberland's squadron.* 
 
 " The Mai/ Flower first got up to her, and received an un- 
 welcome salutation. In the night, the Samson came in, and 
 continued the fight, and at last the admiral. They agreed 
 that the admiral should lay the carrack aboard on the prow, 
 the vice-admiral on the waist, and the rear-admiral on the 
 quarter ; but it fell out that the admiral, laying her aboard at 
 the loof, recoiled astern, the vice-admiral being so near that 
 she was fain to run with her bolt-sprit between the two 
 quarters, which forced the rear-admiral to lay her aboard on 
 the bow." The Portuguese had pledged themselves to each 
 other that they would defend the ship to the last, and rather 
 perish with her in the sea or in the flames, than surrender so 
 rich a prize to the heretics. There were many brave and 
 honourable men on board of the old Portuguese stamp, capable 
 of adhering to such a resolution ; but those who had no honour 
 to lose, and lives at stake, were so greatly the majority that 
 if there had been an alternative they would not have been 
 allowed to choose. One of the most distinguished persons, 
 Don Rodrigo de Cordoba, had both his legs shattered ; and, 
 as he was carried below in a dying state, he exclaimed : " Sirs. 
 I have got this in the discharge of my duty. Be of good 
 heart : let no one forsake his post ; and let us be consumed 
 rather than taken." According to the Portuguese, the 
 privateers twice boarded the carrack, and were twice driven 
 out : a third time they boarded, one of them bearing a white 
 flag, as expecting that the Portuguese would gladly accept 
 the proposal of surrendering : in fact they had begun to 
 waver ; but the Englishman who carried this flag, was the 
 first of that party who was killed ; and when a second pilot 
 
 * Historia Tragico-Maritima, ii., 511-514.
 
 132 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 hoisted another flag at the poop, Nuno Velho threw it over- 
 board, and would have killed the man if he had not escaped 
 by speedy flight. The English, indeed, suffered considerable 
 loss : they had one and twenty slain. Antony, their vice- 
 admiral, was killed ; Downton, the rear-admiral, crippled for 
 life ; and Cave, who commanded the earl's ship, mortally 
 wounded by a shot through both legs. But the privateers, 
 in the heat of action, seem to have forgotten that booty was 
 their object, and, instead of endeavouring to take possession 
 of the carrack, aimed at destroying her. " After many 
 bickerings," says the writer in Purchas, " fire-works flew about 
 interchangeably. At last, the vice-admiral, with a culverin 
 shot at hand, fired the carrack in her stern, and the rear- 
 admiral her fore-castle, by a shot that gave fire to the mat 
 on the beak-head, from thence turning to the mat on the 
 bolt-sprit, and so ran up to the topsail-yard ; they plying and 
 maintaining their fires so well with their small shot that 
 many of those which came to quench them were slain. These 
 fires increased so sore, that the vice-admiral's fore-sail and 
 fore-topsail were both burnt ; the rear-admiral being in like 
 predicament ; while the admiral, with much danger and 
 difficulty, quenched the fires thrown into her from the carrack. 
 To save themselves in this heat and fury, the admiral and 
 vice-admiral fell off, leaving the rear-admiral foul of the 
 carrack's spritsail-yard, in great danger to have been consumed 
 with her, had they not helped her off with their boats." * 
 
 A scene more dreadful than the action itself ensued. P. 
 Frey Antonio, a Franciscan, was seen, with a crucifix in his 
 hand, encouraging the poor wretches to commit themselves 
 to the waves and to God's mercy, rather than perish in the 
 flames. The greater part threw themselves overboard, clinging 
 to such things as were cast into the sea for them to float by. 
 The English boats, it is said, made no endeavour to save any 
 
 * Historia Tragico-Maritima, ii., 515-519. Purchas, 1147.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 133 
 
 of them : it is even affirmed that they butchered in the water 
 those who came near and entreated to be taken on board. 
 The rear-admiral's boat must, however, be exempted from this 
 atrocious charge ; for by that boat Nuno Velho was picked up, 
 Braz Correa, the captain of the Nazareth, and three other 
 persons : ten more, it appears by the Portuguese account, 
 were in like manner saved. Among the passengers in this 
 unfortunate ship were two Portuguese ladies of high birth, 
 Dona Isabel Pereira, a widow, whose father had been chief 
 captain of the Island of Goa, and whose husband, Diogo de 
 Mello Coutinho, had held the command hi Ceylon : her 
 daughter, Dona Luiza de Mello, a young and beautiful damsel, 
 was with her. They had been wrecked in the Santo Alberto, 
 and had performed a journey of nearly 1000 miles after that 
 wreck, through Caffraria, on foot ; and when many of their 
 fellow-sufferers returned from Mozambique to India, they 
 had resolved on resuming their voyage, because the young 
 lady was going to take possession of her entailed property at 
 Evora. Mother and daughter, when they saw that no help 
 was to be hoped for from the privateers, and that they 
 had to choose between the fire and the water, fastened them- 
 selves together with a Franciscan cord ; and their bodies, 
 thus fastened, were cast ashore upon the Island of Fayal. 
 According to the Portuguese statement, about 500 persons 
 perished in the ship ; according to the English, there were 
 more than 1100 on board when she left Loanda, of whom 
 only fifteen were saved ! Nuno Velho and Braz Correa were 
 brought prisoners to England, where the earl is said to have 
 treated them well, and to have entertained them a whole year 
 as his guests : they were then ransomed for 3000 cruzados, 
 which Nuno Velho paid for both.* 
 
 It was not, however, immediately after this deplorable 
 action that the earl sailed homeward : he continued cruising 
 
 * Historia Tragico-Maritimn, ii., 520-526. Purchas, 1148.
 
 134 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 among the islands about a month longer, when they came in 
 sight of another carrack of 1500 tons, homeward bound from 
 India. They took her for a Spanish ship of war, and under 
 that mistake began a more cautious action. After a while a 
 boat was sent to summon her to surrender to the Queen of 
 England's ships under the Earl of Cumberland's command,, 
 unless she would undergo the same fate as the Chagas ; to 
 bear testimony of which two prisoners were put in the boat, 
 and, the Portuguese say, bound. The Portuguese captain 
 returned a brave answer : he acknowledged Don Philip, King 
 of Spain, he said, not the Queen of England ; and if the Earl 
 of Cumberland had been at the burning of the C'mco Chagas, 
 so had he, D. Luis Coutinho, been at the defeat and capture 
 of Sir Richard Grenville in the Queen of England's ship the 
 Revenge. Let the earl do what he dared for his queen, and 
 he, D. Luis, would do what he was able for his king : his 
 ship was homeward bound from India, laden with riches, and 
 with many jewels on board ; let the English take her if they 
 could ! The fight was then renewed,* but intermitted by 
 the calm, and remitted (as the English relater allows) by the 
 remisser company, their captains being slain and wounded ; 
 " whereupon they gave over," and sailed for England, " having 
 done much harm to the enemy, and little good to them- 
 selves ".t 
 
 ' ' The earl, not liking his ill partage in the Madre de Dios, 
 
 * The Portuguese account states, that the English attempted to destroy 
 this ship, by converting the earl's vessel, which was an old one, into a 
 fire-ship ; but that they were prevented from grappling the carrack, first, 
 by a shot that carried away the earl's foremast, and then by a thunder- 
 storm, during which Coutinho got so much ahead of the disabled ship, 
 that the other two dared not pursue them farther (p. 527). This is less 
 probable than the English account. It is unlikely that the earl would 
 have sacrificed his own ship ; and still more so, after the recent fate 
 of the Chagas, that he should have sought to destroy the carrack, instead 
 of attempting to capture it. 
 
 f Purchas, 1148. Historia Tragico-Maritima, ii. , 526-528,
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 135 
 
 nor this unhappier loss of two carracks for want of sufficient 
 strength to take them, built a ship of his own of 800 tons * at 
 Deptford, which the queen, at her launching, named the 
 Scourge of Malice, ,f the best ship that had ever before been 
 built by any subject." In this, with three other vessels in 
 company, he would have made what is called his ninth 
 voyage ; but when he had reached Plymouth, the queen recalled 
 him ; and the ships took only three Baltic vessels laden with 
 Spanish property of little value. He set forth again in the 
 ensuing year, but sprung his mainmast, and was forced to 
 return. His next enterprise was upon a smaller scale ; for 
 Essex and the lord admiral going to the coast of Spain with 
 a large fleet of the queen's, together with a squadron of 
 Flemish men of war, " his lordship thought good to await some 
 gleanings in so great a vintage ". So he sent out Captain 
 Francis Slingsby, in the Ascension of 300 tons, carrying thirty- 
 four guns and 1 20 men, " chiefly to look for such ships as 
 should come from Lisbon". The captain got sore wounded 
 
 * Purchas says 900 ; but Monson is better authority ; she was " pro- 
 portioned in all degrees to equal any of her Majesty's ships of that rank, 
 and no way inferior to them in sailing, or other property or condition 
 of ships ". Monson states the earl's motives for building her. " At 
 last my lord," he says, " began discreetly to consider the obligation 
 he had to the queen for the loan of her ships from time to time ; and 
 withal weighed what fear of danger he brought himself into, if unluckily 
 any of those ships should miscarry ; for he valued the reputation of the 
 least of them at the rate of his life. Upon these considerations, no 
 persuasions being of force to divert him from attempting some great 
 action on the sea, where he had spent much time and money ; and 
 thinking thereby, as well to enrich himself, as to show his forwardness 
 to do his prince and country service, he resolved to build a ship from 
 the stocks, that should equal the middle rank of her Majesty's : an act 
 so noble and so rare, it being a thing never undertaken before by a 
 subject, that it deserved immortal fame " (p. 189). 
 
 t The Malice-Scourge, Monson calls it ; " for by that name, it seems 
 he tasted the envy of some that repined at his honourable achievement " 
 (P- 189).
 
 136 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 in a vain attempt made with his boats against a caravel : after 
 which the Spanish admiral set forth six ships against him ; 
 and himself and another ship, falling in with the Ascension, laid 
 aboard, one on the bow and the other on the quarter ; " and 
 now the mouths of the great ordnance, being near in place to 
 whisper, roared out their thunders, and pierced thorow and 
 thorow on all hands ; which ended, the Spaniards leaped into 
 the fore-chains and main-chains, thinking to have entered 
 the ship, but were bravely repelled. And the English, seeing 
 many together under the admiral's half-deck, discharged 
 among them a fowler laden with case shot, to their no small 
 harm, so that the Spaniards were content to fall off. Of ours, 
 two and twenty were slain and hurt ; which loss lighted as 
 much on them which hid themselves, as those which stood to 
 the fight. To prevent the like afterwards, they put safe in 
 hold the chirurgeon, carpenter, and cooper, for the public 
 dependence on them ; and made fast the hatches, that others 
 should not seek refuge. But the Spanish admiral tacked 
 about and went in for Lisbon ; arid the Ascension, continuing 
 till they had but a fortnight's provision left, returned, with 
 hurt to themselves and loss also to his lordship." 
 
 From the conduct of the men in this action, and from other 
 instances, it appears that an English sea captain could not, in 
 those days, rely with that perfect confidence upon his crew, 
 which has uniformly been felt within our remembrance. The 
 national character was always brave ; but that national spirit 
 had not yet been formed among our sailors, which renders 
 courage as much a moral principle as an animal impulse. 
 
 The earl's success in so many adventures had not been such 
 as would have encouraged a prudent man to repeat them ; 
 but a prudent man would not have engaged in them at first. 
 He now obtained letters patent authorising him to levy sea 
 and land forces, and prepared for the greatest expedition that 
 had ever been undertaken by a subject without the assistance 
 of the sovereign, both in number of ships and land forces.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 137 
 
 The force consisted of eighteen sail ; and the earl " having 
 by several voyages before attained to a perfect knowledge in 
 sea affairs," took the command in person. " Besides his 
 general design to take, destroy, or any way else to impoverish 
 and impeach the King of Spain or his subjects, he grounded 
 his voyage upon two hopes." The first was that of intercept- 
 ing the outward-bound East Indiamen as soon as they should 
 sail from the Tagus. The time of their departure was certain; 
 it could not be later than April ; and as in burden they 
 exceeded all other European ships, and went out full freighted 
 with commodities for the East Indies, and much money also 
 was sent out in them, they would have abundantly enriched 
 him and the other adventurers. This was his first hope. His 
 other was, if this should fail, to make an attempt with his 
 land forces upon some island or town " that would yield him 
 wealth and riches, being the chief end of his undertaking," 
 a most unworthy one for one born of such a line, in such a 
 station, and to such an inheritance ! The success of his first 
 object depended greatly upon the secrecy of the expedition ; 
 and if he had done well and providently, " his fleet," says 
 Monson, " should have been furnished, without rumour, noise, 
 or notice, in several harbours ; and the men should not have 
 known the design of their voyage, nor that they were to meet 
 and compose a main fleet". The whole fleet, however, 
 assembled at Plymouth, and sailed from thence on the 6th of 
 March. 
 
 The wind being prosperous, though there was much of it, 
 their passage was so fair as to put him in hope that God had 
 prepared them an unlooked-for fortune, if it were well handled, 
 and that he might get sure intelligence concerning the de- 
 parture of the carracks ; " the doing of which undiscovered," 
 says he, " though hard, yet I knew was not impossible for him 
 that could well work " ; and considering the mighty importance, 
 he resolved to do it himself, taking with him two other ships ; 
 which two only he meant should be seen on the coasts ; and
 
 138 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 accordingly he left the rest of the fleet, appointing them whereto 
 lie till he should rejoin them. " But God," says he, " whose 
 will is beyond man's resolutions, forced me to alter this ; for 
 my masts, not made so sufficiently as I expected, both now 
 began to show their weakness, especially my mainmast, which 
 I continually looked would have gone overboard. My mariners 
 were at their wits' end ; and I protest I would have given 
 5000/. for a new one ; the greatest part of my strength both 
 by sea and land having been lost, if that ship had returned 
 in this extremity. Hearing all that would, I heard many 
 opinions to little purpose." So he resolved for himself (though 
 many thought it dangerous, lest the wind should with a storm 
 come up at W.N.W.) to go to the Berlings, and there ride 
 till his masts were fished. He knew the road, which no one 
 else in the ship did ; and his fear was not of the wind, but 
 lest he should be discovered, being within three leagues of 
 Peniche, from whence caravels came off to fish. " Go thither," 
 says he, " I must, hopeless otherwise to repair those desperate 
 ruins. My ship was black, which well furthered my device ; 
 and though she were great, yet showed not so afar off. 
 Wherefore I came in about eight of the clock at night upon 
 Thursday, when I was sure all the fishermen were gone to 
 sell their fish at Lisbon, and from the main they could not 
 make me. Before the morning I had down my topmasts, 
 my main yard unrigged, and all things ready for my car- 
 penters to work. The small ships with me I made stand off 
 to sea all day, that, not having any in my company, I should 
 be the less suspected ; and thus with a strange flag dancing 
 upon my poop, I rid, without giving chase to any, as though I 
 had been some merchant, every day divers ships coming by 
 me that were both good prize, and had been worth the 
 taking." By working night and day, he was ready to sail on 
 Saturday night. The fishermen would return to their fishing 
 ground on the night following ; and his hope was to get 
 away undiscovered by them, and rejoin his fleet, which he
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 139 
 
 had appointed to wait for him in the same latitude, between 
 twenty and thirty leagues off.* 
 
 At night, however, he heard firing between him and the 
 shore, and rightly guessed that it was his own small ship and 
 little pinnace in action with a vessel which they had seen 
 them chasing to windward before the night closed ; and 
 judging, also, that she was above their strength, he slipped his 
 anchor, and "soon came to help the poor little ones, much 
 over-matched". He took her fora Biscayan, and therefore 
 concluded that she would fight well ; and, in fact, she returned 
 such an answer to his broadside, that he had three men 
 killed, six or seven hurt, and his ship shot in six or seven 
 places, some of them very dangerous. But, upon boarding 
 and taking her, she proved to be a Hamburgher laden with 
 prohibited commodities. Much as this action exposed him 
 to discovery, he got out of sight of land by daybreak ; 
 succeeded, by stratagem, in capturing a fishing-boat from the 
 Tagus ; and learned from the men, that, with the next fair 
 wind, five carracks would sail, " with more treasure on board 
 than ever went in one year for the Indies, and also twenty- 
 five ships for Brazil. This welcome news," says the earl, 
 " was accompanied with the meeting again of my whole fleet, 
 which at that very instant I descried : so now being joined, 
 I wished for nothing but a happy hour to see those long- 
 looked-after monsters, whose wealth exceeds their greatness, 
 yet be they the greatest ships in the world." Not doubting 
 to meet them now, and well knowing the way they would 
 come, and being made restless by the joy of such hope, the 
 earl and his fleet " continued gazing for that which came 
 not," till disappointment stared them in the face ; then the 
 commander stood for the Tagus in one of his smaller vessels, 
 captured a boat, and learned, that at the time he took the 
 first fishing-boat, a ship, with Spaniards on board, from 
 
 * Purchas, 1150.
 
 140 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 England, had arrived at Lisbon, which ship was in Plymouth * 
 when he sailed from the sound, and had given intelligence 
 that he was at sea, and that his object certainly was to 
 intercept the Indian fleet. He learned, also, that caravels 
 had been sent out to search everywhere for him ; one of 
 which, when he returned to his fleet, he understood had 
 come by them to windward, and discovered them all. t 
 
 It was now evident, that the carracks would alter their 
 course, if they put to sea at all ; and, in despair of winning 
 them by any other means, the earl went again to the Tagus, 
 to see whether tjiey were come so low down the river that 
 it might be possible to board them in the night. The wind 
 favoured him ; he got in between the Cachopos, J and saw 
 them riding in the Bay of Oeyras. " Here," says he, " had I 
 too much of my desire, seeing what I desired to see, but 
 hopeless of the good I expected by seeing them ; for they 
 were where no good could be done upon them, riding within 
 the Castle of St. Julian, which hath in it above 100 pieces of 
 great ordnance ; so as though I could have got in (which I verily 
 believe I could), it had not been possible to have returned, the 
 wind being ever very scant to come forth withal, and hanging, for 
 the most part, so far northerly, as that, for fear of the Cachopos, 
 I must of force have run close by their platforms. With this 
 
 * Monson might justly censure the earl for want of secrecy in his 
 preparations ; but the earl's own narrative shows that another part of 
 his censure was undeserved. " He worthily deserved blame," says 
 Monson, " to present himself and fleet in the eye of Lisbon, to be there 
 discovered, knowing that the secret carriage thereof gave life and hope 
 to the action. By a familiar example of a man that being safely seated 
 in a house, and in danger of an arrest, knows that catchpoles lie to 
 attack him, so fared it with the carracks at that time, who rather chose 
 to keep themselves in harbour, than venture upon an unavoidable 
 danger " (p. 190). 
 
 t Purchas, 1151. 
 
 I The Cat-ships they are called in Purchas, and Oeyras is called 
 Weirs.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 141 
 
 unpleasant sight I returned for my fleet." * Here ended his 
 hope of enriching himself by this enterprise. To the 
 Spaniards,, however, or rather to the Portuguese, the injury 
 was very great ; for rather than put themselves in hazard of 
 him and his fleet, " they chose to give over their voyage, and 
 lose the excessive charge they had been put unto in furnishing 
 their ships ; and these carracks lay at home without employ- 
 ment the whole year after ". Sanguine adventurers had 
 carried their hopes at this time very far : they thought that 
 the Indians, or rather the Portuguese in India, could not 
 subsist without those commodities which they received from 
 Portugal ; and that, if the outward-bound fleet were inter- 
 cepted, or prevented from sailing for three or four years, the 
 Portuguese Indians must have been compelled to trade with 
 England, rather than endure the want of European goods ; 
 and that in time the Indies might have been divided from 
 Portugal, especially if a younger son of the Prior D. Antonio 
 had been carried out, " whom, no doubt," says Monson, " they 
 might have been forced to accept as king". 
 
 The earl sailed now for the Canaries ; and having been 
 informed by some Spaniards, and by some of our own people 
 who had been prisoners there, that there dwelt a marquis 
 on the Island of Lancerota, whose ransom would be worth 
 100,000/., he determined upon attempting to surprise him. 
 But these persons, who undertook to pilot him into the road, 
 and then guide him to the castle, even in the darkness, had 
 nearly carried him upon a ledge of rocks in the road ; so he 
 was fain to cast anchor till the morning ; and then, though 
 he had " no hope left to catch the marquis," unless he were 
 to shut himself up in the castle, yet the earl thought it meet 
 to set all his soldiers on shore, seeing that he had never till 
 then given them any training, and " well knew many of them 
 to be very raw, and unpractised to service at land". The 
 
 * Purchas, 1151.
 
 142 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 day selected for the service was Good Friday. The earl, in 
 fear of an ague from the cold which he had taken in the last 
 night's watching, confined himself to his cabin, "took some 
 strong physic, and was let blood" ; and Sir John Berkeley 
 was sent in command of the men, it being certain that the 
 place could make no resistance against such a force. They 
 landed near Porto de Naos. The guide said the chief town 
 upon the island, Cayas, or Rubicon (from whence the bishops 
 of the Canary Islands were styled Bishops of Rubicon, till the 
 Island of Gran Canaria was conquered), was but three miles 
 from the landing-place ; it proved more than three leagues, 
 and of "the most wicked marching for loose stones and 
 sand ". The town was abandoned before they reached it ; 
 only, as they marched, " the mountaineers would watch if any 
 straggled, and desperately assault them with their lances,* 
 being so swift of foot that none could come near them ". The 
 castle was about half a mile from the town, within and about 
 which were now some four or five score men ; but they retired 
 without fighting, and the privateers took possession of it. 
 They found within it twelve or more brazen guns, ..." the 
 least bases, the most culverins and demi-culverins, and an 
 innumerable company of stones laid in places of greatest 
 advantage. The house itself, built of squared stones, flanked 
 very strongly and cunningly both for offence and defence ; 
 the entrance thereunto not, as in our forts, of equal height 
 with the foundation ground, but raised about a pike's length 
 in height, so that, without the use of a ladder, there could be 
 no entering. Some of our wisest commanders said, that if 
 
 * " When a piece is presented to them, so soon as they perceive the 
 cock or match to fall, they cast themselves flat to the ground, and the 
 report is no sooner heard, but they are upon their feet, their stones out 
 of their hands, and withal they charged with their pikes ; and this in 
 scattered encounters, or single fight (for either they knew not, or neglect 
 orderly battalion), oftener giveth than receiveth hurt" (Layfield in 
 Purchas, 1156).
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 143 
 
 they had drawn in their ladders, and only shut the door, 
 twenty men might have kept it against 500." * 
 
 Lancerota was the first of the Canary Islands upon which 
 the Europeans established themselves. A party of Norman 
 adventurers, under Jehan de Betancour, landed there in 
 1400 ; and their history is the exact prototype of Columbus's. 
 They were hospitably received ; they took advantage of that 
 hospitality to construct a fort ; they left a garrison there ; 
 and that garrison behaved "in such a licentious and cruel 
 manner towards the king and the nation," that their com- 
 mander and many others were deservedly cut off, and the 
 survivors reduced to the last extremity when the conquerors 
 returned there. t We know not enough of the Canarians, to 
 perceive how far they deserved the misery which the Spaniards 
 brought upon them ; but for the Spaniards here, as in the 
 West Indies, and along the coast of America, the sins of the 
 fathers were visited upon the children ; and the English, the 
 buccaneers, and the Algerines,J were to them what they had 
 been to the indigenous inhabitants. The Earl of Cumberland's 
 object in touching at these islands was no better than that of 
 the Algerines ; but it was not worse than what the warfare 
 of the age, by common consent, allowed of ; and nothing 
 occurred here to fill him with compunction in his latter days. 
 " No further harm was done to the town or castle, than that 
 of borrowing some necessaries," for which no payment was 
 intended. The town is described as consisting at that time 
 of somewhat more than 100 houses, rudely built, and com- 
 monly of one story ; the roofs with just sufficient sloping to 
 cast off the rain, " covered only with canes or straw laid upon 
 
 * Purchas, 1151, 1155, 1156. Glas., 219, 220. 
 
 t Glas., iv., ii, 12. 
 
 I In 1618, the Algerines carried off above 1600 persons, being nearly 
 the whole population of the island. They were ransomed by the King 
 of Spain, and sent back (Glas., 218, 219).
 
 144 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 a few rafters, and very dirt cast upon them, which, being 
 hardened by the sun, becometh shower-proof". There was 
 an old church, which was, indeed, the mother church of 
 those islands, a poor structure, having "no windows, nor 
 admitting light otherwise than by the door ; it had no 
 chancel, but was one undivided room, with stone seats along 
 the side, and at the one end an altar, with the appurtenants". 
 There was also an unfinished convent, which was a neat 
 quadrangular building, " with more commodities of fresh 
 water and garden than any other place in the town, even 
 the marquis's house". "Nothing, in a manner," says the 
 chaplain, "was left in the town, saving bulls, and pardons, 
 and divers houses, and good store of very excellent wine and 
 cheese." Of the quality of the wine, Dr. Layfield was 
 probably a more competent judge than the earl, who upon 
 that Good Friday kept an involuntary fast : his lordship says, 
 that "some little wine only was found, which little was too 
 much ; for it distempered so many, that if there had been a 
 strong enemy to have attempted, they should have found 
 drunken resistance ; the meaner sort being most overthrown 
 already ; and the commanders, some distempered with wine, 
 some with pride of themselves, or scorn of others ; so as 
 there were very few of them but that fell to most disorderly 
 outrage one with another. It was, in fact, a mutinous 
 disorder of drunkenness " ; * and Sir John Berkeley, " with 
 much grief, told the earl that if he took not some severe 
 course to remedy these things, it would be the ruin of their 
 voyage ". The earl, therefore, went out here the next day to 
 see the men trained, the greater part of whom he found 
 " both rude and raw " ; and calling all the commanders 
 before him, he rebuked them for their yesterday's conduct, 
 and gave articles both for their courses at land and sea, 
 reading to them his commission, that they might know he 
 
 * Monson, 192.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 145 
 
 had full power to execute the punishment which he had set 
 down for every offence, and assuring them he would not be 
 slow in so doing if they offended. 
 
 One of the fleet, which had not been ready to sail with 
 them from England, joined company between Gran Canaria 
 and Teneriffe, and brought some English prisoners who had 
 escaped in a fishing-boat from Lisbon. These men reported 
 that the carracks, in consequence of his departure from the 
 coast, were to sail in a few days ; and some days accordingly 
 were spent in waiting for them, till it became certain either 
 that they had gone by, or (as was afterwards ascertained) had 
 given up the voyage for that year. The captains and masters 
 then having agreed that it was not fit to tarry any longer 
 upon that hope, counsel was held concerning their further 
 proceedings, and some were for an attempt upon Pernambuco, 
 which had been so far contemplated from the beginning, 
 that the earl had brought with him his old Portuguese pilots, 
 well acquainted with the Brazilian ports. These pilots thought 
 the season too far spent, for they had often at that season 
 been obliged to put back to Lisbon, and, "on their last 
 passage, had been six or seven weeks in getting one degree " : 
 some of the adventurers, however, replied, "that it might 
 fall out otherwise, and that though they might be long in 
 getting thither, yet they were sure of winning the place 
 easily, and gaining wealth enough by the conquest ". The earl 
 felt it was now time to disclose his own intentions, being " so 
 far shot to the southward, that he was sure not to meet with 
 any going to the northward, so that no news of him could 
 reach Spain till it came from the Indies ". " Then laid I 
 before them," said he, " how our men were already many of 
 them sick, and that undoubtedly the crossing the line would 
 keep them from recovering, although the passage were as 
 good as man could wish. Besides, I remembered them of 
 intelligence given us, both upon the coast of Spain and the 
 island, that the king had sent thither, to defend the place 
 
 10
 
 146 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 against me, 600 soldiers ; and also it was likely he had given 
 order, that if they saw themselves not strong enough to resist, 
 they should flee with their portable goods into the mountains, 
 and set their sugar and Brazil wood on fire ; then were we 
 sure to have nothing. And lastly, if we beat long under the 
 line, undoubtedly most of our men would fall sick, and then 
 should we be forced to return without doing anything ; for 
 to no other place could we go, once bearing up upon that 
 occasion." Perceiving by their silence that what he said had 
 produced the desired effect, he proceeded to say, that, not to 
 conceal longer what hitherto had been kept secret for the 
 good of all, the truth was, he had "never any intention to 
 go for Brazil, after he found that they could not leave 
 England before Christmas ; but that the West Indies was 
 his object," where there were many probabilities to make a 
 voyage by, as, first, the sacking of Margarita, which they 
 knew was rich ; then Puerto Rico ; after that St. Domingo ; 
 then, in July, the outward-bound fleet would be in the Acoa, 
 where we could not miss them ; and if these gave us not 
 content, in the end of July or August we should meet the 
 fleet at Cape S. Antonio. Some of these projects, he 
 mentioned, "more," he says, "to carry the men with good 
 liking thither, than for any thought he had of them himself". 
 All entering unto his views "with greedy desire and hope- 
 ful expectation, he directed them each to make the best of 
 his way for Dominica, thinking it better to go straggling 
 thither, there being possibility to meet some purchase by the 
 way, which they were most in likelihood of when they spread 
 furthest". There they had all arrived on 23rd of May, and 
 then they carried their sick on shore. The island was 
 inhabited only by Indians, who hated the Spaniards, and 
 liked the French no better, but were well pleased with 
 English visitors. They brought great store of potatoes, 
 plantains, pines, pepper, and tobacco, for which they most 
 desired to have swords, hatchets and knives in exchange ;
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 147 
 
 clothes, also, were very much in request with them ; but if 
 they could get none, beads or any gaudy baubles were 
 accepted. They spoke some Spanish words, . . . probably 
 enough for all the intercourse that was required. They 
 showed a great desire to obtain the same sort of acquaintance 
 with the language of their new friends : " some of them," says 
 the chaplain, "Avould point to most parts of his body, and 
 having told the name of it in the language of Dominica, he 
 would not rest till he were told it in English ; which having 
 once heard, he would repeat, till he could either name it right, 
 or at least till he thought it was right ; and so commonly it 
 would be, saving that to all words ending in a consonant they 
 always set the second vowel ; as, for chin they say chin-ne, so 
 making the monosyllables dissyllables". The chaplain 
 thought their "wits were able to direct them to things 
 bodily profitable " ; he describes them as using either a 
 broad sheet of basket-work, or a very broad leaf in its stead, 
 to shelter them against the rain, because it washed off their 
 red paint, which was so laid on, he said, that if you touched it, 
 you found it on your fingers. They made a drink of the 
 cassava or mandioc root ; " better of their pines (and it should 
 seem, says Layfield, that might be made an excellent liquor) ; 
 but the best, and reserved for the king's cup only, was of 
 potatoes". The earl brought the squadron into a goodly 
 bay, able to receive a greater navy than had been together 
 in the memory of that age : it was at the north-west end of 
 the island ; and his information directed him to seek for a hot 
 spring there, which he found fast by the side of a very fine 
 river. " The bath," says Layfield, " is as hot as either the 
 Cross Bath or the King's Bath in the city of Bath in England ; 
 and within three or four yards runneth into the river, which, 
 within a stone's cast, disburdeneth itself into the sea. Here 
 the sick men specially found good refreshing ; " and here 
 they remained till the 1st of June. It was thought con- 
 venient to take a muster of their companies here, "and
 
 148 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 something better to acquaint every one with his own colours" ; 
 but the weather proved so unfavourable that this could not 
 be done. 
 
 But notwithstanding the ill weather, the beauty of the 
 country made a strong impression upon those whose hearts 
 were not wholly set upon schemes of plunder. It is "so 
 mountainous/' says Layfield, " that the valleys may better be 
 called pits than plains ; and withal so unpassably woody, 
 that it is marvellous how those naked souls can pull themselves 
 through them, without renting their natural clothes. Some 
 speak of more easy passages in the inland of the island, which 
 makes it probable that they leave those skirts and edges of 
 their country thus of purpose for a wall of defence. Their 
 hills are apparelled with very goodly green trees, of many 
 sorts. The tallness of these unrequested trees makes the 
 hills seem more hilly than of themselves happily they are ; 
 for they grow so like good children of some happy civil body, 
 without envy or oppression, as that they look like a proud 
 meadow about Oxford, when, after some irruption, Thames is 
 again couched low within his own banks, leaving the earth's 
 mantle more ruggy and flakey than otherwise it would have 
 been ; yea, so much seem these natural children delighted 
 with equality, and withal with multiplication, that, having 
 grown to a definite stature, without desire of overtopping 
 others, they willingly let down their boughs, which, being 
 come to the earth again, take root, as it were to continue the 
 succession of their decaying progenitors ; and yet they do 
 continually maintain themselves in a green good-liking, 
 through the liberality, partly of the sun's neighbourhood, 
 which provideth them, in that nearness to the sea, of exceed- 
 ing showers ; partly of many fine rivers, which, to requite the 
 shadow and coolness they receive from the trees, give them 
 back again a continual refreshing of very sweet and tasty 
 water." * 
 
 * Purchas, 1158.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 149 
 
 The weather, and the difficulty of finding an open piece of 
 ground of sufficient extent, having rendered it impossible for 
 the earl to muster his people here, he sailed, on the 1st of 
 June, for the Virgin Islands, and on the afternoon of the 
 3rd, came to an anchor. A fit place having been discovered 
 on one of these uninhabited islands that evening, the land 
 forces went ashore betimes on the following morning, being 
 Whitsunday. There he took a perfect muster of them. 
 The companies, indeed (though after much sickness), were 
 "goodly in number, one might well say, not so few as a 
 thousand". When they had been trained "into all sorts and 
 faces of fights," the earl, who found it, he says, " for many 
 respects meet to speak to them, commanded the drums to 
 beat a call ; and the troops being drawn in the nearest 
 closeness that conveniently they might be, that he might be 
 heard of all, his lordship, standing under a great cliff of a 
 rock, his prospect to the seaward, stepped upon one of the 
 greater stones, which, added to his natural stature, gave him a 
 pretty height above the other company ; and so commanding 
 audience, made a speech to them". We have the harangue 
 preserved, as nearly as he could remember it, in his own 
 unfinished relation. " Kind countrymen and fellow-soldiers," 
 said he, " I am sure there is none here but have marked, 
 and the wisest wonder at my light regarding the many gross 
 faults committed among you, suffering eveiy man to do what 
 be would, and urging no man further than he listed. Many 
 courses drew me to this patience ; only one I will now utter, 
 the rest being fitter to conceal to myself than to make so 
 many acquainted with. The great hope of meeting the 
 carracks made me hope for a short journey ; which, if it had 
 happened, I thought it better to return with every man's 
 good word, than by punishing of any to have their ill word 
 at my return. But that hope is altogether past ; and now 
 we are settled to another course, which, though it may be 
 will not prove altogether so rich, and must of force keep us
 
 150 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 longer abroad, yet I assure you, upon my honour and con- 
 science, I do constantly believe there will spring out of it 
 more glory to God, more service to our prince and country, 
 and more honour to ourselves, than could have been done 
 by the carracks if we had taken them all. For the better 
 performance we must fall to another course ; I in governing, 
 you in obeying ; I in directing you what to do, you in follow- 
 ing my directions ; to which end I have already delivered 
 you certain articles. And though these twenty days at the 
 least you have had them amongst you, yet fear I there are 
 some which wish they could but light upon so much as they 
 would conceal from me. Base conditions be hateful things 
 in men professing arms ; there is none baser than theft, and 
 110 theft so base as for a man to steal from his own com- 
 panion : and he that concealeth anything gotten in this 
 journey, stealeth from every man in it, ... all going to have 
 their part of whatsoever is gotten. This I thought not unfit 
 particularly to touch, because the speech hath given great 
 offence to the whole army, and no doubt may encourage some 
 of lewd and base humours among us to do the like. But let 
 the warning I now give you drive these thoughts out of their 
 thoughts that hold them ; and be also a warning that they 
 heedfully observe the rest of the articles. For, I assure you, 
 my over-patient and forced sluggish humour is shaken off; 
 and I will neither oversee, nor suffer to pass unpunished, ill 
 deservers." * 
 
 As they were now within a day's sail of Puerto Rico, he 
 appointed officers for the field. Twelve companies were 
 made up, whereof if any " wanted the full number of eighty, 
 they were plentifully supplied by a large overplus of gallant 
 gentlemen that followed his lordship's colours, borne by Cap- 
 tain Bromley; and Sir John Berkeley also had another eighty; 
 so that the whole army appointed to land was near upon a 
 
 * Purchas, 1158, 1159.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 151 
 
 thousand, especially seeing that the officers of several com- 
 panies were not reckoned in these numbers". It was now 
 debated whether to pass through the Virgins, which many of 
 the masters and sea captains would have preferred as the 
 nearer way, and there were divers on board, both soldiers and 
 mariners, who had gone this way with Drake ; or to hold the 
 old course through the Passages. The first was the nearer 
 but more dangerous way, being, says Layfield, very narrow, 
 about the breadth of the Thames near London, and they 
 durst not pi'omise themselves the continuance of a leading 
 wind. The earl, however, determined upon the farther and 
 safer course ; more desiring, he said, to be the first that 
 took Puerto Rico, than the second that passed through the 
 Virgins. On the morning of the 5th, two small pinnaces 
 were sent forward to explore the landing, Captain Knotsford, 
 who was in one of them, having been Sir John Hawkins's 
 pilot, and esteemed to be very expert in those countries. 
 The fleet lingered till it was dark, and then putting out all 
 sails, came to them undiscovered a little after midnight. But 
 the pinnaces had found the distance more than had been 
 supposed ; it was dark before they reached the place which 
 they went to discover, and for fear of carrying the earl to 
 leeward, they had tarried for him and done nothing. He 
 stood off and on till morning, and then descried what ap- 
 peared to him a smooth landing-place ; but all who had 
 been with Drake insisted that it was impossible to get there, 
 "the wind over-blowing all day out of the sea". The earl, 
 however, and Sir John Berkeley rowed thither, and found it 
 not only smooth but a most goodly sandy bay, and that they 
 might march all along by the sea-side till they came to the 
 town. Well pleased with this, he gave orders that every 
 captain and ship should put their men in boats, and follow 
 his bloody colours, which he would have presently landed. 
 But some of the commanders objected that the march seemed 
 to be great, that none knew the way, and that if the town,
 
 152 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 as they had often heard, stood on an island, they should be 
 forced to return to their ships, not having means to get unto 
 it. " Gentlemen," said the earl, " a willing mind makes long 
 steps with great ease. I have been sick, and am not now 
 strong ; you shall go no farther nor faster than I will do 
 before you. For guides, we need no better than our eyes ; 
 the town standing by the sea-side, and we landing from the 
 sea, see no other but fair sandy bays all the way thither. 
 We might land much nearer, if we were sure there were 
 anywhere to leeward such a headland as this, that maketh 
 smooth landing within it ; but that being uncertain, I mean 
 to take this, which I do assuredly believe God hath directed 
 us unto ; for I am sure it is better than any ever told me of. 
 And for your last argument, that if it be an island we shall 
 not get into it, that reason is nothing ; for you see our boats 
 may row by us ; and when we shall come to any water, they 
 may set us over if it be deep ; in shallow places we shall pass 
 ourselves. So all you have said or can say being thoroughly 
 answered, let me have no more speaking, but get your men 
 all into your boats and follow in order as I have directed 
 you." Further, he told them, that in taking Puerto Rico, 
 they should possess the keys of all the Indies, and that 
 though there were not so many millions in the town as when 
 a greater force failed to take it, it was nevertheless rich, and 
 there were gold mines in the island. And if men of judg- 
 ment thought it was too strong for their strength to carry, 
 because it had already resisted a much stronger force, that 
 consideration ought to encourage them, seeing the more 
 cause would they have to be proud of taking it ; " and believe 
 me," he pursued, "assured we are to take it, now we see 
 where to land quietly ; the Indian soldiers live too pleasantly 
 to venture their lives ; they will make a great show, and 
 perhaps endure one brunt, but if they do any more, tear me 
 to pieces I" * 
 
 * Purchas, 1153, 1154.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 153 
 
 By eight in the morning the whole force was landed, 
 about a 1000 men, "in a most fine place/' says the earl, 
 " where not any wet his furniture nor saw an enemy ; by 
 which means all our troops were put in good order, and 
 were made much stronger than a small resistance before 
 we were marshalled would have made us ". The landing 
 was about four leagues from the town, toward which they 
 marched in the extreme heat of the day ; this, and the way 
 being sandy, would, he says, "no doubt have tired many, but 
 that going all along by the sea, they marched at pleasure 
 in it when they listed ; and besides, had the place whither 
 they were going still in sight, which, standing upon the top 
 of a hill, showed much nearer than it was". Commonly on 
 firm, sometimes on loose sand, yet it was a fair march for 
 three leagues, when a few horsemen who had been sent to 
 view their strength, came near enough to reconnoitre them, 
 then turned their horses and galloped away. They soon 
 fell in with a negro who was willing enough to be their 
 guide, but he neither spoke good English nor good Spanish ; 
 and moreover was in great fear, as well he might be, at 
 finding himself exposed to imminent danger on one side or 
 the other, whether he led them right or not. " Through 
 most unpassable rocks and cliffs," he brought them to the 
 entrance of an arm of the sea, by which the little island on 
 which the capital stands is separated from the main one. 
 The earl had expected to get over in his boats, but this he 
 saw was hindered by a bulwark on the island side, close at 
 the mouth of the entrance, with five pieces of great brass 
 ordnance. The entrance was not above sixty yards over, and 
 a little within stopped quite across with piles ; so that while 
 the Spaniards occupied this fort it was not possible to get 
 in there. There were some who proposed to plant musque- 
 teers among the rocks, that they might beat those in the 
 fort from their guns ; but though this was thought feasible, 
 it was not determined on, because, if the fort had been
 
 154. ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 silenced, they were ignorant of the depth ; and the boats 
 had not yet found any landing-place. "And here," the 
 chaplain says, "we were at a flat bay, even at our wits' end." 
 The earl, however, was sure there must be some good passage 
 by which the horsemen had come ; " and with much ado the 
 negro, being something comforted, and partly with threaten- 
 ing, partly with promises, brought to the little wits he had," 
 was made to understand whither they wanted to be guided. 
 " When," says the earl, " I perceived he understood me, I 
 followed him through the most wickedest wood that ever I 
 was in in all my life." The troops went on " with as nimble 
 minds as weary bodies, for they had marched from morning 
 till it was even on the edge of the evening, but they would 
 not be weary ; and, at length, through such untrodden paths, 
 or rather no paths, as would have taught," the chaplain 
 observes, "the most proud body to stoop humbly," they came 
 upon the footing of the horsemen, and following their beaten 
 track, came just at sunset to a long and narrow causeway, 
 leading to a bridge, which connected the great island with 
 the lesser one. The causeway was wide enough for three 
 persons abreast, and the bridge was drawn up : on the op- 
 posite bank was a strong barricade, and a little beyond it a 
 fort with ordnance. They learnt from another negro, that 
 at low water the passage was fordable beside the causeway ; 
 " but their own sailors could say little to the ebbing and 
 flowing here ; " and the only way to know the fit time of 
 assault Avas to set a continual watch, to give present informa- 
 tion of the ebb. Two in the morning was the time which 
 the negro stated. The troops, therefore, were ordered to 
 rest and refresh themselves, for the better enabling them to 
 fight in the morning.* 
 
 * Purchas, 1154, 1160. Thus far the earl's own narrative of the 
 voyage extends. "The same honourable hand," says Purchas, "hath 
 been our actor and author ; but here, when he comes to doing, he breaks 
 off speaking, and (tarn Martc quam Mercuric) exchangeth words for
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 155 
 
 They retired to a piece of open ground over which they 
 had passed. The negro guided them to some fresh water ; 
 some had brought bread with them, and the earl "was no 
 niggard of what he had ". His lodging that night was his 
 target. " I," says the chaplain, " lay at his head, and to my 
 remembrance never slept better. Two hours before day the 
 alarum was given very quietly, and was readily taken, for we 
 needed not but to shake our ears." There grew a question 
 concerning the command that day, between Berkeley and 
 the earl, arising from an honourable desire on both sides 
 to have the post of danger. The earl yielded to a fair plea, 
 becomingly urged, and to the representation that, being the 
 general, it behoved him, for the sake of the army, to consider 
 his own preservation ; nevertheless he persisted in being at 
 the service in person, though he left Sir John with the com- 
 mand ; and he put himself in armour, as did all the corn- 
 swords, and mercurial arts into martial acts." He then often declares 
 the reason which induced him to leave out apolitical discourse, and state- 
 moral mystery of this history, written by the same noble commander. 
 " The times," he says, " are altered, and howsoever planets have their 
 peculiar course, fixed stars must move with their orb, and follow the 
 first movable. The men of Bethshemesh bought dearly their prying 
 into the ark ; and I know not how I may be tolerated to utter now in 
 public those state mysteries which he then in private counselled for his 
 country's good. I could also be willing, as I know the world would be 
 greedy of such morsels ; but ^Esop's dog, snatching at the shadow of a 
 morsel in the water, lost that which he had in his mouth ; and his crow, 
 gaping to sing to please the fox, displeased herself with loss of all her 
 other wealth and purchase. Everywhere in this vast work we have been 
 wary, and yet scarce wary enough of this danger in our wariest wariness ; 
 wherein yet (if any such fault be) it is not an itching finger, busy in 
 things above us, but store of business in so multiform a task, perhaps, 
 hath occasioned oversight to eyes, otherwise dim enough. Once whatso- 
 ever the king and state disclaim, I disclaim also as not mine, because I 
 and mine are theirs, and no further desire to be, or see mine own than in 
 the public; of which, and for which (under God) I am, have, can, write, 
 do, speak, acknowledge all things. I will pry in the East and West 
 Indies, rather than state it at home" (p. 1154).
 
 156 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 manders, and who else had armour, for they looked that the 
 service should be hot. So, indeed, it proved ; the enemy's 
 sentinels discovered them as they approached ; the Spaniards 
 were perfectly prepared ; and the member of the Church 
 militant, when he declares it may be well said that it was 
 well fought by his comrades, says also, that if it had been 
 day, and every one could have seen what he did, so many 
 would probably not have deserved so much commendation. 
 The assault continued about two hours ; and " though the 
 assailants left no way in the world unattempted, yet no way 
 could they find to enter the gate ". The causeway, he says, 
 had been purposely made so rugged, that the adventurers, in 
 order to keep their feet, chose to wade in the water beside 
 it. The earl's shield-bearer stumbled, and falling against the 
 earl overthrew him into the water, where, being by reason of 
 his armour unable to rise, he was in great danger of drowning. 
 It was not till a second attempt, that the sergeant-major, 
 who was next him, succeeded in getting him out, and not 
 till he had swallowed so much salt water as to cause such 
 extremity of sickness, that he was forced to lie down in the 
 very place upon the causeway, till, being somewhat recovered, 
 he was able to be led to a spot of more ease, where the 
 bullets made him threatening music on every side ; and there 
 he remained till the end of the action, lying upon the ground, 
 "very exceeding sick," in a place so perilous that it would 
 have been as safe to be at the entry of a breach by assault.* 
 
 The assailants had the advantage of numbers, but they 
 were in a position where that advantage could not avail them. 
 " Not less than 3000 English bullets were sent among the 
 Spaniards, who, on their part, were not much behind the 
 invaders in sending these heavy leaden messengers of death ; 
 for besides six pieces of great ordnance which played just 
 upon the causeway, and some pretty store of musqueteers, 
 
 * Purchas, 1161.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 157 
 
 at a port fast by the gate there lay a fowler, or cast piece, 
 that did more scathe than all the rest, for this shot at once 
 many murdering shot, wherefore the piece is also called a 
 murderer." Yet the English came to the gate, and some 
 two or three began to hew at it with bills, for want of fitter 
 instruments ; others meantime were at the push of the pike 
 at the ports and loop-holes, and having broken their own 
 pikes seized those of their enemies with their naked hands 
 and broke them. With all these exertions they could not 
 force an entrance, and Berkeley, attempting to discover if a 
 passage could be found on either side of the gate, twice 
 waded so far that he got into deep water, and must have 
 perished if he could not have swam. The end was that the 
 tide came in ; and when day began to break, the water, 
 which had been knee-deep, was up to the waist ; daylight 
 would have enabled the Spaniards to sweep the causeway 
 with their guns, and the English were brought off in good 
 time to the place where they had passed the night. " God," 
 the chaplain says, " would not have more bloodshed, nor 
 our troops as yet to have their wills." The loss in killed 
 and wounded was something less than fifty. As soon as the 
 surgeons had looked to the wounded, the men were marched 
 to the sea-side, where the boats had been ordered to meet 
 them with food/'" 
 
 While they refreshed themselves there, the earl went on 
 board, being still so sick that some danger was apprehended. 
 His intention had been to rest on board that night, but his 
 thoughts were so busied and restless that in a few hours he 
 had digested another plan of operations, and came on shore 
 again to put it in execution. The resolution was to attack 
 the fort at the entrance of the channel ; and believing it 
 necessary to carry this, at whatever cost, he ordered one of 
 the ships to bear in close to the shore, though the danger of 
 
 * Purchas, 1161.
 
 158 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 her driving upon the rocks was apparent. Some fifty mus- 
 queteers were stationed upon the broken ground opposite ; 
 from whence it had before been noted that they might beat 
 the enemy from their guns. At the same time 200 men 
 were embarked in boats, that they might effect a landing 
 between the forts and the town. In the course of an hour, 
 the ship and the musqueteers had so beaten the fort that 
 the boats landed at leisure, and this advantage was gained 
 with the loss of only one man killed and three wounded ; 
 but as it had been apprehended, the ship went upon the 
 rocks, and finally was cast away. The Spaniards met them 
 after they were landed, and skirmished awhile gallantly, till, 
 finding themselves the weaker party, they effected an honour- 
 able retreat into a wood, on the skirt whereof they had made 
 their stand : the invaders then advanced to the fort, which 
 had been forsaken, and there they established themselves 
 for the night. By the time the boats returned for a second 
 embarkation it was late at night, and the water so low that 
 there could be no passage till the next flood ; so the com- 
 panies were again marched to the safe ground on which they 
 had taken up their lodging before ; there they rested and 
 refreshed themselves, waiting for the tide, crossed there as 
 soon as it served, and being thus in the smaller island, they 
 now made little doubt of complete success. The distance 
 was about a mile and half from the town, the way woody on 
 either side, and so narrow that not more than three men 
 could march abreast ; yet though the ground was so fit for 
 ambuscades, " or," says Layfield, " for the Irish manner of 
 charging, by sudden coming on and off/' no attempt was 
 made to oppose or annoy their march. By day-break they 
 reached the town, and found none but women there, and men 
 whom either age or infirmity or wounds had disabled ; the 
 rest had betaken them to one of their forts to the seaward, 
 called Mora.* 
 
 * Purchas, 1161, 1162,
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 159 
 
 The city of San Juan de Puerto Rico is described at that 
 time as less in circuit than Oxford, "but very much bigger 
 than all Portsmouth within the fortifications, and in sight 
 much fairer". There was not much lost ground within that 
 space, the buildings having increased one-fourth within the 
 three preceding years. The streets were large, the houses 
 built after the Spanish manner, of two stories height only, but 
 very strongly, and the rooms " goodly and large, with great 
 doors, instead of windows, for receipt of air ". " The cathedral 
 was inferior to the poorest of our cathedral churches ; and 
 yet," says the chaplain, " it is fair and handsome ; two rows 
 of proportionable pillars make two aisles, besides the middle 
 walk, and thus all along up to the high altar. It is darker than 
 commonly country churches in England, for the windows are 
 few and little, and those indeed without glass (whereof there 
 is none to be found in the town) but covered with canvas, so 
 that the most of the light is received by the doors." The 
 earl, as soon as he had taken full possession of the town, set 
 sufficient guard, and quartered his companies, summoned the 
 fort, requiring the governor to deliver it up to him for the 
 Queen of England, who had sent him thither to take it ; the 
 governor returned for answer that the King of Spain had sent 
 him thither to keep it, and keep it he would as long as he 
 was able. It was now a great object with the earl to reduce 
 it with the least possible loss, for he considered that he was 
 to leave a strong garrison, and yet must himself go home well 
 guarded. His first care was to cut off all their means of 
 supply ; and for this purpose boats were stationed between 
 the fort and the main ; two batteries also were provided, in 
 case the enemies' food should last longer than he wished. 
 They were ready on the ninth day after the capture of the 
 town too late to be then opened ; and the morrow being Sun- 
 day, he would not begin on that day ; so it was deferred till the 
 next morning.* 
 
 * Purchas, 1162, 1164.
 
 160 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 "The noise of war meantime was not so great, but that 
 the still voice of justice was well heard." "It is no news," 
 says Layfield, " that in such companies there will be outrages 
 committed." One very good soldier the earl publicly dis- 
 graced for " over-violent spoiling a gentlewoman of her 
 jewels ". But as this example did not prove terrible enough 
 to the rest, he called a court-martial, that justice might be 
 armed with the authority of all the commanders ; and two 
 were condemned to death upon the article of defacing 
 churches and offering force to women. " He that did 
 violence to a Spaniard's wife, was a soldier, and had given 
 very good proof of his valour ; so far, that his lordship had 
 taken special notice of him ; but, being convicted of this 
 crime, there was no place left for mercy ; but hanged he 
 was in the market-place, the Spaniards, as many as would 
 come, being suffered to be present at the execution. The 
 other, who had defaced a church, was a sailor ; great inter- 
 cession was made for him by the importunity of the sailors." * 
 According to Monson, " there was occasion at that time to 
 please them above the soldiers : twice he was taken from the 
 gallows, while endeavours were used in vain to obtain his 
 pardon, but when he was brought out the third time the earl 
 allowed himself to be entreated ". It was, indeed, a case in 
 which the feelings of his people went with the offender, for 
 the soldiers " could not be held from defacing unorderly the 
 images of the saints. They were, however, brought by these 
 examples to much better terms of rule and obedience." f 
 
 On Monday " the batteries began to speak very loud ; and 
 whereas till then four or five soldiers could not appear within 
 reach of the fort, but that a shot of great ordnance would be 
 sent to scatter them, scarce a Spaniard was now to be seen 
 upon any part of their wall ". In the course of one day it 
 was perceived that the cavalier was sufficiently beaten, and 
 
 * Purchas, 1165. Monson, 193. f Purchas, 1164, 1167.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 161 
 
 that with the next rain (which at that season was neither 
 seldom nor little) it would fall ; being of a sandy earth, it did 
 but crumble into dust. The cannoneers were directed there- 
 fore to "beat the other point nearer the sea, for that so 
 flanked the gate and the breach already made, that without 
 great danger there could not any approach be made, and his 
 lordship was grown exceedingly niggardly of the expense of 
 any one man's life ". By the middle of the ensuing day the 
 Spaniard demanded a parley, and proposed to give up the 
 fort, on condition that " with colours flying, match in their 
 cocks and bullets in their mouths, they should be set without 
 the point of the bridge, and go whither they would ; that all 
 prisoners should be delivered without ransom, and no man's 
 negroes or slaves be detained ". The earl utterly refused any 
 such composition ; but told him that because he took no 
 pleasure in shedding Christian blood, he would deliver them 
 terms, which if they liked, he would receive them to mercy. 
 These articles were sent to the governor in the earl's own 
 hand, and in these characteristic words : 
 
 " A resolution which you may trust to. 
 
 " I am content to give yourself and all your people their 
 lives : yourself with your captains and officers to pass with 
 your arms ; all the rest of your soldiers with their rapiers and 
 daggers only. 
 
 " You shall all stay here with me, till I give you passage from 
 the island, which shall be within thirty days. 
 
 " Any one of you which I shall choose shall go with me into 
 England, but shall not stay longer there than one month, but 
 being well fitted for the purpose, shall be safely sent home 
 into Spain without ransom." 
 
 It was doubted whether there were any in the fort who 
 understood English, and therefore some advised that the 
 articles should be translated into Spanish : " but his lordship 
 peremptorily refused to seek their language, but would have 
 them to find out his ". He gave them respite for deliberation 
 
 11
 
 162 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 till eight the next morning, and at that time the conditions 
 were accepted, the Spaniards only desiring further, that they 
 might have two colours left them, in lieu of which they 
 promised that nothing should be spoiled in the fort. The 
 governor and his company dined with the earl : after dinner 
 he returned to the fort, brought out the men, nearly 400, and 
 delivered the keys to the earl, who immediately brought in 
 his own colours and Sir John Berkeley's, and placed them 
 upon the two points of the fort. Everything hitherto had 
 been conducted not only honourably but courteously on 
 either side : the Spaniards took all their property with them, 
 and were secured in Portal eza, a strong castle in the city, 
 which they had not attempted to defend. On the following 
 day the fleet entered the harbour, the fort Mora "being to 
 the sea very strong, and fitted with goodly ordnance, and 
 bestowed for the most advantage to annoy an enemy that 
 possibly could be devised, insomuch that it was thought im- 
 possible for any vessel to pass that point if its passage were 
 opposed by her guns. Yet was it very dangerous to ride 
 without, as the invaders found by the loss of many anchors 
 and cables, and one of their ships.'' 
 
 The prisoners were sent to Carthagena, as a place so far 
 to the leeward that they neither, in haste, could make any 
 preparation for the recovery of Puerto Rico, nor send news to 
 Spain. The governor and some few others who deserved 
 some respect, were put on board the ships that convoyed 
 them, and were permitted to proceed in those ships to 
 England. The earl's "honourable resolution and intend- 
 ment," as the chaplain called it, " was not to come so far for 
 the sake of taking and spoiling some place in the new world, 
 and then run home again, but to keep Puerto Rico, by God's 
 leave, if it pleased God to give it into his hands. That was 
 the place he meant to carry, whatsoever it might cost him, 
 being the very key of the West Indies, which locketh and 
 shutteth all the gold and silver on the continent, and America,
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 163 
 
 and Brazil : " such was his * opinion of its importance. He 
 knew, says Layfield, that St. Domingo might, with much less 
 loss, be taken, and would bring much greater profit for the 
 present ; in regard thereof, and of the desire he had his ad- 
 venturers should become gainers, his thoughts sometimes 
 took that way, but finally they stayed at Puerto Rico, and 
 there settled themselves. As this was his resolution before 
 he had it, so was it also after he had it, and then not only 
 his, but every man of worth or spirit saw such reason in his 
 lordship's designment, that some thought themselves not 
 graciously dealt with in being passed over, while others were 
 named to stay. He was indeed persuaded that though the 
 " eminent and known profits " of the place were ginger, sugar 
 and hides, + yet the island was rich in gold mines, and that the 
 
 * Sir William Monson had formed a very different opinion. 
 " Whereas," he says, " all men's actions have a reasonable show of 
 likelihood of good to redound to them in their intended enterprises, yet 
 cannot I conceive how a land attempt upon towns could yield my lord 
 any profit, or the merchants that adventured with him. For my lord 
 by experience well knew, having been himself at the taking of some 
 towns, that they afforded little wealth to the taker, because riches of 
 value will be either burned or secretly conveyed away. And for mer- 
 chandises of great bulk which that poor island yielded, it was only some 
 few hides, black sugar and ginger, which would not amount to any 
 great matter, to countervail the charge of so costly a journey. Com- 
 monly that island sends out two or three ships of a reasonable burden 
 to transport the yearly commodities it yieldeth ; for though it bears the 
 name of being in the Indies, yet it is a place remote and unfrequented 
 with traffic, either from the Indies or any other place ; or though the 
 island should be surprised at such a season of the year as their com- 
 modities were ripe and ready for transportation, yet the value is not to 
 be esteemed, where so many people that adventured with my lord were 
 to look up for a dividend according to their adventure " (p. 191). 
 
 t " There is so incredible abundance of horses," says the chaplain, 
 " that it is lawful for any man to kill what he needeth for his use, if only 
 he be so honest as to bring the skins to the proper owners. Now these 
 hides must rise to a huge sum of riches, considering that their cattle are 
 Jar larger than any country that I know in England doth yield ; for
 
 164 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 King of Spain, in his policy, had ceased to work them, because 
 of their very productiveness ; " the sweetness he found made 
 him unwilling to have any co-partners ; " and seeing that 
 this island lay nearest the Indies to those people of whose 
 interloping he stood most in fear, " he would not lay such a 
 bait " to attract them, lest having once set foot there, " they 
 should not only gild their fingers, and pay their soldiers for 
 the present with his treasure," but "make it their halting- 
 place on the longer journey to the other islands and con- 
 tinent, which were the coffers from whence his wars were 
 fed ". Another view of recondite policy was imputed to the 
 Spanish king, who was supposed to reason thus, that if in 
 a shorter voyage and less time his subjects were sure to make 
 themselves masters of as much gold as if they went farther, 
 few would fetch it from Peru, or the other more inland parts 
 of the Indies. Moreover, it was reported to the conquerors 
 as a certain truth, that Joachin de Luyando,* formerly a 
 
 their kine that I have seen here are for goodliness, both of heads and 
 bodies, comparable with our English oxen. And I wot not how that 
 kind of beast hath specially a liking to these southerly parts of the 
 world above their horses, none of which I have seen by much so tall and 
 goodly as ordinarily they are in England. They are well made and 
 well mettled, and good store there are of them ; but methinks there are 
 many things wanting in them which are ordinary in our English light 
 horses. They are all trotters ; nor do I remember that I have seen 
 above one ambler, and that a very little fiddling nag" (p. 1171). 
 
 * This man, says Layfield, may be judged to have been of no great 
 either wit or care ; for it is certainly reported, that oftentimes meeting 
 his own slaves coming out of the country to his house in Puerto Rico 
 with store of gold, he did not know them to be his own, till themselves 
 told him so ; and yet this man died so very rich, that he left every of 
 his three sons 100,000 ducats. Insomuch, that the youngest of them 
 being in Spain upon the despatch of some business which his father had 
 left unsettled, was there thought of state so good that a marquis thought 
 his daughter well bestowed upon him in marriage. But see how 
 nothing will last where God, with His preserving blessing, doth not 
 keep things together. For at this day scarce is there any remainder left
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 165 
 
 mint master in the island, had sent the king a mass of pure 
 gold, which was found to be worth 3500 ducats ; and " divers 
 times he had found such pieces of pure ore,'- "that only by 
 splitting them he made himself trenchers of gold to eat his 
 meat on ".* Perhaps the military chaplain was as little likely 
 as any of those who were under his spiritual care to consider 
 how much happier this rich Joachin might have been if he 
 had remained in his own country, where he might have eaten 
 from a wooden trencher with as good an appetite, and a 
 better conscience. 
 
 The English apprehended no ill from the climate. From 
 three in the morning till six was the coolest part of the day ; 
 "a man might then well endure some light clothes upon 
 him; from six till about eight it was very 'sweltering';" 
 then a fresh breeze usually sprung up and continued to blow 
 till four or five in the aftenioon, during which time the 
 houses were comfortably cool : the hottest hours were from 
 thence till midnight ; and it was thought dangerous to be 
 abroad then because of the sereno, which Layfield translates, 
 "the rainy dew" : the soldiers who lay abroad in the fields 
 awoke wet with it. " Books had their glued backs melted 
 and loosened by the heat : flowers or fruits candied in 
 England lost their crust there, and English comfits grew 
 liquid ; " but after some little acquaintance he thought it 
 likely to prove a very healthful place, for they found hale 
 people there who were eighty or ninety years old. The 
 report of some mortality that had lately prevailed there 
 seems not to have disquieted them. " What place," said the 
 chaplain, " is always free from that scourge of God ? " But 
 
 of all his riches ; and this now most poor though great lady, not being 
 able to proportion herself to the lowness of her fortune, and besides 
 vexed with her husband's ill condition, hath, by authority, left him ; and 
 having entered religious profession, is at this present in a nunnery in 
 St. Domingo (p. 1170). 
 * Purchas, 1165, 1170.
 
 166 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 he soon discovered that the great rains in July and August 
 " must needs be very dangerous to bodies already rarefied by 
 the heat of the sun then over them, and yet rather where 
 vehement exercise hath more opened the pores whereby 
 inward heat is exhaled ". Early in July more than 200 had 
 died, there were twice as many sick, and "no great hope 
 to recover the most of them ". The disease was a flux, 
 " sometimes in the beginning accompanied with a hot ague, 
 but always in the end attended by an extreme debility and 
 waste of spirits, so that for some two days before death the 
 arms and legs would be wonderful cold, and this was held for 
 a certain sign of near departure ". From this mortality the 
 earl "saw it was not God's pleasure that this island as yet 
 should be inhabited by the English " ; and as soon as he 
 became conscious that it was not in his power to keep the 
 city which he had taken, he made overtures to the Spaniards 
 for ransoming it. They entertained these overtures without 
 any intention of coming to an agreement, but in hope of pro- 
 longing the time, till the prevailing distemper should have 
 so far weakened the invaders, that they should be unable to 
 destroy the place before they abandoned it. This, the chap- 
 lain affirms, had never been his lordship's purpose ; and it 
 appears that on his part he had not much expectation of 
 obtaining the ransom : but he thought such a negotiation the 
 likeliest way of deluding the islanders, " whom he could not 
 so well rule with any other bit, his own strength being now 
 grown weak ".* 
 
 Meantime all the hides, ginger and sugar which could be 
 collected were forthwith shipped, and so was all the ammuni- 
 tion in the city and all the ordnance which had been taken ; 
 "which amounted," says Layfield, "in all and of all sorts 
 very near the full number of fourscore cast pieces, some of 
 them the goodliest that I ever saw ". He also put on board 
 
 * Purchas, 1167, 1168.
 
 167 
 
 some specimens of the sensitive plant in pots, hoping that he 
 might succeed in conveying to England what appeared to 
 him and his people the most extraordinary production of the 
 island.* This done, he left the strength of the navy with 
 Sir John Berkeley, to follow him as soon as they were ready, 
 and sailed himself with two of the larger ships and seven 
 smaller ones. "The true reason of his desire to be gone 
 from Puerto Rico quickly was a desire he had to be at the 
 Azores, for he had so plotted the voyage, that still he would 
 have a string left in store for his bow, and he hoped to be 
 there before the Mexican fleet. The instructions which he 
 left with every ship, under his own hand, were in these 
 words : 'You shall steer in with the southward part of 
 Flores. If you find me not in that course, then seek me 
 between ten and fourteen leagues of Fayal, west-south-west. 
 If there you find me not, then come through betwixt Fayal 
 and the Pike, and seek me in the road at Graciosa. If you 
 find me at none of these places, you may be assured I am 
 gone from the islands to England.' He left order with 
 
 * " This herb," the chaplain says, " is a little contemptible weed to 
 look upon, with a long wooden stalk creeping upon the ground, and 
 seldom lifting itself above a handful high from the ground. But it hath 
 a property which confoundeth my understanding, and perhaps will seem 
 strange in the way of philosophers who have denied every part of sense 
 to any plant ; yet this certainly seemeth to have feeling. For if you lay 
 your finger or a stick upon the leaves of it, not only that very piece 
 which you touched, but that that is near to it, will contract itself, and 
 run together as if it were presently dead and withered ; not only the 
 leaves, but the very sprigs being touched, will so disdainfully withdraw 
 themselves as if they would slip themselves rather than be touched ; in 
 which state both leaf and sprig will continue a good while before it 
 return to the former green and flourishing form. And they say that so 
 long as the party which touched it standeth by it, it will not open, but 
 after his departure it will ; this last I did not myself observe, and if it be 
 so, it must be more than sense whence such a sullenness can proceed ; 
 but for the former, I have myself been often an eye-witness, to my great 
 wonder, for it groweth in very many places in the little island " (p. 1174).
 
 168 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Berkeley to leave the city undefaced, saving only that Fort 
 Mora should be rased to the landward." Both the earl's 
 division and Berkeley's were scattered in a storm ; the earl, 
 however, when he came off Flores, met with enough of his 
 ships to form a respectable force ; but he learnt that the 
 homeward-bound carracks were passed by, and that the 
 Mexican fleet was not expected : and upon this disappoint- 
 ment a council was held, and it was determined to return to 
 England without delay. They would probably have all been 
 wrecked upon Ushant and the rocks, if the earl had not, in 
 opposition to his master, judged from the soundings that 
 they were near the coast of France, and given orders there- 
 fore to take a more northerly course ; for the next morning 
 that coast was seen.* 
 
 This was his last expedition. No other subject ever under- 
 took so many at his own cost ; and Fuller gives him the dis- 
 tinction of being "the best born Englishman that ever 
 hazarded himself in that kind " ; adding, that his fleets were 
 "bound for no other harbour than the port of Honour, 
 though touching at the port of Profit in passage thereunto ; 
 I say touching (says the old worthy), for his design was not 
 to enrich himself, but impoverish the enemy. He was as 
 merciful as valiant (the best metal bows best), and left im- 
 pressions of both in all places where he came." Fuller 
 eulogises him as " a person wholly composed of true honour 
 and valour ". There were some other ingredients in his 
 character ; and when the Earl of Cumberland bore " next to 
 his paternal coats three murdering chain shots,' 7 such an 
 addition to his armorial bearings was more significant than he 
 intended it. The desire of gain must have influenced him in 
 his privateering speculations as much as the desire of honour ; 
 for a prodigal expenditure, and losses in horse-racing (which 
 species of gaming had in his days begun to be one of the 
 
 * Purchas, 1168, 1176.
 
 THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 169 
 
 follies of the great) had embarrassed his affairs. Next to his 
 voyages, this passion, and the display which he made at tilts, 
 and in all other expensive sports, " were the great occasion of 
 his selling land " ; and he is said to have " consumed more 
 than any one of his ancestors ".* The large expenditure 
 which his station required his own ample means could amply 
 have supported ; but no means are adequate to the demands 
 of prodigality. 
 
 When James came to take possession of his new kingdom, 
 this nobleman "attended him with such an equipage of 
 followers, for number and habit, that he seemed rather a 
 king than Earl of Cumberland. Here happened a contest 
 between the earl and the lord president of the north, about 
 carrying the sword before the king in York : the office, upon 
 due inquiry, was adjudged to him ; and whilst Clifford's 
 Tower," says Fuller, " is standing in York, that family will 
 never be therein forgotten." He died in the forty-eighth year 
 of his age, and was buried at Skipton. His armour may still 
 be seen in Appleby Castle. His two sons died in infancy ; 
 and the only daughter whom he left experienced little 
 of his love, for bequeathing to her 15,000/. he cut off the 
 entail of his estates and settled them upon his brother. 
 She contested the settlement without success ; but on the 
 death of that brother without issue the estates reverted to her. 
 This daughter, by her second marriage Countess of Pembroke, 
 was one of the most high-minded and remarkable women of 
 her age ; and seems to have been the last person in England 
 by whom the old baronial dignity of feudal times was supported. 
 All the good connected with it was manifested in this instance 
 without any of the evil. Daniel was her tutor, and she had 
 the honour of erecting Spenser's monument. 
 
 * Hist, of Westmoreland, 290.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 
 
 SIR JOHN HAWKINS, the second son of Master William 
 Hawkins and Joan Trelawny his wife, was born at 
 Plymouth. His father is said to have been much 
 esteemed by Henry VIII. as a principal sea-captain, and is 
 the first Englishman who is known to have traded to Brazil, 
 having made two voyages thither in his own ship, the Paul 
 of Plymouth, in the years 1530 and 1532.* Plymouth was 
 already a port so famous that the biographer of Devonshire 
 extols it as presenting "a kind of invitation from the com- 
 modiousness thereof to maritime noble actions " ; f and the 
 youth was brought up to his father's calling, and gained 
 much experience by making early in life several voyages 
 to Spain, Portugal, and the Canaries, " which were, in those 
 days, extraordinary adventures ". Being " grown in love and 
 favour" with the Canarians by his good and upright dealing, 
 and inquiring from them concerning the state of the West 
 Indies, he was assured that, "negroes were very good 
 merchandise in Hispaniola ; and that store of them might 
 easily be had upon the coast of Guinea". He resolved 
 upon trying his fortune in this trade ; and having communi- 
 cated that desire with his worshipful friends in London, Sir 
 Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, his father-in-law, Master 
 Gunson, Sir William Winter, and some others, they liked so 
 well of his intention that they became liberal contributors 
 and adventurers in the action. 
 
 Three good ships were accordingly provided, the Solomon 
 
 * Hakluyt, iii., 700. f Prince's Worthies.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 171 
 
 of 120 tons, the Swallow of 100, and the Jonas of 40, "in 
 which small fleet Hawkins took with him not above a hundred 
 men,* for fear of sickness and other inconveniences, whereunto 
 men in long voyages are commonly subject". He sailed in 
 October, 1562, touched at Teneriffe, where he received friendly 
 entertainment, and proceeded to Sierra Leone ; which place is 
 said to have been called Taggarin by the natives. There he 
 stayed some time, " and got into his possession, partly by the 
 sword, and partly by other means, to the number of 300 
 negroes at the least, besides other merchandise which that 
 country yieldeth ". With this prey (so it is properly denomi- 
 nated) he sailed for Hispaniola, and arrived first at the port of 
 Isabella, " where he had reasonable utterance of his English 
 commodities, and of some part of his negroes, trusting the 
 Spaniards no further than that by his own strength he was 
 able to master them ". At Puerto de Plata he made " like 
 sales, standing always upon his guard " ; and at Monte Christo, 
 on the north side of the island, " made vent " of the remainder 
 of his negroes, receiving for them, at these places, by way of 
 exchange, some quantity of pearls, and hides, ginger, sugar, 
 and "other like commodities," enough not only to load his 
 own vessels, but for freighting two other hulks ; f and so 
 "with prosperous success, and much gain to himself and the 
 aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in September, 
 1563". 
 
 It is now no honour to have been the first Englishman who 
 engaged in the slave trade. J But it is not generally known 
 
 * "Such," says Campbell, "were the beginnings of Britain's naval 
 power ! " With how little reflection must that inapt observation have 
 been written ! 
 
 t Hakluyt, iii., 500. 
 
 J This is ascribed to Hawkins ; but a sentence in Camden's history 
 (honourable to the historian) seems to throw some doubt upon it. " Black- 
 moor slaves," he says (108), "were now commonly bought in Africa by 
 the Spaniards, and, from their example, by the English, and sold again 
 in America ; how honestly I know not."
 
 172 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 how so iniquitous a trade grew up without being regarded as 
 in the slightest degree repugnant either to natural justice, or 
 to the principles of Christianity. At a time when European 
 warfare had been mitigated by the courtesies of chivalry, and 
 by the frequent changes of political relations, more than by 
 any growing sense of humanity, the wars between Mahomme- 
 dan and Christian were carried on with as much ferocity as 
 in the days of Coeur de Lion : only where the contending 
 parties, as in Spain, were continually opposed to each other, 
 such unrelenting butchery was disused by mutual though tacit 
 consent, because it would have reduced the land to a desert ; 
 and there those who fell into the hands of their enemies 
 were made slaves. The Portuguese, having cleared their own 
 territory, invaded the Moors in Barbary ; the same system 
 was there pursued with the same people. Their first dis- 
 coveries were made as much in the spirit of conquest as 
 of adventure ; and the same treatment which usage had 
 allotted to the captured Moors was extended, as of course, to 
 the negroes who were taken along the same line of coast. 
 To so great an extent did this prevail, that negro slavery was 
 almost as common in Portugal in the early part of the six- 
 teenth century as it afterwards became in the sugar islands. 
 And so entirely were all persons possessed with the opinion 
 that slavery was the condition to which this unhappy race 
 was destined, that Las Casas, when he proposed the substitu- 
 tion of negro for Indian slavery, as a measure of humanity, 
 never suspected himself of acting inconsistently, nor dreamed 
 that the injustice and cruelty were as great to the one race 
 as to the other. 
 
 Hawkins, then, is not individually to be condemned if he 
 looked upon dealing in negroes to be as lawful as any other 
 trade, and thought that force or artifice might be employed 
 for taking them with as little compunction as in hunting, 
 fishing, or fowling : this was the common opinion of his age, 
 and not a solitary voice had been raised against it. In the
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 173 
 
 ensuing year he sailed upon a second trading voyage, with 
 the Jesus of Lubeck, which was a queen's ship of 700 tons, 
 the Solomon of 140, and two barques, the one of 50, and the 
 other of 30, well stored, and manned with 170 men. They 
 fell in and joined company with another queen's ship, the 
 Minion, Captain David Carlet, and the St. John Baptist, of 
 London, bound for Guinea. Their consort, the Minion, was 
 blown up by the carelessness of a gunner ; but most of the 
 people were saved. Hawkins' instructions were thought 
 worthy of being recorded as " good orders for a fleet on a long 
 voyage ". They were in these words : " The small ships to 
 be always a-head and a-weather of the Jesus, and to speak 
 twice a day with the Jesus at least. If in the day the ensign 
 be over the poop of the Jesus, or in the night two lights, 
 then shall all the ships speak with her. If there be three 
 lights aboard the Jesus, then doth she cast about. If the 
 weather be extreme, that the small ships cannot keep company 
 with the Jesus, then all to keep company with the Solomon, 
 and forthwith repair to Teneriffe, to the northward of the 
 road of Sirroes. If any happen to any misfortune, then to 
 show two lights, and to shoot off a piece of ordnance. If any 
 loose company, and come in sight again, to make three yawes, 
 and strike the mizen three times. Serve God daily ; love one 
 another ; preserve your victuals ; beware of fire, and keep 
 good company." * 
 
 They touched at the Canaries,! "the fruitfulness of which 
 island," says the historian of this voyage,]: "doth surely exceed 
 far all other that I have heard of. For they make wine 
 better than any in Spain : they have grapes of such bigness 
 
 * Hakluyt, iii., 501. 
 
 t " Here we took fishes with heads like conies, and teeth nothing 
 varying ; of a jolly thickness, but not past a foot long ; and is not to be 
 eaten without flaying, or cutting off his head " (Hakluyt, 503). 
 
 J John Sparke,
 
 174 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 that they may be compared to damsons, and in taste inferior 
 to none : for sugar, suckets, raisins of the sun, and many other 
 fruits, abundance ; for rosine and raw silk there is great store : 
 they want neither corn, pullets, cattle, nor yet wild fowl. 
 They have many camels, also, which, being young, are eaten 
 of the people for victuals, and being old they are used for 
 carriage. About this island are certain flitting islands, which 
 have been oftentimes seen, and when men approached near 
 them they vanished ; as the like hath been of these islands 
 now known, by the report of the inhabitants, which were not 
 found of long time one after the other ; and therefore it should 
 seem he is not yet born to whom God hath appointed the 
 finding of them." From thence they made Cape de Verd, 
 where the natives are described as "more civil than any 
 other, because of their daily traffic with the Frenchmen," and 
 as being "of nature very gentle and loving". This they 
 had shown by their treatment of some shipwrecked French- 
 men a little before. Yet, though Hawkins knew the dis- 
 position of these people, and had taken on board one of the 
 men who had been so kindly used, that he was not, without 
 difficulty, persuaded to leave them, he endeavoured to kidnap 
 some for slaves, and laid snares for them accordingly. 
 But the crew of the ship which had been blown up revealed 
 the intended treachery, and thereby frustrated it : perhaps, 
 having lost their ship, they were not entitled to share with 
 the rest ; for it is not to be supposed that they had any 
 better sense of right and wrong than their comrades.* 
 
 Hawkins could not enter the Rio Grande, as he wished, 
 for want of a pilot ; he proceeded, therefore, to " one of the 
 islands called Sambula," and staying there certain days, went 
 "every day on shore to take the inhabitants, with burning 
 and spoiling their towns ". It is no extenuation of this 
 conduct that it appeared to the natives as legitimate a con- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 502, 503.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 175 
 
 sequence of the law of the strongest as it did to themselves : 
 nevertheless, when we contemplate the course of history, it 
 is a consolatory consideration, that the evil produced by 
 invasions and conquest is not all additional evil ; but that, 
 as in this case, barbarous tribes or nations have endured from 
 strangers such miseries as they would otherwise have inflicted 
 upon each other. A people whom the relater of this voyage 
 calls Samboses, and whose own country was beyond Sierra 
 Leone, had conquered these islands three years before from 
 the Sapies, a tribe who inhabited about Rio Grande. " These 
 Sapies," he says, " be more cruel than the Samboses ; for 
 whereas the Samboses live most by the spoil of their enemies, 
 both in taking their victuals, and eating them also, the Sapies 
 do not eat man's flesh, unless in the war they be driven by 
 necessity thereunto ; which they have not used but by the 
 example of the Samboses, but live only upon fruits and cattle, 
 of which they have great store. This plenty is the occasion 
 that the Sapies desire not war, except they be thereunto 
 provoked : whereas the Samboses, for want of food, are en- 
 forced thereunto, and are not wont only to eat them that 
 they kill, but also keep those that they take until such time as 
 they want meat, and then they kill them." The desire of 
 gold was another motive ; for the Sapies buried the dead 
 with their golden ornaments, and the fiercer tribe plundered 
 the graves, the use of gold, as a medium of exchange, being 
 almost the sole practice of civilised society " in which the 
 Portuguese had instructed the natives of the coast ".* 
 
 The Sapies were in appearance the more barbarous people 
 of the two : they filed their teeth, " for a bravery to set out 
 themselves " (a fashion, however, which is likely to have 
 originated in manners as ferocious as those of their neighbours) ; 
 and " they do jagg their flesh," says the writer, " both legs, 
 arms, and bodies, as workmanlike as a jerkin-maker with us 
 
 * Hakluyt, 504.
 
 17G ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 pinketh a jerkin ". These people were kept by their conquerors 
 to till the ground ; and by their labour it had been brought 
 into a more productive state than any other part of the 
 country. Poor wretches, the arrival of the English brought 
 with it nothing but evil to them, for upon them it was that 
 the whole evil fell : their habitations were burnt, their planta- 
 tions wasted ; and, while the Samboses escaped in their 
 canoes to the main, they fell into the invaders' hands, and 
 exchanged the easiest of all states of slavery for the worst. 
 " We took many in that place," is the statement of one of 
 these freebooters, " and as much of their fruits as we could 
 well carry away." This booty was obtained at the cost of a 
 single life : a man, at their departure, having tarried rashly 
 to gather pompions, was watched by the negroes, who came 
 behind him, overthrew him, and cut his throat ; thus taking 
 no undue vengeance upon the only white man that fell into 
 their hands.* 
 
 Flushed with this " prosperous success," Hawkins was easily 
 persuaded by some Portuguese whom he fell in with after 
 leaving the island, to attack a negro town called Bymeba, 
 where, they told him, there was great quantity of gold, and 
 not above forty men, and 100 women and children ; so that if 
 he would "give the adventure, he might get 100 slaves". 
 He was provoked by his ruling motive, the desire of gain ; 
 and also by a determination "that the Portuguese should 
 not think him to be of so base a courage, but that he durst 
 give them that, and greater attempts". Accordingly, forty 
 well-appointed men set forth upon this adventure, guided by 
 certain Portuguese, "who brought some of them to their 
 deaths". A marginal note in the original narrative says, here, 
 " Portugals not to be trusted " ; but the narrative itself shows, 
 that misconduct, and not treachery, brought upon this party 
 what they well deserved. They dispersed, contrary to the 
 
 * Hakluyt, 505.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 177 
 
 captain's orders, every one thinking to secure what gold he 
 could for himself : the negroes took advantage of this, at- 
 tacked the stragglers, and drove the whole party to their 
 boats, pursuing them to the water. Seven of the kidnappers 
 were killed, including Master Field, captain of the Solomon, 
 and twenty-seven wounded. The people were somewhat dis- 
 comforted at this ; but Hawkins, " in a singular wise manner, 
 carried himself with countenance very cheerful outwardly, as 
 though he did little weigh the death of his men, nor yet the 
 great hurt of the rest ; although his heart inwardly was 
 broken to pieces for it". "But he assumed this cheer to the 
 end, that the Portugals, being with him, should not presume 
 to resist against him, nor take occasion to put him to further 
 displeasure." * 
 
 After this the two ships anchored at Taggarin, while the 
 smaller crafts went up " a river called the Casserroes," about 
 their traffic. There they learnt from the Portuguese that a 
 great battle was about to be fought ; the people of Sierra 
 Leone having prepared 300 canoes to invade them of Taggarin. 
 A day was appointed for the battle, "which we would have 
 seen," says the narrator, "to the intent we might have taken 
 some of them, had it not been for the death and sickness of 
 our men, which came by the contagiousness of the place". 
 The canoes carried threescore men apiece, and the towns up 
 the river were large, so that they had looked for a good 
 booty in prisoners ; but the fatal climate compelled them to 
 make haste away ; and they were informed by a Portuguese 
 that they had narrowly escaped from the King of Sierra Leone, 
 "who had made all the power he could" to take some of 
 them, partly for the desire he had to see what kind of people 
 they were. An attempt to surprise them failed, for they 
 took alarm at him, though not thinking there had been such 
 a mischief pretended towards them as there was indeed. "If 
 
 Hakluyt, 506. 
 12
 
 178 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 these men," says the writer, "had come down in the evening, 
 they had done us great displeasure, for that we were on 
 shore filling water : but God, who worketh all things for the 
 best, would not have it so, and by Him we escaped without 
 danger, His name be praised for it." * 
 
 These adventurers resembled the Spaniards as much in 
 their sense of religion as in their want of any sense of justice 
 or humanity. Making for the West Indies, they were be- 
 calmed for the space of eighteen days, "having now and 
 then," says the writer, " contrary winds and some tornados, 
 amongst the same calm ; which happened to us very ill, being 
 but reasonably watered for so great a company of negroes and 
 ourselves. This pinched us all ; and, that which was worst, 
 put us in such fear that many never thought to have reached 
 the Indies without great death of negroes and of themselves ; 
 but the Almighty God, which never suffereth His elect to 
 perish, sent us the ordinary breeze." The first land which 
 they made was Dominica, happening fortunately upon the 
 most desolate part of the island ; whereby they escaped all 
 danger from the cannibals, whom the Spaniards represented 
 as the most desperate warriors in the Indies, and "very devils 
 in respect of men ". Proceeding to Margarita, the alcayde 
 entertained them hospitably, and gave them both beeves and 
 sheep for refreshing their men ; but the governor would 
 neither speak with Hawkins, nor permit him to traffic, nor 
 allow him to engage a pilot. He despatched notice of their 
 arrival to the viceroy at St. Domingo ; and the viceroy sent 
 orders, in consequence, to Cape de la Vela, and to other 
 places along the coast, that no man should trade with these 
 interlopers, but that they were to be resisted with all the 
 force that could be brought together, f 
 
 Obtaining no trade here, and finding no opportunity to 
 take in water, Hawkins departed and came to Cumana. 
 
 * Hakluyt, 506. t Ibid., 507.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 179 
 
 The Spaniards whom he found there, said "they were but 
 soldiers newly arrived, and were not able to buy his negroes," 
 and they directed him to a commodious watering-place two 
 leagues off called Santa Fe. Next day the Indians came 
 down, " presenting meal and cakes of bread, made of a kind 
 of com called maize, in bigness of pease, the ear whereof is 
 much like to a teazel, but a span in length, having thereon a 
 number of grains. Also they brought down hens, potatoes, 
 and pines, which we bought," the relater proceeds, "for 
 beads, pewter whistles, glasses, knives, and other trifles. 
 These potatoes be the most delicate roots that may be eaten, 
 and do far exceed our parsnips or carrots. Their pines be of the 
 bigness of two fists, the outside whereof is of the making of 
 a pine apple ; but it is soft like the rind of a cucumber, and 
 the inside eateth like an apple, but it is more delicious than 
 any sweet apple sugared." The opinion formed of the 
 Indians here was, that they " surely were gentle and tractable, 
 and such as desire to live peaceably, or else it had been im- 
 possible for the Spaniards to have conquered them as they 
 did, and the more to live now peaceably, they being so many 
 in number and the Spaniards so few ".* 
 
 Having passed between Tortuga and the main, Hawkins 
 sailed along in his pinnace to discern the coast. The Caribs, 
 of whom he saw many on shore, and some in their canoes, 
 showed him gold, invited him by friendly tokens to trade, 
 and were very importunate with him to land ; which, " if it 
 had not been for want of wares to traffic with, he would not 
 have denied them, because the Indians which he had seen 
 before were very gentle people, and such as do no man 
 hurt ; but, as God would have it, he wanted that thing, 
 which, if he had had, would have been his confusion : for 
 these were no such kind of people as he took them to be, 
 but more devilish a thousand parts, and are eaters and 
 
 * Hakluyt, 508.
 
 180 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 devourers of any man they can catch, bloodsuckers both of 
 Spaniards, Indians, and all that light in their laps ; not 
 sparing their own countrymen, if they can conveniently come 
 by them". This Hawkins learnt at Borburata, where he 
 anchored and went ashore to speak with the Spaniards, de- 
 claring himself to be an Englishman, who came thither " to 
 trade with them by the way of merchandise," and requiring 
 licence so to do. They made answer that they were forbidden 
 to traffic with any foreigner, on penalty of forfeiting their 
 goods ; " wherefore they desired him not to molest them 
 farther, but to depart as he came, for other comfort he might 
 not look for at their hands, because they were subjects, and 
 might not go beyond the law". To this he replied, that 
 being in a queen's armada, with many soldiers on board, he 
 was in need both of refreshment for them, and food and 
 money also, without which he could not depart. Their 
 princes were in amity one with another : the English had 
 free traffic in Spain and Flanders ; and he knew no reason 
 why they should not have the like in all the King of Spain's 
 dominions. Upon this the Spaniards said they would send 
 to their governor, who was threescore leagues off; ten days 
 must elapse before his determination could arrive : mean- 
 time he might bring his ships into the harbour, and they 
 would supply him with any victuals he might require.* 
 
 The ships accordingly went in, and received all things 
 according to promise. Hawkins then "advised himself, 
 that to remain there ten days idle, spending victuals and 
 men's wages, and, perhaps, in the end, receive no good answer 
 from the governor, it were mere folly ". So he requested licence 
 for the sale of certain lean and sick negroes, who were like 
 to die upon his hands if he kept them ten days, having little 
 or no refreshment for them ; whereas, if they were disposed 
 of, they would be recovered well enough : and this request, 
 
 * Hakluyt, 509.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 181 
 
 he said, he was forced to make, because he had not other- 
 wise wherewith to pay for the necessities which he wanted. 
 This request being put in writing was deemed reasonable, 
 and they granted him a licence to sell thirty slaves. But 
 though some eagerness to purchase had previously been 
 shown, no one came now to buy. Hawkins knew not whether 
 they sought to protract the time till the governor's answer 
 should arrive, that they " might keep themselves blameless," 
 or if some other policy were in view : upon demanding the 
 cause, he was told that the licence had been granted only to 
 the poorer people to buy negroes of small price ; their money 
 was not ready like rich men's ; and, moreover, as soon as 
 they saw the ship, they had sent away their money and their 
 wives to the mountains for fear, and it would take two days 
 to bring them back. Some, however, came to cheapen, but 
 showed such a disposition to bring down the price, that 
 Hawkins sent for the principal of the town, and made show 
 as if he would depart, saying he was sorry that he had troubled 
 them, as also that he had sent for the governor. For it was 
 not only a licence to sell that he sought, but profit also, 
 which he saw was not to be had there ; and, therefore, he 
 would seek farther. And he showed them his papers, that 
 they might see what he had paid for his negroes ; and de- 
 clared, also, " the great charge he was at in his shipping 
 and in wages". The Spaniards, who wanted slaves, and 
 hoped to get them cheap, did not like to hear of his departure : 
 they " put him in comfort to sell better there than in any 
 other place " ; and went so far as to say that, if licence were 
 refused, he should not lose his labour in tarrying, for they 
 would buy without it.* 
 
 The details are curious, because this voyage led the way 
 to those hostilities in the New World, which made the 
 English name so formidable there, and so odious, and which 
 
 * Hakluyt, 509.
 
 182 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 first called forth the character of the English seaman in 
 its whole strength ; and because with these transactions at 
 Borburata that illicit trade commenced, which continued as 
 long as Spain retained its colonies upon the American main. 
 That Hawkins might be induced to stay, the Spaniards 
 bought some of his lean negroes ; but when the purchasers 
 paid the duty, and required from the officers of the customs 
 the customary discharge, the officers refused to give it, and, 
 instead of carrying the money to the king's account, dis- 
 tributed it to the poor " for the love of God ". He could not 
 have acted more wisely with a view to his own exculpation ; 
 but this caution put a stop to the sale, the purchasers fearing 
 that they might be called upon for payment of the duties a 
 second time. So trade was suspended till the fourteenth day, 
 when the governor arrived. To him Hawkins repeated his 
 petition : he had come thither in a ship of the queen's 
 majesty of England bound to Guinea ; but, driven here by 
 wind and weather, he had great need not of necessaries alone, 
 but money for the payment of his soldiers to whom he had 
 promised it ; and, indeed, they would not depart without it, 
 though he were willing to do so. Further, he represented 
 that, notwithstanding the prohibition, it would be well taken 
 at the governor's hands if he granted a licence in this case, 
 seeing that there was a great amity between their princes, 
 and that the thing pertained to our queen's highness. This 
 petition was taken into consideration by the governor in 
 council, and the licence was granted ; but any abatement of 
 the king's custom, being thirty ducats upon every slave, 
 was refused.* 
 
 But as Hawkins had little scruple how he obtained his 
 negroes, or what papers he exhibited, or what story he told, 
 so he was determined that the king's duties should not stand 
 in his way, and that if he could not obtain his price by fair 
 
 * Hakluyt, 510.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 183 
 
 means, he would extort it from his customers by fear. With 
 this resolution, he landed 100 men, well armed with bows and 
 arrows, harquebusses and pikes, and marched toward the 
 town. Speedy messengers came out to know his demands. 
 "So our captain," says his honest chronicler, "declaring how un- 
 reasonable a thing the king's custom was, requested to have 
 the same abated, and to pay 74 per cent., which is the ordinary 
 custom for wares through his dominions there ; and unto this 
 if they could not grant, he would displease them." Answer 
 was returned, that all things should be to his content : the 
 soldiers and mariners, however, insisted upon having hostages ; 
 when these had been given, the traffic was begun, and went on 
 without disturbance ; and Hawkins, it seems, found no further 
 difficulty in obtaining what he thought a fair price. By mere 
 accident, however, his presence, unwelcome as it must have 
 been to the persons in authority, proved to be of singular 
 benefit to the town. A party of Caribs having obtained a 
 guide, came in their canoes by night to burn the place and 
 massacre the inhabitants ; and their purpose was likely to 
 have succeeded, if the Spaniards had not been upon their guard 
 against the English.* Before they left this place, a French 
 vessel from Havre arrived from the coast of Guinea, having 
 been beaten off from St. Jorge da Mina by the Portuguese 
 galleys, and bringing to Hawkins tidings " most sorrowful 
 for him to understand," that the captain of his consort the 
 Minion, with a merchant and twelve mariners, had been 
 betrayed by the negroes on their first arrival there, and were 
 detained prisoners by the Portuguese ; so that there was 
 great doubt of bringing home the ship. 
 
 Having ended their dealings at Borburata, they proceeded 
 to the Island of Curaqoa, where they had "traffic for hides, 
 and found great refreshing both of beef, mutton, and lambs ; 
 whereof there was such plenty that, saving for skins, they 
 
 * Hakluyt, 510, 511.
 
 184 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 had the flesh given them for nothing ; and the worst in 
 the ship thought scorn, not only of mutton, but also of 
 sodden lamb, which they disdained to eat unroasted ". 
 But, notwithstanding this sweet meat, the narrator says, 
 " they had sour sauce there ; and after nine days' tarriance, 
 were rejoiced when they departed : for by reason of riding 
 so open at sea, what with blasts, whereby their anchors 
 being aground there, three at once came home, and also with 
 contrary winds blowing, whereby, for fear of the shore, they 
 were fain to haul off to have anchor-hold, sometimes a whole 
 day and night they turned up and down ; and this happened 
 not once, but half a dozen times in the space of their being 
 there ". Hawkins made next for Rio de la Hacha : there he 
 spoke with the king's treasurer of the Indies, resident there ; 
 told him of his quiet traffic in Borburata ; produced a certificate 
 from the governor in confirmation of this statement ; requested 
 licence to trade here also in like manner ; and when he was 
 told that this could not be granted, the viceroy having sent 
 express commission from St. Domingo to resist him with all 
 the force they could, he repeated his story of having been 
 forced by contrary winds to come into these parts. " But 
 seeing they would, contrary to all reason, go about to with- 
 stand his traffic, he would not it should be said by him, that, 
 having the force he had, he was driven from his traffic per- 
 force, but would rather put it in adventure whether he or 
 they should have the better ; and, therefore, he called upon 
 them to determine, either to give him licence to trade, or 
 else stand to their own defence." In reply to this, they gave 
 him the licence which he asked, but offered a price less by 
 one-half than what he had obtained at Borburata. ' ' Where- 
 upon the captain, weighing their unconscionable request, 
 wrote to them a letter, saying, that they dealt too rigorously 
 with him, to go about to cut his throat in the price of his 
 commodities, which were so reasonably rated, as they could 
 not by a great deal have the like at any other man's hands ;
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 185 
 
 but seeing they had sent him this to his supper, he would in 
 the morning bring them as good a breakfast." * 
 
 Having given this hint that he intended to settle the price 
 of his commodities in his own way, Hawkins accordingly 
 fired a culverin, in the morning, " to summon the town," and 
 prepared to land with 100 men, having two brass falcons in 
 his great boat, " and in the other boats double bases in their 
 noses ". The townsmen, " incontinent, in battle array," 
 marched from the town, making semblance as if they would 
 resolutely have opposed the landing ; and he, " perceiving 
 them so to brag, commanded the two falcons to be discharged 
 at them ; which put them in no small fear to see, as they 
 afterwards declared, such great pieces in a boat". At every 
 shot they fell flat to the ground ; and at last, for fear of 
 these guns, they broke their array, and dispersed. Still their 
 horsemen, being about thirty, made a brave show, coursing 
 up and down, their white leather targets in one hand, and 
 their javelins in the other : but as soon as Hawkins marched 
 towards them, they sent a flag of truce ; and the treasurer, 
 in a cautious interview with this ugly merchant, acceded to 
 all that he asked. Hostages were demanded, as before, on 
 the alleged determination of the men ; and these having been 
 given, " we made our traffic quietly ". Nevertheless, as the 
 Spaniards seemed to be collecting, Hawkins thought a second 
 display of his strength necessary ; and when the final settle- 
 ment was to be made, he went with his three boats, as before, 
 "with bases in their noses, and his men with weapons ac- 
 cordingly ". All, however, passed off peaceably ; and though 
 some displeasure had arisen concerning money due by the 
 Governor of Borburata, which was to have been paid by the 
 treasurer here, and of which the treasurer refused payment, 
 Hawkins " would not molest him " for a debt which was not 
 his own, but was content to remit it until another time. 
 
 * Hakluyt, 512,
 
 186 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 They parted with a show of friendship : the captain demanded 
 a testimonial of his good behaviour : it was not given till he 
 was under sail,, ready to depart : then having received it, he 
 very courteously took his leave, shooting off the bases of his 
 boat for his farewell ; and the townsmen returned this parting 
 salute with four falcons and thirty harquebusses, glad to be 
 sped of such traders.* 
 
 He now made for Hispaniola ; but was driven so far to 
 leeward, that he fell in with the " middle of Jamaica, though 
 the clouds, which lay upon the land two days together, made 
 it appear like a headland. There was a Spanish merchant in 
 Hawkins' ship, who, trading in Guinea, and being by treason 
 taken of the negroes, and afterwards bought by the Tango- 
 mangos, was by our captain brought from thence, and had his 
 passage to go into his own country." Poor man ! he was 
 little benefited by this act of humanity. Deceived by the 
 appearance of the land, he pointed to the objects which, as 
 his hopes and imagination shaped them, seemed to him w r ell 
 known. This was such a place ; yonder was such a man's 
 ground ; behind that point was the harbour. Before he went 
 into the pinnace to go ashore, " he put on his new clothes, 
 and for joy flung away his old. But in the end," says the 
 angry narrator, "he pointed so from one point to another, 
 that we were a-leeboard of all places, and found ourselves at 
 the west end of Jamaica before we were aware of it ; and 
 being once to leeward, there was no getting up again: so 
 that, by trusting of this Spaniard's knowledge, our captain 
 sought not to speak with any of the inhabitants, which, if he 
 had not made himself sure of, he would have done as his cus- 
 tom was in other places." But this man was a plague not only 
 to our captain, whom he made lose, by overshooting the place, 
 2000/. by hides, which he might have gotten, but also to him- 
 self; for having been three years out of his country, and in 
 
 * Hakluyt, 513,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 187 
 
 great misery in Guinea, and now in hope to come to his wife 
 and friends, as he made sure account, he could not find any 
 habitation neither there nor in Cuba, which we sailed all 
 along ; but it fell out ever, by one occasion or other, that we 
 were put beside the same, so that he was fain to be brought 
 to England ; and it happened to him as to that Duke of 
 Samaria, when the Israelites were besieged ; "for not ever 
 thinking to have seen his own country, he did see the same, 
 and went upon it ; and yet it was not his fortune to come to 
 it, nor to any habitation, whereby to remain with his friends 
 according to his desire ".* 
 
 This unfortunate Spaniard, as he had at first been mistaken 
 in the part of the coast, fell into a greater mistake concerning 
 the island itself, and concluded that it was Hispaniola ; in 
 which erroneous opinion Hawkins concurred, because, being 
 ignorant of the force of the current, he could not believe 
 that he had been so far driven to leeward. He set his course, 
 therefore, for Jamaica, as he supposed ; and this further error 
 " came to as ill a pass " as the first ; " for by this did he also 
 overpass a place in Cuba called Santa Cruz, where, as he was 
 informed, was great store of hides to be had " ; and missing, 
 thus, two of the ports "where he thought to have raised great 
 profit by his traffic, and also to have found refreshing of 
 victuals and water for his men, he w r as now disappointed 
 greatly ". The latter necessary he found upon the Isle of 
 Pinas ; and " although it were neither so toothsome as running 
 water, by the means it is standing, and but the water of rain, 
 and, moreover, being near the sea, was brackish, yet did not 
 they refuse it, but were more glad thereof, as the time then 
 required, than they should have been another time with fine 
 conduit water". After wandering in these seas three weeks 
 longer, they overshot the Havannah, " which," says Sparke, 
 " is an harbour whereunto all the fleets of the Spaniards come, 
 
 * Hakluyt, 514.
 
 188 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and do there tarry to have one the company of another '. 
 Hawkins meant to have watered there, if he had hit the port. 
 He seems not to have entertained any apprehension that, if 
 he had fallen in there with any ships of greater strength, 
 they might have been disposed to put a stop to his trading by 
 just such cogent means as he had employed in carrying it on. 
 At length, in great want of water, he made for the coast of 
 Florida, and there ranged along, anchoring every night, 
 because he would miss no place where this want could be 
 supplied, and entering every creek in search for the Huguenot 
 colony which Admiral de Coligni had sent thither under 
 Rene de Laudonniere. He found them not where he ex- 
 pected, but on the river May ; where Laudonniere had erected 
 a fort about two leagues from the sea, which he named La 
 Caroline. They had been reduced, by war, desertion, and 
 mutiny, from 200 to about 40 ; and Hawkins heard from 
 them the sad history of their misfortunes and their mis- 
 conduct. Little as was the sense of religion that either party 
 manifested in their general dealings, on this occasion it 
 became a bond of sympathy and a security for good faith. 
 No precautions were thought necessary in their intercourse. 
 Hawkins supplied them out of his ship with such stores as he 
 could spare ; and, to help them the better homeward, spared 
 thenTalso one of his barques of fifty tons ; * when Laudonniere 
 could not be persuaded to accept of a passage to Europe for 
 himself and his people, though he had determined upon 
 returning thither without delay, after destroying the fort, lest 
 the Spaniards or English should occupy it.f 
 
 * Hakluyt, 516-518. 
 
 t " Fort honnete homme," Charlevoix calls Hawkins on this occasion ; 
 " et que, bien loin," he adds, " d'abuser du triste etat ou il trouva les 
 Frangois, fit au contraire 'Jtout ce 'qu'il put pour les soulager. Surtout 
 quand il cut reconnu qu'ils etoient Protestans." Of this, however, 
 Hawkins could not have been ignorant. " II vint seul et sans armes lui 
 rendre visite." And for the stores which he spared them, Charlevoix
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 189 
 
 He now sailed for England ; and contrary winds prolonged 
 the voyage " till victuals scanted, so that they were in despair 
 of ever reaching home, had not God," as they truly said, 
 " provided for them better than their deserving ". " In 
 which state of great misery," says Sparke, "we were provoked 
 to call upon Him by fervent prayer ; which moved Him to 
 hear us " : and they arrived, at length, at Padstow, in Corn- 
 wall, through His mercy, in safety, " with the loss of twenty 
 persons in all the voyage, and with great profit to the venturers, 
 as also to the whole realm, in bringing home gold, silver, 
 pearls, and other jewels great store. His name, therefore, be 
 praised for evermore. Amen ! " Thus piously the writer 
 of this narrative concludes his relation, as if utterly uncon- 
 scious that he had been engaged in anything iniquitous. 
 Contrariwise, it was considered that Hawkins had rendered 
 good service to his country by opening for it a new branch of 
 trade ; insomuch that, " by way of increase and augmentation 
 of honour, a coat of arms and crest were settled upon him and 
 his posterity, by a patent thus worded : He bears sable on 
 a point wavee, a lion passant gold, in chief three besants. 
 Upon his helm a wreath argent and azure, a demi-Moor, in 
 his proper colour, bound and captive, with annulets on his 
 
 says : " Non seulement Hawkins lui en avoit fait un bon prix, mais il y 
 avoit ajoute quantite de presens " (Hist, de la N. France, c. Ixxxix., xc.). 
 
 De Morgues confirms the account of this fair dealing, eequo admodum 
 pretio, and that some stores were given to the French (De Bry, 21). 
 
 Hawkins' historian thought there were means to reap a sufficient 
 profit in Florida and Virginia ; though it might seem unto some that, 
 because gold and silver were not so abundant as in other places, the cost 
 would not quit the charge. For breeding cattle, he thought no country 
 could be more favourable ; and the profit from hides was very great. But 
 as to forming a settlement there, " because," he says, " there is not the 
 thing we all seek, being rather desirous of present gains, I do, therefore, 
 affirm the attempt thereof to be more requisite for a prince, who is of 
 power able to go through with the same, than for any subject " (p. 520). 
 
 * Hakluyt, 521.
 
 190 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 arms and ears, or mantelled gules double argent." * "A 
 worthy symbol/' Campbell observes, f " of the infamous 
 traffic which he had opened to his country." 
 
 After an expedition in 1567, for the intended relief of the 
 Huguenots at Rochelle, he prepared for a second adventure 
 to Guinea and the Spanish Indies ; J and sailed from Plymouth, 
 in October, 1567, with his old ship the Jesus of Lubeck, the 
 Minion, and four other vessels. Arriving at Cape de Verd, 
 he landed 150 men, "hoping to obtain some negroes, where 
 he got but few, and those with great hurt and damage to his 
 own men ; chiefly, it was thought, proceeding from poisoned 
 arrows : for although, in the beginning, the hurts seemed to 
 be but small, there hardly escaped any that had blood drawn 
 of them, but died in strange sort, with their mouths shut 
 some ten days before they died, and after their wounds 
 were whole ". Thence they proceeded, " searching with 
 all diligence the rivers from Rio Grande to Sierra Leone " ; 
 when, having "gotten together" not so many as 150 slaves, 
 sickness and the lateness of the season, says Hawkins, " com- 
 manded us away, thus having nothing wherewith to seek the 
 coast of the West Indies ". While the commander was 
 holding counsel whether to make for St. Jorge da Mina, and 
 there obtain gold for their wares, so to defray their charges, 
 a negro king sent to desire their aid against his neighbours, 
 promising them for their pains all the prisoners who should 
 
 * Prince's Worthies of Devon. t Vol. i., 405. 
 
 j Herrera says, that two Portuguese offered to conduct this fleet to a 
 place where they might load themselves with gold and other riches : 
 that upon this allurement the queen supplied Hawkins with two ships, 
 he and his brother fitting out other four and a pinnace, that the force on 
 board amounted to 1500 soldiers and mariners, who were to be paid by 
 a third of the profits (que yuan al terclo de la ganancia) ; and that, when 
 the expedition was on the point of sailing, the Portuguese deserted from 
 Plymouth, and got to France : but as the cost of the outfit had been 
 incurred, it was thought proper to proceed (Historia General, 1. xix., c. 
 xviii., p. 718).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 191 
 
 be taken. Without regard to anything but the prospect of 
 gain, the offers were accepted, and 120 men sent to assist 
 this barbarian. They assaulted a town containing 8000 in- 
 habitants, strongly paled and fenced after their manner, and 
 so well defended, that the English, having had six slain and 
 forty wounded, sent to Hawkins for more help ; " whereupon," 
 says he, " considering that the good success of this enterprise 
 might highly further the commodity of our voyage, I went 
 myself ; and, with the help of the king of our side, assaulted 
 the town both by land and sea ; and very hardly, with fire 
 (their houses being covered with dry palm leaves), obtained 
 the town, and put the inhabitants to flight ; where we took 
 250 persons, men, women, and children. And by our friend, 
 the king of our side, there were taken 600 prisoners, where- 
 of we hoped to have had our choice ; but the negro (in which 
 nation is seldom or never found truth) meant nothing less : 
 for that night he removed his camp and prisoners, so that we 
 were fain to content us with those few that we had gotten 
 ourselves." * 
 
 Having, however, now obtained between 400 and 500 
 negroes, he hoped, by carrying them to the West Indies, to 
 countervail the charges of this expedition with some gains. 
 Having made the Island of Dominica, he " coasted on from 
 place to place, making his traffic with the Spaniards as he 
 might ; somewhat hardly, because the king had straightly 
 commanded all his governors in those parts by no means to 
 suffer any trade to be made with them ". Notwithstanding, 
 
 * Hakluyt, 521, 522. " When they were about to land in the river Bambo," 
 Herrera says, " a sea-horse (cavallo marino) gave the boat a blow, which 
 would have swamped it if it had not speedily got to shore : the creature," 
 he adds, " sprang upon the prow at the same time, and with its tail and arm, 
 or paw, carried off a trumpeter " (p. 718). " Here, too," he says, " Haw- 
 kins took on board twelve Frenchmen, the miserable remains of fifty, who 
 had put off in their boat from a sinking ship, and remained at the mercy of 
 the waves, subsisting upon four figs a day till these alone survived."
 
 192 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 he had "reasonable trade and courteous entertainment" 
 from the Isle of Margarita unto Carthagena, except at Rio de 
 la Hacha, " from whence came all the pearls ". The trea- 
 surer, who had the charge, would by no means agree to any 
 trade, or suffer us to water ; he had fortified his town with 
 divers bulwarks in all places where it might be entered, and 
 furnished him with 100 harquebusiers ; so that he thought, 
 by famine, to have enforced us to put a-land our negroes ; 
 " of which purpose," says Hawkins, " he had not greatly 
 failed, unless we had by force entered the town : which, 
 after we could by no means obtain his favour, we were 
 enforced to do. So, with 200 men, we brake in upon their 
 bulwarks, and entered the town, with the loss only of two 
 men,* and no hurt done to the Spaniards, because, after their 
 volley discharged, they all fled. Thus having the town, with 
 some circumstances, as partly by the Spaniards' desire of 
 negroes, and partly by friendship of the treasurer, we ob- 
 tained a secret trade, whereupon the Spaniards resorted to us 
 by night, and bought of us to the number of 200 negroes. 
 In all other places where we traded, the Spaniard inhabit- 
 ants were glad of us, and traded willingly." f 
 
 Carthagena was the last town which they thought to have 
 seen on the coast. There the governor was so straight 
 that is, he observed his orders so properly that Hawkins 
 could have no dealings with any Spaniard ; and, because his 
 trade was nearly finished, he neither thought it prudent to 
 venture a landing, nor to " detract further time," but departed 
 in peace, hoping to escape the hurricanes, for "the time of 
 these storms " w T as approaching. But passing by the west 
 end of Cuba, towards Florida, there " happened to them " a 
 storm, which continued four days, and "so beat the Jesus 
 that they cut down all her higher buildings ; her rudder also 
 
 * Herrera says: "He lost his sargento mor here, and three others" 
 (p. 719). 
 
 t Hakluyt, 522.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 193 
 
 was sore shaken, and withal the ship was in so extreme a 
 leak," that they were "rather on the point to leave her 
 than to keep her any longer". Yet, hoping to "bring all to 
 good pass/' they made for the coast of Florida, and there 
 found no place nor haven for their ships because of the shal- 
 lowness of the coast. "Thus being in greater despair, and 
 taken with a new storm, which continued other three days," 
 Hawkins thought that his only resource was to take for his 
 succour " the port which serveth the city of Mexico, called 
 St. Juan de Ulloa ; in seeking of which port," he says, "we 
 took on our way three ships, which carried passengers to the 
 number of 100 ; which passengers we hoped should be a 
 mean to us the better to obtain victuals for our money, and a 
 quiet place for the repairing of our fleet ".* 
 
 That port they entered on the 16th of September. The 
 Spaniards of Vera Cruz mistook them for a fleet from Spain 
 which was daily expected ; and under that mistake the chief 
 officers came aboard to receive the dispatches, f and "being 
 deceived of their expectation," were greatly dismayed ; " but 
 when they saw our demand was nothing but victuals, they 
 were recomforted. I found in the same port," says Hawkins, 
 " twelve ships, J which had in them, by report, 200,000/. in 
 gold and silver ; all which being in my possession, with the 
 king's island, as also the passengers before in my way thither- 
 ward stayed, I set at liberty, without the taking from them 
 the weight of a groat." He had good reason for being upon 
 his good behaviour at this juncture ; and, detaining two 
 persons of estimation for his own security, he sent post to 
 Mexico, representing to the viceroy that he had put in here 
 by stress of weather, in want of victuals, and his ships in 
 
 * Hakluyt, 522. 
 
 t " Fue tanto el recato de Juan de Aquines, que nunca los oficiales cono- 
 cieron los navios, hasta que los tomaron, y se los llevaron " (Herrera, 719). 
 
 J Herrera says six, with a great quantity of silver on board. 
 
 13
 
 194 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 great need of repair : these wants the English, as friends to 
 King Philip, requested they might be supplied with for their 
 money ; they requested, also, that, with all convenient speed, 
 order might be taken for preventing any cause of quarrel on 
 the arrival of the Spanish fleet. This message left the port 
 on the night after their entrance : " on the morrow," says 
 Hawkins, "we saw open of the haven thirteen great ships. 
 I sent immediately to advertise the general of the fleet of 
 my being there, giving him to understand, that, before I 
 would suffer them to enter the port, there should some order 
 of conditions pass between us for our safe-being there and 
 maintenance of peace. 
 
 " Now it is to be understood that this port is made by a 
 little island of stones, not three foot above the water in the 
 highest place, and but a bowshot of length any way : this 
 island standeth from the mainland two bowshots or more. 
 Also it is to be understood that there is not in all this coast 
 any other place for ships to arrive in safety, because the north 
 wind hath there such violence, that, unless the ships be 
 very safely moored, with their anchors fastened upon this 
 island, there is no remedy for these north winds but death. 
 Also the place of the haven was so little, that of necessity 
 the ships must ride one aboard the other, so that we could 
 not give place to them, nor they to us. And here 1 began 
 to bewail that which after followed : ' For now/ said I, ' I am in 
 two dangers, and forced to receive the one of them '. That 
 was, either I must have kept out the fleet, the which, with 
 God's help, I was very well able to do ; or else suffer them 
 to enter in with their accustomed treason, which they never 
 fail to execute, when they may have opportunity to compass 
 it by any means. If I had kept them out, then had there 
 been present shipwreck of all the fleet, which amounted in 
 value to six millions, which was in value of our money 
 1,800,000/. ; which I considered I was not able to answer, 
 fearing the queen's majesty's indignation in so weighty a
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 195 
 
 matter. Thus with myself revolving the doubts, I thought 
 rather better to abide the jutt of the uncertainty than the 
 certainty : the uncertain doubt, I account, was their treason, 
 which, by good policy, I hoped might be prevented ; and, 
 therefore, as choosing the least mischief, I proceeded to con- 
 ditions." * 
 
 The fleet, which was commanded by Francisco de Luxan, 
 brought out a new viceroy, Don Martin Henriquez ; and his 
 presence rendered it unnecessary to wait for instructions 
 from Mexico.! Indeed the circumstances admitted of no 
 delay ; for the fleet, being advised from Vera Cruz that the 
 English were in the port, kept off at a distance of some three 
 leagues, and were in danger of the north winds, which are 
 as frequent on that coast as they are perilous. Upon re- 
 ceiving Hawkins's overtures, the viceroy, therefore, desired 
 him to propose his conditions, promising that, for the better 
 maintenance of amity between the two crowns, they should 
 on his part be favourably granted and faithfully performed : 
 he added "many fair words, how, passing the coast of the Indies, 
 he had understood of our honest behaviour towards the in- 
 habitants where we had to do ; the which," says Hawkins, 
 " I let pass. We required victuals for our money, and 
 licence to sell as much ware as might furnish our wants ; and 
 that there might be of either part twelve gentlemen as 
 hostages ; and that the island, for our better safety, might 
 be in our own possession during our abode there, and such ord- 
 nance as was planted on the same island, which were eleven 
 pieces of brass ; and that no Spaniard might land on the island 
 with any kind of weapon." These conditions the viceroy 
 " somewhat disliked " at first ; as well he might, coming from 
 one whom he could regard as nothing better than an armed 
 
 * Hakluyt, 523. 
 
 t According to Herrera, the English had been some days in the port, 
 and the permission for which they had applied had arrived from Mexico 
 But these are points upon which Hawkins must be the best authority.
 
 196 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 contrabandist. Chiefly he objected to the demand that the 
 English should have the island in their own keeping : this, 
 however, Hawkins justly regarded as an indispensable con- 
 dition, seeing that " if they had had it, we should soon have 
 known our fare ; for with the first north wind they had cut 
 our cables, and our ships had gone ashore ". The negotia- 
 tions, not being expedited by any dangerous weather, con- 
 tinued three days. At last, the viceroy consented to all that 
 was required, reducing only the number of hostages to ten : 
 these, with all speed on either part, were exchanged ; the 
 viceroy gave a writing, " signed with his hand, and sealed 
 with his seal, of all the conditions ; and forthwith command- 
 ment was made, by sound of trumpet, that none should 
 violate the peace on pain of death. The two generals met 
 and pledged their faith each to the other ; and all having 
 been, as it seemed, concluded, the Spaniards entered the 
 port, the fleets saluting one another as the manner of the sea 
 doth require. Thus, Thursday, we entered the port, Friday 
 we saw the Spanish fleet, and on Monday, at night, they 
 entered. Then we laboured two days placing the English 
 ships by themselves, and the Spanish ships by themselves ; 
 the captains of each part, and inferior men of their parts, 
 promising great amity ; which even as with all fidelity it was 
 meant on our part, so the Spaniards meant nothing less on 
 theirs." * 
 
 Hawkins soon had reason to suspect that the Spaniards 
 were secretly furnishing their ships with men from the shore : 
 indeed, on the very night after the Spaniards had entered, 
 120 soldiers had been conveyed on board. The viceroy, who, 
 by permitting this, clearly consented to the intended treason, 
 left things in this state, and departed for Mexico. On the 
 morning of Thursday there were manifest indications of some 
 intended treason ; such as " shifting of weapons from ship to 
 
 * Hakluyt, 523, 524.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 197 
 
 ship ; planting and landing of ordnance from the ships to the 
 island ; passing to and fro of companies of men, more than 
 required for their necessary business, and many other ill 
 likelihoods, which caused him and his people to have a 
 vehement suspicion. Therewithal he sent to the general 
 to inquire what was meant. The answer was, that he would 
 be their defence against all villainies ; * and commandment 
 was given, accordingly, to unplant all things suspicious." 
 Hawkins's apprehensions were not removed by these fair 
 words and fair appearances : he had reason to believe that 
 not less than 300 men had been secretly conveyed on board a 
 ship of 900 tons, which was moored next the Minion ; and, 
 as the master of the Jesus spoke Spanish, he sent him to the 
 viceroy, and required to be satisfied if any such thing were or 
 not. "The viceroy now seeing that the treason must be 
 discovered, forthwith stayed our master, blew the trumpet, 
 and of all sides set upon us. Our men which warded ashore, 
 being stricken with sudden fear, gave place, fled, and sought 
 to recover succour of the ships. The Spaniards, being pro- 
 vided for the purpose, landed in all places in multitudes from 
 their ships, which they might easily do without boats, and 
 slew all our men ashore without mercy ; a few only escaping 
 on board the Jesus. The great ship immediately fell aboard 
 the Minion ; but, by God's appointment, in the time of the 
 suspicion we had, which was only one half-hour, the Minion 
 was made ready to avoid ; and so leesing her head-fasts, and 
 
 * On the faith of a viceroy, Hawkins says : but it was the general, 
 Luxan, who was now acting on his own authority, and on the avowed 
 principle that faith was not to be kept with freebooters : Qne aqucllos 
 Inglcses tran cossarios y que no se les devia guardar la fc dada. Indeed 
 the story, as told by the Spanish historian, has a blacker character than 
 in Hawkins's relation. Herrera says, that Luxan sent a good number 
 of Spaniards on shore, armed only with daggers, who feigning good 
 fellowship with the English, invited them to drink, and when they had 
 drank enough, and the signal was given, suddenly Attacked them, the 
 ships at the same time opening their fire.
 
 198 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 hauling away by the stem-fasts, she was gotten out : thus, 
 with God's help, she defended the violence of the first brunt 
 of these 300 men. The Minion being passed out, they came 
 aboard the Jesus; which, also, with very much ado, and 
 the loss of many of our men, kept them out. Then were there 
 also two other ships that assaulted the Jesus at the same 
 instant, so that she had hard getting loose ; but yet, with 
 some time, we had cut our head-fasts, and gotten out by the 
 stern-fasts. Now, when the Jesus and the Minion were 
 gotten about two ships' length from the Spanish fleet, the 
 fight began so hot on all sides, that, within one hour the 
 admiral of the Spaniards was supposed to be sunk, their 
 vice-admiral burnt, and one other of their principal ships 
 supposed to be sunk ; so that the ships were little able to 
 annoy us." * 
 
 Had the English maintained the island long enough after 
 the first manifestation of hostility, to have spiked the. guns 
 there, the whole action would have been as glorious to them 
 as it was dishonourable to the Spaniards ; but they had made 
 no preparation against an attack, and when it was made 
 the men who were ashore lost all courage and with it all 
 presence of mind. Their ordnance being thus in the Spaniards' 
 hands, " did us," says Hawkins, " so great annoyance, that 
 it cut all the masts and yards of the Jesus, in such sort that 
 there was no hope to carry her away ; also it sunk our small 
 
 * Hakluyt, 524. The Spanish account differs from this : it says that 
 Hawkins, having fought all day, and seeing twelve of his men killed by 
 the fall of a mast, and that his other vessels were in bad plight, went on 
 board the Almeranta, and ordered his own ship to be set on fire, and so 
 put to sea. The ship, however, was not burnt ; and the Spanish hostages 
 who were left in it said that he had always treated them well. The 
 Spaniards say that they sunk one vessel, and that another with sixty men 
 got out, but afterwards was driven on the coast of Panuco, where the 
 people were made prisoners by the inhabitants of S. Luis de Tampico 
 and sent to Mexico, and there, by the viceroy's orders, treated well 
 (p. 720).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 199 
 
 ships (the Judith only, a small barque of fifty tons, excepted) : 
 whereupon we determined to place the Jesus on that side of 
 the Minion, that she might abide all the battery from the 
 land, and so be a defence for the Minion till night ; and then 
 to take such relief of victuals and other necessaries from the 
 Jesus as the time would suffer us, and to leave her. As we 
 were thus determining, and had placed the Minion from the 
 shot of the land, suddenly the Spaniards fired two great ships 
 which were coming directly with us ; and having no means 
 to avoid the fire, it bred among the men a marvellous fear, so 
 that some said, ' Let us depart with the Minion ' ; others said, 
 ' Let us see whether the wind will carry the fire from us '. 
 But to be short, the Minion's men, who had always their 
 sails in readiness, thought to make sure work ; and so, without 
 either consent of the captain or master, cut their sail." 
 Hawkins himself was " very hardly " received on board. Most 
 of the men who were left alive in the Jesus made shift and 
 followed the Minion in their boat ; the rest, whom the boat 
 could not hold, were enforced to abide the mercy of the 
 Spaniards, " which," he says, " I doubt, was very little ".* 
 
 Thus only the Minion and the Judith escaped ; and Haw- 
 kins complains that the latter that same night forsook him 
 in his great misery. Having removed about two bowshots 
 from the Spanish ships, the Minion rode until morning, and 
 then gained the Isla de Sacrificios, about a mile off: there a 
 north wind took them ; and being left only with two anchors 
 and as many cables, for in the conflict they had lost three 
 
 * Hakluyt, 425. Little, indeed; "for it is a certain truth," says Miles 
 Philips, " that whereas they had taken certain of our men ashore, they 
 hung them up by the arms upon high posts, until the blood burst out of 
 their fingers' ends : of which men so used there is one Copstowe, and 
 certain others yet alive, who, by the merciful providence of the Almighty, 
 arrived here at home in England, carrying still about with them (and shall 
 to their graves) the marks and tokens of those their inhuman and more 
 than barbarous cruel dealings " (Hakluyt, 473).
 
 200 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 cables and two anchors they thought always upon death, which 
 ever was present ; " but God," says the commander, " pre- 
 served us to a longer life. [That north wind prevented the 
 Spaniards, according to their own account, from pursuing him : 
 but they might have done this when the wind changed, and, 
 doubtless, would have done so, had they not been so roughly 
 handled in the action.] The weather waxed seasonable, and the 
 Saturday we set sail ; and having a great number of men and 
 little victuals, our hope of life waxed less and less." Some 
 were for yielding to the Spaniards ; some rather desired to 
 reach a place where they might give themselves to the in- 
 fidels ; and some had rather abide, with a little pittance, the 
 mercy of God at sea. "So, thus, with sorrowful hearts, we 
 wandered in an unknown sea by the space of fourteen days, 
 till hunger enforced us to seek the land ; for hides were 
 thought very good meat : rats, cats, mice, and dogs, none 
 escaped that might be gotten ; parrots and monkeys, that 
 were had in great price, were thought then very profitable if 
 they served the turn one dinner. Thus on the 8th of October 
 we came to land in the bottom of the same Bay of Mexico, 
 in 23, where we hoped to have found inhabitants of the 
 Spaniards, relief of victuals, and place for the repair of our 
 ship, which was so sore beaten with shot from our enemies, 
 and bruised with shooting off our own ordnance, that our 
 weary and weak arms were scarce able to keep out water. 
 But all things happened to the contrary ; we found neither 
 people, victuals, nor haven of relief; only a place where, 
 having fair weather, with some peril we might land a boat." * 
 This was on the coast of Tabasco. 
 
 Here some of his people desired to be set ashore, making 
 their choice rather to submit themselves to the mercy of 
 savages than longer to hazard themselves at sea, where they 
 very well saw that should they remain together, if they per- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 524, 525.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 201 
 
 ished not by drowning, hunger must enforce them in the end 
 to eat one another. Desperate as the request was, he could 
 not but consent to it. About a hundred took this resolution, 
 and about as many more resolved, at all risks, to take the 
 chance of reaching their own country.* The former were 
 
 * Thus Hawkins relates the story : a very different one is told by 
 Miles Philips: he says that to this request "our general did very willingly 
 agree, considering with himself that it was necessary for him to lessen 
 his number, both for the safety of himself and the rest ; and thereupon 
 being resolved to set half his people ashore that he had then left alive, it 
 was a world to see how suddenly men's minds were altered ; for they which 
 a little before desired to be set on land were now of a different mind, and 
 requested rather to stay. By means whereof our general was enforced, 
 for the more contentation of all men's minds, and to take away all occasions 
 of offence, to take this order. First, he made choice of such persons of 
 service and account as were needful to stay ; and that being done, of 
 those which were willing to go, he appointed such as he thought might 
 be best spared, and presently appointed that by the boat they should be 
 set on shore ; our general promising us that, the next year, he would either 
 come himself, or else send to fetch us home. Here, again, it would have 
 caused any stony heart to have relented to hear the pitiful moan that 
 many did make, and how loth they were to depart. The weather was 
 then somewhat stormy and tempestuous, and, therefore, we were to pass 
 with great danger ; yet, notwithstanding, there was no remedy, but we 
 that were appointed to go must of necessity do so : howbeit, those that 
 went in the first boat were safely set on shore ; but of those which went 
 in the second, of which I myself was one, the seas wrought so high, that 
 we could not attain to the shore, and, therefore, we were constrained, 
 through the cruel dealing of John Hampton, captain of the Minion, and 
 John Sanders, boatswain of the Jesus, and Thomas Pollard his mate, to 
 leap out of the boat into the main sea, having more than a mile to shore, 
 and so to shift for ourselves, and either to sink or swim ; and of those 
 that so were (as it were) thrown out, and compelled to leap into the sea, 
 there were two drowned" (pp. 473, 474). Those who were landed, he 
 says, had only one caliver, and two old swords among them. 
 
 The relation of Job Hortop, another of the party, is more in conformity 
 with Hawkins. "Our general," he says, "was forced to divide his 
 company into two parts, for there was mutiny among them for want of 
 victuals ; and some said that they would rather be on the shore, to 
 shift for themselves amongst the enemies, than to starve on shipboard.
 
 202 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 landed ; Hawkins determined to water there, and then with 
 his "little remain of victuals to take the sea". He was on 
 shore with fifty of his remaining crew expediting this work, 
 when there arose an extreme storm ; during three days they 
 could not regain the ship, and the ship was in such peril that 
 eveiy hour they expected to see it wrecked. But " God again 
 had mercy on them," and with fair weather they got clear of 
 the coast of the Indies and the Gulf of Bahama. After this, 
 his men, oppressed with famine, began to sink and die, till 
 the few survivors grew into such weakness that they were 
 scarce able to manage the ship. The wind " being always ill 
 for them to recover England," they made for the coast of 
 Galicia, and on the last day of December put into Pontevedra. 
 There, " by excess of fresh meat, the men grew into miserable 
 diseases ". Most of them died ; and Hawkins perceiving 
 that, notwithstanding all endeavours to conceal his weak- 
 ness, the Spaniards had discovered it, and were planning 
 some treachery, removed with all speed possible to Vigo. 
 Some English ships which were lying there assisted him, and 
 spared him twelve of their men, with which help he arrived 
 at last in Mount's Bay. He concludes his relation with these 
 
 He asked them who would go on shore, and who would tarry on ship- 
 board ? those that would go on shore, he willed to go on fore-mast, and 
 those that would tarry, on baft-mast. Fourscore and sixteen of us were 
 willing to depart. Our general gave unto every one of us six yards of 
 Roan cloth, and money to them that demanded it. When we were 
 landed he came unto us, where, friendly embracing every one of us, he 
 was greatly grieved that he was forced to leave us behind him ; he 
 counselled us to serve God and to love one another, and thus courteously 
 he gave us a sorrowful farewell, and promised if God sent him safe home, 
 he would do what he could, that so many of us as lived should by some 
 means be brought into England ; and so he did. 
 
 " Since my return into England, I have heard that many misliked 
 that he left us so behind him, and brought away negroes. But the 
 reason is this, for them he might have had victuals, or any other thing 
 needful, if by foul weather he had been driven upon the islands, which 
 for gold nor silver he could not have had " (Hakluyt, 491).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 203 
 
 words : " If all the miseries and troublesome affairs of this 
 sorrowful voyage should be perfectly and thoroughly written, 
 there should need a painful man with his pen, and as great a 
 time as he had that wrote the lives and deaths of the martyrs ".* 
 It is remarkable that the Spanish character, honourable as 
 it had formerly been, and as it afterwards again became, 
 should at this time have been stained by so many instances 
 of bad faith. The perfidy of some of their kings, especially 
 of Ferdinand, first brought upon the nation this disgrace. 
 He acted upon the Machiavellian principle, that in policy 
 whatever is expedient is right ; and the Romish Church con- 
 secrated that principle for his successors, when it pronounced 
 that no faith was to be kept with heretics, a principle which 
 no Church but that which styles itself infallible has ever 
 proclaimed, and which can be held by none but those whose 
 conscience is not in their own keeping. The treachery with 
 which Hawkins had been treated excited a strong feeling in 
 England, especially among military and seafaring men. They 
 exclaimed against the Spaniards for breach of treaty in this 
 case, inasmuch, they said, as it had been agreed between 
 Charles V. and Henry VIII. that there should be free com- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 526. Hawkins little knew, when he penned that sentence, 
 that some of his unhappy companions would be entitled in the strictest 
 sense to that appellation ! George Rively, Peter Momfrie, and Cornelius, 
 an Irishman, were burnt at Mexico ; Robert Barret and John Gilbert at 
 Seville. Many others, who saved their lives by renouncing the opinions 
 which they had been compelled by torture to avow, though they would 
 have professed anything to have escaped persecution, were flogged on 
 horseback through the streets of Mexico, and condemned there or in 
 Seville to the galleys, and to different terms of imprisonment. The 
 narratives which Miles Philips and Job Hortop published of their ad- 
 ventures and sufferings must have contributed greatly to that abhorrence 
 of the Spaniards which so long prevailed in this country. The first 
 effected his escape after sixteen years, the latter after three and twenty. 
 Both accounts bear every mark of veracity. It appears that the Spaniards 
 would have been disposed to treat them with great kindness, if it had 
 not been for the Inquisition.
 
 204 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 merce between the subjects of both princes, in all and singu- 
 lar their dominions and islands, not excepting America, which 
 already at that time belonged to Charles ; and on this ground 
 they wished that war might be declared against Spain.* 
 Both parties were in the wrong. An infraction of that treaty, 
 by closing the American ports, was a point for discussion 
 between the two Governments, and if the English Government 
 had thought fit, a ground of war, if any wrong in consequence 
 had been offered to one of the queen's subjects ; but it was 
 not for a subject to take the matter into his own hands, and 
 declare his determination of trading in those ports amicably 
 if the authorities pleased, but otherwise, arms in hand, 
 whether they would or not. After he had thus declared, 
 and acted up to that declaration, there could have been no 
 just cause of complaint on the part of England, if he and his 
 fleet had been fairly taken or destroyed. But by acting 
 basely the Spaniards gave the English the advantage of a 
 fair quarrel ; and though the queen, because she was at that 
 time perplexed with the troubled state of affairs in Scotland, 
 for that cause, and for other weighty considerations, gave no 
 ear to those who would at once have engaged the nation in a 
 war with Spain, there were adventurers who resolved to pro- 
 secute the quarrel at all risks. 
 
 The Judith, which made part of Hawkins's fleet, and was 
 the only vessel except the Minion that escaped, was com- 
 manded by Francis Drake, a name that soon became terrible 
 to the Spaniards. The cottage in which Drake was born, on 
 the beautiful banks of the Tavy, was demolished some thirty 
 years ago, till which time it; had remained unchanged ; a stall 
 for cattle belonging to the farm-house hard by now stands 
 upon its site. By his own account, as repeated by Camden, 
 he was born of mean parentage, but his name was given him 
 in baptism by his godfather, Francis Russel, afterwards Earl 
 
 * Camden, 108.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 205 
 
 of Bedford ; and he is said to have been akin to Hawkins, at 
 whose cost and under whose care it is also said that he was 
 brought up, being the eldest of twelve sons. That cost, how- 
 ever, could have been little ; and the care, perhaps, little 
 more than such countenance as gave him consideration in 
 the eyes of his employers, if Camden's statement be correct, 
 which in the main it must needs be, having been derived from 
 Drake himself. His father being likely to be called in question* 
 for his religion as a Protestant, in the days of persecution fled 
 from Devonshire into Kent. When better days arrived, he 
 obtained an appointment " among the seamen in the king's 
 navy to read prayers to them " ; and soon afterwards was 
 ordained deacon, and made vicar of Upnor Church upon the 
 Medway ; the road, says Camden, where the fleet usually 
 anchoreth. Here, " by reason of his poverty, he put his son 
 to the master of a barque, his neighbour, who carried on a 
 coasting trade, and used sometimes to transport merchandise 
 to Zeeland and to France ". This master " held Drake hard 
 to his business " ; and " pains with patience in his youth," 
 says Fuller, " knit the joints of his soul, and made them more 
 solid and compacted ". The master was so satisfied with his 
 conduct, and pleased with him, that, being unmarried, he be- 
 queathed him the barque at his death. With this he continued 
 his active and thriving way of life ; and had got together some 
 
 * Camden says he was called in question by the law of the six articles ; 
 but Campbell observes, that, if Drake was born some time before, Sir 
 Francis Russel could have been but a child, and, therefore, not likely to 
 be his godfather : moreover, he says this account makes him ten years 
 older than he was. But Drake was two and twenty when he obtained 
 the command of the Judith : this carries back his birth to 1544, at which 
 time the six articles were in force, and Francis Russel was seventeen 
 years of age. Fuller says, upon this occasion, that " the sting of Popery 
 still remained in England, though the teeth were knocked out," and 
 that Drake was born in Devonshire and brought up in Kent ; " God 
 dividing the honour betwixt two counties, that the one might have his 
 birth, and the other his education " (Holy State, 123).
 
 206 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 little money, when, hearing that Hawkins was fitting out an 
 expedition for the New World, he sold his vessel, and, re- 
 pairing to Plymouth with some other "stout seamen," 
 embarked himself and his fortunes in the adventure.* 
 
 In this unfortunate voyage Drake lost all that he had 
 accumulated by his former industry ; but a divine,f belonging 
 to the fleet, comforted him with the assurance that, having 
 been thus treacherously used by the Spaniards, he might 
 lawfully recover in value of the King of Spain, and repair his 
 loses upon him wherever he could. " The case," says Fuller, 
 " was clear in sea divinity ; and few are such infidels as not 
 to believe doctrines which make for their own profit. Where- 
 upon Drake, though a poor private man, undertook to 
 
 * Camden, 248. Fuller's Holy State, 123. Prince's Worthies of 
 Devon. Campbell. It is certain that Hawkins was displeased with 
 Drake for "forsaking him in his great misery, and shifting for himself. 
 Herrera says that Drake escaped from the island by a ship's cable ; that 
 Hawkins ordered him into a French ship (which he had taken from some 
 Portuguese who had captured it off Cape Blanco, and in which was 
 most of the gold which they had obtained), and that Drake, instead of 
 obeying his further orders and waiting for him off the port, made all 
 speed for England, reported there that Hawkins was lost, and rose up 
 with the gold himself, saying he had distributed it among the men. 
 " This," says Herrera, " was his beginning ; and though the queen kept 
 him three months in prison, she pardoned him upon intercession, and 
 so the matter rested " (p. 720). Camden says that Drake hardly escaped 
 with the loss of what he had. The charge of peculation is no doubt a 
 calumny ; for his imprisonment, if it really took place, breach of orders, 
 and the desertion of his commander, would be sufficient cause. Drake, 
 according to Job Hortop. was made master and commander of a Portu- 
 guese caravel, captured on the way from the Canaries to Cape Blanco. 
 
 t These are Camden's words, from whence it may be surmised that 
 possibly -that divine was Drake's own father. Fuller and subsequent 
 writers who have followed Fuller say it was the minister of his ship. 
 " The doctrine, however rudely preached, was very taking in England ; 
 and, therefore, he no sooner published his design than he had numbers 
 of volunteers ready to accompany him, though they had no such pretence 
 even as he had to colour their proceedings" (Campbell, i. , 418).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 207 
 
 revenge himself on so mighty a monarch, who, not contented 
 that the sun riseth and setteth in his dominions, may seem 
 to desire to make all his own where he shineth." * Two or 
 three voyages he made to gain intelligence, it is said, in the 
 West Indies ; and in these he got some store of money " by 
 playing the seaman and the pirate ".t Some reputation now 
 he had by this time acquired as a skilful and adventurous 
 mariner ; for now, it is said, he got a commission, and sailed 
 from Plymouth, in 1570, with two ships, the Dragon and the 
 Swan ; and the year after in the Swan alone. In these 
 voyages he acquired certain notice of the places to be aimed 
 at.J Thus prepared with all needful information, he sailed 
 from the Sound on Whitsun Eve, 1572, in the Pascha of Ply- 
 mouth, of seventy tons, and his brother, John Drake, in the Swan, 
 of twenty-five, with three handsome pinnaces, taken asunder 
 and stowed aboard, to be put together upon occasion. He was 
 well provided with a year's victuals, and with all necessary 
 ammunition ; but the force with which he commenced this 
 first hostile expedition against the Spanish Indies consisted of 
 no more than seventy-three men and boys. With these he 
 sailed for Nombre de Dios, which "was then the granary of 
 the West Indies, wherein the golden harvest brought from 
 Panama was hoarded up till it could be conveyed to Spain". || 
 
 On the 2nd of July he came in sight of the high land of 
 America, and directed his course to Port Pheasant, so named 
 by him on a former voyage, because of the number of those 
 
 * " And now," he adds, " let us see how a dwarf, standing on the mount 
 of God's Providence, may prove an overmatch for a giant." 
 
 t Camden. \ Prince. 
 
 " With all speed and secrecy, as loth to put the town to too much 
 charge, which he knew they would willingly bestow, in providing before- 
 hand for his entertainment " (Fuller). 
 
 Fuller. Nombre de Dios " then served the Spaniards for the same 
 purposes, though not so conveniently, as those for which they afterwards 
 used Porto Bello " (Campbell, i., 418).
 
 208 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 birds which he had there seen. Landing here, they found 
 this warning newly inscribed on a plate of lead, and fastened 
 to a tree of such conspicuous magnitude that four men could 
 not enclasp its girth : " Captain Drake, if you fortune to 
 come into the port, make haste away, for the Spaniards which 
 you had with you here- last year have betrayed this place, and 
 taken away all that you left here. I departed hence this 
 present 7th of July, 1572. Your loving friend, John Garret." 
 This Captain Garret was of Plymouth ; and was probably, 
 like his friend, one of those persons who made war against the 
 King of Spain and his subjects upon their own account. 
 Drake, however, was not induced to alter his plans by this 
 unfavourable information, but employed seven days in putting 
 together his pinnaces in that convenient port. "As they 
 had completed this business, an English barque from the Isle 
 of Wight, James Rowse,* captain, with thirty-eight men aboard, 
 came into the port, and being made acquainted with his design, 
 joined company with him." Some of the men had been 
 there with him the year before. 
 
 Sailing from hence for Nombre de Dios, they kept close to 
 the shore, and lay quiet all night, intending to attempt the 
 town at break of day. But he was forced to alter his resolu- 
 tion, and assault it sooner ; for he heard his men muttering 
 among themselves about the strength and greatness of the 
 place : t wherefore he roused them from their rest before 
 
 * In Sir William Davenant's opera upon this part of Drake's history, 
 one of the sailors says, or sings, 
 
 " The lion Rowse is landed here, 
 I'll run to meet him at the pier ; 
 A ton of yellow gold 
 Conceal'd within our hold, 
 For half my share I scorn to take, 
 When he is joined with dragon Drake ". 
 
 " And when men's heads are once fly-blown with buzzes of suspicion, 
 the vermin multiply instantly, and one jealousy begets another " (Fuller).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 209 
 
 they had hatched their fears, and persuaded them it was 
 dawn when the moon rose. The town was unwalled, and 
 they entered it without difficulty in two companies, with 
 trumpet sounding and drum beating, and with "fire-pikes 
 divided between both companies, which no less affrighted the 
 enemy than gave light to the English, who thereby discovered 
 every place as if it had been broad day ".* But the Spaniards 
 were not unprepared, and saluted them in the market-place 
 with a volley of shot. Drake returned the greeting with a 
 flight of arrows, " the best ancient English compliment," and 
 drove them from the ground ; but not without receiving a 
 severe wound in his leg. This he dissembled, " knowing that, 
 if the general's heart stoops the men's will fall; and that, if 
 so bright an opportunity once setteth, it seldom riseth again". 
 They made their way to the house where the bars of silver 
 were deposited, t Drake telling them " he had brought them 
 to the mouth of the treasury of the world, which if they did 
 not gain, none but themselves were to be blamed". He 
 bade them break it open ; but as he stepped forward to 
 encourage them by his example, his strength, sight, and 
 speech failed him, and he began to faint for loss of blood. 
 They bound up his wound with his scarf; and when he 
 would not be persuaded, they " added force to their entreaties, 
 and so carried him to his pinnace ".J It was time to retreat, 
 
 * Prince. 
 
 f'They discovered," says the relation, " a vast heap of wealth in the 
 lower room, consisting of bars of silver, piled up against the wall, seventy 
 foot in length, ten in breadth, and twelve in height, each bar between 
 thirty-five and forty pounds' weight" (Prince). They might have 
 looked into the room through the grating, but certainly had neither time 
 nor opportunity for measuring it. 
 
 I Fuller. " Thus victory sometimes slips through their fingers who 
 have caught it in their hands." Lopez Vaz, whose brief account of 
 this expedition fell into the hands of the English, and is published (in a 
 translation) by Hakluyt (vol. iii., p. 525), says, that Drake landed about 
 150 men, left seventy of them in a fort which was there, and, with the rest, 
 
 14
 
 210 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 for the Spaniards had discovered their weakness ; and the 
 adventurers, many of whom had got good booty before they 
 retired, found it necessary to re-embark, and put off to an 
 island some two leagues distant, where they remained two 
 days. Several men were wounded in this affair, but only one 
 slain. While they lay off the island, one of the garrison 
 came off to them, trusting, as it seems, to their honour ; and 
 declaring that he came for no other purpose than to see those 
 whose courage was such that, with such inconsiderable forces, 
 they had ventured upon so incredible an attempt. He asked, 
 however, whether their captain were the same Captain Drake 
 who had been on this coast the two preceding years ? and as 
 
 marched into the town, without doing any harm till he came to the 
 market-place. There he discharged his calivers, and sounded a trumpet ; 
 and " the people hereupon, not thinking of any such matter, were put in 
 great fear, and, waking out of their sleep, fled all into the mountains, 
 inquiring one of another what the matter should be, remaining as men 
 amazed ! But some fourteen or fifteen of them," he says, " went to the 
 market-place, and seeing the English to be but few, fired their harque- 
 busses at them with such fortune as to kill the trumpeter, and shoot one 
 of the principal men through the leg, upon which he retired towards the 
 fort. Meantime they in the fort, hearing the firing in the town, and 
 finding when they sounded their trumpet that it was not answered, con- 
 cluded that their comrades had all been cut off, and thereupon fled to their 
 pinnaces. And the captain and his people, finding the fort forsaken, 
 were in so great fear, that, leaving their furniture behind them, and 
 putting off their hose, they swam and waded to their pinnaces, and so 
 went with their ships out of the port." 
 
 Except as to the numbers, and the manner of the retreat, this relation 
 is in the main confirmed by the English account, Drake having been 
 thus wounded, and the only Englishman who was slain (though many 
 were hurt) being the trumpeter. Herrera makes no mention of this 
 expedition. A notice relating to it, but under the erroneous date of 1568, 
 occurs in the " Compendio Historial y Indice Chronologico Peruano y del 
 Nuevo Reyno de Granada," annexed to the very rare work of P. Manuel 
 Rodriguez, entitled El Mar anon y Amazonas. It is in these pithy words : 
 " Tubose noticia en las costas de Indias, que las infestaba el Draque, 
 Cosario, que fue muy prejudicial, como se dize despues ".
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 211 
 
 many of the Spaniards were wounded with arrows, he asked 
 also whether the arrows were poisoned, and how the wounds 
 might be cured ? The captain made answer he was the same 
 Drake concerning whom they inquired ; that it was never his 
 custom, nor that of his countrymen, to poison their arrows ; 
 that their wounds might be cured with the ordinary remedies ; 
 and that he only wanted some of that gold and silver which 
 they got out of the earth and sent into Spain to trouble all 
 the world.* 
 
 Having been disappointed here, Drake made toward 
 Carthagena, and took several vessels on his way laden with 
 provisions and goods. What was of more eventual importance, 
 he opened a communication with the Cimarrones, or Maroons, 
 negroes who had escaped from slavery, and established them- 
 selves in freedom in the interior of the Isthmus of Darien. 
 " They had towns of about sixty families, in which the people 
 lived cleanly and civilly," and their chief was able to raise 
 1700 fighting men. By these people he was informed that 
 the treasure was brought from Panama to Xombre de Dios 
 upon mules, a recua or party of which, consisting as might 
 happen of from thirty to seventy, he might probably intercept. 
 On this adventui'e, his leg having been healed, Drake set 
 forth. One of the chief Cimarrones, as they were on the 
 way, led him to a height, where from a great tree, it is said, 
 that both seas might be seen. The story says that steps 
 were cut in the trunk of this huge tree for ascending it, and 
 that almost in the top " a convenient arbour had been made, 
 wherein twelve men might sit". Into this Drake mounted ; 
 and, obtaining a full sight from thence of that ocean, con- 
 cerning which he had heard such golden reports, besought 
 God to grant him "life and leave once to sail an English 
 ship in those seas".f 
 
 * Prince. 
 
 f Prince. Camden's is a less circumstantial but more likely account : 
 " that, after having burnt the rich receptacle or storehouse of merchandise
 
 212 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 The rashness of one of his own men, "who had taken a 
 little too much aqua-vitae/' marred this enterprise : through 
 this man's folly the Spaniards were alarmed, and Drake had 
 
 upon the river Chirage, called the Cross, roving for a time up and down 
 in the parts adjoining, he descried from the mountains the South Sea. 
 Hereupon the man, being inflamed with ambition of glory and hopes of 
 wealth, was so vehemently transported with desire to navigate that sea, 
 that falling down there upon his knees, he implored the Divine assistance, 
 that he might at some time or other sail thither, and make a perfect 
 discovery of the same ; and hereunto he bound himself by a vow. 
 From that time forward his mind was pricked on continually, night and 
 day, to perform his vow" (p. 249). 
 
 Balboa expressed similar feelings in precisely the same situation. 
 When his Indian guides pointed out to him the height from whence " he 
 might see the other sea so long looked for, and never seen before of any 
 man coming out of our world, approaching to the top of the mountain, 
 he commanded his men to stay, and went himself alone to the summit, 
 as if it were to take the first possession thereof; where falling prostrate 
 upon the ground, and raising himself again upon his knees, as the manner 
 of the Christians is to pray, lifting up his eyes and hands toward heaven, 
 and directing his face toward the new-found South Sea, he poured forth 
 his humble and devout prayers before Almighty God, as a spiritual sacri- 
 fice with thanksgiving, that it pleased His Divine Majesty to reserve 
 unto that day the victory and praise of so great a thing unto him, being 
 a man but of small wit and knowledge, of little experience and base 
 parentage. When he had thus made his prayers after his warlike manner 
 he beckoned to his companions to come to him, showing them the great 
 main sea heretofore unknown to the inhabitants of Europe, Africa, and 
 Asia. Here again he fell to his prayers as before, desiring Almighty 
 God and the blessed Virgin to favour his beginnings, and to give him 
 good success to subdue those lands to the glory of His holy name, and 
 increase of His true religion. All his companions did likewise, and 
 praised God with loud voices for joy. Then Vasco, with no less manly 
 courage than Hannibal of Carthage showed his soldiers Italy from the 
 promontories of the Alps, exhorted his men to lift up their hearts, and 
 to behold the land even now under their feet, and the sea before their 
 eyes, which should be unto them a full and just reward of their great 
 labours and travails now overpast. When he had said these words he 
 commanded them to raise certain heaps of stones, in the stead of altars, 
 for a token of possession " (Peter Martyr. Eden's translation, 97).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 213 
 
 at first to encounter not a party of muleteers, but of men 
 prepared for defence. He put them to flight, however, and 
 got possession of Venta de la Cruz, which seems to have been 
 a station between the two ports on each side of the isthmus. 
 Here the English account says, that both the Maroons and 
 his own people were strictly ordered not to hurt any woman 
 nor unarmed man, and that this order was faithfully obeyed. 
 In the Spanish relation it is said that six or seven merchants 
 were killed here, and no gold or silver found, but much 
 merchandise, to the value of 200,000 ducats, which he burnt, 
 together with the place. He had better fortune soon in 
 hearing " the sweet music of the mules coming with a great 
 noise of bells " ; and presently he got sight of two recuas or 
 companies, under no other care than that of the muleteers, 
 who mistrusted nothing. Taking from these as much treasure 
 as they could carry, they buried several tons of silver ; but 
 one of his men fell into the Spaniards' hands, and was com- 
 pelled by torture to discover the place, so that, when Drake's 
 people returned for a second lading, it was almost all gone. 
 Upon returning to the coast where his pinnaces had been 
 appointed to meet him, they were not to be seen, but in their 
 stead seven Spanish pinnaces which had been searching all 
 the shore thereabouts. Being now in great fear that his 
 ships also were lost, he constructed a raft of the trees which 
 the river brought down, mounted a biscuit sack for a sail, and 
 " with an oar shaped out of a young tree, for a rudder," 
 he with three others, it is said, ventured out of the mouth of 
 the river. If this account be true, his motive must have been 
 to obtain a better view of the coast from the water, than he 
 could in a country covered with woods. Having sailed upon 
 this raft about six hours, always up to the waist in water, and 
 at every wave up to the arm-pits, they had sight of their 
 own pinnaces, which, not perceiving them, were making be- 
 hind a point for shelter from the wind and night. Drake 
 then ran his raft ashore, got round the point by land, and
 
 214 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 there joyfully found them. They went about to the Rio 
 Francisco, took in their comrades with the treasure that they 
 had secured, and rejoined the ships. Nothing now remained 
 but to dismiss their Maroon allies. Pedro, one of the chief 
 and most serviceable of them, had taken a fancy to Drake's 
 sword, and was so delighted when it was presented to him, 
 that he desired him to accept four wedges of gold as a grate- 
 ful return. Drake accepted them as courteously as they 
 were proffered, but threw them into the common stock, saying 
 it was just that they who bore part of the charge in setting 
 him to sea, should enjoy their full proportion of the advantage 
 at his return. He now sailed homeward with so prosperous a 
 gale that in twenty-three days he passed from Cape Florida 
 to the Scilly Isles ; and arriving at Plymouth on a Sunday, 
 the news was carried into the church during sermon time, 
 and "there remained few or no people with the preacher," 
 all running out to welcome one who was already regarded as 
 the hero of that place and of that county.* 
 
 Though Drake had enriched himself in this expedition, 
 success served only to excite him to a greater enterprise. 
 But while he was " brooding privately over this new design," 
 it was in part forestalled by one who had served under him 
 in the various capacities of soldier, sailor, and cook. This 
 person, whose name was John Oxenham, is said to have 
 obtained the good opinion both of his captain and comrades 
 in no ordinary degree. Drake, when he beheld from " that 
 goodly and great high tree " of the Maroons the sea of which 
 
 * Prince. " There want not those," says Fuller, " who love to beat 
 down the price of every honourable action, though they themselves 
 never mean to be chapmen. These cry up Drake's fortune herein, to 
 cry down his valour ; as if this his performance were nothing, wherein 
 a golden opportunity ran his head, with his long forelock, into Drake's 
 hands, beyond expectation. But certainly his resolution and uncon- 
 querable patience deserved much praise, to adventure on such a design, 
 which had in it just no more probability than what was enough to keep 
 it from being impossible" (Holy State, 126).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 215 
 
 he had heard such golden reports, communicated especially 
 to Oxenham his purpose of one day sailing upon it, " if it would 
 please God to grant him that happiness " ; and Oxenham, in 
 reply, protested that unless Drake were to beat him from his 
 company, " he would follow him by God's grace ". On one 
 occasion, when a party was to be sent on shore, and the 
 people would not consent that Drake should venture his 
 person, John Oxenham and Thomas Sherwell were put in 
 trust for the service, "to the great content of the whole 
 company, who conceived greatest hope of them next to the 
 captain, whom, by no means, they would condescend to suffer 
 to adventure".* Oxenham " had gotten among the seamen 
 the name of captain for his valour, and had privily scraped 
 together good store of money " ; and, having now been some 
 time at home, and becoming impatient of idleness, he de- 
 termined no longer to wait for Drake,t but undertake, on his 
 own account, the adventure which that enterprising com- 
 mander had projected. Following, therefore, the course 
 which his late commander had so successfully pursued, he 
 sailed for the isthmus with one ship and seventy men, re- 
 visited his old acquaintance the Maroons, and learned from 
 them that the treasure which he had hoped to intercept 'on 
 its way from Panama was now protected by a convoy of sol- 
 diers. Disappointed in this hope, he determined upon a 
 bolder adventure. He drew his ship aground in a retired 
 and woody creek, covered it with boughs, buried his provisions 
 
 * Burney's Hist, of Discoveries in the South Sea, i., 294, 295. Sir 
 Francis Drake Revived, 54, 81. 
 
 t " Drake," says Prince, " being prevented from setting forth, partly 
 by secret envy at home, and partly by being employed in his prince and 
 country's service in Ireland. 'Tis true Oxenham had formerly promised 
 him to assist him in that noble undertaking ; but having already waited 
 his leisure for so doing two years, and not knowing how much longer 
 it would be, if at all, ere his occasions would permit him so to do, he 
 might think himself disobliged from his promise, and so he undertook 
 something himself."
 
 216 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and his great guns, and taking with him two small pieces of 
 ordnance, went, with all his men and six Maroon guides, 
 about twelve leagues into the interior, to a river which dis- 
 charges itself into the South Sea. There he cut wood and 
 built a pinnace, " which was five and forty foot by the keel " ; 
 embarked in it, and secured for himself the honour (if so it 
 may be called, under such circumstances) of being the first 
 Englishman that ever entered the Pacific. In this vessel he 
 went to the Isla de Perlas, five and twenty leagues from 
 Panama, and there lay in wait for the appearance of a vessel 
 from Peru. After lurking ten days, he captured a small 
 barque bringing gold from Quito ; and, six days afterward, 
 another with silver from Lima. 
 
 Not satisfied with this, he searched the islands for pearls ; 
 and having found a few, returned to his pinnace, made for the 
 river in which he had embarked, and, when he was near the 
 mouth, dismissed his prizes, thus incautiously allowing them 
 to perceive where he was entering. The alarm was soon 
 given ; first, by some negroes from the island, who, as soon as 
 he had left them, hastened in a canoe to Panama.* Juan de 
 Ortega was immediately dispatched with 100 men, beside 
 negro rowers, in four barques ; and he falling in with the 
 prizes on his way was by them directed to the river. Here, 
 
 * There is a more romantic but far less likely story (Prince calls it 
 " another guess account "), that in one of the prizes Oxenham found 
 "two pieces of especial estimation ; the one a table of massy gold set 
 with emeralds, sent for a present to the king ; the other, a lady of singu- 
 lar beauty, married and the mother of children. The latter grew to be 
 his perdition ; for he had capitulated with these Symerons, that their 
 part of the booty should be only the prisoners, to the end to execute 
 their malice upon the Spaniards for their cruelty to them ; showing their 
 revenge by roasting them, and eating their hearts. John Oxenham was 
 taken with the love of the lady, and to win her good-will, what through 
 her tears and detestation of this barbarous action, breaking promise 
 with the Symerons, he gave the prisoners their liberty, except the lady ; 
 and they, making haste to Panama, sent out forces to intercept him,"
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 217 
 
 however, he was at fault ; for the river discharged itself by 
 three channels : he had made his choice to ascend the great- 
 est of these streams, "when feathers were observed coming 
 down one of the smaller channels, from whence it was inferred 
 that the pirates had plucked some fowls upon its banks. 
 Here, therefore, he entered ; and, after four days' search, 
 discovered the pinnace, with six Englishmen on board. 
 These men leaped ashore, and ran for their lives: one was 
 killed in his flight, the others escaped. Ortega, leaving 
 twenty men in his boats, entered the country with the rest 
 of his force ; and, pursuing such traces as were to be found, 
 came upon a hut or barrack, from whence the English, upon 
 the alarm given them by their comrades, had fled, but where 
 they had left their booty, and whatever else might have en- 
 cumbered them. He removed the treasure to his barques, 
 and thought it more prudent to wait awhile for the chance 
 of events, than to enter upon a painful and uncertain pursuit. 
 In this he judged wisely. There had been a dispute 
 between Oxenham and his men when they had got their 
 plunder ashore : he had required them to carry it to their 
 ship, promising them their shares ; the sailors, however, de- 
 manded a present division of the spoil : he was angry that 
 his word should be doubted, and they were incensed that he 
 made any difficulty in satisfying their claim. His life was 
 threatened : the matter, however, seems to have been com- 
 promised, and Oxenham went in search of negroes to act as 
 carriers. These he procured among the Maroons ; and re- 
 turning with them, met his men who had escaped from the 
 pinnace, and those who were fleeing from the barrack. The 
 loss of their booty at once completed their reconcilement : he 
 promised larger shares if they should succeed in recapturing 
 it ; and marched resolutely in quest of the Spaniards, relying 
 upon the Maroons as well as upon his own people. But 
 Ortega was prepared for such an attempt : the Spanish 
 were experienced in bush-fighting, and made such advantage
 
 218 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 of their experience, that, with the loss of seven killed and 
 wounded, they slew five of the negroes and eleven English- 
 men, and took seven of Oxenham's men prisoners. Thus 
 defeated, he made for his ship with the remainder of his men ; 
 and Ortega, having buried his dead, returned with the 
 treasure, the pinnace, and the prisoners to Panama. Advice 
 had been sent from thence to Nombre de Dios : vessels 
 were despatched to search along the coast for the English- 
 man's ship ; and when Oxenham and his people reached the 
 spot where they had, as they hoped, concealed it, it was gone. 
 Nothing remained to them but to trust to the friendship of 
 the Maroons, till they could build canoes, in which it was 
 their intention to try their fortune upon the Northern Sea, 
 if they could surprise some vessel there. But in this, which, 
 if time had been given them for attempting it, would have 
 been no forlorn hope, they were prevented. The Spaniards, 
 who knew how insecure they must be while fifty such ad- 
 venturers were at large in the country, sent 150 men under 
 Diego de Frias to hunt them out : some who were sick fell 
 into his hands ; and the others, whom he failed to take, 
 Oxenham being one, were, after a while, delivered up by the 
 negroes. They were brought to Panama ; and Oxenham 
 was then asked whether he had his queen's authority for 
 entering the King of Spain's dominions ? This could not be 
 produced, nor was it pretended : summary condemnation 
 followed, and the prisoners were executed as pirates, except 
 Oxenham, the master, the pilot, and five boys, who were sent 
 to Lima, the latter as fit subjects for mercy and conversion 
 because of their youth ; the three former as being the chiefs 
 of the crew, of whom it was expedient that an example should 
 be made in the Peruvian capital. In that city Oxenham and 
 his two companions suffered death * as common enemies of 
 
 * Prince says : " There is a family of considerable standing of this name 
 (Oxenham) at South Tawton, near Okehampton, of which is this strange 
 and wonderful thing recorded ; that at the deaths of any of them a bird
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 219 
 
 mankind ; " thus miscarrying," says Camden, " in this great 
 and memorable adventure ".* 
 
 Another freebooter followed Drake's course the ensuing 
 year. This was Master Andrew Barker, of Bristol, who, 
 
 with a white breast is seen for a while fluttering about their beds, and 
 then suddenly to vanish away ". 
 
 Howell has this account in one of his letters, written from London 
 in 1632 : " As I past by St. Dunstan's, in Fleet Street, the last Saturday, 
 I stepped into a lapidary or stonecutter's shop, to treat with the master 
 for a stone to be put upon my father's tomb, and, casting my eyes up 
 and down, I spied a huge marble, with a large inscription upon it, which 
 was this, to my best remembrance : 
 
 " ' Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly young man, in whose chamber, 
 as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a bird, with a white breast, 
 was seen fluttering about his bed, and so vanished. 
 
 '" Here lies also Mary Oxenham, the sister of the said John, who 
 died the next day, and the same apparition was seen in the room.' 
 
 " Then another sister is spoken of. Then, 
 
 " ' Here lies hard by James Oxenham, the son of the said John, who 
 died a child in his cradle a little after ; and such a bird was seen flutter- 
 ing about his head a little before he expired, which vanished afterwards.' 
 
 " At the bottom of the stone there is, 
 
 " ' Here lies Elizabeth Oxenham, the mother of the said John, who 
 died sixteen years since, when such a bird with a white breast was seen 
 about her bed before her death.' 
 
 " To all these there be divers witnesses, both squires and ladies, whose 
 names are engraven upon the stone. This stone is to be sent to a 
 town hard by Exeter, where this happened. Were you here I could raise 
 a choice discourse with you hereupon " (Epistola Ho-Eliance, book i., 
 sec. 6, ep. ix.). 
 
 * Hakluyt, iii., 526, 527 ; Camden, 251, 252. The account of this 
 adventure we owe to Lopez Vaz, a native of Elvas, who was taken in 
 the Plata, by one of the Earl of Cumberland's ships, having with him 
 the Discourse which he had written concerning Drake's attempt on 
 Nombre de Dios, and the subsequent expedition. The manuscript came 
 into Hakluyt's hand. "The Spaniards of that country (Darien)," he 
 says, " marvelled much at this one thing, to see that, since the con- 
 quering of this land, there have been many Frenchmen that have come 
 to those countries, but they never saw Englishmen there, but only these 
 two : and although there have many Frenchmen been on the coast, yet
 
 220 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 having traded for some years with the Canaries, left one 
 Charles there, the son of Dominic Chester, a Bristol merchant, 
 as his agent. The said Chester devised means of securing 
 for himself a certain portion of his employer's goods, and this 
 with a good conscience, under favour of his father's patron- 
 saint and namesake. For when Captain Roberts arrived with 
 a cargo, and with charge to bring home returns for Barker, 
 this Charles accused him to the Inquisition, and, on the pre- 
 text that he was Barker's partner, the whole property was 
 confiscated to the Holy Office, such portions only excepted 
 as the informer received for his meritorious services, or had 
 previously secured for himself. By means of some humane 
 friar, Roberts was delivered from prison, at the cost of all he 
 had brought with him in his ship ; and returning empty, the 
 charges of his voyage were added to Barker's loss, making it 
 amount to nearly 2000/. It was in vain to seek redress, " for 
 no suit prevaileth against the Inquisition of Spain ". So 
 Andrew Barker, in recompense of his injury, and also to 
 recover his loss from the Spaniards themselves, fitted out two 
 barques, one called the Ragged Staff, himself being captain, 
 and Philip Roche master thereof; the other, named the Bear, 
 had one William Coxe for her master and captain. They 
 sailed from Plymouth, on Whitsunday ; burnt two villages in 
 the Isle of Maya, in revenge for their trumpeter there treach- 
 erously killed by the Portugals, and having reached Trinidad, 
 began their piracies and their fatal disputes among themselves. 
 
 never durst they put foot upon land ; only these two Englishmen ad- 
 ventured it. All these things coming to the hearing of the King of 
 vSpain, he provided two galleys, well appointed, to keep those coasts ; 
 and the first year they took six or seven French ships. And after that 
 this was known, there were no more Englishmen or Frenchmen of war 
 that durst adventure to approach the coast, until this present year 1586, 
 that the aforesaid Francis Drake arrived there with a strong fleet. But 
 it is likely that, if the King of Spain live, he will in time provide sufficient 
 remedy to keep his countries and subjects from the invasion of other 
 nations."
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 221 
 
 In the Bay of Tula (about eighteen leagues south-west of Cartha- 
 gena), they took a frigate and treasure therein, to the value 
 of 500/. in bars of gold and ingots of silver, with some quantity 
 of corriente, or coin, in reals of plate, and " certain green stones 
 called emeralds, whereof one, very great, being set in gold, 
 was found tied secretly about the thigh of a friar". The 
 frigate they left ; and finding that some Spanish men-of-war 
 were in pursuit of them, passed on to the mouth of the 
 Chagre, and there landed ten men to seek the Maroons, who, 
 it was supposed, were ready to join with the English and 
 French against the Spaniards. The men returned without 
 having discovered them, but brought with them " a disease 
 called there the Calentura, which is a hot and vehement fever"; 
 they infected others, and some eight or nine died. 
 
 Between the Chagre and Veragua they took a frigate, in 
 which was some quantity of gold, and where they found also 
 four cast pieces of ordnance which had belonged to Oxenham's 
 ship. This capture was made in good time, the Ragged Staff", 
 because of her great leakage, being no longer seaworthy ; 
 wherefore they set the Spaniards ashore, removed her crew 
 into the prize and then sunk the vessel. At Veragua, the 
 ill blood between Barker and his master Roche, which had 
 been hardly repressed before, broke out afresh ; they fought, 
 and Barker was wounded in the cheek. They made from 
 thence, by the direction of certain Indians, for the Bay of 
 Honduras, and captured on the way a barque with some 
 money and provisions on board, and the Escrivano of Cartha- 
 gena, "who, being a man of some note, was put to his 
 ransom " ; the rest were dismissed freely. The first race of 
 freebooters were in nothing more honourably distinguished 
 from their successors than in this, that they exercised no 
 cruelty upon their prisoners, and committed no murder. 
 Arriving at the Island of St. Francisco, in the mouth of the 
 Bay of Honduras, Coxe, the master of the Bear, with a party 
 of mutineers, boarded Barker's ship, took possession of it
 
 222 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and of all his booty, and set him ashore upon the island, 
 where he and one Germane Welborne fought, and both were 
 wounded. Barker would then fain have returned to the ship, 
 but this was resisted, and he was told that he should not 
 come on board till they were ready to depart. Whatever 
 may have been their intentions with respect to him, his 
 troubled life was near its close ; for, one morning, at day- 
 break, a party of Spaniards arriving secretly in the island, 
 surprised the English and slew nine of them ; of these Barker 
 was one ; about twenty escaped by getting on board. Coxe 
 then, with two parties, in a pinnace and a skiff which he had 
 taken at the island, surprised the town of Truxillo in the bay, 
 and took there " wine and oil as much as they would, and 
 divers other good things, but no gold or silver, nor any other 
 treasure which they would confess. But before they could 
 return to their ship, some men-of-war chased her ; the pinnace 
 shifted for itself and got safe, leaving for haste those that 
 were in the skiff, being eight persons ; what became of them 
 afterwards God knoweth." Their misfortunes did not end 
 here ; for having now determined to sail for England, and 
 being in the main sea, homeward bound, about sixty leagues 
 from the isle, the frigate their prize, "wherein was the 
 treasure for the adventurers, and that which pertained to 
 the captain, to the value of 2000/., being over-set with sail, 
 with a flaw of wind was overthrown, and all the goods there- 
 in perished ". Fourteen men were drowned in her ; Coxe 
 and eight others were saved. They had built a frigate upon 
 the shore of the Honduras, in place of the Bear, which seems 
 to have followed the fortunes of its old companion the Ragged 
 Staff; in this they reached Scilly, when, Roche having died 
 on the passage home, Coxe and Andrew Brown divided the 
 remaining prize money among the survivors, "delivering to 
 some five pounds, to some six, to some seven, to some more, 
 as every man was thought to have deserved " : the barque 
 and the guns (Oxenham's among them) were left at Scilly to
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 223 
 
 the use of Brown. " Divers of our company," says the person 
 from whom Hakluyt collected his relation, "were committed 
 to prison upon our arrival at Plymouth, at the suit of Mr. 
 John Barker, of Bristol, as accessories to his brother, our 
 captain's death, and betrayers of him unto the enemy. And 
 after straight examination of many of us, by letters of direc- 
 tion from his Majesty's privy council, the chief malefactors 
 were only chastised with long imprisonment, when, indeed, 
 before God, they had deserved to die : whereof some, 
 although they escaped the rigour of man's law, yet could 
 they not avoid the heavy judgment of God, but shortly after 
 came to miserable end. Which may be example to others to 
 show themselves faithful and obedient in all honest causes to 
 their captains and governors." * 
 
 It appears then that the persons who went upon this 
 piratical voyage thought they were engaged in an honest 
 cause. Most men who enter upon unlawful courses, either 
 form a code of convenient morals for themselves, or act upon 
 the accursed opinion that there is nothing to be hoped or 
 feared beyond the grave. But there were circumstances, 
 which made the light in which these precursors of the 
 buccaneers regarded their proceedings, appear plausible to 
 the nation as well as to themselves. During great part of 
 Elizabeth's long reign, Spain and England, though formally 
 at r peace, were in a state of manifest enmity and of private 
 warfare ; and that enmity was on both sides more acrimonious 
 than could have been generated in any ordinary war. No 
 English subject, while trading with those parts of the 
 Spanish dominions with which the trade was authorised by 
 treaty, was safe, unless he was a Roman Catholic. The In- 
 quisition looked upon all heretics who came within its reach 
 as amenable to its laws, no matter what their country ; they 
 were rebellious subjects of the Universal Roman Catholic 
 
 * Hakluyt, iii., 528-530.
 
 224 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Church, and, as such, to be seized and punished, wherever 
 that wicked Church was strong enough to enforce its pre- 
 tensions. If the confiscation of English property, and the 
 imprisonment and ill usage (even to tortures and death) of 
 English subjects, should have the effect of bringing on 
 hostilities between the two crowns, whatever might be the 
 policy of the Spanish Government, this was what the clergy 
 and the Inquisition desired. The English people resented 
 this before the queen could venture to resent it otherwise 
 than by unavailing remonstrances ; and the injured parties 
 took a shorter course, in which some gallant spirits, and many 
 desperate ones, were ready to join. Thus, in Barker's case, 
 he had just cause of complaint against the Spanish authorities, 
 by whom he had been iniquitously deprived of his goods ; and 
 if he could have indemnified himself by the forcible seizure 
 of property belonging to the Inquisition, or to the Spanish 
 Government, without injury to any other parties, this would 
 have been nothing more than what by the law of nations 
 might be justified, when national law had been by the other 
 party set at nought : but this was impossible ; and what, if 
 so restricted, would have been a just act of reprisal, was an 
 act of piracy when committed against the King of Spain's 
 subjects. So the Spaniards naturally and properly considered 
 it. They knew nothing of the injuries upon which Drake as 
 well as Barker is said to have founded his right of making 
 war upon the King of Spain ; nor would they indeed have 
 allowed them to be injuries ; nor that, if they had been such, 
 any such right could be derived from them. While, therefore, 
 the private warfare continued, they executed as pirates all 
 whom they made prisoners ; and this was conformable to the 
 acknowledged law of nations. 
 
 The first adventurers of this stamp did not, however, con- 
 sider themselves pirates, for two reasons : first, because they 
 professed to carry on hostilities only against the Spaniards, 
 not, like the Vikingar and Vitalians, against all who traversed
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 225 
 
 the seas ; secondly, because they had good reason to believe 
 that, although not commissioned by their own Government, 
 they were acting with its connivance, and under its tacit sanc- 
 tion. In this way of thinking, therefore, they were fairly at 
 war, carrying it on at a twofold risk, seeing that, if taken by 
 the enemy, they had no mercy to expect ; but also with a pro- 
 spect of far greater gains than could be obtained in any other 
 service. The danger might have been little different in 
 ordinary wars ; for whether war should be what was then 
 termed good or bad, depended in those days upon the 
 temper of an individual commander, not upon any fixed law 
 or general usage. But this formed no part of their considera- 
 tion. Among such men, those who were not thoughtless of 
 danger were regardless of it. Some were of as heroic a 
 spirit as the greatest of the Spanish conquerors ; others were 
 of no better qualities than the worst of them ; and perhaps 
 not a few were perfectly aware that they were pursuing a 
 safer course upon the seas at whatever hazard, than if they 
 had been braving the laws at home. 
 
 There was another circumstance which undoubtedly entered 
 into the views of the better adventurers, and was not without 
 some influence upon all. A strong feeling of indignation 
 had been excited against the Spaniards for their cruelties in 
 the New World, by a relation ascribed, on no good grounds, 
 to Bartolome de Las Casas, and published in many languages, 
 with engravings, in which the acts of the most atrocious 
 barbarity were represented. In one respect it was, perhaps, 
 well that this impression should have been produced, lest 
 posterity, in astonishment and admiration at the intrepidity, 
 and perseverance, and unparalleled achievements of the con- 
 querors, should have overlooked their crimes. Contemplating 
 the history of their conquests with that religious temper 
 wherewith all history ought to be contemplated, nothing 
 more mournful is to be found in the annals of the human race. 
 We can perceive only that abominations, like those of the 
 
 15
 
 226 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Canaanites, prevailed among all the more civilised nations of 
 the New World ; and that the Spaniards, who were the 
 appointed instruments of Divine judgment, substituted other 
 evils in the place of those which they extirpated ; sacrificed 
 more victims to avarice than the Mexicans to their idols ; 
 and are now suffering from the consequence of their long- 
 continued and unrepented offences. Further than this, 
 the course of Providence is not evolved. The first chastise- 
 ment which the Spaniards received was from those ad- 
 venturers who now assailed them in their conquests, and led 
 the way for the buccaneers, the Vikingar of the New World. 
 Even these wretches thought it some justification of them- 
 selves that they were taking vengeance for the Indians ; and 
 that feeling, in a certain degree, was entertained also by 
 Drake and his contemporaries. 
 
 Moreover, the Spaniards founded their right of conquest 
 on Pope Alexander's grant, the validity of which grant was, 
 of course, denied by a people who had thrown off the papal 
 yoke. England acknowledged in the Spaniards no right but 
 that of the strongest to those parts of America which they 
 actually possessed, and none to those extensive regions in 
 which they had formed no settlement. Least of all could 
 the English, in an age when the spirit of maritime enterprise 
 had been excited, submit to an assumption of dominion, which 
 pretended to exclude them from the Caribbean Sea, and from 
 the Great Pacific, on which Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first 
 European who ever beheld it, had not looked with a more 
 ambitious eye than the first Englishman by whom it was 
 seen, Francis Drake. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the plan of Drake's voyage 
 was communicated to the queen, and by her approved. Sir 
 Christopher Hattoii introduced him to Elizabeth, and it is 
 said that she gave him a sword, with this remarkable speech : 
 "We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake, 
 striketh at us ! " It is said, also, which is less credible, that
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 227 
 
 he had a commission from his sovereign. This would have 
 been inconsistent with her cautious policy ; it was enough 
 for her at this time to assure him of her secret sanction. 
 The expedition was fitted out at his own cost,* "with the 
 help of divers friends, adventurers ; it consisted of his own 
 ship the Pelican, 100 tons; the Elizabeth, of 80, captain, John 
 Winter ; the Mart/gold, a barque of 30 tons, captain, John 
 Thomas ; the Loan, a fly-boat, of 50, captain, John Chester ; 
 and the Christopher, a pinnace, of 15, captain, Thomas Moon ". 
 These ships he manned with an able and sufficient crew, "to 
 the number of 164, men, gentlemen, and sailors, and fur- 
 nished with such plentiful provision of all things necessary, 
 as so long and dangerous a voyage seemed to require " ; 
 taking out with him the frames of four pinnaces in pieces, 
 to be put together when occasion required. "The smallness 
 of this force," it is remarked by Admiral Burney,f " for an 
 enterprise of such magnitude, is not so extraordinary as that a 
 navigation, which on account of its difficulties and dangers 
 had been many years discontinued, should be undertaken in 
 vessels so diminutive." " Neither did he omit, it is said, to 
 make provision for ornament and delight ; carrying to this 
 purpose with him expert musicians, rich furniture (all the 
 vessels for his table, yea, many belonging to the cook-room, 
 being of pure silver), with divers shows of all sorts of curious 
 workmanship, whereby the civility and magnificence of his 
 native country might, among all nations whither he should 
 come, be the more admired." J In this he followed the 
 example of the Portuguese, in their first voyage to the East. 
 
 * Herrera says, at the cost of the queen also, and of Sir John Hawkins, 
 and others. He states the number of men at 200 fighting men, besides 
 ten young men of family (cavalleros mozos), who went out to learn the 
 art of navigation, and he says that each vessel carried eighteen brass 
 pieces, as if the ships had been all of equal tonnage. That of the admiral's 
 ship, which is the only one he specifies, he states at 120 (t. ii., p. 384). 
 
 t i-> 35- + Prince.
 
 228 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Great care was taken to conceal his destination ; few of 
 the persons who were embarked were acquainted with his 
 designs ; and the better to conceal them, it was given out 
 that they were bound for Alexandria. On the 15th of 
 November, 1577, they sailed from Plymouth ; but the next 
 morning the wind falling contrary, they put into Falmouth, 
 and there so terrible a tempest took them, and so vehement, 
 that all their ships were like to have gone to wreck. The 
 admiral was obliged to cut away his mainmast, and the Munj- 
 gold was driven ashore. They put back to Plymouth to 
 repair, and set forth a second time, with better fortune, on 
 the 1 3th of December. When they were out of sight of land 
 Drake first gave his people some ground for conjecturing 
 what course he intended, by appointing the Island of Moga- 
 dore, on the coast of Barbary, for the place of rendezvous, in 
 case any of the fleet should part company. Between that 
 island and the main, from which it is one mile distant, they 
 found a very good and safe harbour, with good entrance, and 
 void of any danger. Here he put together one of his pin- 
 naces. The island was not inhabited. An intercourse was 
 opened with the Moors of the main, by means of one of the 
 crew, who had formerly been a captive among them. Hos- 
 tages were exchanged the first day, and traffic promised by 
 the Moors for the next ; but when they came with camels 
 to the sea-side, as if bringing their wares, one of the men 
 too hastily leaped on shore, meaning to become a hostage 
 as on the yesterday ; he was seized, a dagger was held to his 
 throat to deter him from making any resistance : * the boat's 
 crew, seeing a number of armed men start up from behind 
 the rocks, found it prudent to return, and the prisoner A\ as 
 laid on a horse and carried away. The first narrator remarks 
 upon this, that " a man cannot be too circumspect and wary of 
 himself among such miscreants". Drake landed, and marched 
 
 * Hakluyt, Hi., 730.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 229 
 
 a little way into the country, hoping to redeem the man, or 
 obtain some satisfaction ; but the Moors neither offered to 
 resist nor approached to treat ; he could obtain no inter- 
 course with them, and sailed from Mogadore on the third 
 day after his arrival there. The intention of the Moors was, 
 however, less inimical than it appeared. Their king, Muley 
 Moloc, was then expecting that memorable invasion from 
 Portugal which in the ensuing year took place, under the 
 unfortunate Sebastian ; he wanted to know what ships these 
 were, and if anything could be learnt concerning the Portu- 
 guese. The prisoner was taken to his presence, and when 
 all that he could communicate had been collected from him, 
 Muley gave orders for conducting him back to the ship, with 
 offers of friendship and assistance to the general. But the 
 fleet had departed ; this, however, was no misfortune to the 
 man, who was not long afterwards sent home in an English 
 merchantman. * 
 
 At Cape Blanco they remained four days : there Drake 
 mustered his men on shore, and trained them in warlike 
 manner, to make them fit for all occasions ; and leaving 
 there the Christopher, he took in its stead one of the Spanish 
 barques called canters, being of the burden of forty tons or 
 thereabouts, releasing some other prizes which he had made, 
 after taking out of them such necessaries as he wanted and they 
 could yield. Leaving this place on the 22nd, they anchored 
 off the Isle of Maya on the 28th, when a party was sent to 
 " view the island, and the likelihood that might be there of 
 provision ". The inhabitants had been forbidden to trade 
 with any such visitors, and when they saw them, they salted 
 the wells near the landing place, and forsook their houses. 
 It was easy for them thus to spoil the water, salt being pro- 
 duced there without labour, " save only that the people 
 gather it into heaps, which continually in great quantity is 
 
 * Burney, 308.
 
 230 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 increased upon the sands by the flowing of the sea, and the 
 heat of the sun burning the same, so that of the increase 
 thereof they keep a continual traffic with their neighbours ". 
 Marching into the island, they found grapes and cocoa-nuts, 
 and saw goats, which were so chased by the inhabitants that 
 they could kill none of them ; but the people, as if to stop 
 the mouths of their uninvited visitors, had laid out some old 
 dried goats' flesh, which being but ill, and small, and few, 
 the English made no account of. Next they sailed by the 
 Island of Santiago, from whence three pieces were fired at 
 them, but at such distance that they could do no harm. The 
 mountains and high places there, they were told, were pos- 
 sessed by Moors, who had escaped from their Portuguese 
 masters, and maintained themselves in great strength. Off 
 this island they espied two ships under sail, gave chase to one, 
 and boarded her from a boat without resistance ; she proved 
 to be a Portuguese, bound for Brazil, with many passengers, 
 and among other commodities good store of wine. Drake 
 transferred the prisoners to the pinnace which he had set up 
 at Mogadore, giving them their clothes, provision, and one 
 butt of their own wine, and letting them go, all except the 
 pilot Nuno da Sylva, whom he detained, because it was dis- 
 covered that he was well acquainted with the coast of Brazil. 
 The prize he committed to Master Thomas Doughtie's custody, 
 with twenty-eight men ; but complaint being soon after made 
 against him that he had received things from some of the 
 Portuguese prisoners, and kept them for his own use, he was 
 removed in consequence, and Thomas, the general's brother, 
 was made captain of the prize instead. The wine and pro- 
 vision with which this ship was laden, was the most valuable 
 part of their stores. * 
 
 From the Cape de Verds they were nine weeks without 
 the sight of land, " often meeting with unwelcome storms and 
 
 * Hakluyt, 731, 732. Burney, 309, 310.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 231 
 
 less welcome calms, being in the bosom of the burning zone, 
 not without the affrights of flashing lightnings and terrifying 
 claps of thunder ; yet, still with the admixture of many com- 
 forts, for, being but badly furnished with fresh water, their 
 necessities were, for seventeen days together, constantly 
 supplied with rain ; nor was their fleet in all that time dispersed, 
 nor did any ship lose company except the Portuguese prize, for 
 one day, which then came in again, to their great comfort, for 
 the loss of it, it is said, would have defeated the voyage." * When 
 they were near the equator, Drake, being very careful of his 
 men's health, let every one of them blood with his own hands, f 
 On 5th February, he made the coast of Brazil, in latitude 31| 
 S. ; "and being discovered at sea by the inhabitants of the 
 country, they made upon the coast great fires for a sacrifice 
 to the devils, about which they use conjurations (making 
 heaps of sand and other ceremonies), that when any ship 
 shall go about to stay upon their coast, not only sands may 
 be gathered together in shoals in every place, but also that 
 storms and tempests may arise, to the casting away of ships 
 and men". Thus the sailors were told, probably by the 
 Portuguese pilot, and they were also assured that the efficacy 
 of these conjurations had often been proved. On the 7th 
 they lost the canter, which had been named the Christopher, 
 after the pinnace for which she had been exchanged : by 
 Drake's great care in dispersing his ships they fell in with 
 her again ; and his pleasure at recovering her was such that 
 he named the place where they met the Cape of Joy : " the 
 name, however, was as little permanent as the feeling with 
 which it was imposed. The country appeared to them very 
 fair and pleasant, with an exceeding fruitful soil, and they 
 saw great store of large and mighty deer," but not being able 
 to chase the deer, they contented themselves with slaughter- 
 ing seals at an anchorage eighteen leagues within the Plata, 
 thinking them "good and acceptable meat both as food for 
 
 * Prince. f Camden, 250. J Hakluyt, 732.
 
 232 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the present, and as a supply of provisions for the future ". 
 They sailed farther up, till they found but three fathoms 
 depth, and filled their casks with fresh water by the ship's 
 side. On the 27th they left the Plata, pursuing their course 
 towards the south. The ship in which Doughtie was parted 
 company that night, and the Christopher two days afterwards. 
 In latitude 47 S. they saw a bay within a headland, which 
 seemed as if there should be a commodious port there. Drake 
 did not think it prudent to stand in with the ship, till he had 
 examined it : he anchored, therefore, three leagues from the 
 coast, and went to explore it himself the next morning in a 
 boat. As he approached, a native made his appearance, 
 shouting and dancing to the noise of a rattle which he shook 
 in his hand ; no doubt this was the maraca, which the savages 
 of South America used in most of their ceremonies from the 
 Orinoco southwards, and far in the interior. It was supposed 
 that he invited them to land, but a fog came on, the weather 
 became bad, and Drake thought it necessary to retuni to his 
 ships, being three leagues from them : the fog thickened ; 
 the ships could no longer be seen, and Captain Thomas in the 
 Marygold, being anxious for the general's safety, ventured to 
 stand into the bay, fortunate in both his hopes, for Drake got 
 on board, and he came to anchor in a secure situation. The 
 other ships were obliged to stand out to sea. On the morrow 
 the weather became fine, and Drake kindled fires on the shore 
 as signals for the dispersed ships, none of which were in 
 sight ; but they were soon assembled, except the Swan and 
 the Portuguese prize, which had been named the Mary. The 
 natives kept at distance, answering by gestures and unin- 
 telligible speech the signal which was made to them by 
 showing a white cloth. Places were discovered near the 
 rocks, constructed for the purpose of drying the nandu or 
 American ostrich, and other birds for food. More than fifty 
 nandus, either dried or in a state of preparation, were found 
 there ; their thighs were as large as " reasonable legs of
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 233 
 
 mutton ".* The English thought they were intended for a 
 present ; they took accordingly what they found, but it seems 
 they left what was accepted as a full compensation, for a 
 friendly intercourse was afterwards established. 
 
 According to their account the nandu was decoyed by 
 stalking, a practice known in civilised as well as in savage 
 countries. The natives shaped such a resemblance as they 
 could of the bird's head and neck at one end of a staff, and 
 fastened plumes of its feathers at the other ; holding this 
 before them, they approached their intended prey, and either 
 decoyed or drove them into some neck of land, across which 
 they stretched a strong net, and then set dogs upon them. 
 That practice, however, is no longer known ; and it is said 
 that it is now impossible to take this bird by any snare, t 
 Leaving this place, which was not convenient for the fleet, 
 they found a good port in 47^ S., and having given his orders 
 there, Drake sent out Winter in the Elisabeth, to search for 
 the two missing ships to the southward, and went northward 
 in the admiral himself on the same quest. He met with the 
 Siraii the same day, brought her into harbour and broke her 
 up for firewood, having taken everything out of her that 
 could be of use : this was done to lessen the number of ships 
 and the chance of separation, and that their force might be 
 more compact. Here they " made new provision of seals, 
 whereof they slew to the number of from 200 to 300 in the 
 space of an hour. Some days passed before any natives were 
 seen ; they, however, made the first advances by signs from 
 the shore, as if inviting some English who were on a small 
 island opposite. Drake sent a boat and such presents in it 
 as Avere taken out for such occasions ; these, as the Indians 
 manifested some want of confidence, were tied to a pole, and 
 the pole was stuck in the ground a little way from the land- 
 ing place, and left for them. They in return put some of 
 
 * Burney, 312. f Azara, iv., 172,
 
 234 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 their coronals and carved bones on the same place. Some 
 kind of traffic followed upon this opening, but on their part 
 it was still cautious ; they would receive nothing by hand ; it 
 must be placed on the ground for them, and the words by 
 which they expressed themselves willing or unwilling to ac- 
 cept the things proffered in exchange, were presently under- 
 stood. Hakluyt's author describes them as naked, saving 
 only about their waist the skin of some beast with the fur 
 or hair on, and something also wreathed on their heads. 
 Their faces were painted with divers colours ; some of them 
 had on their heads the similitude of horns, every man his 
 bow, which was an ell in length, and a couple of arrows. 
 They were very agile people, and quick to deliver, and seemed 
 not to be ignorant in the feats of war, as by their order of 
 ranging a few men might appear." Some had one leg, one 
 shoulder, or the whole side, painted white, and the other black, 
 with white moons on the black part, and on the white black 
 suns. It is worthy of notice, that this parti-coloured fashion, 
 as well as that of ornamenting the head with the similitude 
 of horns, is at this time in use among the tribes on the far 
 distant coast of California. 
 
 The men who frequented the port were not above fifty in 
 number ; no canoes were seen among them. " They fed on 
 seals and other flesh, which they ate nearly raw, casting 
 pieces of four or six pounds weight into the fire, till it was 
 a little scorched, and then tearing it in pieces w r ith their 
 teeth like lions, both men and women." They were a merry 
 race ; the sound of the trumpet delighted them, and they 
 danced with the sailors. The chaplain of the fleet, Mr. 
 Francis Fletcher, describes them as of large stature ; and 
 that the Austral tribes are so, may be affirmed on the most 
 satisfactory testimony, but the fact has been much exagger- 
 ated. " One of the giants," says Fletcher, " standing with 
 our men when they were taking their morning draught, 
 showed himself so familiar that he also would do as they
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 235 
 
 did ; and taking a glass in his hand (being strong canary 
 wine), it came no sooner to his lips, than it took him by the 
 nose, and so suddenly entered his head, that he was so drunk, 
 or at least so overcome, that he fell on his bottom not able to 
 stand ; yet he held the glass fast in his hand, without spilling 
 any of the wine ; and when he came to himself, he tried again, 
 and tasting, by degrees got to the bottom. From which time 
 he took such a liking to the wine, that having learnt the 
 name, he would every morning come down from the moun- 
 tains with a mighty cry of wine ! wine ! wine ! continuing 
 the same until he arrived at the tent." * 
 
 In this place, which he named Seal Bay, Drake remained 
 something more than a fortnight. When he sailed from 
 thence the Portuguese prize was still missing ; and it was 
 not long before the canter again parted company, and was 
 absent three or four days. They unloaded her, therefore, 
 when next they came to anchor, and abandoned her, letting 
 her drift to sea. On the 1 9th, they had the good fortune once 
 more to meet the Portuguese ; and on the next day the 
 whole fleet anchored in the "good harborough called by 
 Magellan Port Julian ". That some navigator had been 
 there before them was, indeed, certain ; for they found a 
 gibbet standing there, t and from that rueful monument sup- 
 posed it to be the spot where Magellan did execution upon 
 some of his disobedient and rebellious company ; some of 
 their bones also were remaining. As soon as the ships were 
 secured, Drake went to search for a watering place, and to 
 see what provisions this ill-omened harbour could furnish. 
 His brother, Captain Thomas, Robert Winter, Oliver the 
 master-gunner, and two others, went in the boat with him. 
 Two of the natives came to them on their landing, received 
 the presents which were offered, and appeared as well pleased 
 as they were familiar. They were armed with bows and 
 
 * Burney, 315, from Fletcher's MSS. f Hakluyt, 733, 751.
 
 236 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 arrows ; and the gunner, to show them how well the English 
 understood the use of that weapon, discharged an arrow from 
 his own bow. The natives tried all theirs, but could not 
 shoot so far ; and they seemed pleased at seeing his skill. 
 Presently another Indian came, " but of a sourer sort " ; and 
 manifestly disliking the confidence with which his country- 
 men treated the strangers, angrily made signs to the English 
 to depart. No doubt it was well remembered how treacher- 
 ously Magellan had kidnapped two of the natives here, and 
 the blood that was now shed was probably in revenge for 
 that wickedness. Robert Winter, whether in mere sport, or 
 that he wished to let this sterner savage behold a specimen 
 of English archery, prepared to shoot as the gunner had 
 done ; but in drawing it to its full length, the string broke. 
 While he was busied in refitting it, the savages shot at him 
 so suddenly, that before any mischief was apprehended, one 
 arrow was fixed in his shoulder, and another pierced his lungs. 
 Upon this the gunner took aim at them with his caliver ; it 
 missed fire, and he was immediately shot " through the breast 
 and out at back, so that he fell down stark dead ". The 
 Indians were now increasing in number ; and it appeared 
 that they had commenced this attack, not in a confidence 
 upon their own dexterity alone, but with the assurance of 
 being supported. 
 
 Drake upon this ordered his companions to cover them- 
 selves with their targets, and approach the enemy, but not 
 in a regular line ; and he directed them to break the arrows 
 that were shot at them, observing that the savages had but 
 a small store. At the same time he took the piece which 
 had so unhappily missed fire, aimed at the Indian who had 
 killed the gunner, and who was the man that had begun the 
 fray, and shot him in the belly. An arrow wound, hoAvever 
 severe, the savage would have borne without betraying any 
 indication of pain ; but his cries, upon being thus wounded, 
 were so loud and hideous, that his companions were terrified
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 237 
 
 and fled, though many were then hastening to their assistance. 
 Drake did not pursue them, but hastened to convey Winter 
 to the ship for speedy help ; no help, however, availed, and 
 he died on the second day. The gunner's body, which had 
 been left on shore, was sent for the next day ; the savages, 
 meantime, had stript it, as if for the sake of curiously inspect- 
 ing it : the clothes they had laid under the head, and stuck 
 an English arrow in the right eye for mockery. Both bodies 
 were buried in a little island in the harbour.* No further 
 attempt was made to molest the English, though they re- 
 mained nearly two months in the harbour, and no after 
 intercourse took place. The lesson which the natives had 
 received was sufficient ; perhaps it was the more effectual, 
 because the individual upon whom the punishment fell was 
 the one at whose instigation the fray had been begun.f 
 
 A more tragical event followed. Magellan had in this 
 same port quelled a dangerous mutiny, with an intrepidity 
 and promptitude that would have been worthy of all praise, 
 if treachery and assassination had not been among the means 
 which he employed. Drake apprehended a similar danger. 
 It is said, in the earliest relation of his expedition, that he 
 began here to inquire diligently into Master Doughtie's 
 actions, " and found them not to be such as he looked for, 
 but tending rather to contention, or mutiny, or some other 
 disorder, whereby the success of the voyage might greatly 
 have been hazarded ; that the company were called together, 
 and made acquainted with the particulars, which, partly by 
 
 * Cliffe, 751. Burney, 317, 318. 
 
 f Admiral Burney thought it might be received as a proof that the dis- 
 positions of the Patagonians were not in general mischievous and re- 
 vengeful, that they attempted no farther injury, nor offered any kind of 
 interruption to the English in their watering, wooding, or other avoca- 
 tions (p. 318). My kind-hearted old friend thought too favourably of 
 savage nature. These Indians would have watched for every opportunity 
 of vengeance, if they had not been deterred by fear or by superstition.
 
 238 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Dough tie's confession, and partly by evidence, were found 
 to be true ; which," says the writer, " when our general saw, 
 although his private affection to Master Doughtie (as he 
 then in the presence of us all sacredly protested) was great, 
 yet the care he had of the state of the voyage, of the ex- 
 pectations of her majesty, and of the honour of his country, 
 did more touch him (as indeed it ought) than the private 
 respect of one man ; so that the cause being thoroughly 
 heard, and all things done in good order, as near as might 
 be to the course of our laws in England, it was concluded 
 that Master Doughtie should receive punishment, according 
 to the quality of the offence. And he, seeing no remedy but 
 patience for himself, desired before his death to receive the 
 communion ; which he did at the hands of Master Fletcher 
 our minister, and our general himself accompanied him in 
 that holy action : which being done, and the place of execu- 
 tion made ready, he having embraced our general, and 
 taken his leave of all the company, with prayer for the 
 queen's majesty and our realm, in quiet sort laid his head 
 to the block, where he ended his life." It is further said 
 that when the execution was over, Drake addressed the 
 whole company, exhorting them to unity, obedience, and 
 regard of the voyage in which they were engaged ; for 
 better confirmation whereof he willed every man to prepare 
 himself for receiving the holy communion on the following 
 Sunday, "as Christian brethren and friends ought to do. 
 This," the relator says, " was done in a very reverent sort ; 
 and so, with good contentment, every man went about his 
 business." * 
 
 A mystery has been thrown over this transaction, and a 
 suspicion, f in consequence, of the darkest kind, has been 
 
 *Hakluyt, 733. 
 
 t Admiral Burney, than whom no man ever desired to judge more 
 equitably and more kindly of others, expresses no opinion on the case,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 239 
 
 brought upon the character of Drake, who, in this matter, 
 has been more injured by his friends than by his enemies. 
 It is certain that Doughtie was tried for attempting to raise 
 a mutiny ; that he was " found guilty by twelve men after 
 the English manner, and suffered accordingly ".* The most 
 indifferent persons in the fleet were of opinion that he had 
 acted seditiously, and that Drake cut him off because of his 
 emulous designs. The question is, how far those designs ex- 
 tended ? He could not aspire to the credit of the voyage, 
 without devising how to obtain for himself some more con- 
 spicuous station in it than that of a gentleman volunteer : if 
 he regarded Drake as a rival, he must have hoped to supplant, 
 or, at least, to vie with him ; and in no other way could he 
 have vied with him but by making off with one of the ships, 
 and trying his own fortune. Considering what such adven 
 turers too often were, and were likely to be, and how frequent 
 mutinies were among them, considering, too, that Doughtie 
 had been removed from the command of the Portuguese 
 prize upon a charge of peculation, and that resentment, 
 
 because he thought the statements too imperfect for forming one. The 
 subject, he said, could not, perhaps, be better closed than by the reflec- 
 tions which they produced in the mind of Dr. Johnson. That great and 
 good man says : " How far it is probable that Drake, after having been 
 acquainted with this man's designs, should admit him into his fleet, and 
 afterwards caress, respect, and trust him, or that Doughtie, who is re- 
 presented as a man of eminent abilities, should engage in so long and 
 hazardous a voyage, with no other view than that of defeating it, is left 
 to the determination of the reader. What designs he could have formed 
 with any hope of success, or to what actions worthy of death he could 
 have proceeded without accomplices (for none are mentioned), is equally 
 difficult to imagine. Nor, on the other hand, though the obscurity of the 
 account, and the remote place chosen for the discovery of this wicked pro- 
 ject, seem to give some reason for suspicion, does there appear any tempta- 
 tion from either hope, fear, or interest, that might induce Drake, or any 
 commander in his state, to put to death an innocent man upon false pre- 
 tences " (p. 322). 
 * Camden, 251.
 
 240 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 whether for the wrongful charge, or the rightful removal, 
 might be rankling in him, this is no improbable supposition ; 
 and if this were proved, the sentence cannot be deemed un- 
 just. 
 
 The enemies of Drake, however, gave out that he sailed 
 from England with secret instructions from Leicester to take 
 off Doughtie upon any pretence whatever, because Doughtie 
 had reported that Walter, Earl of Essex, was poisoned by 
 Leicester's means.* That Essex was not poisoned is as certain 
 as any such fact can be at such a distance of time ; and if 
 Leicester had been as bad a man as he has been represented 
 (that is, far worse than he was), it was not thus that he would 
 have taken vengeance for what was a common calumny ; nor 
 was Drake one who would have taken upon himself to execute 
 so nefarious a design. This charge may, with perfect con- 
 fidence, be dismissed ; nor would any doubt be entertained 
 upon the subject, if an injudicious advocate had not, in vin- 
 dication of Drake, attempted to prove too much. In the 
 history of the voyage published under the name of Francis 
 Drake, the admiral's nephew, it is affirmed that Doughtie 
 embarked in the expedition with the determination of over- 
 throwing it, raising a mutiny, and accomplishing his ends by 
 the murder of Drake and his most faithful friends ; and that 
 Drake received information of this by letter before he sailed 
 from Plymouth, but could not and would not credit " that a 
 person whom he so dearly loved would conceive such evil 
 purposes against him ". When, however, his practices, 
 having been well observed, became too certain, the general, 
 then assembling in Port Julian " all his captains and gentle- 
 men of his company, propounded to them the good parts 
 which were in the gentleman, the great good-will and inward 
 affection, more than brotherly, which he had ever since his 
 first acquaintance borne him, not omitting the respect which 
 
 * Camden, 251.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 241 
 
 was had of him among no mean personages in England ; and 
 afterwards delivered the letters which were written to him, 
 with the particulars from time to time which had been ob- 
 served, not so much by himself as by his good friends ; not 
 only at sea, but even at Plymouth ; not bare words, but 
 writings ; not writings alone, but actions, tending to the 
 overthrow of the service in hand, and making away of his 
 person". The proofs, this advocate avers, were "so many 
 and so evident, that the gentleman himself, stricken with 
 remorse of his inconsiderate and unkind dealing, acknow- 
 ledged himself to have deserved death, yea, many deaths, 
 for that he conspired not only the overthrow of the action, 
 but of the principal actor also. The chiefest in place and 
 judgment in the whole fleet, with their own hands," he says, 
 " under seal, adjudged that he deserved death, and that it 
 stood by no means with their safety to let him live ; and, 
 therefore, they remitted the manner hereof, with the rest 
 of the circumstances, to the general." The general then 
 gave the condemned party his choice, whether he would be 
 executed in the island ? or be set ashore on the main ? or 
 return to England, there to answer his deed before the lords 
 of her Majesty's council ? Doughtie replied, that he would 
 not endanger his soul by consenting to be left among savage 
 infidels ; and as for returning to England, if any could be 
 found to accompany him on so disgraceful an errand, yet the 
 shame of the return would be more grievous than death ; 
 therefore he preferred ending his life on the island, desiring 
 only that he and the general might once more receive the 
 holy communion together, and that he might not die other 
 than the death of a gentleman. From this choice he was not 
 to be dissuaded by any reasons that could be urged. Accord- 
 ingly, on " the next convenient day, a communion was cele- 
 brated by Master Fletcher ; the general himself communicated 
 in the sacred ordinance with Master Doughtie ; after which 
 they dined at the same table together, as cheerfully, in 
 
 16
 
 242 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 sobriety, as ever in their lives they had clone ; and taking their 
 leave by drinking to each other, as if some short journey only 
 had been in hand ".* A provost marshal, appointed for the 
 occasion, had meantime made all things ready ; and after 
 drinking this stirrup-cup, Doughtie went to the block. 
 
 This statement is so certainly false in its most important 
 part, that it would be entitled to no credit in any of its minor 
 circumstances, even if those circumstances were less im 
 probable at first sight. Fletcher the chaplain's relation of 
 the voyage is still preserved in manuscript. It is there 
 stated, that the same persons whose accusation had brought 
 upon Doughtie his former disgrace (namely, John Brewer, 
 Edward Bright, and other of their friends) laid now more 
 dangerous matter to his charge, for words spoken by him to 
 them in the general's garden at Plymouth, long before their 
 departure ; " which," says Fletcher, " it had been their part 
 or duty to have discovered at the time, and not to have con- 
 cealed them for a time and place not so fitting. How true 
 it was wherewith they charged him upon their oath, I know 
 not ; but he utterly denied it, affirming that he was innocent 
 of such things whereof he was accused." So far was he 
 from confessing his guilt, that, according to this person, who 
 of all others must have possessed the most clear knowledge 
 on this point, " he utterly denied the truth of the charges 
 against him, upon his salvation, at the time of his communi- 
 cating the sacrament, and at the hour and moment of his 
 death ".f Mr. Fletcher speaks of Doughtie in terms of 
 more than common regard, and describes him as a man of 
 extraordinary endowments. Neither in his nor in any other 
 contemporary account is it said that he had the choice 
 allowed him of returning to England, there to answer for 
 himself before the lords in council. It is, indeed, most 
 
 * Burney, 319, 320. World Encompassed, 32. 
 t Burney, 321, 322,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 243 
 
 unlikely that Drake could have spared a ship to convey him ; 
 and not to be believed that he, standing upon his innocence, 
 would have rejected such an alternative had it been proposed 
 to him. And the cheerful dinner, and the parting glass, 
 are such embellishments of the story, that the person who 
 devised them could have no expectation of their obtaining 
 belief from any one, except by a reflex supposition in the 
 reader's mind that a circumstance so incredible never would 
 have been invented, and its extreme incredibility was, there- 
 fore, an evidence of its truth. 
 
 The falsehood of this statement ought not, however, to 
 weigh against Drake, unless he were cognisant of it ; but 
 there is no proof of this, nor can it fairly be presumed from 
 the fact that the narrative wherein it was brought forward 
 is said to be the work of Drake's nephew and namesake. A 
 calumny had been raised against the great navigator, and 
 evidently not without some injurious effect : panegyrical 
 biographers have passed over the whole transaction in 
 silence, thereby showing that they did not like to touch 
 upon it : Drake's representative may have fallen into the 
 great folly and greater fault of thinking it allowable to 
 counteract one falsehood by another. Mr. Fletcher's evi- 
 dence makes it certain that Doughtie made no confession 
 of guilt, but it proves nothing more. The general opinion 
 in the fleet was, that a mutiny had been designed. The 
 Portuguese pilot, who is likely to have been an attentive 
 observer, and must have been an impartial one, says that 
 Doughtie was put to death because he would have returned * 
 (it will presently appear that one of the ships took the first 
 opportunity of doing so). The Spaniards, f willing as they 
 
 * Hakluyt, 791. 
 
 t " En estabaya se quiso amotinar la gente a persuacion de un cavallero 
 llamado Tomas Auter, que se quiso alzar con el armada ; y Francisco 
 Draque fue tan diligente que le prendio, y luego le hizo cortar la cabeza 
 y salvo el peligro " (Herrera, Hist. Gen., ii., 384).
 
 244 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 were to load Drake with every kind of obloquy, were so far 
 from blaming him on this account, that they extolled him 
 for his vigilance and decision. The sufferer's solemn pro- 
 testations of innocence are easily accounted for ; and he 
 would persist in them till the last, because till the last there 
 was always a possibility that they might be believed ; it was 
 truly a case, in which, while he persisted in them, as long 
 as there was life there was hope. Finally, and this considera- 
 tion may be deemed conclusive, the justice of Drake's pro- 
 ceedings was not called in question on his return. 
 
 Doughtie was buried on an island in the harbour : the 
 bodies of Robert Winter and Oliver the gunner were interred 
 at the same time, in the same place ; and the chaplain set 
 up a stone upon their graves, whereon he engraved their 
 names, and the day, month, and year of their burial. Here 
 the Portuguese prize, being leaky and troublesome, was 
 broken up ; * the fleet was thus reduced to three, the Pelican, 
 the Elizabeth, and the Mart/gold ; and having completed their 
 watering, wooding, and repairs, and remained in Port St. Julian 
 from the 20th of June to the 17th of August, they sailed 
 from that port. On the 20th they made Cape Virgenes, f 
 remarkable, at four leagues' distance, for its high and steep 
 grey cliffs, full of black spots. Here, too, they met with an 
 ill omen, the bones of a corpse " whose flesh was clean con- 
 sumed". J And here, for a good omen, perhaps, as well as 
 
 "This port," says Lopez Vaz, "I take to be accursed, for that 
 Magellan likewise put some to death there for the like offence " 
 (Hakluyt, 791). 
 
 * Herrera says that this vessel went down in a storm with all on board, 
 before they put into Port St. Julian ; and that another vessel was broken 
 up for fuel, because of the extreme cold. 
 
 t The eleven thousand had been dropped for shortness. Magellan 
 named the cape in honour of that noble army, having discovered it on 
 the day appropriated for this ridiculous legend in the Romish calendar. 
 
 \ Burney, 323. Hakluyt, 733.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 245 
 
 out of respect to his friend Sir Christopher Hatton, he changed 
 the name of his ship, calling her, instead of the Pelican, the 
 Golden Hind, which Sir Christopher probably bore in his arms. 
 On the following day they entered the straits. 
 
 The lateness of the season seems to have been the only 
 thing which prevented Amerigo Vespucci from discovering this 
 passage into the South Sea before that sea had been seen by 
 Balboa, and eighteen years before the famous voyage of 
 Magellan.* He had conceived the hope of making this 
 great discovery, and had nearly accomplished it.f Magellan 
 named it the Patagonian Straits, after the natives, to whom, 
 because they wore ill-shaped sandals, he had given the 
 name of Patagons, patagon signifying in Spanish a large, 
 clumsy foot. The inappropriate name has been fixed upon 
 the people, not upon the strait, which is properly called 
 after Magellan himself; though before it obtained that 
 appellation from popular justice there was an attempt to call 
 it the Strait of Victoria, after the name of his ship4 Juan 
 Ladrilleros had been sent with two ships from Valdivira to 
 survey the strait in 1558. The ships were separated by a 
 storm. The one put back with few of her crew remaining. 
 Ladrilleros executed his commission in the other with great 
 diligence, and extraordinary perseverance and resolution. 
 When he returned to Chili, two men and himself were all 
 who survived to navigate the vessel, the rest having perished 
 by cold and hunger. Other attempts followed from the 
 same quarter : nothing is known of them but that they 
 failed ; and Drake was the third person who performed the 
 passage the second who performed it from Europe. 
 
 " We found the strait," says the first narrator, " to have 
 many turnings, and, as it were, shuttings up, as if there 
 
 * I write the name thus because it is so written in our maps, and so 
 called in common pronunciation ; but the proper name is Magalhaens. 
 t Grynaeus, iv., 124. Hist, of Brazil, i., 28. 
 J Pigafetta, 26, 40. Burney, 249.
 
 246 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 were no passage at all ; by means whereof we had the wind 
 often against us, so that some of the fleet recovering a cape 
 or point of land, others should be forced to turn back again, 
 and to come to an anchor where they could. There be many 
 fair harbours, with store of fresh water, but yet they lack their 
 best commodity ; for the water is there of such depth that 
 no man shall find ground to anchor in, except it be in some 
 narrow river or cornel', or between some rocks ; so that if 
 any extreme blasts or contrary winds do come (whereunto 
 the place is much subject), it carrieth with it no small 
 danger. The land on both sides is very huge and moun- 
 tainous ; the lower mountains whereof, although they be 
 monstrous and wonderful to look upon for their height, yet 
 there are others which exceed them in a strange manner, 
 reaching themselves above their fellows so high, that be- 
 tween them did appear three regions of clouds. These moun- 
 tains are covered with snow. The strait is extreme cold, 
 with frost and snow continually ; the trees seem to stoop 
 with the burden of the weather, and yet are green continually ; 
 and many good and sweet herbs do very plentifully grow and 
 increase under them." * Drake gave the name of Elizabeth 
 to the largest of three islands, " lying triangle-wise," near 
 which they anchored, when, by their own account, they were 
 thirty leagues within the strait. The other two he named 
 St. Bartholomew's (on whose day he anchored there), and 
 St. George's. " There," says Cliffe,t " we stayed one day, 
 and victualled ourselves with a kind of fowl which is plenti- 
 ful on that isle, and whose flesh is not far unlike a fat goose 
 here in England. They have no wings, but short pinions, 
 which serve their turn in swimming : their colour is some- 
 what black, mixed with white spots under their belly and 
 about their necks. They walk so upright, that, afar off, 
 a man would take them to be little children. If a man 
 
 * Hakluyt, 734. f Ibid., 752.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 247 
 
 approach anything near them they run into holes in the 
 ground (which be not very deep), whereof the island is full ; 
 so that to take them we had staves with hooks fast to 
 the end, wherewith some of our men pulled them out, and 
 others being ready with cudgels did knock them on the head, 
 for they bite so cruelly with their crooked bills that none of 
 us were able to handle them alive." This seems to be the 
 earliest account in our language of the penguin. Three 
 thousand of these birds were slaughtered in less than one 
 day, and the ships " victualled themselves thoroughly there- 
 with ". 
 
 As they approached the western end they observed a 
 number of channels toward the south, and Drake went in 
 a boat to discover the best passage. They met a canoe as 
 they returned, in which were Indians of a smaller stature, 
 and different from those with whom the affray had occurred. 
 Their canoe was excellently well made of bark ; the body 
 being handsomely moulded, and the seams so close, though 
 only stitched with thongs, or perhaps the sinews of some 
 animal, that scarcely any water entered : both the prow and 
 stern were semicircular and high. The tools which they used 
 were made of the large mussel shells which, in the strait, are 
 found sometimes twenty inches in length ; these they grind 
 to so sharp an edge that it could cut the hardest wood, and 
 even the bones of which they made fish-gigs. They had a 
 hut on the island near to which the ships had anchored ; it 
 was merely formed of a few poles covered with skins. Their 
 vessels were of bark, well shaped and made. * On the 
 seventeenth day after making Cape Virgenes, Drake cleared 
 the strait, and entered the South Sea. 
 
 Balboa had taken possession of that sea in the true spirit 
 of a Spaniard. Reaching its shore for the first time during 
 the ebb, he seated himself there, with his companions, and 
 
 * Burney, 324.
 
 248 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 waited patiently till the tide turned and reached him. Rising 
 then, armed as he was for the occasion, with a sword in one 
 hand and a banner in the other, bearing the Virgin Mary 
 with the arms of Castille at her feet, he advanced into the 
 waves till he was above knee-deep, saying, with a loud voice : 
 " Long live the high and mighty sovereigns of Castille ! 
 Thus, in their names do I take possession of these seas and 
 regions ; and if any other prince, whether Christian or infidel, 
 pretend any right to them, I am ready and resolved to oppose 
 him, and to assert the just claims of my sovereigns ! " * The 
 possession which had thus proudly been taken was now, for 
 the first time, about to be disturbed. 
 
 Drake's intention was to steer north, that they might get, 
 as speedily as they could, out of "the nipping cold". The 
 season, however, had not been rigorous ; rather, indeed, for 
 that region, it seems to have been unusually favourable. On 
 the second day after clearing the strait, they had sailed about 
 seventy leagues to the north-west, when a gale from the 
 north-east came on, and continued more than a fortnight, 
 with such violence that they could carry no sail, and were 
 driven till they were in 57 S. latitude, and above 200 
 leagues west of the strait. The wind then became favourable, 
 and, at the end of another week, during which they held a 
 north-east course, they made the land, but the weather 
 would not permit them to anchor. The Mary gold was 
 obliged to bear away before the gale, and was never heard of 
 more. The two remaining ships a week afterwards stood, 
 under low sail, into a bay, where they hoped to have found 
 shelter, it "being a very foul night, and the seas sore grown". 
 The bay proved " very dangerous, full of rocks ". Drake's 
 cable broke, and the Golden Hind was driven out to sea. 
 Winter made no attempt to follow him ; but the next day, 
 
 *Quintana, Lives of Balboa and Pizarro. Translated by Mrs 
 Hodson (p. 46).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 249 
 
 " hardly escaping the dangers of the rocks/' entered the 
 strait again, and, anchoring there in an open bay, made great 
 fires on the shore, that if Drake should put into the strait 
 also, he might discover them. After ten days he proceeded 
 farther, and went into a sound, in which he remained three 
 weeks, and named it the Port of Health, because most of 
 his men being " very sick, with long watching, wet, cold, and 
 evil diet," soon recovered here. They found the large 
 mussels " very pleasant meat, and many of them full of seed 
 pearls ". Captain Winter now alleged that he stood in 
 despair both of having favourable winds for Peru and of 
 Drake's safety : he, therefore, " gave over the voyage, full 
 sore against the mariners' mind," and sailed for England, 
 where he arrived with the reproach of having abandoned his 
 commander.* 
 
 Meantime Drake, from the Bay of Parting of Friends, as 
 he named the place in which he parted company from his 
 last remaining consort, was driven as far as 55 S., and 
 found two days' shelter on the coast of Tierra del Fuego, 
 where he also met with good water and wholesome herbs. 
 But the winds once more returning to their old wont, 
 forced him again from his anchorage, with this additional 
 misfortune, that the shallop, with eight men in it, and pro- 
 vision for only one day, lost sight of the ship. These poor 
 men regained the shore, entered the straits, salted and 
 dried penguins there, and coasted on till they reached the 
 Plata, and put into a small river on the south side. Six of 
 them landed there in unhappy hour, and entered the woods 
 to seek for food. They fell in with a party of Indians, who 
 with their arrows wounded them all, took four, pursued the 
 others to the shore, and, when the wounded men got on 
 board and pushed off, pursued them with their arrows, and 
 wounded those who had been left in charge of the boat. 
 
 * Cliffe. Hakluyt, 752.
 
 250 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 These unhappy men reached an island about three leagues 
 from the mainland, where two of them died of their wounds, 
 and their boat was beaten to pieces against the rocks. 
 Upon this island, which was about a league in compass, they 
 remained two months, living upon small crabs, eels, and a 
 fruit like an orange ; but there was no fresh water, and, 
 unable longer to endure the want of it, they ventured to 
 make for the mainland, on a large plank some ten feet long, 
 having made paddles with which to guide it. The passage 
 was the work of three days and two nights. " On coming 
 to land," says Carter, " we found a rivulet of sweet water ; 
 when William Pitcher, my only comfort and companion 
 (although I endeavoured to dissuade him), being before 
 pinched with extreme thirst, overdrank himself, and, to my 
 unspeakable grief, died within half an hour, whom I buried 
 as well as I could in the sand." Carter fell into the hands 
 of some Indians, who had compassion on him, and conducted 
 him, after a while, to a Portuguese settlement ; and, after nine 
 years, he was fortunate enough to return to his own country.* 
 Drake, having lost his pinnace, was driven still farther 
 south, ran in again among the islands, and at length " fell in 
 with the uttermost part of the land towards the south pole, 
 without which there is no main nor island to be seen to 
 the southward ; but the Atlantic Ocean and the South Sea 
 meet in a large and free scope ". The storm, which with 
 little intermission had continued fifty-one days, ceased : they 
 found an anchoring place at the southern extremity of the 
 land, since called Cape Horn ; and to all the islands which 
 lay without, and to the south of the strait, Drake gave the 
 name of the Elizabethides. He had thus accidentally dis- 
 covered Cape Horn, and by that displaced the old terra 
 
 * Burney, 368. Purchas, iv. , 1188. Purchas in a marginal note abbre- 
 viates the last part of this tragedy into two words, " Pitcher breaks ". 
 This is characteristic of Purchas, and it is not less so of Admiral Burney 
 that he has noticed it.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 251 
 
 incognita from a large portion of the space which it occupied 
 in the map : " We altered the name/' says Mr. Fletcher, " to 
 terra mine bene cogniia " . Drake went ashore, and, sailor-like, 
 leaning over a promontory, as far as he safely could, came 
 back, and told his people that he had been farther south 
 than any man living.* On 30th of October, the wind came 
 fair, and " departing from the southernmost part of the world 
 known, or (as they thought) like to be known," they sailed 
 to the north-west, stored themselves with birds and seals 
 from some islands, and coasted for nearly four weeks along 
 the American shore, till they arrived at the Island of Mocha, 
 and anchored there. The Portuguese pilot describes it as 
 small and low land, full of Indians, and altogether possessed 
 by them. The English supposed that the cruel and extreme 
 dealings of the Spaniards had forced these people, for their 
 own safety and liberty, to flee from the main and fortify 
 themselves here, an erroneous supposition, for they would 
 have been more secure in the wild parts of their own country. 
 The general landed : the Indians came to the water side, 
 "with show of great courtesy, bringing potatoes, roots, and 
 two fat sheep, for which they received a suitable return ; 
 and, as it was then late, it was agreed that the ship should 
 take water there on the morrow ". Drake accordingly went 
 in the boat with twelve men, and set two of them, with their 
 vessels, ashore : the Indians lay in ambush by the watering 
 place, sprang upon them, and either seized or slew them ; 
 and when the boat was hastening to their succour, a flight 
 of arrows was discharged at it with such effect as to wound 
 every one of the crew, the general himself under the right 
 eye. It was not without difficulty that the boat escaped 
 from this imminent danger, for the Indians pursued their 
 advantage with such resolution that they seized four of the 
 oars, and kept possession of them. None of the assailants 
 
 *This he himself told to Sir Richard Hawkins.
 
 252 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 were hurt, for the English had not time to use a harquebuss. 
 No attempt was made to take vengeance for this unprovoked 
 attack : it was supposed to have been made under a mistaken 
 notion that they were Spaniards ; and it seems Drake ad- 
 mitted that, in that case, the Indians would have acted 
 rightly, and, therefore, that it did not behove him to punish 
 the offence. He sailed the same day, and, happily, none of 
 the wounded died, though they had lost their principal 
 surgeon. 
 
 A hope still remained of meeting with the two missing 
 ships. It had been appointed that in case of separation 
 they should look for each other on the coast of Peru, about 
 the latitude of 30 S., and Drake accordingly made diligent 
 search as he sailed along. On the last of November an 
 Indian was found fishing, and brought on board : he was 
 made to comprehend that the ship wanted provisions, and 
 would pay for them, and was then dismissed with gifts. 
 This man's report pleased the natives so well that they 
 brought to the seaside a fat hog, poultry, and other food ; 
 and an Indian, of some apparent consequence, went on 
 board. He spoke Spanish ; told them that they had passed 
 the Port of Valparaiso six leagues ; that a Spanish ship was 
 then lying at anchor there, and that he would pilot them 
 thither, which he did accordingly, having no suspicion that 
 they were enemies to the Spaniards, who had never yet seen 
 an enemy in those seas. Felipe, as this civilised Indian was 
 called, did the English good service in conducting them to 
 this port. They found the ship riding at anchor, with eight 
 Spaniards and three negroes aboard : who, taking the new 
 comers for friends, saluted them with beat of drum, and 
 made ready a jar of Chili wine to drink with them. The 
 pirates (they are entitled here to no better name) were no 
 sooner aboard, than one of them, Thomas Moon, struck at a 
 Spaniard, exclaiming: "'Abaxoperrof down dog! and began to 
 lay about him ". " One of these Spaniards, seeing persons
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 253 
 
 of that quality in these seas, all-to-crossed and blessed him- 
 self." Another leaped overboard, and swam ashore to give 
 the alarm ; the rest were secured under hatches. The town 
 was not more prepared for resistance than the ship, and less 
 capable of it. It consisted of some nine families, who took 
 flight before the English landed and fell to spoil. Little 
 booty was found there : a small chapel contained nothing 
 that was thought wortli taking, except a silver chalice, two 
 cruets, and an altar cloth, which Drake transferred to the use 
 of his own chaplain ; but there was store of Chili wine in a 
 warehouse, which, with other provisions and some cedar 
 planks for fuel, was canned on board. The prisoners were 
 set ashore, one man excepted, who, being a Greek by trirth, 
 was called Juan Griego, and whom they detained to serve as 
 a pilot to Lima. The prize they rifled when they got out to 
 sea : they found in her 1770 jars of Chili wine, 60,000 pieces 
 of gold, some pearls, and some merchandise. Well pleased 
 with this adventure, they rewarded Felipe the Indian, and 
 landed him at that place which was most convenient for him. 
 From hence they ran along the coast, looking anxiously 
 for their lost consorts ; and because the ship was too large 
 to examine close in-shore, and a boat not strong enough in 
 case of an attack, they put together a pinnace, which might 
 safely look into every bay and creek. A fortnight after their 
 departure from Valparaiso they anchored about cannon-shot 
 from the mouth of the Coquimbo, and sent a party to get 
 water. Not far to the north was a Spanish town, of which 
 they were not aware, and a considerable body of horse and 
 foot came down upon the men while they were filling their 
 casks. The English, however, who were keeping good 
 watch, retreated to their boat, and pushed off in time ; one 
 Richard Minivy only, in a fit of fool-hardiness, refused to 
 escape, killed one of their horses, and was himself killed, 
 and his body thrown upon a horse, and earned off. This 
 place not suiting their purpose, nor the entertainment being
 
 254 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 such as they desired, they weighed anchor. The next day 
 Drake, having anchored in a bay in 27 55 ' S., embarked in 
 the pinnace, and turned back in it to make one more search 
 for the lost ships : the wind baffled him, and after one day's 
 trial he gave up the attempt ; yet, in apparent hope that as 
 much diligence would be used in seeking him as had been 
 manifested on his part, he remained in this bay more than 
 four weeks, then proceeded slowly along the coast. 
 
 They landed next at a place called Tarapaca, and, while 
 looking for water, found a Spaniard lying asleep, and thirteen 
 bars of silver lying by him, which were worth 4000 ducats. 
 No personal injury was offered to the man ; nor to another, 
 whom, on a second landing not far off, they met with an 
 Indian in his company, driving eight llamas, each carrying 
 a hundredweight of silver, divided equally in two leathern 
 bags. The llamas as well as their freight were taken on 
 board. From this part of the coast many Indians came off 
 to exchange fish for knives and glasses ; and even at an 
 Indian town, where two Spaniards resided as governors, they 
 obtained some llamas in the way of traffic. At Arica they 
 found two ships at anchor, one of which yielded some 40 
 bars of silver, weighing about 20 Ibs. each ; the other 200 
 jars of wine. Only a negro was on board : the people, 
 mistrusting no danger, were gone to the town ; " which," 
 says one of the adventurers, " we would have ransacked, if 
 our company had been better and more in number ". The 
 sight of certain horsemen ready to have attacked them if 
 they had landed deterred them from the attempt. But they 
 learnt from the negro that there was a ship not far before 
 them richly laden. Taking with him one of his prizes, Drake 
 went in pursuit, he himself in the pinnace close along shore, 
 the ships keeping their course a league to seaward ; and 
 having proceeded thus about five and forty leagues they saw 
 the vessel at anchor. But the tidings that a sea-rover was 
 in pursuit had reached the Spaniards a few hours before, and
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 255 
 
 they had landed 800 bars of silver belonging to the king : 
 everything else of any value had been removed in time. 
 Here, too, there was a muster on the shore, which it would 
 have been rash to encounter. Drake, therefore, held on his 
 way : but taking this vessel and his other prizes with him, 
 one excepted, which he had burnt at Arica, when they were 
 about a league out at sea, he ordered all their sails to be set, 
 and then let them drive before the wind ; while he with only 
 his own ship and the pinnace proceeded to Callao, the port 
 of Lima. 
 
 Leisurely as Drake had proceeded, he arrived in sight of 
 the capital of Peru before it was known there that an enemy's 
 ship had entered those seas. When he landed at Valparaiso, 
 the Governor of Chili was in the interior, prosecuting that war 
 against the Araucans which has given so great a celebrity 
 to their name ; and the authorities did not venture to take 
 upon themselves the responsibility of sending- a vessel with 
 despatches to Peru. * A few leagues off that harbour, Drake 
 boarded a barque laden with silks and other goods, which the 
 owner, a Portuguese, was glad to redeem by engaging to 
 pilot the English into Callao. t He brought them in after 
 night-fall, " sailing in between all the ships that lay there, 
 seventeen in number," twelve of which were moored, and 
 had all their sails ashore, " for the master and merchants 
 were here most secure, having never been assaulted by 
 enemies ". They rifled these ships, and found in one of them 
 a chest of silver reales, and good store of silk and linen. 
 Their inquiry was for the ship that had the silver on board : 
 the silver, it was replied, was on shore ; but they were like- 
 wise informed that a richly laden treasure ship called the 
 
 * The viceroy, D. Francisco de Toledo, states this in his letter to the 
 Governor of the Rio de la Plata: if such advice had been sent, he says, 
 " Se habieran escusado hartas perdidas y gastos que se han recaecido a 
 S. M. ya los particulares " (Viageal Estrecho par Pedro Sarmiento, Ixxx.). 
 
 t Herrera, 385.
 
 256 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Cacafuego (a name not to be translated) had lately sailed 
 for Payta. They cut the cables of these ships, and the 
 masts of the two greatest, and let them drive, not for wanton- 
 ness, but in provident foresight, that they might be disabled 
 from pursuing him. While he was thus employed, a vessel 
 from Panama, laden with Spanish goods, entered the harbour, 
 and anchored close by the Golden Hind. A boat came from 
 the shore to search it ; but because it was night they deferred 
 the search till the morning, and only sent a man on board. 
 "The boat then came alongside Drake's vessel, and asked 
 what ship it was ? A Spanish prisoner answered, as he was 
 ordered, that it was Miguel Angel's from Chili. Satisfied with 
 this, the officer in the boat sent a man to board it ; but he, 
 when on the point of entering, perceived one of the large 
 guns, and retreated into the boat with all celerity, because 
 no vessels that frequented that port, and navigated those seas, 
 carried great shot." The speed with which the boat made 
 off upon this discovery alarmed the Panama ship, which forth- 
 with cut her cable, and put to sea. Drake's men manned 
 their pinnace, and pursued. The Spainards, instead of strik- 
 ing at their summons, shot one of the crew, upon which the 
 pinnace returned. But the Golden Hind presently set sail, 
 and gained so fast upon the Panama ship, that the men took 
 to their boat, and escaped ashore, leaving the ship with 
 everything on board. * 
 
 Drake's great object was now to overtake the Cacafuego : 
 the wind failed, and boats were put out to tow the ship. 
 Meantime the alarm had been given in Lima ; and the 
 viceroy, Don Francisco de Toledo, hastened instantly to 
 Callao, and exerted himself through the remainder of the 
 night with such success that two vessels, with 200 men in 
 each, were despatched in pursuit before Drake was out of 
 sight of the port. Their orders were to board the rover if 
 
 * Nunho da Sylva. Hakluyt, 746.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 257 
 
 they could come up with her, for they had no artillery. 
 The wind, however, sprung up, of which the English made 
 eager use ; and the Spaniards were as little desirous of 
 coming up with them as they were of being detained by an 
 action in which nothing was to be gained. So manifest, in- 
 deed, was this unwillingness, that though there were persons 
 of some distinction on board, the viceroy punished many for 
 cowardice,* not allowing the excuse they had devised for 
 themselves by following the Panama, which Drake dismissed 
 with Juan Griego and his other pilot on board. Drake now 
 made all speed to the north, the pinnace keeping close in- 
 shore, the ship about a league and half from land. After 
 some days they stopped a vessel bound for Callao, from 
 which they " took a lamp and a fountain of silver," and 
 learnt that she had seen the treasure ship three days before. 
 At Payta they boarded another, and were told that the 
 Cacqfuego had left that port two days ago. Neither of these 
 vessels did they detain, but taking from the latter some pro- 
 visions and a negro, hastened on. On the morrow t they 
 captured a ship bound for Panama, and sent the crew and 
 passengers, among whom were two friars, ashore. In this 
 prize they found forty bars of silver, eighty pounds weight of 
 gold, and a golden crucifix, " set with goodly great emeralds". 
 This booty cost one of the men his life ; he had secreted two 
 plates of gold, denied it when accused, and was hanged when 
 they were found upon him. 
 
 They crossed the line on 24th February ; and Drake pro- 
 mised to give his chain of gold to the man who should have 
 the good fortune first to descry the golden prize, for which 
 all eyes were eagerly looking out. On St. David's Day they 
 
 * " Aunque yvan en ellos gente honrada, de miedo se bolvieron, y Don 
 Francisco de Toledo castigo por ello a muchos" (Herrera, 385). Nunho 
 da Sylva relates the excuse, and says nothing of the cowardice. 
 
 t Hakluyt, 735, 747. Burney, 336. 
 
 17
 
 258 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 made Cape St. Francisco in latitude 40 ' N., and if Drake 
 had been a Welshman, the day would have been rendered 
 doubly dear to him, for at three in the afternoon a certain 
 John Drake, going into the top, espied the object of their 
 long chase about four leagues to seaward. And here the 
 Portuguese pilot describes what Hakluyt calls "a pretty 
 device to make their ship sail more swiftly ". " Because the 
 English ship was somewhat heavy before, whereby it sailed 
 not as they would have it, they took a company of bolijas, or 
 Spanish pots for oil, and filling them with water, hung them 
 by ropes at the stern of the ship to make her sail the better." 
 The device was not wanted ; for the Spanish captain, Juan 
 de Anton,* made towards the English shipt to know what 
 she was, thinking her to be one of the ships that used to sail 
 along the coasts and traffic in the country. When they were 
 near enough Drake hailed them to strike, and the other 
 refusing, "with a great piece he shot her mast overboard, 
 and having wounded the master with an arrow, the ship 
 yielded ". They took possession, sailed with her further 
 into the sea all that night, and the next day and night, 
 making all the way they could. Being then at safe distance 
 from the coast, they stopped, and lay by their prize four days, 
 taking out her cargo and transferring it to their own ship. 
 They found in her great riches, as jewels and precious stones, 
 thirteen chests full of reales of plate, eighty pounds weight of 
 gold, and twenty-six tons of silver : 300 bars of the silver be- 
 longed to the king, and the rest was the property of private 
 merchants. The whole value was estimated at 360,000 
 pieces of gold, that of the silver alone being 212,000/. ; and 
 the captors congratulated themselves that their ship might 
 now well be called the Golden Hind. A little of the ex- 
 
 * Santona ? 
 
 t Herrera says that had it not been for this mistake the English 
 would not have captured her, because the South Sea ships were excellent 
 sailers, better than any others in the world (385).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 259 
 
 ultation of success was shown upon this occasion. Among 
 other plate, two very fair gilt bowls of silver were found, be- 
 longing to the pilot, to, whom Drake said, " Sennor pilot, you 
 have here two silver cups, but I must needs have one of 
 them ! " The pilot, who knew that need has no law, and 
 that the adventurer who addressed him had just then as 
 little, assented, "because lie could not otherwise choose," 
 and gave the other also to the steward of the general's ship. 
 In a better spirit Drake called for the register of the 
 treasure on board, and wrote a receipt in the margin for the 
 whole amount.* 
 
 Many a witticism was passed upon the unseemly name f 
 of their unfortunate prize, which, at the end of four days, 
 was dismissed, and three men put on board, whom Drake 
 had taken on the way for pilots. Drake gave the captain 
 
 * C. Suarez de Figueroa, 209 : Lope de Vega also relates this, and says 
 that the Spaniards themselves were amused at it. 
 tomaste la rica presa opima 
 De un millon y seyscientos mil ducados ; 
 Donde Espana ha tenido en mas estima 
 Aquellos tus donayres celebrados, 
 Quando al maestre y del navio ministro 
 Pediste de la plata el gran registro. 
 
 Las margenes del qual por recibidas 
 Satisfaciendo con estrafias veras, 
 Firmaste de tu nombre las partidas, 
 Como si dueno de la plata fueras. 
 Hasta las letras oy estan corridas 
 De que esta burla a su registro hizieras, 
 Bolviste el libro, que fue en tanto estrago 
 Para el dueno gentil recibo y pago. 
 
 Dragontea, canto i. 
 
 t " When this pilot departed from us, his boy said thus unto our 
 general : ' Captain, our ship shall be called no more the Cacafuego, but 
 the Cacaplata, and yours shall be called the Cacafuego ' ; which pretty 
 speech of the pilot's boy ministered matter of laughter to us, both then 
 and long after " (Hakluyt, 736).
 
 260 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 a letter of safe-conduct, in case he should fall in with the 
 Elizabeth or the Man/gold. This letter, which has been pre- 
 served by the Portuguese pilot, is remarkable for its kind- 
 ness and religious feeling. The contents, as retranslated 
 in Hakluyt from the Portuguese or Spanish version, were 
 these : 
 
 " Master Winter, if it pleaseth God that you should chance 
 to meet with this ship of Senor Juan de Anton, I pray you 
 use him well, according to my word and promise given unto 
 them ; and if you want anything that is in this ship of Senor 
 Juan de Anton, I pray you pay them double the value of it, 
 which I will satisfy again ; and command your men not to do 
 her any hurt ; and what composition or agreement we have 
 made, at my return into England I will, by God's help, per- 
 form ; although I am in doubt that this letter will never come 
 to your hands. Notwithstanding I am the man I have pro- 
 mised to be, beseeching God, the Saviour of all the world, 
 to have us in His keeping, to whom only I give all honour, 
 praise, and glory. What I have written is not only to you, 
 Master Winter, but also to M. Thomas, M. Charles, M. Caube, 
 and M. Anthony, with all our other good friends, whom I 
 commit to the tuition of Him that with His blood redeemed 
 us ; and am in good hope that we shall be in no more trouble, 
 but that He will help us in adversity ; desiring you, for the 
 passion of Christ, if you fall into any danger, that you will 
 not despair of God's mercy, for He will defend you, and pre- 
 serve you from all danger, and bring us to our desired haven : 
 to whom be all honour, glory, and praise, for ever and ever. 
 Amen. * 
 
 " Your sorrowful captain, 
 
 " Whose heart is heavy for you, 
 
 " FRANCIS DRAKE." 
 
 * Hakluyt, 747.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 261 
 
 The general had now no other object in these seas ; * how 
 to make his way home with this great booty was the next 
 consideration. To return by the strait was, on many accounts, 
 unadvisable ; the season was unfavourable, and they knew 
 the difficulties and dangers of that passage : moreover, the 
 Spaniards expecting them to take that course, would be 
 likely both to have despatched ships in quest of them, and 
 a force to intercept them there. This was no vain surmise : 
 the whole coast of Chili and Peru was in such alarm, that a 
 stop was put to all maritime trade ; for it was known that 
 Drake expected to be joined by his two consorts, and in every 
 port the people were under arms to resist them. All the 
 consequences of such an invasion, and more than all, were 
 apprehended by the Spanish authorities : they thought that 
 nothing less than the King of Spain's dominion in those seas, 
 and the properties and lives and souls of the inhabitants, 
 were at stake, f It was not Drake's business now to encoun- 
 ter any danger that could be avoided ; but greater proof of 
 his ability as a seaman, and of his enterprising genius, was 
 never given than at this time ; for instead of at once resolving 
 to follow the course of Magellan, and so compass the globe, 
 he conceived the hope of rivalling that great navigator by 
 exploring a passage between the two great seas, at the 
 opposite extremity of America. J This he propounded to 
 his ship's company. " All of us," says one, who writes as if 
 he had been present, " willingly hearkened and consented to 
 our general's advice ; which was, first, to seek out some con- 
 venient place to trim our ship, and store ourselves with wood 
 
 * " Thinking himself, both in respect of his private injuries received 
 from the Spaniards, as also of their contempts and indignities offered to 
 our country and prince in general, sufficiently satisfied and revenged, 
 and supposing that her majesty, at his return, would rest satisfied with 
 this service " (Hakluyt, 736). 
 
 t Viage del Sarmiento, 4. 
 
 J World Encompassed. Burney, 339.
 
 262 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and water, and such provisions as we could get ; and thence 
 forward to hasten on our intended journey for the discovery 
 of the said passage, through which we might with joy return 
 to our longed homes." * 
 
 They now sailed for the coast of Nicaragua, which they 
 made on 16th March, "near a small island named Canno," 
 two leagues from the mainland ; there they found a small 
 bay, wherein they anchored, at five fathom deep, close by 
 the land, and near a fresh water stream. On the 20th, a 
 vessel was seen attempting to pass close by. The pinnace 
 was sent in chase, and brought her in. She was laden with 
 sarsaparilla, butter, and honey, and other things. The sarsa- 
 parilla they threw ashore ; and used the vessel as a receptacle 
 for their stores, while they laid their own ship down to ex- 
 amine her bottom. The island afforded them wood and fish, 
 and would have supplied alligators and monkeys if they had 
 chosen to take any on board. While they remained here 
 they felt the shock of an earthquake. In eight days the re- 
 pairs, wooding and watering were completed, and they sailed 
 westward, taking Avith them their prize ; which, however, 
 after keeping two days longer, they dismissed, detaining 
 some of the men to serve as pilots, and taking " the sea cards, 
 wherewith they should make their voyage, and direct them- 
 selves in their course ".t And so sailing until 6th April, 
 about evening, they discovered a ship that held two leagues 
 to seaward from the land ; and before the next day, in the 
 morning, they were hard by her, and suddenly fell upon her 
 while her men slept. She was apparently from Manilla, 
 
 * Camden (p. 252) is mistaken in saying that the viceroy had at this 
 time sent ships to fortify the strait. He could not do this till the Panama 
 fleet arrived ; and the expedition appointed for this service was not ready 
 to sail from Callao till Oct. n (Vlagc del Sarmicnto, pp. 4, 40). 
 
 t Admiral Burney says : " Whether these were charts of those seas 
 or only the cards of steering compasses was not explained ". I have no 
 doubt that the former are intended.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 263 
 
 laden with " linen cloth (which probably means muslins), 
 fine China dishes of white earth, and great store of China 
 silks ; of all which," says the relater, " we took as we listed ". 
 He adds, that the owner of the ship was on board, who was 
 a Spanish gentleman ; and that the general took from him a 
 falcon of gold, with a great emerald in the breast thereof. 
 They took a negro out of this vessel, and dismissed her with 
 all her crew, one man excepted, whom they detained to show 
 them some watering place. He brought them into the haven 
 of Guatulco. They landed there, in happy hour for some 
 negroes, upon whom the criminal court was then sitting in 
 judgment for having conspired to set the town on fire. 
 Judges and prisoners were conveyed on board ; and the chief 
 judge was made to write to the inhabitants, ordering them 
 to leave the town, while the English might remain here. 
 There were but seventeen Spaniards residing here ; and 
 neither they nor the coloured population had much to lose, 
 for the adventurer who tells us that the town was ransacked 
 boasts of no other plunder than a pot as big as a bushel full 
 of silver reales, and a gold chain and some jewels which one 
 " Thomas Moon took from a Spanish gentleman, whom he 
 caught as he was flying out of the place ". 
 
 Drake remained here nearly a fortnight ; and before he 
 departed he released all his prisoners, and put the Portuguese, 
 Nunho da Sylva, on board a ship in the harbour, to find his 
 way to Portugal as he could.* From Guatulco they steered 
 
 * This is injuriously represented, as if the poor man had been left in 
 an enemy's country. It was hardship enough for him to lose his ship 
 and his goods, and be carried from the Cape de Verds through the strait 
 and to the coast of Nicaragua. But he could not have been dismissed 
 at any point which would have been more convenient for himself; and 
 in the relation which he drew up for the viceroy of New Spain, he 
 makes no complaint of his treatment. It is very much to his honour, 
 and something to that of Drake and his men, that there is not in this 
 plain and evidently faithful relation the slightest expression of prejudice 
 or resentment against the English.
 
 264 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 " directly off to sea/' and sailed (the accounts say) 500 leagues 
 in longitude to get a favourable wind. On 3rd June, having 
 sailed in different directions 1400 leagues, without seeing 
 land, they had arrived in latitude 42 N. A great change in 
 the temperature was now felt ; the people were benumbed 
 with the piercing cold, which increased to that extremity on 
 sailing two degrees farther north, that meat, as soon as it was 
 removed from the fire, would presently be frozen, and the 
 ropes and tackling of the ship were quite stiffened. Contrary 
 winds forced them to run in with the land, which they then 
 unexpectedly descried ; for they had not supposed that 
 America in that latitude extended so far to the west. "They 
 stood toward the' shore, and anchored in an open ill-sheltered 
 bay. The wind was strong and in gusts ; upon any inter- 
 mission, there came a thick stinking fog, in which they were 
 enveloped, till it was dispersed by the renewed strength of 
 the wind. They could not remain here ; and the direction 
 of the wind, with the severity of the cold, not only dis- 
 couraged them from persisting in the attempt to go farther 
 north, but commanded them to the southward, whether they 
 would or no." So they drew back from latitude 48, to 
 which they had advanced, ten degrees, " in which height it 
 pleased God to send them into a fair and good bay, with a 
 good wind to enter the same ". There can be little doubt 
 that this bay was that which is now called Port San 
 Francisco.* 
 
 There were huts close to the water side. The day after 
 they anchored many natives showed themselves on the shore, 
 and a single man was sent off in a canoe. Immediately he 
 began to speak, though at a considerable distance from the 
 ship, and continued to do so as he paddled on, till having 
 drawn as near as he thought fit upon this first advance, he 
 stopped, made a long and earnest address accompanied by 
 
 * Burney, 343. Hakluyt, 440.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 265 
 
 gesticulations not more intelligible than the harangue ; and 
 when he had finished, returned with great show of reverence 
 to the shore. Soon after he repeated the same ceremony in 
 the same manner ; and presently a third time, but he then 
 brought a bunch of feathers, resembling those of a crow, 
 neatly fastened together, clean and handsomely cut ; and also 
 a small basket made of rushes, and filled with an herb which 
 they called tabah : * these he tied to a short stick, and cast 
 them into the ship's boat. In return Drake directed some 
 presents to be put on a plank in the water, and pushed 
 towards him ; but he refused to touch them, and would 
 receive nothing except a hat, which being thrown from the 
 ship, he took up. No intercourse followed upon this cere- 
 mony ; both parties, however, seemed to consider that a 
 good understanding had been established by it, and to have 
 acted accordingly in good faith. The natives were not dis- 
 trustful, because they had only once been visited by 
 Europeans, thirty-seven years before, when Joam Rodrigues 
 Cabrillo,f a Portuguese by birth, was sent by the viceroy 
 of New Spain to explore that coast : he happened to be a 
 humane good man, as well as a skilful navigator ; and the 
 whole of his intercourse with the natives had been of the 
 most friendly kind. Drake knew not that any such earlier 
 discovery had been made of these parts ; but he felt the 
 beneficial consequences of his predecessor's conduct ; and 
 neither he nor his people did anything during their tarriance 
 to counteract the favourable impression which Cabrillo had 
 made. 
 
 * The author of the "famous voyage" says tobacco (Hakluyt, 441). 
 I have followed Admiral Burney in using the name by which the natives 
 called it ; but that it was tobacco I have no doubt. For the Californians, 
 though they had not discovered the art of preparing any fermented 
 liquor, used to intoxicate themselves at their feasts with the smoke of 
 this wild herb (Notlcia de la California, t. i., p. 79). 
 
 t Burney, i., 220-224. Herrera, Dec. 7. i. 5. c. 3, 4. Noticia dc la 
 California, i., 181-183.
 
 266 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 He was not, however, unmindful of that caution which 
 ought always to be observed among any people whose char- 
 acter is not well known, and especially among savages. It 
 was necessary to lighten the ship in order to come at a leak 
 which she had sprung. She was anchored, therefore, close 
 to the shore, and Drake landed his men, with tents, and 
 such things as were necessary for foi-tifying their temporary 
 encampment. The natives upon perceiving this collected in 
 arms, and in large companies ; yet their demeanour was that 
 of men who had prepared themselves to resent wrong, not to 
 offer it ; and when signs were made to them to lay aside 
 their bows and arrows they did so, accepted the gifts which 
 were offered, and in return presented the general with 
 feathers, nets, and skins. They retired at evening, to all 
 appearance, well satisfied ; but when they had reached their 
 dwellings loud lamentations were distinctly heard from thence, 
 though the distance was not less than three parts of a mile, 
 and the voices of the women were distinguished, whose miser- 
 able shrieking rose above the deep and doleful outcries of 
 the men. During the two following days no one came near 
 the tents, and Drake is said to have fortified them by build- 
 ing a stone wall round. On the third day, a more numerous 
 assemblage than had yet been seen convened on the nearest 
 eminence, from whence one of their orators delivered with 
 violent enunciation a long speech, his words falling " so thick 
 one on the neck of the other, that he could hardly fetch his 
 breath again ". When he had ended, all the natives bowed 
 their heads, and sung out oh in a solemn and lengthened 
 tone, whereby it was supposed that they signified their 
 assent to all that had been said. The men then left their 
 bows on the ground, descended to the encampment, and 
 offered bunches of feathers and baskets of tobacco to the 
 general, which he accepted, and made them presents in 
 return. But the women, meantime remaining on the hill, 
 " tormented themselves lamentably " : they tore their cheeks
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 267 
 
 and bosoms, uttered pitiable cries, threw off their upper 
 garment, and holding their hands over their heads, dashed 
 themselves on the ground, repeating this till they were 
 covered with blood. The English did not behold this miser- 
 able sight without compassion, and Drake felt the more, 
 because he and his people were persuaded that the natives 
 took them for gods, and meant this as a religious act of pro- 
 pitiation. A proper sense of piety prompted him to the 
 wisest measure that could have been taken. He ordered all 
 his people to prayers, and divine service was performed with 
 an earnestness which the natives understood. The effect 
 which he had hoped for was produced, a stop was put to their 
 self-lacerations and other acts of violence : they " seemed to 
 be greatly affected at what they witnessed " ; that is, they 
 regarded it with awe, and at every pause in the service they 
 chanted out their solemn oh. When it was over, and they 
 rose to depart, they restored all the presents which had been 
 made them, and no one could be persuaded to take away 
 with him a single thing.* 
 
 The news having spread into the country, more natives 
 flocked to the place, and two heralds made the general 
 understand that their chief, or hioh, as he was called, was 
 coming to visit him, but that he desired to have some token 
 sent him that his coming might be in peace. They were 
 dismissed with what they asked for ; and forthwith the hioh, 
 who was " of a goodly stature and comely personage," ad- 
 vanced toward the fort with a princely majesty, the people 
 crying continually after their manner, and as they drew near 
 so did they strive to behave in their actions with comeli- 
 ness. One " of a large body and goodly aspect " led the 
 way, bearing a club of dark-coloured wood, to which were 
 fastened two coronals, " a less and a bigger, made of net- 
 work, and artificially wrought with feathers of many colours". 
 
 * Burney, 345-348. Hakluyt, 441.
 
 268 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Three chains also were suspended from it, " of a marvellous 
 length, and made of a bony substance, * every part thereof 
 being very little, thin, finely burnished, with a hole pierced 
 through the middle, the number of links making one chain 
 being in a manner infinite. Few be the persons that are 
 admitted to wear them, and those persons are stinted in the 
 number, by which it seems their rank was denoted." Next 
 came the hioh, wearing a coronal like those which were 
 borne before him, and a cloak of what the English took for 
 rabbit skins. About 100 "tall and warlike men accompanied 
 him, with similar cloaks but of different skins ". Some wore 
 feathered coats, others had their heads " covered with a very 
 fine down, which grows in that country upon an herb much 
 like our lettuce ". All had their faces painted, each after 
 his own fashion. Each brought something for a present. 
 " The naked, common sort of people followed," every one 
 having his face painted, some with white, some with black, 
 and other colours, " and having feathers in their hair, which 
 they gathered up in a bunch behind. Women and children 
 brought up the train, each bringing a round basket or two 
 with bags of tobacco, broiled fish, and a root called petah, of 
 which meal was made, to be either baked or eaten raw. 
 Even the children carried each a present." + 
 
 Drake, seeing so numerous a body of natives, drew up his 
 men within the " fenced place, making against their approach 
 a very warlike show ". The Californians, " being trooped 
 
 * A marginal note in Hakluyt says, " These are like chains of Esurnoy 
 in Canada and Hochelage," that is, strings of wampum. Langsdorff 
 says, that the Indians at this place still retain the art of making the 
 pieces of which these strings are composed with marvellous exactness, 
 all of the same size, and boring them without an iron instrument. They 
 are cut from the shell of a kind of mussel, which he did not see. One 
 of them is represented in the plates to the German edition of Langsdorffs 
 work (Rcise um die Welt, ii., 143). 
 
 t Burney, 348-350. Hakluyt, 441.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 269 
 
 together in their order/' first made a general salutation, 
 which was followed by a general silence. The club bearer 
 then pronounced with a loud and manly voice, after the 
 dictation of one who stood close to him, an oration which 
 seemed to the English to continue half an hour, and at its 
 conclusion the whole train chanted that long oh, which was 
 interpreted to signify amen, so be it ! Men and women then 
 descended the hill (leaving the children), and advanced in 
 order towards the camp ; their demonstrations were so peace- 
 ful that Drake allowed them to enter ; the club or sceptre 
 bearer (as he is dignified by the relater) " began a song, 
 observing his measures in a dance, and that with a stately 
 countenance ; the hioh with his guard, and every degree of 
 persons following, did in like manner sing and dance, but the 
 women only danced and kept silence ". When they were 
 within the camp, they continued their song and dance a 
 reasonable time. Then, in the words of the earliest account, 
 " they made signs to our general to sit down, to whom the 
 king and divers others made several orations, or rather 
 supplications, that he would take their province and kingdom 
 into his hand and become their king, making signs that they 
 would resign unto him their right and title of the whole land, 
 and become his subjects. In which to persuade us the better, 
 the king and the rest with one consent, and with great 
 reverence, joyfully singing a song, did set the crown upon 
 his head, enriched his neck with all their chains, and offered 
 unto him many other things, honouring him by the name of 
 hioh, * adding thereunto, as it seemed, a sign of triumph ; 
 which thing our general thought not meet to reject, because 
 
 * " These honours," says Admiral Burney, " paid to a stranger, have 
 more than a shade of resemblance to the custom which has been found 
 among so many Indian nations, of exchanging names with those whose 
 alliance or friendship they desire. The general, to have manifested an 
 equal return of consideration, might have decorated his visitor with some 
 ornament, and have saluted him by the name of Drake " (p. 350).
 
 270 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 he knew not what honour and profit it might be to our 
 country. Wherefore, in the name and to the use of her 
 majesty, he took the sceptre,* crown, and dignity of the said 
 country in his hands ; wishing that the riches and treasure 
 thereof might so conveniently be transported to the enrich- 
 ing of her kingdom at home, as it aboundeth in the same." f 
 The natives accompanied this act of surrender with a song 
 and dance of triumph, "because (says another relater) they 
 were not only visited of gods (for so they still judged us to 
 be), but the great and chief god was now become their god, 
 their king and patron, and themselves the only happy and 
 blessed people in all the world ". J 
 
 That the natives meant to make a surrender of their 
 country by these ceremonies is what none but men pre- 
 possessed with notions which were common to all Europeans 
 in that age could have supposed ; but that they regarded 
 the English as beings, if not of superior nature, yet of such 
 superior knowledge and power, that it was necessary to 
 propitiate them by circumstances approaching to idolatry, 
 must be inferred from the scene which immediately ensued. 
 "The common sort of people, leaving the king and his guard 
 with our general, scattered themselves together with their 
 sacrifices among our people, taking a diligent view of every 
 person ; and such as pleased their fancy (which were the 
 youngest), they, enclosing them about, offered their sacrifices 
 unto them with lamentable weeping, scratching, and tearing 
 
 * The invariable custom adopted by Europeans, of claiming and taking 
 formal possession of every new land they meet with (whether it is in- 
 habited or uninhabited never entering into the consideration), no doubt 
 disposed Drake to credit, if it is true that he did credit it, that these 
 people, simply, and for no cause, value received, or other consideration, 
 made a voluntary gift of themselves and their country to him, a perfect 
 stranger (Burney, 354). 
 
 t Hakluyt, 441. 
 
 J World Encompassed, 76.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 271 
 
 the flesh from their faces with their nails, whereof issued 
 abundance of blood. But we used signs to them of disliking 
 this, and stayed their hands from force, and directed them 
 upwards to the living God, whom only they ought to wor- 
 ship." Such, too, as had sores, craved help of the strangers, 
 as of persons who assuredly they thought could heal them. 
 Whereupon, the writer says, " we gave them lotions, plasters, 
 and ointments, agreeing to the state of their griefs, beseech- 
 ing God to cure their diseases. Every third day they brought 
 their sacrifices unto us, until they understood our meaning 
 that we had no pleasure in them. Yet they could not be 
 long absent from us, but daily frequented our company to 
 the hour of our departure, which departure seemed so griev- 
 ous unto them, that their joy was turned into sorrow. They 
 entreated us that, being absent, we would remember them, 
 and by stealth provided a sacrifice, which we misliked."* 
 
 The Californians were in a ruder state than many of the 
 North American nations. The people whom Drake saw 
 were a burrowing tribe : their houses or dens were circular, 
 roofed with timber, the centre forming a kind of spire, t near 
 which " an opening that resembled the scuttle of a ship 
 served the double purpose of door and chimney ". They 
 were not so far advanced as to use the hammock ; but slept, 
 like our British ancestors, upon rushes, around a central fire. 
 Most of the men were nearly naked ; the women wore a 
 loose garment round the waist, made of bulrushes, " combed 
 after the manner of hemp " : over the shoulders they had a 
 deer skin. Deer were very numerous : in an excursion 
 which Drake made to some of their villages in the interior, 
 he saw herds of a thousand in a company, " being most large 
 
 * Hakluyt, 442. 
 
 t " Their houses," says the old relation, " are digged round about with 
 earth, and have from the uttermost brims of the circle clefts of wood set 
 upon them, joining close together at the top like a spire steeple, which 
 by reason of that closeness are very warm " (p. 441).
 
 272 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and fat of body ". " The whole country was like a warren 
 of a strange kind of conies, their bodies in bigness as be 
 the Barbary conies, their heads as the heads of ours, the 
 feet of a wunt (or mole), and the tail of a rat, being of great 
 length ; under her chin on either side a bag, into the which 
 she gathered her meat, when she hath filled her belly abroad." 
 The skins of these creatures were much esteemed, " for their 
 king's coat was made of them ". Drake named the country 
 New Albion, " in respect of the white banks and cliffs which 
 lie towards the sea," and also for old England's sake. He 
 set up a monument of the queen's "right and title to the 
 same, namely, a plate nailed upon a fair great post, where- 
 upon was engraven her majesty's name, the day and year of 
 our arrival there, with the free giving up of the province and 
 people into her majesty's hands, together with her highness's 
 picture and arms in a piece of sixpence of current English 
 money under the plate, where under was also written the 
 name of our general ". Nova California is still named New 
 Albion in English maps ; but no consequences, either evil or 
 good, have resulted from the possession thus confidently 
 taken.* That part of the Americas has even to this time 
 escaped from all the evils of conquest, and the attempts that 
 have been made to civilise it have been in the spirit of that 
 religion which was proclaimed with the announcement of 
 peace on earth, good will towards men. The Jesuits, who 
 were as beneficially employed in America as they were 
 mischievously in Europe, established missions there, in which, 
 
 * " It seemeth that the Spaniards hitherto had never been in this part 
 of the country, neither did they ever discover the land by many degrees 
 to the southwards of this place " (Hakluyt, 442). The English knew 
 nothing at that time of Cabrillo's voyage, nor indeed of anything that 
 the Spaniards had done in that direction. They too were dreaming of 
 Eldorados, and thought there was " no part of the earth here to be 
 taken up wherein there is not some special likelihood of gold or silver " 
 (Ibid.).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 273 
 
 though they attempted, and consequently effected, less than 
 in Paraguay and among the Chaquitos, they reclaimed very 
 many hordes from a savage life, and reduced them to a state 
 of contented pupilage, in which their bodily wants were 
 amply provided for. Upon the abolition of that order the 
 Franciscans were substituted for them in these parts, and the 
 Californian missions appear to have been the only ones that 
 were not either utterly ruined or miserably deteriorated by 
 the change. 
 
 After remaining five weeks in port Drake took his departure, 
 and as long as the ship continued in sight, the natives kept 
 fires on the tops of the hills. The design of seeking for a 
 passage by the north of America was, with general consent, 
 given up, seeing that the northern summer was so far ad- 
 vanced, and that the wind was then blowing from the north- 
 west ; and it was determined to follow the example of Mag- 
 ellan, and steer for the Moluccas. After taking " good store 
 of seals and birds " from the Farellones, which are near the 
 entrance of Port St. Francisco, they sailed sixty-eight days 
 without seeing land, and then fell in with some inhabited 
 islands, which, from the conduct of the natives, they named 
 the Island of Thieves, another remarkable coincidence with 
 the circumstances of Magellan's voyage. These people began 
 by fair trading : then took the English articles and would 
 make no return ; and, lastly, when the English refused to 
 deal any more with such customers, attacked the ships with 
 stones, wherewith they had come well provided. A great 
 gun was fired over their heads : it frightened them away ; 
 but when they found that they were not hurt, they returned 
 more audaciously to the unprovoked attack, and "could not 
 be got rid of till they were made to feel smart as well as 
 terror ". There is little doubt that these were the Pelew 
 Islands. Drake was not clear of them till 3rd of October. 
 On the 16th he made the Philippines, and on 3rd of No- 
 vember had sight of the Moluccas, and steered for Tidore, 
 
 18
 
 274 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 where it was his intention to anchor ; but a boat came off 
 from the Island Motir, and Portuguese enough was spoken 
 by those who came in it to make him understand that the 
 Portuguese had been driven out from Ternate, and had taken 
 up their quarters in Tidore, and to invite him to change his 
 destination and go to Ternate, when they understood that he 
 was not a friend to the Portuguese. Thither, accordingly, he 
 went ; and sending a velvet cloak as a present to the king, 
 requested to be furnished with provisions, and to trade for 
 spices. * 
 
 The king, who had already been told " what good things 
 he might receive by traffic," prepared forthwith to visit the 
 ship. He sent before him " four great and large canoes, in 
 every one whereof were certain of his greatest states that 
 were about him, attired in white lawn of cloth of Calicut, 
 having over their heads from the one end of the canoe to the 
 other a covering of thin perfumed mats, borne up with a 
 frame made of reeds for the same use, under which every one 
 did sit in his order, according to his dignity, to keep him 
 from the heat of the sun ; divers of whom being of good age 
 and gravity did make an ancient and fatherly show. There 
 were also divers young and comely men attired in white, as 
 were the others. The rest were soldiers, which stood in 
 comely order, round about on both sides ; without whom sat 
 the rowers in certain galleries, which being three on a side 
 all along the canoes did lie off from the side thereof three or 
 four yards, one being orderly builded lower than another, in 
 every of which galleries were the number of fourscore rowers. 
 These canoes were furnished with warlike munition, every 
 man, for the most part, having his sword and target, with his 
 dagger, besides other weapons, as lances, calivers, darts, 
 bows and arrows ; also every canoe had a small cast base (or 
 cannon) mounted at the least one full yard upon a stock set 
 
 * Burney, 356-358. Hakluyt, 739.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 275 
 
 upright. Thus coming near tlic ship in order they rowed 
 about it, one after another, and passing by, did their homage* 
 with great solemnity, the great personages beginning with 
 great gravity, and fatherly countenance, signifying that the 
 king had sent them to conduct the ship into a better road." 
 The king soon arrived, and was received with a salute of 
 great guns, with trumpets sounding, and such politic display 
 of state and strength as Drake knew it was advisable to ex- 
 hibit. He and his suite were "passing well contented with 
 the presents which were made them ; and taking his leave, 
 as the ship anchored, he promised to repeat his visit the next 
 day, and said that provisions should be supplied ".t 
 
 That same night provisions were sent, consisting of rice, 
 fowls, " unperfect and liquid sugar," sugar canes, " a fruit 
 which they call figo," cloves, and " meal, which they call 
 sagu, made of the tops of certain trees, tasting in the mouth 
 like sour curds, but melting like sugar, whereof they make 
 certain cakes, which may be kept the space of ten years, and 
 yet then good to be eaten ". But instead of repeating his 
 visit, as he had promised, the king sent his brother on the 
 morrow to invite the general ashore, and remain on board as 
 hostage for his safe return. The breach of promise made 
 Drake "mislike" this invitation, and his whole company 
 utterly refused to let him accept it. Not, however, to ex- 
 press any suspicion, that should it prove needless might justly 
 give offence, he sent some of his officers with presents in his 
 stead. They were received in great state, in a large and fair 
 house, near the castle which this prince had taken from the 
 
 * Here, too, Drake's people were possessed with the notion of an in- 
 tended surrender of the rights of sovereignty. The first relater says, 
 " the king was moved with great liking toward us, and sent to our 
 general with special message, that he should have what things he needed 
 and would require, with peace and friendship ; and, moreover, that he 
 would yield himself, and the right of his island, to be at the pleasure 
 and commandment of so great a prince as we served" (p. 739). 
 
 t Hakluyt, 739. Burney, 358.
 
 276 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Portuguese. About 1000 persons were assembled, among 
 whom were seven ambassadors * from different countries. 
 The king came in, after a while, with twelve guards, and 
 under a rich canopy, embossed with gold. " From his waist 
 down to the ground was all cloth of gold, and the same very 
 rich ; his legs were bare, but on his feet were shoes of Cor- 
 dovan skin. In the attire of his head were finely wreathed 
 hooped rings of gold ; and about his neck he had a chain of 
 perfect gold, the links whereof were great and one fold 
 double. On his fingers he had six very fair jewels ; and 
 sitting in his chair of estate, at his right hand stood a page 
 with a fan in his hand, breathing and gathering the air to 
 the king. The fan was in length two feet, and in breadth 
 one, set with eight sapphires, richly embroidered, and knit 
 to a staff three feet in length, by which the page did hold 
 and move it." No treachery had been intended : the inter- 
 view ended well ; and the English were offered an exclusive 
 trade with Ternate and its numerous dependent isles, t if 
 they would enter into engagements of amity and commerce 
 with him. 
 
 Sultan Baboe, or more properly Baab-Ullah, by whom this 
 proposal was made, was a more politic and powerful prince 
 than any of the twenty-four sultans who had preceded him 
 in the sovereignty of those islands. His father, Sultan Hairun, 
 had been assassinated in his own palace by the Portuguese, 
 
 * Two Turks, liegers, the old relation says, and one Italian, and 
 " four grave persons, apparelled all in red down to the ground, and 
 attired on their heads like the Turks, and these were said to be Romans, 
 and liegers there to keep continual traffic with the people of Ternate " 
 (p. 740). Who these may have been it is impossible to guess, farther 
 than that they were Mahommedans. 
 
 f Seventy they are said to be in Hakluyt. They were commonly 
 accounted seventy-two, but Valentyn enumerates twenty more, besides 
 more than a hundred uninhabited ones, of which the birds and turtles 
 are in full, but not peaceful, possession.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 277 
 
 mutual wrongs and mutual intolerance having exasperated 
 them against each other. The history of the Portuguese in the 
 Moluccas, far unlike that of the mother-country and its other 
 conquests or colonies) may be described as a series of crimes, 
 with little to mitigate them, and nothing to redeem the 
 perpetrators from abhorrence and execration. * They cut 
 the body of Hairun in pieces, salted them, and when Baab- 
 Ullah offered even to become a Christian if they would give 
 him the dishonoured remains of his murdered father, they 
 cast them into the sea. The sultan had his revenge, but it 
 was that of a brave and honourable man : he besieged them 
 in their fort St. Paulo, compelled them, by famine, to sur- 
 render, received the keys in a casket of finely wrought silver, 
 and made the army hut themselves upon the beach till oppor- 
 tunity might offer of a passage to their own country. A 
 galleon arrived ; but those on board regarded the capitula- 
 tion as so shameful, that they refused to take their country- 
 men on board, and there they must have remained, if the 
 people of Tidore had not, in hatred to the Ternatans, trans- 
 ported them to their island, and allowed them to construct 
 a fortress there ; and though Baab-Ullah pursued them 
 thither, and defeated them and their allies in battle, they 
 maintained themselves there, t These events occurred only 
 six years before Drake's arrival, and they explain the readi- 
 ness with which the sultan proposed to enter into an alliance 
 with the English. Powerful as he then was, he knew that 
 he might possibly one day stand in need of European aid ; 
 and in the eastern islands the sultans seem always to have 
 been merchant princes. But the English did not yet extend 
 their views of commerce so far, and Drake had not come 
 there "to spy the land," even with mercantile intentions. 
 
 * My knowledge of it is derived from their own historians ; and if 
 there is a wickeder history than that of the Portuguese in the Moluccas, 
 it has not come within the course of my reading. 
 
 t Valentyn, Beschryving dcr Moluccas, i., 206, 207.
 
 278 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 His first object was to discover the weakness of Peru ; having 
 succeeded in that, to go round the world was not only a 
 point of ambition but his best way home. 
 
 Among the persons who came on board the Golden Hind 
 during the six days that she remained at Ternate was a 
 Chinese, who informed Drake, through an interpreter, that 
 he was related to the family of the reigning emperor, but 
 had been unjustly accused of a capital crime, and was afraid 
 that if it came to trial, innocent though he was, he should 
 not be able to make his innocence appear. He had, there- 
 fore, solicited and obtained leave to expatriate himself, upon 
 condition that if he could bring home any important intelli- 
 gence, he should be allowed to live in his native country, 
 otherwise he must pass his life in exile. Now, he said, he 
 accounted himself a happy man, in that he had seen and 
 spoken with the English, thinking this was a thing for which, 
 perhaps, he might find favour in China ; and he endeavoured 
 to persuade Drake to go thither, not doubting but that it 
 would be a means to obtain him advancement and honour. 
 But Drake's business was to secure both the wealth and the 
 glory which he had acquired, by returning home with as 
 little delay as possible ; and the poor Chinese departed 
 sorrowfully, when he found that his persuasions did not 
 succeed.* 
 
 Having stored himself with provisions, and laid in as large 
 a quantity of cloves as convenient stowage could be found 
 for, Drake sailed on 9th of November ; and on the 14th 
 anchored at a small uninhabited island near the eastern part 
 of Celebes. There he erected tents, intrenched them to be 
 prepared for unwelcome visitors if any should arrive, set up 
 a forge, and repaired the ship carefully. Four weeks were 
 passed in this occupation without molestation of any kind. 
 They had to provide themselves with water from an adjacent 
 
 * World Encompassed, 93. Burney, 359.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 279 
 
 island ; in all other respects this was most commodious. It 
 was covered "with wood of a large and high growth, straight, 
 and without boughs, save only in the head or top, whose 
 leaves are not much differing from our broom in England. 
 Amongst these trees, night by night, through the whole 
 land, did show themselves an infinite swarm of fiery worms 
 flying in the air, whose bodies being no bigger than our 
 common English flies make such a show and light, as if every 
 twig and tree had been a burning candle." Such is the ex- 
 aggerated description which one of these adventurers has 
 given of a very striking and beautiful sight. " In this place 
 breedeth also wonderful store of bats, as big as large hens " ; 
 and, better than such ugly poultry, " a kind of cray fish, of 
 such a size that one was sufficient to satisfy four hungry 
 men". These, which seem to be exaggerated in size, were 
 land crabs, and " very good and restoring meat ". " They 
 are," says another relater, " as far as we could perceive, 
 utter strangers to the sea, living always on the land, where 
 they work themselves earths ; or rather they dig huge caves 
 under the roots of the largest trees, where they lodge by 
 companies together. Sometimes, when we come to take 
 them, for want of other refuge, they would climb into the 
 trees and hide themselves, where we were enforced to follow 
 them." * 
 
 From hence they sailed toward the west, and thereby got 
 entangled among the islands and shoals near the coast of 
 Celebes. With the hope of escaping from these, they held 
 a southern course ; but on 9th of January, when they thought 
 themselves in a clear sea, early in the first watch, the ship 
 running under full sail, with the wind large, and blowing 
 moderately fresh, came at once upon a rocky shoal, and 
 stuck fast. " Boats were got out to examine if an anchor 
 could be placed in any direction, by which they might 
 
 * Hakluyt, 740. Burney, 361.
 
 280 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 endeavour to draw the ship off into deep water ; but at the 
 distance of only a boat's length no bottom could be found 
 with all their lines. The ship had not become leaky in con- 
 sequence of the shock ; but she remained all night fixed, and 
 another examination after daylight was as fruitless as the 
 former." There she continued till four in the afternoon. 
 The general, " as he had always hitherto shown himself coura- 
 geous, and of a good confidence in the mercy and protection 
 of God, so now he continued in the same ; and lest he should 
 seem to perish wilfully, both he and his men did their best 
 endeavour to save themselves. Those endeavours were all 
 vain ; and it was to God's special mercy that they were 
 alone beholden for their preservation, when no human effort 
 could avail. In a state which was hopeless, as well as help- 
 less, the crew were summoned to prayers ; and when that 
 duty was performed they tried what could be done by lighten- 
 ing the ship. Three tons of cloves were thrown out, eight of 
 the guns, and a quantity of meal and pulse ; but none of the 
 treasure, though that was he heaviest part of the cargo.* 
 
 * Fuller says otherwise in a most characteristic passage. The ship, he 
 says, struck twice on a dangerous shoal, " knocking twice at the door of 
 death, which no doubt had opened the third time. Here they stuck, 
 having ground too much, and yet too little to land on ; and water too 
 much, and yet too little to sail in. Had God, who, as the wise man 
 saith, holdeth the winds in His fist, but opened His little ringer and let 
 out the smallest blast, they had undoubtedly been cast away ; but there 
 blew not any wind all the while. Then they, conceiving aright that the 
 best way to lighten the ship was first to ease it of the burthen of their 
 sins by true repentance, humbled themselves by lasting under the hand 
 of God ; afterward they received the communion, dining on Christ in 
 the sacrament, expecting no other than to sup with Him in heaven. 
 Then they cast out of their ship six great pieces of ordnance ; threw 
 overboard as much wealth as would break the heart of a miser to think 
 on't ; with much sugar, and packs of spices, making a caudle of the sea 
 round about. Then they betook themselves to their prayers, the best 
 lever at such a dead lift indeed, and it pleased God that the wind, for- 
 merly their mortal enemy, became their friend" (Holy State, 127).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 281 
 
 Xo visible benefit was produced. The ship had grounded on 
 a shelving rock ; where she lay there was on one side only 
 six feet depth at low water, and to float her it required 
 thirteen. The wind blowing fresh directly against the other 
 side kept her upright during the time she was left by the tide ; 
 but when it was nearly at the lowest the wind slackened, 
 and the ship losing this prop fell toward the deep water : her 
 keel with the shake was freed from the rocks ; and, not less 
 to the surprise than to the joy of every one aboard, she was 
 once more afloat. Thus were they delivered at the very time 
 when the tide was least favourable, and when all efforts were 
 thought useless."* 
 
 " Having suffered many dangers by winds and shoals," 
 they fell in, on the 8th of ^February, with " the fruitful island 
 of Barateva," of which they say that, "to confess a truth, 
 since the time that we first set out of our country of England, 
 we happened upon no place, Ternate only excepted, wherein 
 we found more comforts, and better means of refreshing ". 
 The people they found comely, just in dealing, and courteous 
 to strangers. From thence they set their course for Java ; 
 which island, according to them, "was governed by five 
 rajahs, living at that time in such unity, as if they had 
 one spirit and one mind ". The people, by their account, 
 dwelt together as harmoniously as their chiefs. " They have 
 a house in every village for their common assembly ; eveiy 
 day they meet twice, men, women, and children, bringing 
 with them such victuals as they think good ; some fruits, 
 
 * Burney, 363. This excellent seaman follows the author of the 
 World Encompassed in this detail, wherein I have followed him safe 
 always with such a guide. The account in Hakluyt (p. 741) says, that 
 they lightened the ship ; " and then the wind (as it were in a moment 
 by the special grace of God) changing from the starboard to the larboard 
 of the ship, we hoisted our sails, and the happy gale drove our ship off 
 the rocks into the sea again, to the no little comfort of all our hearts, 
 for which we gave God such praise and thanks as so great a benefit 
 required ''.
 
 282 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 some rice boiled, * some hens roasted, some sagu ; having a 
 table made three feet from the ground, whereon they set 
 their meat, that every person sitting at the table may eat, 
 one rejoicing in the company of another." It is a mournful 
 reflection that in proportion as we become acquainted with 
 the real condition and character of distant nations, the more 
 there is to subtract from the first favourable opinion that is 
 formed of them. 
 
 Here Drake was informed that not far off there were 
 ships as large as his own, and he was warned to beware of 
 them ; though he must previously have known his danger 
 as he drew near the Portuguese settlements, this warning 
 is said to have made him hasten his departure from Java. 
 From thence he steered for the Cape of Good Hope, which 
 his men thought "a most stately thing, and the fairest cape 
 they had seen in the whole circumference of the earth ". 
 They landed on the west side in search of water, and finding 
 no spring must have been distressed if they had not provi- 
 dently collected rain water in good time. They supplied 
 themselves at Sierra Leone, and concluded their prosperous 
 voyage at Plymouth after two years and nearly ten months ; 
 arriving on Monday by their own reckoning, they found that 
 it was Sunday in England. Drake immediately repaired to 
 court, and was graciously received there, though the treasure 
 
 * They boil their rice in an earthen pot, made in form of a sugar loaf, 
 being full of holes, as our pots which we water our gardens withal ; and 
 it is open at the great end, wherein they put their rice dry, without any 
 moisture. In the meantime they have ready another great earthen pot, set 
 fast in a furnace, boiling, full of water, whereinto they put their pot with 
 rice, by such measure that the grains, swelling, become soft at the first, 
 and by their swelling, stopping the holes of the pot, admit no more water 
 to enter ; but the more they are boiled the harder and more firm sub- 
 stance they become, so that in the end they are a firm and good bread; 
 of the which with oil, butter, sugar, and other spices, they make divers 
 sorts of meats, very pleasant of taste, and nourishing to nature 
 (Hakluyt, 741).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 283 
 
 which he brought home was placed in sequestration, in case 
 it should be found necessary to answer such demands as would 
 be made for it. Her own right of navigating the ocean in 
 all parts Elizabeth firmly asserted to the Spanish ambassador, 
 and as firmly denied any right which the Spaniard laid claim 
 to in the Indies by virtue of the pope's grant. And though 
 she yielded so far as to pay a considerable sum of money to 
 an ostensible procurator of certain merchants who claimed 
 it, enough seems to have been retained to make it a profitable 
 adventure for the captors. Drake was rewarded with such 
 honours as he had well deserved. The queen gave orders 
 that his ship should be drawn up in a little creek near 
 Deptford, and there preserved as a monument of the most 
 memorable voyage that the English had ever yet performed. 
 " Having, as it were, thus consecrated it, she honoured it and 
 him by going on board to partake of a banquet there ; and 
 on that occasion * Drake knelt to her, and rose up Sir 
 Francis. The good fortune which had attended the Golden 
 Hind on her voyage round the world did not forsake that 
 
 * On this occasion also the Westminster scholars set up the following 
 verses upon the mainmast : 
 
 " PLUS ULTRA, Herculeis inscribas, Drace, columnis, 
 Et magno, dicas, Hercule major ero ". 
 
 On Hercules' pillars, Drake, thou may'st plus ultra write full well, 
 And say, I will in greatness that great Hercules excel. 
 
 " Drace, pererrati novit quem terminus orbis, 
 
 Quemque semel mundi vidit uterque polus, 
 Si taceant homines, facient te sidera notum, 
 Sol nescit comitis non memor esse sui." 
 
 Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knows, which thou didst compass 
 
 round, 
 And whom both poles of heaven once saw which north and south do 
 
 bound, 
 
 The stars above will make thee known if men here silent were ; 
 The sun himself cannot forget his fellow-traveller.
 
 284 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ship when laid up in this its last harbour. The bridge of 
 planks by which the queen and her retinue went on board 
 broke under the crowd of people who stationed themselves 
 upon it ; about 1 00 persons fell, and yet no one suffered any 
 serious injury. * The ship remained at Deptford till it de- 
 cayed : it was then broken up ; and from one of its planks a 
 chair was made, and presented to the University of Oxford. 
 
 It was, probably, about this time that Sir Francis assumed 
 the arms of the Drakes of Ash, near Axminster, which, as 
 he was not able to make out his descent from that family, 
 was, "in those days, when the court of honour was in more 
 honour, a matter not so easily digested ". Bernard Drake, 
 the representative of that family, was a sea-rover like him- 
 self; and instead of feeling that the tree of his pedigree 
 would be rendered more illustrious by having the name of 
 Sir Francis Drake pendent from it than by any fruit that it 
 had ever before borne, resented the assumption angrily ; high 
 words ensued, and he gave Sir Francis a blow within the 
 verge of the court : worse consequences might have followed 
 had this outrage been offered in any other place ; and the 
 queen, it is said, not leaving the laws to take cognisance of 
 the offender, terminated the dispute by bestowing upon Sir 
 Francis " a new coat of everlasting honour to himself and 
 posterity for ever". " The field," says Gwillim, f "is diamond, 
 a fess wavy between the two pole stars, Arctic and Antarctic, 
 pearl. Such was the worth of this most generous and re- 
 nowned knight, as that his merits do require that his coat- 
 armour should be expressed in that selected manner of 
 blazoning that is fitting to noble personages, in respect of his 
 noble courage and high attempts achieved." The crest given 
 him was a ship on a globe, under ruff, held by a cable with a 
 hand out of the clouds, and a wivern gules, his wings dis- 
 played, and tail nowed (being the Drake arms), hung by the 
 
 * Camden, 253, 254. f P. Si, ed. 1679.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 285 
 
 heels in the rigging, marking thereby the queen's displeasure 
 towards the bearer of that coat. He, however, according to 
 the tradition in his family, told the queen, with no unbecom- 
 ing spirit, that though she might give his competitor a nobler 
 coat of arms than his, she could not give him an ancienter. * 
 Elizabeth's displeasure was but for a time ; and sparing as 
 she was in the distribution of honours, it was not long before 
 she rewarded the services of this gentleman, as they well 
 deserved, with knighthood. 
 
 Whether this expedition were justifiable or not upon those 
 principles by which all Christian states ought to hold them- 
 selves bound, Drake's conduct in it, as a navigator and a 
 commander, is entitled to the highest praise. It has been 
 said of him that he was a willing hearer of every man's 
 opinion, but commonly a follower of his own, and this is the 
 highest praise that can be bestowed upon a man so competent 
 to form an opinion for himself. The next great enterprise 
 in which he was engaged was planned after Elizabeth had 
 openly entered into an alliance with the United States. Philip 
 had then laid an embargo upon all English ships, goods, and sub- 
 jects in his dominions ; and the queen authorised such as sus- 
 tained loss by this measure to indemnify themselves by taking 
 and arresting all ships and merchandise belonging to the subjects 
 of Spain wherever they could find them.f Not waiting for the 
 war at her own doors, she fitted out an expedition, consisting of 
 twenty-five sail of ships and pinnaces. Drake was appointed 
 admiral, Martin Frobisher vice-admiral, Christopher Carleill, 
 "a man of long experience in the wars as well by sea as 
 land," general of the land forces. The soldiers and seamen 
 amounted to 2300. They sailed from Plymouth on the 14th 
 of September, 1585, for the coast of Spain; and after a few 
 days, " for lack of favourable wind," put in within the isles 
 of Bayona. No sooner had part of the fleet anchored than 
 Drake ordered the pinnaces and boats to be manned, got into 
 
 * Prince. t Monson, in Churchill, Hi., 155.
 
 286 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 his galley, and rowed toward the town of Bayona, then a con- 
 siderable place, his intent being, says the historian of the 
 voyage, "with the favour of the Almighty, to surprise it". 
 They were presently met by a messenger from the governor ; 
 the communication ended in Drake's despatching Captain 
 Sampson, one of the two corporals of the field, to demand 
 of the governor, " first, if there were war between Spain and 
 England ; and, secondly, why the English merchants and 
 their goods were embargoed ? " The governor replied, that 
 he knew of no war between the two nations, and it lay not 
 in him to make any : the embargo had been the king's 
 pleasure, but not with intent to injure any man ; and, in fact, 
 it had been taken off by the king's counter order a week ago, 
 to certify which he sent the English merchants then resident 
 there. But it was with no pacific intention that this arma- 
 ment had been set forth. The troops landed, and quai-tering 
 themselves as well as they could, and setting good guard 
 upon every approach, thought to rest themselves there for 
 the night. Wine, fruit, and other refreshments were sent 
 from the town to their unbidden and unwelcome visitants, 
 as if they had been friends. But about midnight the weather 
 began to overcast : it was deemed wiser to repair aboard than 
 make any longer tarriance, and before they could recover the 
 fleet a storm arose ; many of the ships drove from their 
 anchorage, some were forced out to sea in great peril, and 
 one was driven to England. "The extremity of the storm 
 lasted three days." * 
 
 When the fleet had re-assembled, Carleill was sent with 
 part of it "to see what he could do above Vigo". He inter- 
 cepted many boats and caravels, in which the inhabitants 
 were removing their property up into the country, except 
 one boat, in which were the plate and ornaments of the high 
 church. The booty was of little value to the captors, yet 
 the loss of the people was computed at more than 30,000 
 
 * Cates, in Hakluyt, iii., 535.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 287 
 
 ducats, the ducat being 5*. 6d. The next day Drake joined 
 Carleill in a station above the town, chosen " as well for the 
 more quiet riding of his ship as also for the good commodity 
 of watering, which the place afforded full well ". Meantime 
 the Governor of Galicia, having collected some 2000 foot and 
 300 horse, hastened to this point, and demanded a parley 
 with the English commander. Drake consented, " so it 
 might be in boats upon the water ". Hostages were given on 
 both sides ; and an agreement was concluded that the English 
 'should furnish themselves with fresh water, to be taken 
 quietly by their own people, and with all other such neces- 
 saries as the place would afford, paying for the same". This 
 done, the fleet sailed for the Canaries. * 
 
 The parties had regarded each other here Avith respect ; 
 and humiliating as it was for the governor of such a province 
 to have consented to such an agreement, his presence pre- 
 vented greater evil, the disposition of the English being to 
 burn and destroy, or to extort a ransom as the price of their 
 forbearance. Great and not unreasonable alarm was excited 
 by their appearance. Their force was estimated at 5000 
 troops, with 30 ships, besides many pinnaces and oared 
 shallops : it was feared that they were designed for the 
 South Sea ; and the mischief which they might effect upon 
 the way was forecast by the Marquis of Santa Cruz. In 
 eighteen days from Bayona, at this season, Drake might sack 
 Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape de Verds ; forty days 
 more might carry him to Rio Janeiro : he might take pos- 
 session of the mouth of that fine harbour, which commands 
 the entrance, fortify it, and maintain it by leaving a garrison 
 of 500 men there : he might then pass the strait, enter the 
 South Sea, and attack Lima. The population of that city 
 consisted of 2000 families, but they were neither a warlike 
 people, nor had they been trained to arms ; and as the place 
 
 * Gates, in Hakluyt, iii., 536.
 
 288 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 was open, and had no artillery for its defence, the English 
 might take and sack it, and proceed to make themselves 
 masters of the land ; in furtherance of which views it was 
 veiy probable that they would get possession of Panama. If 
 this were not Drake's design, it might be to sack St. Domingo, 
 Puerto Rico, and the coast of Tierra-Firma to Carthagena and 
 Nombre de Dios, and by way of Venta de Cruz attack Panama 
 from that side. The Havannah, also, was in great danger, 
 the fortress being but small and weak. The marquis advised, 
 therefore, that despatches should be sent off with all possible 
 diligence to the viceroys and governors in the Indies ; that 
 a fleet should be ordered out to sail in pursuit of the English, 
 and give them battle ; that 1000 Catalonian and Genoese 
 sailors should be distributed in this fleet, and 6000 soldiers 
 levied for it, a greater number being raised, to the end that 
 those who were chosen might be able men.* 
 
 Drake, meantime, was on his way to the Canaries, and 
 made first for the Isle of Palma, " with intention," says 
 Gates, "to have taken our pleasure of that place, for the 
 full digesting of many things into order, and the better 
 furnishing our store with such several good things, as it 
 affordeth very abundantly". But he complains "we were 
 forced by the vile sea-gate, which at that present fell out, 
 and by the naughtiness of the landing-place, being but one, 
 and that under the favour of many platforms, well furnished 
 with great ordnance, to depart with the receipt of many of 
 their cannon shot ; but the only or chief mischief was the 
 dangerous sea surge, which at shore all along plainly threatened 
 the overthrow of any boats as should have attempted land- 
 ing". They then tried the Island of Hierro, and landed 
 about 1000 men : the inhabitants came to them ; and, by 
 means of a young Englishman who resided there, represented 
 " their state to be so poor, that they were all ready to starve ". 
 
 * Hakluyt, 530, 534.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 289 
 
 This poverty was their defence ; and the expedition, thus a 
 second time disappointed, proceeded for the Cape de Verds.* 
 Arrived at the principal of those islands, they anchored 
 between the towns of Playa and Santiago. Carleill was 
 landed there with 1000 men, marched toward the latter 
 place, being the capital, during the night, halted at some 
 two miles' distance till break of day, and then advancing 
 "hard to the walls" saw no enemy to resist him, the inhabit- 
 ants having, at sight of the fleet, fled into the interior. Two 
 companies of thirty men each were then sent to enter the 
 town, the whole of which, being in a valley, was completely 
 seen from the high ground on which the troops had arrived ; 
 the great ensign was also sent, " which had nothing on it but 
 the plain English cross, to be placed toward the sea, that our 
 fleet might see St. George's cross flourish on the enemy's 
 fortress. Order was given that all the ordnance throughout 
 the town, and upon all the platforms, which were about 
 fifty pieces, all ready charged, should be shot off in honour 
 of the queen's majesty's coronation day, being the 17th 
 November, after the yearly custom of England, which was 
 so answered again by all the ships in the fleet, being now 
 come near, as it was strange to hear such a thundering noise 
 last so long together." The town was in form like a triangle, 
 having cliffs, " as it were, hanging over it," on the east and 
 west ; both heights were fortified, though no attempt had 
 been made to defend the works. On the south was the sea ; 
 and at the north end the valley, in which the town is built, 
 becomes so narrow, that it was estimated not to be above ten 
 or twelve score over. A stream came down the valley, and 
 formed a pond near the sea-side, at which the ships were 
 watered with great ease. Above the town the valley ex- 
 panded, and was wholly converted into gardens and orchards. 
 Carleill remained on the heights till the deserted town was 
 quartered out for the lodging of the whole army ; that done, 
 
 * Hakluyt, 536. 
 
 19
 
 290 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 he took possession, and set such sufficient guard in every part 
 that there was no cause for any present fear.* 
 
 Here the English continued a fortnight, finding no treasure 
 nor any booty of greater value than provisions, and " trash 
 for the Indian trade ". None of the inhabitants came near 
 them, till one day a Portuguese approached with a flag of 
 truce ; and being received by Captains Sampson and Goring, 
 first asked what countrymen they were, and then put the 
 pithy question, whether there was war between England and 
 Spain ? Their answer was, that they knew not ; but that if 
 he would go to the general he could best resolve him of that 
 particular. This he refused, as having no such commission 
 from the governor. They then told him that if the governor 
 desired to take a course for the good of the place and the 
 people, " his best way was to present himself unto our noble 
 and merciful general, Sir Francis Drake, whereby he might 
 be assured to find favour both for himself and the inhabitants ; 
 otherwise, within three days, we should march over the land, 
 and consume with fire all inhabited places, and put to the 
 sword all such living souls as we should chance upon ". Some 
 cause of complaint the English had against the people of this 
 island, for having broken their promise to " old Master William 
 Hawkins of Plymouth," a few years before, and murdered 
 many of his men ; and to this they imputed the fear which 
 prevented the authorities from opening any negotiation, and 
 the inhabitants from holding any communication with them. 
 A week after their arrival, Drake marched with 600 men to 
 a village called St. Domingo, twelve miles inland, where he 
 had heard that the governor, the bishop, and all the chief 
 inhabitants, had retired : it was deserted before they arrived ; 
 but when, after waiting awhile, not only to rest themselves, 
 but to see whether any would come to confer with them, 
 they marched back, the islanders showed themselves with 
 
 * Hakluyt, 537.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 291 
 
 some force both of horse and foot, yet not in such strength 
 as to venture or abide an attack ; " so in passing some time 
 at gaze with them, it waxed late before the men reached 
 Santiago ". The invaders had expected that either the 
 governor or the bishop, whose authority they believed to be 
 great, or the people either of town or country, would entreat 
 them to leave some part of their needful provision, " or at 
 least to spare the city at their departure " ; that is, they 
 expected that a ransom would be offered, and they took 
 " great discontentment and scorn " at a conduct which disap- 
 pointed their hopes. The wisest course that the islanders 
 could take with such enemies was thus to disappoint them, 
 it being better to suffer any immediate havoc that might be 
 made than, by purchasing a respite, to attempt a repetition 
 of such visits. But they provoked the invaders by murdering 
 a boy, whom they caught straggling, and by mutilating his 
 body " in a most brutish and beastly manner". In revenge 
 for this the invaders burnt every house in the town, and 
 every house which they saw in their incursions, except the 
 hospital : that they left uninjured ; and there and in other 
 places affixed a paper, declaring the reason why they had 
 exercised this vengeance. Having thus inflicted upon the 
 islanders all the evil they could, they re-embarked leisurely, 
 but cautiously, and set sail, not having suffered the slightest 
 loss. * 
 
 Unpunished, however, they did not depart ; for though, 
 till then, not a man had been lost by sickness, there now 
 began among them such mortality, that in the course of a few 
 days between 200 and 300 died. "The sickness," says 
 Gates, "showed not his infection till we were departed 
 thence, and then seized our people with extreme hot burning 
 and continual agues, whereof veiy few escaped with life, and 
 those for the most part not without great alteration and 
 decay of their wits and strength for a long time after." Upon 
 
 * Hakluyt, 537, 538.
 
 292 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 some of the dead marks appeared which were taken for 
 plague spots. The first land which they made after a passage 
 of eighteen days was Dominica : not thinking it safe to make 
 any tarriance there, because of the character of the Caribs, 
 though they exchanged beads and such trifles which they 
 had brought from Santiago for "great store of tobacco and 
 cassavi bread," they proceeded to St. Christopher, which at 
 that time was uninhabited, and there spent some days of 
 Christmas, to refresh the sick, and to cleanse and air the 
 ships. There a counsel was held ; and it was determined 
 that they should make for the great Island of Hispaniola, 
 "as well for that they knew themselves then to be in their 
 best strength, as also the rather allured thereunto by the 
 glorious fame of the city of St. Domingo, being the ancientest 
 and chief inhabited place in all the tract of country there- 
 abouts ". 
 
 The city of St. Domingo is the oldest, and was once the 
 most considerable Spanish city in the New World. Bartolome 
 Columbus founded it so early as the year 1496, and called it 
 Nueva Isabella, removing to it the inhabitants of the earlier 
 settlement named after the Queen of Castille. He placed it 
 on the eastern side of the river Ozama, where a copious fountain 
 supplied it with good water, that of the river being salt or 
 brackish for some leagues up. The first inhabitations were 
 hastily constructed with wood and reeds, and were nearly de- 
 stroyed in 1502 by a hurricane. Shortly afterwards Ovaiido 
 removed it to the opposite side of the Ozama. In the first 
 years of the conquest a city was moved almost as easily as 
 a camp ; and such removals were sometimes made with no 
 worthier motive than the desire of a new governor to gain 
 reputation at the expense of his predecessors. By this motive 
 Ovando is thought to have been influenced * when he aban- 
 
 * Oviedo, lib. iii., c. 10, f. 31. Yet, in an earlier part of his most valu- I 
 able work (lib. ii., c. 13, f. 19), Oviedo says that the foundations were not 
 originally laid on the present site, because Bartolome Columbus was
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 293 
 
 cloned a well-chosen and commodious site for one which was 
 exposed to morning fogs, and where fresh water was wanting. 
 That want he meant to supply by bringing an aqueduct from 
 the river Haina ; and the foundations of the city were laid 
 by him in a manner and upon a scale worthy of the Spaniards 
 in their best days. In the next generation it was said, that, 
 space for space, no city in the mother country was better built, 
 Barcelona alone excepted ; that the emperor Charles V. was 
 often lodged in Spain in worse houses than were to be found 
 in this capital ; that the palace of the viceroy, Diego 
 Columbus, far exceeded that of any subject in Spain ; and 
 that the streets having been built, according to a regular plan, 
 upon convenient ground, and laid out by cord and compass, 
 excelled those of any other place that its earliest historian 
 Oviedo had ever seen.* The first cross which Columbus 
 in evil hour for the Indians planted on the island was pre- 
 served in the cathedral, enclosed in a silver case, richly inlaid, 
 and secured in a tabernacle with three locks, the keys of 
 which were kept by three of the dignitaries of the church. 
 To that cathedral, also, the remains of Columbus, pursuant 
 to his will, were translated from Seville, and there they 
 rested on the right of the high altar till, upon the scandalous 
 cession to France of the Spanish part of Hispaniola, the brazen 
 coffin wherein they were deposited was removed to the Ha- 
 vannah by the direction of his representative the Duque de 
 Veragua, who, on that occasion, manifested a feeling in which 
 the miserable Charles IV. and his profligate ministers were 
 wanting.f 
 
 unwilling to disturb the cacica Catalina and the Indians who were settled 
 on that side of the river. " The city was called St. Domingo," he says, 
 " not only because the adelantado came to found it on a Sunday (Domin- 
 go), which Sunday also was St. Domingo's day, but, moreover, because 
 his father's name was Domenico y en su memoria el fib llamar Sancto 
 Domingo a este ciudad.''' 
 
 * Historia, Natural et General, f. 31. Sommario (in Ramasio, Hi., 46). 
 
 t Walton's Spanish Colonies, i., 144.
 
 294 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Proceeding with the determination of attacking this city, 
 and not knowing how greatly it was fallen from its high 
 estate, Drake came up with a small frigate, on the way, 
 bound for the same port ; and having " duly examined the 
 crew, learnt from them that it was a barred harbour, com- 
 manded by a strong castle ; but that, about two miles to the 
 westward of it, there was a convenient landing-place," to 
 which one of the men offered to pilot him. The troops, 
 accordingly, embarked in pinnaces and boats, Drake going 
 in his namesake, the barque Francis, as admiral : thus they 
 lay all night at sea, bearing small sail ; and on the morrow, 
 being New Year's Day, safely * disembarked about daybreak. 
 Having seen them landed, Drake returned to the fleet, 
 " bequeathing them to God and the good conduct of Master 
 Carleill ". About noon they approached the city, from 
 whence some 150 brave horse began to present themselves. 
 But the invaders played upon them with small shot, and 
 supported that fire " with good proportion of pikes in all 
 parts" ; and the Spaniards, having viewed the very superior 
 force which threatened them all round, found it necessary to 
 let them proceed toward the two sea-ward gates : both gates 
 were manned, and ordnance planted there, and some troops 
 of small shot in ambuscade by the wayside. Carleill divided 
 his force, consisting of some 1200 men, into two bodies, giving 
 Captain Powell the command of one : they were to enter 
 both gates at the same time ; and he swore to Powell, " that, 
 with God's good favour, he would not rest till they met in 
 the market-place ".f 
 
 The artillery was discharged with some effect, though not 
 much : the first man that fell was very near Carleill, who 
 " began forthwith to advance both his voice of encourage- 
 
 * " At that time," says Gates, " nor yet is known to us any landing- 
 place where the sea surge does not threaten to overset a pinnace or 
 boat " (p. 539). 
 
 f Hakluyt, 539,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 295 
 
 ment and pace of marching," hastening all he could to 
 prevent the Spaniards from reloading their guns ; and, 
 notwithstanding the ambuscade, his men " marched, or rather 
 ran, so roundly into them, that pell-mell they entered the 
 gates, and gave them more care every man to save himself 
 by flight than reason to stand any longer to their broken 
 defence ". Forthwith the victorious adventurers made their 
 way to the Plaza Mayor, or market-place ; "a. place of very 
 fair, spacious, square ground:" there Powell, with the other 
 detachment, met them. They strengthened it and its avenues 
 with barricadoes, and secured themselves there as the most 
 convenient position, thinking the city " far too spacious for 
 so small and weary a troop to undertake to guard. The 
 castle was abandoned that night ; some of the garrison being 
 made prisoners, and others fleeing, by the help of boats, to 
 the other side of the haven, and so into the country. Next 
 day, the English quartered a little more at large, but not 
 into the half part of the town ; and so, making substantial 
 trenches, and planting all the ordnance that each part was 
 correspondent to other," they held the town a month. * 
 
 It was a great marvel and no less disappointment both to 
 the adventurers and the sleeping partners of the concern, 
 that such a famous and goodly built city, so well inhabited 
 of gallant people, should afford no greater riches than was 
 found there ; for at that time it was not understood, in 
 England, that, as the conquests on the main became of more 
 importance, Hispaniola had declined ; and that its native 
 population had been consumed, and, consequently, that its 
 mines had ceased to be productive. The colonists had opened 
 a surer source of prosperity i$ the cultivation of their fer- 
 tile soil ; but gold and silver money had disappeared (as 
 at this time in Brazil), the only currency which was found 
 was in copper, and that in great quantity. "We found 
 
 * Hakluyt, 540.
 
 296 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 here," says Gates, " great store of strong wine, sweet oil, 
 vinegar, olives, and other such like provisions, excellent 
 wheat meal, packed up in wine pipes and other casks, and 
 other commodities, as woollen and linen cloth, and some 
 silks ; all which were brought out of Spain, and served us 
 for great relief. (Good store of brave apparel our soldiers 
 also found for their relief.) There was but little plate, or 
 vessel of silver, in comparison of the great pride in other 
 things of this town ; because, in these hot countries, they 
 use much of those earthen dishes, finely painted or varnished, 
 which they call porcellana, which is had out of the East 
 India ; and for their drinking they use glasses altogether, 
 whereof they make excellent, good and fair, in the same 
 place. But yet some plate we found, and many other good 
 things, as their household garniture, very gallant and rich, 
 which had cost them dear, although unto us they were of 
 small importance." * 
 
 The Spaniards here were more ready to treat f for the 
 ransom of their city than the Portuguese had been in the 
 Cape de Verds. There was, in the gallery of the governor's 
 palace, " painted, in a very large scutcheon, the arms of the 
 King of Spain ; and in the lower part of the scutcheon a 
 terrestrial globe, whereon a horse was represented as in the 
 act of leaping from it, with a scroll proceeding from his 
 mouth, and displaying these words, Non siifficit orbis, The 
 world sufficeth not". The invaders, who looked upon this 
 " as a very notable mark and token of the unsatiable am- 
 
 *Hakluyt, 541. 
 
 t Faria y Sousa ascribes this to the pusillanimity of Christoval de 
 Ovalle, president of the audience there. He had been advised of the 
 danger (according to this historian) in time to have provided for defence ; 
 but disbelieving or disregarding the information, he was half dead with 
 fear when he saw the English in the island, and actually died when told 
 that they were making search for him (Europa Portugtieqa, t. iii., p. 1., c. 
 2, 27).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 297 
 
 bition of the Spanish king and nation/' could not refrain 
 from pointing it out to the Spaniards who came to negotiate 
 with them, nor from sarcastically inquiring what was intended 
 by such a device ; at which they " would shake their heads, 
 and turn aside their countenance in some smiling sort, with- 
 out answering anything, as greatly ashamed thereof. For by 
 some of our company," says Gates, " it was told them, that 
 if the Queen of England would resolutely prosecute the war 
 against the King of Spain, he should be forced to lay aside 
 that proud and unreasonable reaching vein of his, for he 
 should find more than enough to do to keep that which he 
 had already, as by the present example of their lost town 
 they might, for a beginning, perceive well enough.'' * 
 
 This was in no commendable spirit of bravery ; and the 
 enmity with which the Spaniards and English then regarded 
 each other needed nothing to exasperate it. Drake had 
 sent out a negro boy, with a white flag : there could be no 
 mistake concerning it, for the same flag was used, in like 
 manner, by the Spaniards themselves ; but some of their 
 officers fell in with the bearer and ran him through the body 
 with a horseman's spear. The poor boy returned to the 
 general, wounded as he was, told his story, and died in his 
 presence. Upon this Drake, " being greatly passioned," 
 ordered the provost marshal to take two friars, who were 
 among his prisoners, under a guard, to the place where the 
 boy had been hurt, and there hang them both. Another 
 Spaniard he set at liberty to declare to the authorities where- 
 fore this execution was done ; and to tell them, farther, that 
 until the party who had thus murdered his messenger were 
 delivered into his hands for condign punishment, there 
 should no day pass wherein there should not two prisoners 
 be hanged, until all who were in his hands were consumed. 
 This terrible message, and the dreadful proof which had been 
 
 * Hakluyt, 540.
 
 298 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 given of Drake's determination to carry his words into effect, 
 made them send the offender, on the following day, to be 
 delivered into his hands ; " but it was thought a more honour- 
 able revenge to make them there, in his sight, perform the 
 execution themselves ; " and this was done.* 
 
 The treaty concerning the ransom proceeded slowly, and 
 " upon disagreements," the invaders still spent the early 
 mornings in firing the houses without their intrenchment ; 
 and they found it " no small travail to ruin them ; being very 
 magnificently built of stone, with high lofts ". For many 
 successive days, 200 sailors, from daybreak till nine o'clock, 
 when the heat began, did nothing but labour to fire these 
 houses ; the same number of troops being drawn out to pro- 
 tect them during this work of devastation. " Yet," says 
 Gates, " did we not, and could not, consume so much as one 
 third part of the town ; and so in the end, what wearied 
 with firing, and what hastened by some other respects, we 
 were contented to accept of 25,000 ducats, of 5*. 6d. each, 
 for the ransom of the rest." f 
 
 The expedition then stood over to the main, and kept 
 along the coast till they came in sight of Carthagena. That 
 city, which was then the principal fortress in all that country, 
 and contained about 450 families, was built upon a sandy 
 peninsula, formed by the sea on one side, and on the other 
 by a great lake, which communicates with the harbour. The 
 mouth of the harbour lay some three miles westward of the 
 town, and the fleet entered, about three in the afternoon, 
 without any resistance, or meeting with any impediment. In 
 the evening, Carleill landed, toward the harbour mouth ; the 
 plan being that the land forces should advance about mid- 
 night, " as easily as foot might fall," along the sea-wash of 
 the shore, while the fleet drew the attention of the Spaniards 
 by a false attack upon a little fort at the entrance of the 
 
 * Hakluyt, 540. t Ibid.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 299 
 
 inner haven. When the troops were within two miles of the 
 town, some hundred hoi-semen fell in with them ; but the 
 ground being bushy, even to the water-side, was unfavourable 
 for these enemies, and upon the first volley they turned about, 
 and hastened back to give the alarm. At the same time the 
 English heard a firing in the harbour, where, if anything 
 more than a feint was intended, nothing was done : the place 
 was strong, and a chain drawn across the narrow entrance ; 
 but little or no harm was received. The troops, meantime, 
 advanced till they came to the neck of the peninsula, about 
 half a mile from the town. The strait was about fifty paces 
 over ; " fortified clean across with a stone wall, well and 
 orderly built, with flanking in every part, and a ditch ". 
 There was only so much space left as might serve for ordin- 
 ary passage ; but this opening was now fortified with a good 
 barricade of barrels " filled with earth, full and thick, as they 
 might stand on end one by another ; some part of them 
 standing even in the main sea. This place of strength was 
 furnished with six great pieces, demi-culverins and rakers, 
 which shot directly in front upon the assailants ; and without 
 the wall, on the inner side of the strait, they had brought 
 two great galleys, with their prows to the shore, and eleven 
 pieces of ordnance, thus flanking the approach. On board 
 these the English estimated that there were from 300 to 400 
 harquebussiers, and, to defend the barricade, 300 shot and 
 pikes." * 
 
 The Spaniards, being thus ready to receive their sturdy 
 visitors, spared not their shot ; but they expended most of it 
 in vain ; for they were too eager to wait till they could see 
 the enemy ; and while they fired in the darkness, Carleill 
 advanced along the lowest ground, close to the water's edge, 
 where the tide, too, had somewhat fallen. He had ordered 
 his men not to fire till they should come to the wall-side ; so, 
 " with pikes roundly together," they approached, and finding 
 
 * Hakluyt, 541.
 
 300 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the barricade of barrels, strongly as it was manned, the best 
 place where to make their assault, they assailed it. " Down 
 went the butts of earth, and pell-mell came our swords and 
 pikes together, after our shot had given their first volley, even 
 at the enemy's nose." The English pikes were somewhat 
 longer than theirs, and the English were also better armed, for 
 very few of the Spaniards wore any defensive armour : this 
 want, and the disadvantage of their pikes, was felt when it 
 came thus to the push. Their standard-bearer, fighting man- 
 fully to the last, fell by Carleill's hands : they gave way ; and 
 the assailants, giving them no time to breathe, followed them 
 into the town. At every street's end they had raised bar- 
 ricadoes of earth-work, with trenches in front, which were 
 better made than defended ; the little resistance which they 
 attempted there being soon overcome, with trifling loss. 
 They had stationed many Indian archers " in corners of ad- 
 vantage, with their arrows most villainously empoisoned ; so 
 that if they did but break the skin, the party so touched, 
 unless it were by great marvel, died ". Some were likewise 
 " mischieved to death by small sticks, sharply pointed, of a 
 foot and a half long, fixed in the ground, with the points 
 poisoned, right in the way from the place where they landed 
 toward the town ; but by keeping the shore, the invaders 
 escaped the greater part of these ". The chief commander 
 of the Spaniards was wounded and taken by Captain Goring ; 
 and when the English had established themselves in the 
 market-place no farther opposition was attempted, the 
 Spaniards retiring into the interior, whither they had previ- 
 ously removed their families and their treasure. They had 
 been warned of their danger twenty days before, and had 
 employed the time diligently in preparing both for defence 
 and for the consequences of defeat. * 
 
 Having taken the city, the adventurers pursued the same 
 course as at St. Domingo ; and though, " upon discontent- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 542, 545.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 301 
 
 ments, and for want of agreeing in the first negotiations for 
 a ransom, they touched the town in its outparts, and con- 
 sumed much with fire/' yet some of the humanities of war 
 were observed here. " There passed divers courtesies/' says 
 Gates, " between us and the Spaniards, as feasting and using 
 them with all kindness and favour " ; so that the governor 
 and the bishop, and divers other gentlemen of the better sort, 
 came to visit the general. One day the sentinel on the 
 church tower descried two small barques standing in for the 
 harbour ; upon which Captains Moon and Varney embarked, 
 with a party of sailors, in two pinnaces, thinking to take 
 them before they came so near the shore as to be apprised, 
 by signals, that the town was in possession of an enemy. 
 The alarm, however, was given in time ; the barques ran 
 ashore ; the men hid themselves among the bushes, where 
 they were presently joined by those who had made signals to 
 them, and from thence fired upon the English, who, without 
 any regard of danger, had boarded the vessels, and were 
 " standing all open in them ". Varney was killed by this 
 discharge, and some five or six others mortally wounded, 
 Captain Moon among them, who was the same person that 
 struck the first blow at a Spaniard in the South Sea.* 
 
 This was the only loss which the English sustained from 
 the enemy while they occupied Carthagena ; but the disease 
 which they had brought with them from the Cape de Verds 
 still continued ; and, though its ravages were not so great as 
 at the first, it reduced their numbers, and, in a still greater 
 degree, their strength ; few or none of those who escaped 
 with life remaining fit for service, t In consequence of this 
 
 * Hakluyt, 544. 
 
 t " Yea, many of them were much decayed in their memory ; insomuch 
 that it was common, when one was heard to speak foolishly, to say he had 
 been sick of the calenture. The original cause thereof is imputed to the 
 evening, or first night air, which they term la serena ; wherein they say, 
 and hold very firm opinion, that whoso is then abroad in the open air shall
 
 302 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 mortality, Drake consulted his land captains what course they 
 thought most expedient now to be undertaken. The first 
 question proposed to them was touching the keeping of the 
 town against the present force of the enemy, or that which 
 might come out from Spain. Upon this their opinion was, 
 that, though they had not above 700 men who could answer 
 present service, the residue (some 150) being altogether un- 
 able to stand them in any stead ; yet, being victualled and 
 munitioned, they might well keep the town. But it was for 
 the sea captains, they said, to give their resolution how they 
 would undertake the safety and service of the ships upon the 
 arrival of any Spanish fleet. 
 
 The second point was, " whether it were meet to go 
 presently homeward, or make farther trial of their fortune, 
 thereby to seek after that bountiful mass of treasure, for 
 recompense of their travails, which was generally expected 
 at their coming forth from England ". To this they replied, 
 " that it was well known how they, both officers and soldiers, 
 had entered into this action as voluntary men, without any 
 imprest or gage from her majesty, or anybody else ; and 
 that, hitherto, they had discharged the parts of honest men ; 
 for, by the great blessing and favour of their good God, they 
 had taken three notable towns, wherein all men thought 
 very great treasures would have been found : for Santiago 
 was the chief city of all the islands and traffic thereabouts ; 
 St. Domingo was the chief city of Hispaniola, and the head 
 government not only of that island, but of Cuba, and all the 
 islands about it, and all such inhabitations of the firm land 
 as were next unto it, a place, too, magnificently built, and 
 which entertained great trade of merchandise : lastly, this 
 city of Carthagena, which could not be denied to be one of 
 the chief places of most especial importance to the Spaniards 
 
 certainly be infected to the death, not being of the Indian or natural race 
 of that country. Our men were thus subjected to the infectious air " 
 (Hakluyt, 543).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 303 
 
 of all on this side the West India. All these cities, with the 
 goods and prisoners taken in them, and the ransoms of them 
 all put together, were found far short to satisfy the expecta- 
 tions which, by the generality of the enterprisers, were first 
 conceived. They considered the slenderness of the strength 
 to which they were reduced ; as well in respect of the small 
 number of able bodies, as not a little in regard of the slack 
 disposition of the greater part of those which remained, very 
 many of the better minds and men being either consumed by 
 death or weakened by sickness and hurts. And, lastly, see- 
 ing that no enterprise was laid down convenient to be under- 
 taken with their reduced strength, and withal of such 
 certain likelihood as might, with God's good success, which 
 it might please Him to bestow, promise to yield them any 
 sufficient contentment, they concluded that it was better to 
 hold sure the honour already gotten, and return with it to 
 their gracious sovereign and country, from whence," said 
 they, "if it shall please her majesty to set us forth again, 
 with her orderly means and entertainment, we are most ready 
 and willing to go through anything that the uttermost of our 
 strength and endeavour shall be able to reach unto : but, 
 therewithal, we do advise and protest, that it is far from 
 our thoughts either to refuse, or so much as seem to be 
 weary of anything which for the present shall be farther 
 required or directed to be done by us from our general." * 
 
 Being thus convinced that, in all prudence, they must give 
 over the intended enterprise against Nombre de Dios, and 
 so overland to Panama, where they " should have stricken 
 the stroke for the treasure and full recompense of their 
 tedious travails," they took into consideration the third and 
 last point, which was touching the ransom of the city. Their 
 demand had been 100,000/. : an offer had been made of 
 27,000/. or 28,000/., and they thought it better to accept this 
 than to break off by standing upon the first demand, " which," 
 
 * Hakluyt, 543, 544.
 
 304 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 said they, " seems a matter impossible for the present to be 
 performed by them ; and, to say truth, we may now, with 
 much honour and reputation, better be satisfied with that 
 sum offered by them at first (if they will now be contented 
 to give it) than we might at that time with a great deal 
 more, inasmuch as we have taken our full pleasure, both in 
 the uttermost sacking and spoiling of all their household 
 goods and merchandise, as also, in that we have consumed 
 and ruined a great part of their town with fire ". Farther, 
 they considered that there were in that voyage a great many 
 poor men who had ventured their lives, and divers of them 
 spent their apparel and such other little provision as their 
 small means enabled them to prepare ; " which being done 
 upon such good and allowable intention as this action carried 
 with it against the Spaniard, our greatest and most dangerous 
 enemy, so (said they) we cannot but have an inward regard 
 to help toward the satisfaction of this their expectation, and 
 by procuring them some little benefit to encourage them, and 
 to nourish their ready and willing disposition both in them 
 and in others by their example, against any other time of like 
 occasion. But because it may be supposed that herein we 
 forget not the private benefit of ourselves, and are thereby 
 the rather moved to incline ourselves to this composition, 
 we declare hereby, that what part or portion soever it be of 
 this ransom for Carthagena, which should come unto us, we 
 do freely give and bestow the same wholly upon the poor 
 men who have remained with us in the voyage, meaning as 
 well the sailor as the soldier, and wishing with all our hearts 
 it were such, or so much, as might seem a sufficient reward 
 for their painful endeavour." * 
 
 This paper was signed by Carleill as lieutenant-general, 
 and by all the land captains ; and conformably to their 
 opinion, a ransom of 110,000 ducats was accepted. Cartha- 
 gena, though not half the size of St. Domingo, yielded so 
 
 * Hakluyt, 544.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 305 
 
 much larger a sum, because its harbour and its position 
 rendered it a most important place, and it was inhabited by 
 rich merchants ; whereas St. Domingo was chiefly inhabited 
 by lawyers and " brave gentlemen/' being the seat of that 
 coui't before which all appeals were brought from the islands 
 and from the neighbouring main. The officers had dealt 
 generously towards their own people in the affair of this 
 ransom ; but in their subsequent conduct toward the Span- 
 iards they cannot be held free from reproach : for after they 
 had received the money, and evacuated the town, they 
 stationed some of their soldiers in the convent of St. Fran- 
 cisco, which was a little way off on the harbour side, and told 
 the Spaniards that neither that building nor a block-house at 
 the mouth of the inner harbour was included in the com- 
 position : thus they extorted from the convent another thousand 
 crowns, and demanded as much more for the block-house ; 
 the townsmen declared that they were not able to pay them, 
 " having stretched themselves to the utmost of their power ; 
 and Drake, therefore, undermined the fort, and blew it 
 up ".* 
 
 They sailed from Carthagena on the last of March, and 
 after two or three days put back ; a great ship which they 
 had taken at St. Domingo, and laden with ordnance, hides, 
 and other spoil, having sprung so great a leak, that she was 
 hardly kept from foundering. Several days were spent in 
 distributing the cargo of this vessel among the other ships : 
 then they departed once more ; and on the 27th of April 
 reached Cape St. Antonio, the westernmost part of Cuba. 
 Failing to find fresh water there, they made for Matanzas, 
 which is to the east of the Havannah. But in the course of 
 a fortnight, through lack of favourable weather, they were 
 brought again to Cape St. Antonio. By this time their want 
 of water was such, that they made more careful search, and 
 found in sufficient quantity what they supposed to be rain water 
 
 * Hakluyt, 545. 
 20
 
 306 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 newly fallen and collected in pits made in marshy ground, some 
 300 paces from the shore. " Here/' says Gates, " 1 do wrong 
 if I should forget the good example of the general, who, to 
 encourage others, and to hasten the getting water aboard, 
 took no less pains himself than the meanest. Throughout 
 the expedition, indeed, he had everywhere shown so vigilant 
 a care and foresight in the good ordering of his fleet, ac- 
 companied with such wonderful travail of body, that, doubt- 
 less, had he been the meanest person, as he was the chiefest, 
 he had deserved the first place of honour. And no less 
 happy do we account him for being associated with Master 
 Carleill his lieutenant-general, by whose experience, prudent 
 counsel, and gallant performance, he achieved so many and 
 happy enterprises, and by whom also he was very greatly 
 assisted in setting down the needful orders, laws, and course 
 of justice, and the due administration of the same upon all 
 occasions." No difference of any kind, indeed, seems to have 
 occurred between Drake and any of his officers during this 
 expedition. From thence they made for the coast of Florida, 
 not touching anywhere, but keeping the shore in sight, till 
 on 28th of May they descried a scaffold raised upon four high 
 masts, for a lookout to the seaward. Upon this Drake 
 manned the pinnaces and landed, " to see what place the 
 enemy held there, no one in the armament having any know- 
 ledge of it". * 
 
 Having marched about a mile up the river St. Augustine, 
 they saw the Fort of San Juan de Pinos on the opposite side, 
 newly erected by the Spaniards, and not yet completed. 
 Carleill would fain have crossed with four companies, and in- 
 trenched himself so near the fort as to play upon it with his 
 muskets, till a battery could be planted ; but, because the 
 sailors were not at hand to make trenches at this time, the 
 intention was abandoned. Not to be inactive, however, he 
 crossed during the night with a few chosen men in a small 
 
 * Hakluyt, 546,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 307 
 
 skiff, to espy what guard the enemy kept, and to explore the 
 ground. Though he did this as covertly as might be, the 
 Spaniards took the alarm ; and supposing that the whole 
 force was approaching to the assault fired off some of their 
 pieces, and then with all speed abandoned the work, and 
 made the best of their way to the city (so called) of St. 
 Augustine, where there was a garrison of 1.50 men. Carleill 
 returned, knowing nothing of their flight. He was presently 
 followed by a French fifer, who, having been prisoner in the 
 fort, gladly seized the opportunity to escape, and came over 
 the river in a small boat, playing " the tune of the Prince of 
 Orange's song ". When the guard called out to him, he told 
 them who he was and what had happened, and offered either 
 to remain in the hands of the English, or return to the fort 
 with those who chose to believe him and go thither. There 
 was no reason to doubt his tale : both Drake and Carleill 
 crossed forthwith with as many boats as were at hand, leaving 
 orders for the rest to follow. A few Spaniards, " bolder than 
 the rest," had remained after their companions, and fired two 
 guns at them ; but on shore the English went, and entered 
 the place without finding any man there. When the day 
 appeared, they saw that it was built entirely of timber, " the 
 walls being none other than whole masts or bodies of trees 
 set upright, and close together in manner of a pale ". " The 
 ditch had not yet been made, nor was the work in other 
 respects finished ; so as to say the truth, the Spaniards had 
 no reason to keep it, being subject both to fire and easy assault. 
 There were fourteen great pieces of brass ordnance planted 
 on a platform, which was constructed of large pine trees, laid 
 across, one on another, and some little earth between. The 
 garrison, who were 150 in number, had retired in such haste, 
 that they left behind them the treasure chest containing 
 about 2000/." * 
 
 * Hakluyt. Gabriel de Cardenas, Ensaio Chronologico a la Historia 
 de Florida, 161, 162.
 
 .108 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 Drake, no doubt, felt some satisfaction when he learnt 
 from the Frenchman that the Governor of Florida, at this 
 time, was D. Pedro Menendez, Marquez de Aviles, nephew 
 of that Menendez whom he erroneously supposed to have 
 been the general of the fleet by which Hawkins had been so 
 treacherously attacked at St. Juan de Ulloa, and from which 
 he had at that time himself so narrowly escaped. An oppor- 
 tunity for taking vengeance upon one nearly related to the 
 imagined offender seemed now to be afforded him ; and he 
 would, without delay, have marched to attack the adelantado 
 in his capital, the city of St. Augustine, if the march had 
 been practicable ; but, by reason of rivers and broken ground 
 between the two places, it was necessary again to embark in 
 the pinnaces and ascend the great river. When they landed, 
 as it appears not far from the city, some of the Spaniards 
 showed themselves, fired a few shot, and presently withdrew. 
 They were pursued, and the sergeant-major, Anthony Powell, 
 leaping upon one of their horses which they had left, ad- 
 vanced rashly beyond his company in pursuit, over ground 
 which was overgrown with a species of high grass : seeing 
 this, a Spaniard laid wait for him, and shot him through the 
 head ; and before any could come to his rescue his body had 
 been pierced with many wounds, as if in insult and hatred. He 
 was much lamented, " being in very deed an honest, wise 
 gentleman, and a soldier of good experience, and of as great 
 courage as any man might be ". This was the only loss that 
 the English experienced in their descent. The adelantado 
 had prudently withdrawn in time to collect the whole of his 
 forces at St. Matheo, and the city was left without a single 
 inhabitant. It is described as being then a prosperous settle- 
 ment, with its council-house, church, and other edifices and 
 gardens all round about, all which were burnt and laid waste 
 by the invaders in vengeance. * 
 
 * Hakluyt, 547. Cardenas, 162.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 309 
 
 About twelve leagues to the north, the Spaniards had 
 another settlement called St. Helena, with a garrison of equal 
 force, maintained " for no other purpose than to keep all 
 other nations from inhabiting any part of all that coast," a 
 purpose deemed as important by them as it was judged to be 
 arrogant and unreasonable by the English. It was resolved, 
 " in full assembly of captains," to attack this place also, and 
 from thence proceed in search of Raleigh's recently planted 
 colony in Virginia. But when they came opposite St. Helena, 
 the shoals were found too dangerous for them to attempt an 
 entrance without a pilot, and under unfavourable circum- 
 stances of wind and weather. Abandoning, therefore, this 
 design, they kept coasting on till, on 9th of June, " upon 
 sight of one special great fire," Drake sent his skiff to shore, 
 and found, as he had hoped, some of his countrymen there, 
 by whose direction he reached the place which they made 
 their port, and wrote from thence to their governor, Master 
 Ralph Lane, who was then in his fort at Roanoak. On the 
 morrow, Lane came with some of his company ; and Drake, 
 understanding the state of their affairs, liberally proposed, 
 with the consent of his captains, to leave them a ship, a 
 pinnace, boats, men, and a month's provision, for prosecuting 
 their discovery of the country and coasts, and as much more 
 provision as might suffice for their voyage home, if, at the 
 month's end, they thought good to return ; or, if they were 
 satisfied that they had already sufficiently explored the land, 
 he offered them all a passage, being 103 persons. They 
 thankfully accepted the first of these proposals, and a ship 
 was delivered to them ; but, before the provisions could be 
 put on board, a storm came, to the great danger of the whole 
 fleet, while some of the ships being of too great draught to 
 enter the harbour, were at anchor in a wild road, about two 
 miles from shore. Many cables parted, many anchors were 
 lost ; and some vessels, which had lost all, were driven out 
 to sea, and never again joined company till they met in
 
 310 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 England : that which should have been left with the colony 
 was one. Drake, notwithstanding the loss which had been 
 thus sustained, offered them another ship, but one which, 
 being considerably larger, was not so well suited to their 
 purposes. For this reason, and because no small part of his 
 stores, and some of the persons on whose services most re- 
 liance had been placed, were in the ship of which he had 
 been thus deprived, Lane, and those with whom he advised, 
 thought the only course that remained for them was to accept 
 the proffered passage, as a providential deliverance, " by the 
 very hand of God, as it seemed, stretched out to take them 
 thence ". They were taken on board ; and, after a passage 
 of thirty days, the fleet in good safety arrived at Portsmouth. * 
 The booty obtained in this expedition was valued at 60,000/., 
 " whereof the companies which travelled in the voyage were 
 to have 20,000/., the adventurers the other forty ; and of the 
 20,000/. it was computed that some six pounds would come 
 to a single share " : 240 pieces of artillery, the far greater 
 number brass, were part of the spoil. The loss of men in the 
 voyage amounted to about 750, three parts of them by sick- 
 ness. It is said that tobacco was first f brought into England 
 by the men who returned from Virginia with Drake at this 
 time. The expedition was more creditable to the resolution 
 with which it was conducted than to the councils wherein it 
 was concerted. Little hurt was done to the King of Spain, 
 who was rather awakened than weakened by it, but great 
 and cruel injury was inflicted upon individuals : they were 
 thereby made to hate the English, not as heretics only, but 
 
 * Hakluyt, 264, 548. 
 
 t Camden, 324. " Certainly," he says, " from that time forward it be- 
 gan to grow into great request, and to be sold at a high rate ; whilst, in 
 a short time, many men everywhere, some for wantonness, some for 
 health's sake, with insatiable desire and greediness, sucked in the stink- 
 ing smoke thereof through an earthen pipe, which presently they blew 
 out again at their nostrils ; insomuch as tobacco shops are now as ordin- 
 ary in most towns as tap-houses and taverns."
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 311 
 
 as a people who were the vikingar of the age ; and the 
 Spanish government received a lesson which taught it the 
 necessity of fortifying its distant ports, and increasing its 
 maritime strength. * Drake, however, suffered no loss of 
 
 * Monson says : " The fleet was the greatest of any nation, except the 
 Spaniards, that had ever been seen in those seas since the first discovery 
 of them; and if the action had been as well considered of before their 
 going from home, as it was happily performed by the valour of the under- 
 takers, it had more annoyed the King of Spain than all other actions that 
 ensued during the war " (p. 155). In his opinion, the queen had then " a 
 notable opportunity to annoy and weaken the Spaniards by keeping the three 
 towns which had been taken : she was rich in those days, and her sub- 
 jects no less able than willing to contribute to what she proposed, they 
 were so much devoted to her in their hearts " ; she might have bound the 
 States of Holland to any conditions she pleased against the Spaniards 
 at that time ; whereas, from that time till her death, " notwithstanding 
 %ve were drawn into the war by them, yet they traded peaceably into the 
 King of Spain's dominions, and never offered to annoy the Spaniards by 
 any act oi hostility at sea, but supplied them with ships and intelligence 
 against us ". He thought, also, that, in point both of reputation and 
 profit, the places ought to have been maintained, as a motive and mean 
 for prosecuting the victories thus begun (p. 240). 
 
 Monson was mistaken, both in his opinion and on the grounds upon 
 which he founded it. At no time during her reign was Elizabeth rich. 
 How greatly the measures of her otherwise vigorous government were 
 crippled by necessary parsimony was, perhaps, not so well known to him 
 as it no%v is ; but he might have seen that if Drake had attempted to 
 keep possession of those places, which are among the most unwholesome 
 for Europeans of any-Sn the world, the consequences would have been as 
 fatal as they were at Puerto Rico. I have elsewhere explained the 
 conduct of the Dutch. But Monson felt and thought rightly when he 
 said : " Whosoever makes an enterprise on a town in America, with an 
 intention not to keep it, will do no more than a malicious person that 
 seeks the destruction of his neighbour in setting his house a-fire, without 
 any other prospect in so doing but mischief and revenge. I confess we 
 shall damnify the inhabitants of the town so sacked and spoiled, as the 
 owner of a house burnt will be damnified ; but it is no more loss or 
 prejudice to the King of Spain, or to the bordering countries, than to the 
 neighbour of the man that shall have his house burnt ; for every 
 bears his own particular loss " (p. 241).
 
 312 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 reputation in this voyage : he had bravely and ably executed 
 the service on which he was sent, overcoming the enemy 
 everywhere, and yielding only to an evil against which the 
 skill of man was of as little avail as his strength. When, 
 therefore, Elizabeth, in the year 1587, was assured that 
 preparations were making upon a great scale in the Spanish 
 ports, for the invasion of England, and thought it wiser to 
 prevent the danger than wait for it, she appointed Drake to 
 command the fleet which was equipped for that intent. It 
 consisted of four ships of the navy royal, namely, the Bona- 
 ventura, in which he went as general ; the Lion, Captain 
 William Borough, who was comptroller of the navy ; the 
 Dreadnought, Captain Thomas Venner ; and the Rainbow, 
 Captain Henry Bellingham ; to these two of the queen's 
 pinnaces were " appointed as handmaids ". Certain tall ships 
 of the city of London were added, and the whole armament 
 amounted to some thirty sail. * 
 
 Sailing from Plymouth early in April, they met on the 
 16th, in latitude 40, two Middleburg ships coming from 
 Cadiz, from whom they learnt that great store of warlike 
 provision had been collected in that and the adjacent ports, 
 ready for transport to Lisbon. For Cadiz, therefore, Drake 
 made with all possible speed, and on the 19th entered 
 the road. Sixty ships and many other small vessels were 
 lying there, little expecting such an attack, and yet not un- 
 prepared for defence, having the fortresses to protect them, 
 and also some galleys. Six of these vessels assailed the in- 
 vaders in front of the town, but were soon compelled to 
 retire under the fortress. Two from St. Mary's, and two 
 from Puerto Real, came boldly to the fight and shot freely, 
 " but altogether in vain," so that they hastened back with no 
 little loss. A great Ragusan ship of 1000 tons, carrying 40 
 guns, and very richly laden, was sunk early in the action. 
 Before night Drake was master of the road, and there he 
 
 * Hakluyt, ii., part ii., 121.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 313 
 
 continued till the morning of the 21st, with so little loss as 
 to be thought at the time " not worth mentioning " ; with 
 little ease, " by reason of their continual shooting from the 
 galleys, the fortresses, and the shore, where continually at 
 convenient places they planted new ordnance " ; but also 
 with no little triumph, for never was daring service more 
 resolutely performed. Drake had two objects in view, which 
 were not very compatible at this time : to sink, burn, and 
 destroy for the public good ; and, on the other hand, to 
 secure as much as he could for the benefit of the merchant 
 adventurers, who bore by much the larger part in this ad- 
 venture. The labour which lay upon the sailors day and 
 night during the six and thirty hours after the action, in 
 discharging the stores from their prizes, was so great, that it 
 was a pleasant sight to them when the Spaniards set fire to 
 the ships which they could no longer defend ; though the 
 greatest danger to which the conquerors were exposed was 
 when the ships thus fired were drifted toward them in flames 
 by the tide. 
 
 About thirty vessels were burnt, sunk, or taken in this 
 daring enterprise. Among them were four large Biscayans, 
 taking in stores for the armament at Lisbon, and another of 
 1000 tons, laden for the West Indies. Some twenty French 
 ships, and some Spanish ones that could pass the shoals, 
 escaped to Puerto Real, where about forty others were lying 
 in sight of the English. W r hen Drake left the road, satisfied 
 as he well might be with the success of his attempt, ten 
 galleys came out after him, " as it were in disdain, to make 
 some pastime with their ordnance " : the wind just at this 
 time scanted, so that the fleet cast about, stood in with the 
 shore, and anchored within a league of the town ; but the 
 galleys, alert as they had seemed to be, suffered them to 
 ride quietly there ; and thus brought themselves into disrepute 
 with the English sailors. * The loss which had been inflicted 
 
 * The author of the relation in Hakluyt says: "We now have had
 
 314 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 upon the Spaniards was great : the insult and humiliation 
 were greater ; and Philip pursued his plans of vengeance with 
 exacerbated hatred. Drake, having despatched advice of his 
 triumphant proceeding to England, turned back along the 
 coast, and captured and burnt nearly 100 vessels before he 
 came to Cape St. Vincent's, dealing " favourably with the 
 men, and setting them ashore " ; but he destroyed all the 
 fishing boats and nets, " to their great hindrance," and in 
 the hope of spoiling the tunny-fishery for that year. Near 
 the Cape a landing was made ; and that he might ride there 
 in harbour at his pleasure, he assaulted the Castle of Sagres, 
 and took that fortress with three others, some by force, some 
 by surrender. He then entered the mouth of the Tagus, 
 anchored near Cascaes, sent to the Marquis of Santa Cruz, 
 who, as general of the armada, was with his galleys in the 
 river, preparing for the invasion of England, told him who 
 he was, and said he was then ready to exchange bullets with 
 him. The marquis, according to the English account, replied 
 that he was not then ready for him, nor had any such com- 
 mission from his king. But the insult here, and at Cadiz, is 
 said to have " bred such a corrosion in his heart, that he 
 never enjoyed good days after," and within few months died 
 of chagrin, happy in thus being removed before the invincible 
 armada went to its destination. * 
 
 What Drake had done delayed the sailing of that arma- 
 ment for the current year. The public service had been 
 
 experience of galley-fight ; wherein I can assure you, that only these 
 four of her majesty's ships will make no account of twenty galleys, if 
 they be alone, and not busied to guard others. There were never galleys 
 that had better place and fitter opportunity for their advantage to fight 
 with ships : but they were still forced to retire ; we riding in a narrow- 
 gut (the place yielding no better), and driven to maintain the same, 
 until we had discharged and fired the ships, which could not conveniently 
 be done but upon the flood, at which time they might drive clear of us " 
 (p. 122). 
 
 * Hakluyt, 122, 123.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 31$ 
 
 thus effectually performed ; but he knew that if nothing 
 more were done, it would not give satisfaction to the mer- 
 chant adventurers, who expected some immediate and 
 tangible profit upon their disbursements. He shaped his 
 course, therefore, toward the Azores, having obtained intelli- 
 gence that the San Philipe, a Portuguese carrack from India, 
 had wintered at Mozambique, and was expected to reach 
 Lisbon in the passing month. His stores were becoming 
 low, and his people importunate to return ; but he with fair 
 speeches, of which no man was more a master, persuaded, 
 and prevailed with them to cruise yet a few days longer off 
 the islands. And on this occasion fortune made him large 
 amends for all former losses and disappointments, for he fell 
 in with and easily captured the prize he looked for. This, 
 says the writer of the voyage, was the first carrack that ever 
 was taken coming from the East Indies, which the Portugals 
 took for an evil sign, because the ship bore the king's own 
 name. The whole company assured themselves now, that 
 every man would have a sufficient reward for his travail, and 
 thereupon they all resolved to return home, with the willing 
 consent of their general. He dismissed the prisoners in 
 certain vessels, with all the courtesies and humanities of war ; 
 and sailing then for England, the whole fleet arrived safely 
 with their prize at Plymouth,* " to their own profit and 
 
 * " And here, by the way, it is to be noted, that the taking of this 
 carrack wrought two extraordinary effects in England : first, that it 
 taught others that carracks were no such bugs but that they might be 
 taken (as since, indeed, it hath fallen out in the taking of the Madre de 
 Dios, and firing and sinking of others) ; and, secondly, in acquainting 
 the English nation more generally with the particularities of the exceed- 
 ing riches and wealth of the East Indies ; whereby themselves and their 
 neighbours of Holland have been encouraged, being men as skilful in 
 navigation, and of no less courage than the Portugals, to share with 
 them in the East Indies, where their strength is nothing so great as 
 heretofore hath been supposed " (Hakluyt, 122). 
 
 Lediard says : " The taking of this ship was of a greater advantage
 
 316 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 due commendation," says one of the happy company, " and 
 to the great admiration of the whole kingdom ". * 
 
 The service which in this voyage he had performed at 
 Cadiz, and all along the coast to the Tagus. Drake called 
 singeing the King of Spain's beard. This was said in the 
 mirthful spirit of a sailor ; and with that spirit of local 
 patriotism, from which so many great and good actions have 
 arisen, he expended no trifling part of the riches which he 
 had won in supplying Plymouth with fresh water : the in- 
 habitants had till then been enforced to fetch it from a 
 mile's distance. The head of the spring from which it was 
 now to be brought is between seven and eight miles distant 
 in a direct line ; but by indentings and circlings it was to be 
 conveyed twenty-four miles, t through valleys, wastes, and 
 bogs ; and what was most troublesome, through a mighty 
 rock, thought to be impenetrable. He, nevertheless, " made 
 the way he could not find, and overcoming the difficulty. 
 finished the enterprise to the continual commodity of the 
 place, and his own perpetual honour ". " And fine would 
 have been the diversion," says the good old vicar of Berry 
 Pomeroy, "when the water was brought somewhat near the 
 town, to have seen how the mayor and his brethren, in their 
 
 to the English merchants than the value of her cargo to the captors ; for. 
 by the papers found on board, they so fully understood the rich value 
 of the Indian merchandises, and the manner of trading into the eastern 
 world, that they afterwards set up a gainful trade and traffic, and es- 
 tablished a company of East India merchants " (i., 229). 
 
 * Hakluyt, 123. Monson, 156. Lediard, i., 228. 
 
 f Prince says thirty. " Various mills were erected on the stream for 
 the use of the town at Sir Francis's expense. He vested the property 
 hi the mayor and commonality, and their successors for ever. The 
 water is brought to a reservoir above the town, and from thence dis- 
 tributed by leaden pipes. The lessee pays a fine of 3/. 135. 6d. for 
 twenty-one years of the water, and an annual quit-rent of i2s. Persons 
 who use more water than private families pay a double quit-rent, and 
 brewers a fourfold one " (Beauties of England and Wales, iv., 148).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 317 
 
 formalities, went out to meet it, and bid it welcome thither ; 
 and being thus met, they all returned together ; the gentle- 
 men of the corporation, accompanied with Sir Francis Drake, 
 walked before, and the stream followed after into the town, 
 where it has continued so to do ever since." Perhaps the 
 day of that peaceful triumph was the happiest of Drake's 
 public life. 
 
 His next service was as vice-admiral in that fleet by which, 
 with the aid of the elements, the mighty preparations of the 
 Spaniards were frustrated, their invincible armada dispersed, 
 and England providentially saved from a most formidable 
 invasion. In the ensuing year he was employed as admiral 
 in an expedition sent to Portugal, in the vain hope of es- 
 tablishing the claim of a pretender to that kingdom. In 
 this adventure the government took little part, acting upon 
 a system of parsimonious policy, as if it risked nothing, so it 
 avoided the risk of expense, and considered not how greatly 
 the national interests and national character must be affected 
 by the issue, and that that issue could not be fortunate unless 
 adequate means were applied. The journey of Portugal (as 
 this expedition was at the time called) was undertaken chiefly 
 at the charge of Drake and Sir John Norris, grandson of that 
 Xorris who was unjustly executed with Anne Boleyn. Eliza- 
 beth always rightly regarded his family as entitled to more 
 than ordinary favour on that account ; and this Sir John and 
 his brethren (six in all) were " men of haughty courage, and 
 great experience in the conduct of military affairs; persons," 
 says Sir Robert Naunton, * " of such renown and worth, as 
 future times must out of duty owe them the debt of an 
 honourable memory ". No English soldier in that age had 
 seen more service than this Sir John. He had been trained 
 under Coligny in the religious wars in France, served in 
 Ireland while yet very young under Walter, Earl of Essex, 
 held various commands in the Low Countries till he became 
 
 * Scot's Somers Tracts, i., 267.
 
 318 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 general of the English forces there ; and in the year of the 
 armada, when an invasion was expected, was made " marshal 
 of the field in England ". There were others who engaged 
 in the charge of the expedition, but fewer than had been 
 expected ; and some of those who subscribed their names, 
 thinking that the scheme would never be brought to bear, 
 but that they might gain credit by displaying a readiness to 
 encourage it, withheld their money when they saw that 
 serious preparations were made, and 10,000/. was thus with- 
 drawn from the sum on which the leaders had calculated. 
 And this was not the only nor the most serious defalcation 
 from the means which had been looked for. Six hundred 
 English horse from the Low Countries were withheld for 
 other service, and seven out of thirteen old companies from 
 the same school of war : the Dutch, instead of supplying six 
 men of war and ten companies, sent only four companies ; * 
 and the government, which had promised twelve pieces of 
 cannon, gave only a third part of that number, t 
 
 When the expedition sailed from Plymouth it consisted of 
 11,000 troops and 1500 seamen. There had been some 
 weeks' previous delay ; and when all was ready contrary 
 winds detained them a whole month, living upon pi-ovisions 
 which they could ill afford to consume in inaction. The 
 generals at length, weary of these cross winds, " thrust to 
 sea in the same, choosing rather to attend the change thereof 
 there, than by being in harbour to lose any part of the 
 better, when it should come, by having their men on shore ". 
 
 * Camden (429) says the estates joined some ships, although they 
 were somewhat discontented with the English, because Wingfield, 
 Governor of Gertruydenberg, and the English garrison in it, had betrayed 
 that town to the Spaniards. But these could not have been ships of 
 war, or their failure in this point would not have been distinctly stated, 
 as it is in the relation ascribed to Colonel Anthony Wingfield (Hakluyt, 
 ii., part ii., 133). 
 
 f Hakluyt, 123. Camden, 429.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 319 
 
 Two days the wind continued cross ; and some of the fleet, 
 having twenty-five companies on board, parted company 
 during that time, " either not being able or not willing to 
 double Ushant". Nearly 3000 men thus forsook the ex- 
 pedition at sea, "whereof some passed into France, and the 
 rest returned home ". The weather then became favourable ; 
 and in five days more, on the evening of 20th of April, the 
 troops disembarked in a bay something more than a mile 
 from Corunna. * No attempt was made to prevent or im- 
 pede their landing ; t but as they presently marched toward 
 the town, they were encountered on the way : the Spaniards, 
 however, retired within their walls, and the invaders took up 
 their lodging for the night in the "villages, houses, and 
 wind-mills next adjoining, and very near round about the 
 town ". They were not disturbed there by the garrison : 
 but the galleon San Juan, one of the few which had escaped 
 from the general wreck of the armada, was lying in the 
 harbour ; and with two galleys, and three smaller vessels, 
 fired upon their lodgings during the night, and as they passed 
 to and fro. | 
 
 Before day, Norris reconnoitred the base town : this, which 
 
 * This place is called the Groine in Hakluyt, as it still is by the 
 sailors, an easy corruption from Cruna, the name bestowed upon it at 
 the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Alonso IX. founded it, 
 and removed thither the inhabitants of Burgo Viejo. Cruna is the 
 Galician word for coluna, a column or pillar ; and it is supposed that 
 the town took its name from the Torre de Hercules at the entrance of 
 the port, that well-kno\vn lighthouse having this appearance when seen 
 from a distance (Cornide, Investigaciones sobre la Torre de Hercules, 
 etc., p. 17, n.). 
 
 Joshua Barnes tells us that Logrono also was called Groing by the 
 English (Hist, of Edward III., 705). 
 
 t Faria y Sousa says, however, that the marquis made more resistance 
 than could be made, " fortificose lo major que pudo, y mas de lo que se 
 podia resistio la desembarcacion " (p. 94). 
 
 ; Hakluyt, 138.
 
 320 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 retains the name of La Pexaria, or Pescaderia, from the days 
 when it was only of importance as a fishing station, stands 
 upon a small tongue of land, and contained at that time 
 1 500 houses. On the land side it was protected by a wall 
 and a dry ditch, but on neither of the water sides were there 
 any defences, and Norris resolved upon attempting it by 
 escalade, in two places. As a preliminary measure it was 
 necessary to silence the enemy's ships. Some artillery was 
 landed : as soon as it opened, the galleys retired to Ferrol, 
 and the other vessels ceased their fire. The rest of the day 
 was spent in preparing for the attack. Twelve hundred men 
 under Colonel Huntley, and the vice-admiral, Captain Fenner, 
 were to be landed on one side the peninsula on which 
 Corunna stands, and the long boats and pinnaces which 
 landed them were to keep up a fire as they approached. 
 On the other side, Captain Wingfield, who was Norris's 
 lieutenant-colonel, and Captain Sampson, who held the same 
 rank under Drake, were to enter with 500 men at low water, 
 if they found it passable : otherwise they were provided for 
 the escalade ; and on the land side 300 men, under Colonels 
 Bret and Umpton, were to set up their ladders and scale the 
 wall. The three attacks were to be made at the same time. 
 In strict obedience to this part of their orders, Wingfield 
 and Sampson began the assault as soon as the signal was 
 given : they found good resistance, and were twice beaten 
 from their ladders, yet persevered in the attempt. Huntley 
 and Fenner landed, meantime, with no great difficulty, and 
 but little loss ; and some of this party, under Captain Hinder, 
 having effected an entrance, scoured the wall, clearing the 
 way for Bret and Umpton to enter without resistance, and 
 passed on till he came in the rear of those who were resisting 
 Wingfield and Sampson : upon this the defence was aban- 
 doned. The Spaniards, indeed, knowing that if attacked 
 from the water it was not tenable, had determined upon 
 withdrawing the garrison and the inhabitants into the high
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 321 
 
 town, should this be the plan of the assailants ; but in the 
 confusion and fear which prevailed, the signal for recalling 
 the troops from the land side was not made ; and men whose 
 courage deserved a more generous treatment than they 
 underwent were sacrificed through this error. * 
 
 Upon the English having thus entered in three places, 
 " with a huge cry," the inhabitants, they who could, betook 
 themselves to the high town, which they might with less 
 peril do, because the assailants, being strangers, knew not the 
 way to cut them off. " Some," says one of the expedition, 
 " fled to the rocks in the peninsula ; some hid themselves in 
 chambers and cellars ; some found favour to be taken prisoners ; 
 but the rest, to the number of about 500, falling into the 
 hands of the common soldiers, had their throats cut " ; and 
 this seems to have been perpetrated and related equally 
 without compunction. The cellars were found full of wine, 
 2000 pipes having been collected there, toward the provision 
 for a second armada ; and the men, by inordinate drinking, 
 becoming reckless of danger, or incapable of perceiving it, 
 exposed themselves to the shot from the upper town, whereby 
 many were hurt, t It was thought that by their excesses at 
 
 * Hakluyt, 139. 
 
 f In the only Spanish account of these transactions which I have 
 been able to consult, it is said that the wine was purposely left ; and 
 that the Spaniards, taking advantage of the drunkenness and consequent 
 disorder thus produced, killed as many as 800 stragglers, whom the 
 succours, as they arrived from the interior, fell in with and found drunk 
 and sleeping. This writer says : " Bebieron bellamente los Ingleses, 
 como valientes bebedores ; y pareciendoles que ya eran seriores de la 
 tierra, lo que menos cuidado les daba era la guerra" (P. M. F. Felipe 
 de la Gandara, Armas y Triunfos del Reino de Galicia. 1672, p. 470). 
 
 The author was chronista general of that kingdom. The first part 
 of his account cannot be reconciled with the English statements. 
 According to him the invaders landed more than 10,000 men, and took 
 possession of Burgo, an open village (lugar), without walls or castle, 
 more than a league from Corunna : there they began to visit the drinking 
 
 21
 
 322 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 this time they brought on the subsequent sickness and 
 mortality. From the few prisoners who were taken, they 
 learnt that there were in the town when they arrived 500 
 soldiers, the poor remains of seven companies who had 
 returned from " the journey of England," and that money 
 and stores had been sent thither for a second attempt at 
 invasion. * 
 
 The Spaniards had been taken by surprise, which they 
 ought not to have been in any of their great ports on this 
 side the Straits. But the governor, who was the Marquez 
 de Zerralbo don Juan Pacheco Osorio, prepared now with 
 a Spaniard's determination for defence. His first object was 
 to prevent the enemy from taking possession of the galleon ; 
 and as this could by no other means be effected, he gave 
 orders for destroying it ; the crew, accordingly, overcharged 
 the guns, set the ship on fire, and left her in flames, " which 
 burnt in terrible sort for two days together ". When she 
 had burnt to the water's edge, and the English came to 
 search her hull, they found only sixteen whole cannon out of 
 fifty : the rest had burst in their discharge, as had been 
 designed, and were taken out in broken pieces and molten 
 lumps. Every exertion was made for improving the fortifica- 
 tions, which were strong but old. All hands were employed 
 at this, and in carrying earth for the ramparts, which were 
 now made ; and so intent were they upon these operations, 
 
 houses, instead of making any attempt to occupy the bridge (at the head 
 of the harbour, over the mouth of the Mandeo), and take a position, to 
 prevent succours from arriving. " They might have done this easily," 
 he says, " sin que pudicra cntrar gcnte par parte alguna." Afterwards 
 they attempted to insulate the fortress by cutting across the isthmus ; but 
 there were rocks in the way, large reinforcements had already entered, and 
 the fire from the walls put an end to their operations. He makes no 
 mention whatever of the storming the base town, nor of the subsequent 
 carnage, but simply says that they burnt the suburb called La Pescaderia, 
 which contained 1500 houses. 
 * Hakluyt, 140.'
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 323 
 
 that they left the Puerto Real, or royal gate, open, and 
 Corunna, according to the Galicians, would have been lost, 
 if a greater personage than the governor had not taken upon 
 himself the defence in this emergency. For the English 
 entered not only without resistance, but without any one 
 speaking to them or giving the alarm : so strange a circum- 
 stance made them apprehensive of some stratagem ; still, 
 however, though with all possible circumspection, they ad- 
 vanced up the street, at the end of which stood the parochial 
 church of the upper town ; and to whom should that 
 church be dedicated but to the peculiar patron of Spain 
 and especial glory of Galicia Santiago ? He did not indeed 
 appear in person : short as the distance was from Compostella, 
 the occasion was not of sufficient importance for him to leave 
 his shrine and mount his celestial white horse ; but out of 
 his church there issued a great darkness, and in the midst of 
 that darkness a great light ; and the light dazzled, and the 
 darkness confused, and both terrified them : they made their 
 way out of the gate with more alacrity than they had entered 
 it ; and Santiago achieved for his faithful devotees the only 
 one of all his numerous victories in which no blood was shed. * 
 This was a modest miracle for the saint, the country, and 
 the religion. Another and not less thaumaturgic saint worked 
 none upon the occasion, though he might seem to have been 
 more especially invited or provoked to manifest his power. 
 Without the Puerta de los Aires, and fronting it, was a 
 convent of St. Domingo : the invaders occupied it ; and 
 from the upper windows and other parts of the edifice fired 
 into the town. These things passed on the day after the 
 escalade. On the morrow some 2000 men from the adjacent 
 parts approached the gates as confidently as if they had been 
 resolved to enter : but they advanced without order ; and 
 losing a few men in the first encounter took to flight, and 
 
 * Gandara, 471.
 
 324 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 outstripped their pursuers. A party following up this success 
 foraged round about, and brought back kine and sheep in 
 abundance, to the great relief of the army, whose provisions 
 when they landed * were well nigh exhausted. Norris 
 meant in the ensuing night to take a " long munition house 
 built upon the wall " ; but the Spaniards apprehending this, 
 and knowing how advantageous a position it would be for 
 the enemy, burnt it before the attempt could be made. At 
 the same time a fire broke out in the lower end of the town, 
 " which, had it not been by the care of the general heedily 
 seen unto, and the fury thereof prevented, by pulling down 
 many houses which were most in danger, had burnt," says 
 Wingfield, " all the provisions we found there, to our wonder- 
 ful hindrance ".t 
 
 Two demi-cannons and two culverins were now planted 
 under the garden of the convent, but with little skill or fore- 
 sight, for the first or second fire shook down the cross wall by 
 which this battery was " defended or gabioned " ; it then lay 
 open to the enemy. They did not overlook their oppor- 
 tunity ; and the lieutenant of the ordnance, with some of the 
 cannoneers, were slain there. The battery was secured dur- 
 ing the night. When it was ready to open, the general sent 
 to summon the place : the man who bore it was fired at 
 from the town. Presently a Spaniard was hanged over the 
 wall, and a signal for parley made, the object of which was 
 to let the English see that this summary punishment had 
 been inflicted upon the person who fired at the messenger ; 
 and they took the opportunity of requesting to have " fair 
 
 * Wingfield says : " What extremity the want of that month's victuals 
 which we did eat during the month we lay at Plymouth for a wind 
 might have driven us unto, no man can doubt of that knoweth what 
 men do live by, had not God given us, in the end, a more prosperous 
 wind and shorter passage into Galicia than hath been often seen, where 
 our own force and fortune revictualled us largely " (Hakluyt, 135). 
 
 t Hakluyt, 141.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 325 
 
 war/' promising it on their part. They made inquiry con- 
 cerning what prisoners were in the hands of the English, but 
 would not listen to any proposal for surrendering. * 
 
 Norris had now sufficiently reconnoitred the walls to see 
 that they were almost everywhere built upon a rock : one 
 place, however, he thought mineable, and men were presently 
 set to work there, who, after three days' labour, and on the 
 seventh after their entrance of the base town, had bedded 
 their powder, but, as afterwards appeared, not far enough 
 into the wall. The breach by that time was thought as- 
 saultable, and companies were drawn out for a simultaneous 
 attack there, and at the point where it was expected that 
 the mine would make an opening. But the mine failed, "by 
 reason the powder brake out backward in a place where the 
 cave was made too high ". Nothing therefore could be at- 
 tempted that day. The miners resumed their work, and by 
 the second day after had wrought well into the foundation of 
 the wall. The first failure drew after it no ill consequence ; 
 not so the partial success of the second attempt. The ex- 
 plosion brought down half the tower under which the mine 
 had been made, and opened a practicable breach : it was im- 
 mediately assaulted ; and when the men had gained the 
 summit, the other half fell on them ; some twenty or thirty 
 were crushed, and the men were " so amazed, not knowing 
 whence that terror came, that they forsook their commanders, 
 and left them among the ruins of the mine ". The two 
 ensigns were shot in the breach, but their colours were 
 rescued ; among those on whom the tower fell " was Captain 
 Sydenham pitifully lost, who having three or four great 
 stones upon his lower parts was held so fast that neither him- 
 self could stir nor any reasonable company recover him ; not- 
 withstanding the next day, being found to be alive, there 
 were ten or twelve lost in attempting to relieve him ". It 
 
 * Hakluyt, 141.
 
 326 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 is the most honourable incident on the part of the English, 
 during their descent in Galicia, that so many should have 
 exposed and lost their lives in endeavouring to perform this 
 act of forlorn humanity toward their suffering countryman ; * 
 and the least honourable on that of the Spaniards that they 
 should have fired on men who were exposing themselves for 
 such a motive. 
 
 Meantime a breach which had been made by the poor 
 battery in the convent garden was attempted ; and the officers 
 brought their men to the push of the pike at the summit. 
 But the Spaniards had prepared all means of defence, and 
 they were encouraged by the masculine exertions of the wife 
 of an alferez, Maria Pita was her name. With a spirit 
 which women have more often displayed in Spain than in any 
 other country, she snatched up sword and buckler, and took 
 her stand among the foremost of the defendants ; and so 
 much was ascribed by the people to the effect of her example, 
 that she was rewarded for this service with the full pay of an 
 ensign for life, and the half pay was settled upon her de- 
 scendants in perpetuity, t The defence, however, was not 
 difficult ; for the rubbish over which the assailants mounted 
 " slid outward from under their feet ; and it then appeared 
 that half the height of the wall had received no injury ". { 
 
 * Hakluyt, 141. 
 
 f Gandara, as chronista mayor of Galicia, is good authority for a circum- 
 stance like this. The story gained something by travelling in its own 
 country. Faria y Sousa says, that this virago lost none of her courage 
 at seeing her husband killed before her eyes, and that she wounded an 
 English standard-bearer, mortally, with a lance (p. 95. Gandara, 472). 
 
 I " For let no man think that culverin or demi-cannon can sufficiently 
 batter a defensible rampire. And of those pieces which we had, the 
 better of the demi-cannons, at the second shot, broke in her carriages " 
 (Hakluyt, 141). 
 
 The writer argued, that if the battering pieces which were promised 
 for the armament, but not supplied, had been there, the place would 
 have been taken.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 327 
 
 Thus, had there been more spirit for renewing the assault, 
 the breach no longer appeared practicable. From both 
 points of attack the retreat lay through a narrow street or 
 lane, and many were hurt there. * Whatever the loss may 
 have been, the failure was so complete, that it determined t 
 the general to abandon an enterprise which he now con- 
 sidered hopeless. But to secure his embarkation it was 
 necessary to disperse a considerable force with which the 
 Conde de Andrade was encamped behind the Puente de 
 Burgo, waiting there to be joined by the Conde de Altamira, 
 and then, with united strength, to advance for the relief of 
 the town. Norris accordingly, leaving Drake, with five 
 regiments, to guard their quarters, marched, with nine, to 
 meet the enemy. His brother, Sir Edward Norris, who 
 commanded the van, came in sight of them some half mile 
 from their camp, and beat them from place to place (though 
 " they had good places of defence, and cross walls which they 
 might have held long "), till they came to the bridge, " on 
 the foot of the farther side whereof lay their camp, strongly 
 intrenched ". Sir Edward followed at the point of the pikes, 
 through a heavy fire : the enemy's shot flanked both sides 
 of the bridge, and at the end was a barricade of barrels. 
 They who should have guarded it forsook their station, seeing 
 this " proud approach ". Sir Edward entered, and charging 
 the first who opposed him, pike in hand, fell, " with very 
 earnestness, in over-thrusting," and received a grievous sword 
 wound in the head. The general, and some other officers, 
 
 * Gandara, in his exaggerated statement, says, that the English held 
 out a signal for burying their dead, who were found to be 1500 ; and 
 that the loss of the Spaniards, from the time that the expedition landed, 
 till it re-embarked, amounted only to thirty-five. I wish Wingfield's 
 account of the slaughter in the base town rested on no better authority, 
 or could be suspected of equal exaggeration. 
 
 t The expression in Hakluyt is, " it made him grow to a new resolu- 
 tion " (p. 141).
 
 328 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 " most honourably " rescued him ; and overcoming, not with- 
 out a severe struggle, the brave resistance that was made, 
 obtained then an easy victory over the rest of the army. 
 The standard was taken, and the fugitives hotly pursued 
 for some three miles. " How many," says Wingfield, " 2000 
 men (for of so many consisted our vanguard) might kill in 
 pursuit of four sundry parties, so many you may imagine fell 
 before us that day. And to make the number more great, 
 our men having given over the execution, and returning to 
 their stands, found many hidden in the vineyards and hedges, 
 whom they despatched." Two hundred, also, were found in 
 a convent, and were there put to the sword, and the convent 
 spoiled and burnt. This was not the " fair war," for which 
 the Spaniards had asked, and which, by their honourable 
 conduct at the time of asking, they had deserved. The 
 contrary system can be justified only when reprisals become 
 necessary, as the sole means of putting a stop to it ; but in 
 that age fair war seems, almost, to have been the exception. * 
 After what is called "the fury," and might better have 
 been termed the wickedness t " of the execution," the van- 
 guard was sent one way, and the main body the other, " to 
 burn and spoil, so that you might have seen the country, 
 more than three miles' compass, on fire ". The next day was 
 spent in shipping their artillery, J and whatever booty could 
 be transported ; and they attempted, during the last night 
 of their tarriance, to burn that part of the upper town where 
 
 * Hakluyt, 142. Camden, 430. 
 
 f Such a carnage after the action well deserves to be so qualified, 
 especially if the relater in Hakluyt is to be believed when he says, that 
 " there were slain in this fight, on our side, only Captain Cooper, and 
 one private soldier ". 
 
 J Their own and those taken in the base town, " which," says Wing- 
 field, " had it been such as might have given us any assurance of a 
 better battery, or had there been no other purpose of our journey but 
 that, I think the general would have spent some more time in the siege 
 of the place".
 
 329 
 
 the houses were built upon the wall by the water side ; but 
 the Spaniards were vigilant, and made so good a defence 
 that they frustrated this intention. At their departure, how- 
 ever, the invaders, by their own account, set fire to every 
 house of the base town, so that not one was left standing 
 there. * Putting then to sea, after contending nine days 
 with contrary winds, they reached the Berlings, having a 
 little before fallen in with Essex, who, with some other 
 volunteers of note, had followed the expedition in a single 
 ship. By this time, the troops had suffered much by sickness, 
 aggravated by their own excesses at Corunna ; and the loss 
 during the siege had been considerable, t But this was not 
 the only evil J during the eighteen days of their continuance 
 there ; troops had been sent to Lisbon, and all persons of any 
 influence, who were suspected of favouring Antonio, were 
 removed from that city, and sent into Spain. Antonio, in- 
 deed, had been considered of so little consequence in this 
 first act of the expedition, that he seems not to have been 
 
 * Gandara confirms this, but represents it having been done before 
 the attempts on the upper town ; and he avoids all mention of the action 
 at the Puente de Burgo. 
 
 t El Peregrine Espanol (Antonio Perez) whose Tratado Parcznetico 
 was translated into French and English, and widely circulated by the 
 Portuguese emigrants, says that the greater part of the troops died there, 
 and all the best artillerymen : but he seems to refer this loss rather to 
 the mortality than the siege ; and his object was to show that the 
 expedition failed wholly through the misconduct of the English, and not 
 owing to the weakness of Antonio's partisans. 
 
 I Sir William Monson says: "The landing at the Groyne was an 
 unnecessary lingering and hindrance of the other great and main 
 design ; a consuming of victuals and weakening of the army by the 
 immoderate drinking of the soldiers, which brought a lamentable sick- 
 ness amongst them ; a warning to the Spaniards to strengthen Portugal ; 
 and (what is more than all this) a discouragement to proceed farther, 
 being repulsed in the first attempt" (160). This is true, except as to 
 the waste of provision. Monson himself says, that " divers of the ships 
 had not four days' victuals when they departed from Plymouth ".
 
 330 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 consulted concerning it, nor, indeed, is he noticed in the 
 accounts of it till the fleet arrived at Peniche. The troops 
 landed there, about a mile from the town, with much 
 difficulty, owing to the wind and the surf, and with the loss 
 of one boat, carrying twenty-five men. Essex commanded 
 this party ; and when man enough had been disembarked for 
 forming two troops, he left one to protect the landing, and 
 advanced with the other against some companies who sallied 
 from the town to oppose him. The Spaniards fled when it 
 came to the push of the pike : he entered the open town, 
 and summoned the castle, which the commandant, Antonio 
 de Araujo, readily surrendered to Antonio, acknowledging 
 him as his king. * 
 
 Here it was agreed that the army should proceed overland 
 to Lisbon, and the fleet meet them in the Tagus. When 
 the army was marshalled and ready to act, Drake, " to make 
 known the honourable desire he had of taking equal parts in 
 all fortune with them, stood upon the ascent of a hill by 
 which the battalions marched, and, with a pleasing kindness, 
 took his leave severally of the commanders of every regiment, 
 wishing them happy success, with a constant promise, that if 
 the weather did not hinder him, he would meet them at 
 Lisbon with the fleet ". The non-performance of this en- 
 gagement brought a reproach upon Drake, who may, with 
 more cause, be censured for having made it. While the ai-my 
 proceeded with little encouragement from the Portuguese, 
 whose eager co-operation they had been led to expect, Drake 
 sailed for Cascaes and took possession of the town. The in- 
 habitants, who abandoned it upon his landing, returned upon 
 his assurances of all peaceable kindness if they would ac- 
 knowledge Antonio for their king, and supply the fleet with 
 necessaries ; but the castle, having a Spanish garrison, was 
 maintained against him. Here he remained, till the army, 
 weakened by sickness, unable for want of artillery (the little 
 
 * Hakluyt, 144.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 331 
 
 which they had being in the fleet) to make any serious 
 attempt upon Lisbon, knowing themselves far inferior in 
 number to the Spanish troops who were collected against 
 them, and undeceived as to the influence and strength of the 
 pretender's adherents, gave up this ill-planned and worse 
 conducted attempt, and came to join him at Cascaes. What- 
 ever blame was afterwards imputed to the admiral, those 
 who were on the spot, and were capable of forming a dis- 
 passionate opinion, must have admitted the validity of the 
 motives which had withheld him from entering the river. 
 The fleet must have passed within culver shot of St. Julian's, 
 which was then accounted "one of the most impregnable forts 
 to seaward in Europe : this and the other two forts between 
 Cascaes and Lisbon Drake might have passed with a reason- 
 able gale " ; but once in the Tagus, the coming out again 
 was uncertain : there were galleys in the river ready at any 
 advantage to have assailed him : he would have been exposed 
 to fire ships ; and if a fleet had been brought against him at 
 the mouth of the river, he had neither the hope of victoiy 
 nor of escape, and the destruction of the army must have 
 followed upon the loss of the ships.* 
 
 The emigrants whose expectations had been so cruelly 
 disappointed, imputed Drake's breach of promise to his 
 regarding the interests of the merchant adventurers rather 
 than those of the expedition, because while he remained at 
 Cascaes many prizes were brought in there. Most of these 
 were easterlings, of which not fewer than three scores 
 belonging to the Hanse towns, and laden with naval stores, 
 as was supposed for another armada, were captured. Some 
 were of great burden, with little on board, and evidently 
 built as ships of war : it could not be doubted that these 
 were for the Spanish navy. The embarkation of the troops 
 was secured by forcing the Castle of Cascaes to surrender, 
 the commandant requiring only such a display of force as 
 
 * Camden, 431, 432. Monson, 160.
 
 332 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 might justify him in offering no farther resistance. It was 
 occupied then by English troops, till the armament was ready 
 to sail, and partially blown up at their departure. One 
 company had been left at Peniche, together with the sick 
 and wounded : some vessels were sent to bring them away, 
 and advices were despatched to the commanding officer over- 
 land : the advice arrived in time, but not the ships ; for the 
 commander, then apprised of what had happened, and learn- 
 ing also that an enemy's force was hastening against him, 
 embarked in barques which were on the spot, and with such 
 haste that he neither brought away the artillery nor all his 
 men. * 
 
 Nine galleys from Andalusia had entered the Tagus some 
 days before the departure of the English : these, with the 
 twelve which were stationed there, followed the fleet ; and 
 on the following morning, taking advantage of a dead calm, 
 cut off some stragglers, and ran down some who endeavoured 
 to escape from them in their boats. One hulk had Captain 
 Minshew and his company on board, and he was seen fight- 
 ing to the last after his ship was on fire : the calm meantime 
 was such, that none of the great ships could approach to 
 assist him, though every effort was made by towing them. 
 In this and in another action with a straggler the galleys 
 were so roughly handled, that they discontinued the pursuit. 
 The expedition had been instructed to ply for the Azores if 
 the wind were northerly ; but if it blew from the south, 
 then for the Isles of Bayona. The fleet was dispersed in a 
 gale ; but after seventeen days the two commanders and 
 good part of the ships were united off Vigo. In that interval 
 many men had been cast overboard ; for not only was the 
 sickness raging among them, but many died of hunger, and 
 more must have perished for lack of sufficient food, if the 
 mortality which carried off their comrades had not left a 
 
 * Hakluyt, 149.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 333 
 
 more competent allowance for the survivors. Not more than 
 2000 effective men were now left. They were landed in two 
 bodies : they approached the town on two sides ; and though 
 a strong barricade had been constructed at the end of every 
 street, no defence was attempted. The inhabitants deemed 
 it prudent to withdraw in time, and had removed with them 
 everything of value, except good store of wine. It was 
 thought too hazardous to make a movement upon Bayona, 
 whither they had fled, and where they knew, from one of 
 their Corunna prisoners, that there was a strong garrison. 
 The English contented themselves with spoiling the country 
 for some seven or eight miles, burning the villages and the 
 standing corn : then, after setting fire to every house in the 
 town, they re-embarked. * 
 
 Still the commanders clung to the hope of returning with 
 some booty that might compensate for the loss incurred in 
 this luckless expedition. It was agreed that Drake should 
 draft the able men into twenty of the best ships, and sail for 
 the Azores for the chance of falling in with the Indian fleet, 
 while Norris with the rest of the armament should return 
 home. They parted with this understanding : on the second 
 night there arose a greater storm than any they had en- 
 countered since they left England ; both squadrons were 
 dispersed ; and when Norris, twelve days afterwards, reached 
 Plymouth, he found that Drake had arrived there, and all 
 the queen's ships, and many others ; but every vessel had 
 taken the opportunity, which the storm afforded, of going its 
 own way, " some led by a desire of returning whence they 
 came, and some," says Wingfield, " being possessed of the 
 hulks (the Hanse towns' prizes), sought other ports, from their 
 general's eye, where they might make their private com- 
 modity of them, which they did to their own great advan- 
 tage ". At Plymouth the army was dissolved, eight companies 
 
 * Hakluyt, 150.
 
 334 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 only being retained : every soldier received five shillings, and 
 " the arms he bare to make money of, and this was believed 
 to be more than could by any means be due to them ". * It 
 appears, however, that some of the men who compared their 
 wages with their pains, murmured against this distribution, 
 and that this increased the unpopularity, t which in some 
 
 * " For they were not in service three months ; in which time," says 
 Wingfield, " they had their victuals, which no man will value at less 
 than half their pay, for such is the allowance in her majesty's ships to 
 her mariners ; so as there remained but ten shillings a month more to 
 be paid : for which there was not any private man but had his apparel 
 and furniture to his own use ; so as every common soldier discharged 
 received more in money, victuals, apparel, and furniture than his pay 
 did amount to" (Hakluyt, 151). 
 
 t "As our country," says Wingfield, " doth bring forth many gallant 
 men, who, desirous of honour, do put themselves into the actions there- 
 of, so doth it many more, who, though their thoughts reach not so high 
 as others, yet do they listen how other men's acts do pass ; and, either 
 believing what any man will report unto them, are willingly carried away 
 into errors, or, tied to some greater man's faith, become secretaries 
 against a noted truth. The one sort of these take their opinions from 
 the highway side, or, at the farthest, go no farther than Paul's, to 
 inquire what hath been done in this voyage ; where if they meet with 
 any whose capacity before their going out could not make them live, 
 nor their valour maintain their reputation, and who went only for spoil, 
 complaining on the hardness and misery thereof, they think they are 
 bound to give credit to these honest men who were parties therein, and, 
 in very charity, become of their opinions. The others, to make good 
 the faction they are entered into, if they see any of those malcontents 
 (as every journey yieldeth some), do run unto them, like tempting spirits, 
 to confirm them in their humour, with assurance that they foresaw, 
 before our going out, what would become thereof. 
 
 " Be ye not, therefore, credulous in believing every report ; for there 
 have been many more beholders of these things that have passed than 
 actors in the same ; who, by their experience not having the knowledge 
 of the ordinary wants of war, have thought that to be hard, not to have 
 their meat well dressed, to drink sometimes water, to watch much, or to 
 see men die and be slain, was a miserable thing ; and not having so 
 given their minds to the service as they are anything instructed thereby, 
 do, for want of better matter, discourse ordinarily of these things" (p. 151).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 335 
 
 degree is generally attached to the leaders of an unsuccessfu 
 expedition. * 
 
 A very rich booty is said to have been brought home, and 
 1 50 pieces of great ordnance ; but the loss of lives had been 
 very great, of 12,500 men little more than 6000 returning : 
 the Spaniards exaggerated the loss to 16,000 ; and, tracing 
 to the disease which the survivors brought home a great 
 mortality which ensued, they said that England suffered more 
 for having sent an armada against Spain, than Spain for 
 having sent an armada against England, t Yet the result of 
 the expedition was to confirm the English people in that 
 opinion of their superiority to the Spaniards, whether at sea 
 or in the field, which they had now begun to entertain ; and 
 the spirit of adventure became more general. Elizabeth's 
 conduct toward the Hanse towns encouraged that spirit. 
 She had warned those towns against carrying provisions or 
 military stores into Spain or Portugal, upon peril of losing 
 ships and lading, according to special treaty in this case, 
 and to the acknowledged practice and law of nations. Con- 
 scious that they were violating that treaty, and amenable to 
 that law, the easterlings took the perilous course, north about, 
 rather than risk passing the Channel ; but when their ships 
 were captured off the mouth of the Tagus, they complained 
 as if their privileges had been violated, and called for resti- 
 tution. The queen replied, that their ships, being employed 
 in carrying warlike stores to the enemies of England, she had 
 lawfully taken them, and could not have done otherwise, 
 unless she would wilfully bring destruction upon herself and 
 her people. Privileges, to which they appealed, might 
 neither be claimed nor allowed to the prejudice of the public 
 safety, which is the highest law : nor was the appeal main- 
 tainable in itself; for in the privilege granted by Edward I. 
 to the Hanse towns, it was expressly provided that they 
 
 * Hakluyt, 151, 152. f Faria y Sousa, 197.
 
 336 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 should not carry any merchandise into the dominions of the 
 declared enemies of England. More than once had their 
 ships been detained heretofore, when, during war with 
 France, they had supplied the French with stores ; and this 
 had been done not by England only, but by Charles V., the 
 Kings of Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, and recently by the 
 Prince of Orange, according to the law of nations ; for neu- 
 trality must so be used, that the neutrals while they help one 
 party hurt not the other. Referring then to the tone of 
 their demands, she reminded them that it did not become 
 cities and towns to use menaces to kings ; for her part she 
 feared not the threats of the greatest monarchs, much less 
 of particular cities ; and as for the due and just rights of 
 neighbourhood, she punctually observed them with all men. * 
 
 Whatever murmurs had been raised against the conduct 
 of the Portugal voyage, Drake's character was too well es- 
 tablished both in the estimation of the court and of the 
 people to be seriously affected by them : the failure of that 
 expedition was sufficiently accounted for by want of means, t 
 want of co-operation on the part of Antonio's party, and the 
 mortality among the troops. And when, in the year 1594, 
 in conjunction with Sir John Hawkins, he proposed to the 
 government to set on foot an armament against the West 
 Indies, the project was readily entertained. 
 
 Hawkins, after his unhappy adventure at St. Juan de Ulloa, 
 seems to have given up the career of enterprise. In 1573 he 
 had been appointed treasurer or comptroller of the navy, a 
 high and arduous office, which he discharged so ably that he 
 is said to have introduced more useful inventions into the 
 navy, and better regulations, than any of his predecessors. 
 He acted as rear-admiral against the armada, and received, 
 
 * Camden, 433. 
 
 t Monson says, that, in his opinion, the two generals never overshot 
 themselves more, than in undertaking so great a charge with so little
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 337 
 
 on that occasion, the honour of knighthood, which he had 
 well deserved. During a long course of service, he had 
 obtained a great name in his profession, and, notwithstanding 
 his loss in the Gulf of Mexico, no inconsiderable fortune, for 
 he and his elder brother were at one time owners of thirty 
 good ships. * The queen, no doubt in consequence of his 
 representations, resolved upon putting her navy upon a 
 better and more regular footing than it had before been, and 
 assigned a yearly sum of 8970Z. t for keeping it in repair ; 
 and in the same year, 1590, she sent ten of her own ships, 
 under Hawkins and Sir Martin Frobisher, to threaten the 
 coast of Spain, and intercept the Indian ships. But the 
 Spaniards obtained intelligence of this in time to send 
 despatches out, and order the homeward-bound fleet to 
 winter in India, rather than run the hazard of falling in with 
 this force ; others, which were on their way, either meeting 
 with timely advice, or warned by their own forethought, 
 kept at a distance from the islands, and by that unsuspected 
 course reached Lisbon safely. Hawkins, therefore, cruised 
 about in vain, and with such singular ill success that not a 
 single prize fell into his hands. A landing which he at- 
 tempted at Fayal was not more fortunate ; and after seven 
 months he returned, without loss indeed, but without any 
 apparent advantage, though it was known afterwards that the 
 delay of a year in their expected returns had proved most 
 injurious to the Spanish merchants, and that the ships as well 
 as their owners suffered greatly. No blame could be imputed 
 to the commanders. Sir John, however, thought it necessary 
 to offer some apology in the report of his voyage : this he 
 did at considerable length ; and concluded by reminding the 
 queen that Paul planteth and Apollos watereth, but it is God 
 who giveth the increase. This ill-applied allusion to Scrip- 
 ture is said to have provoked from Elizabeth a characteristic 
 
 * Campbell, i., 415. t Camden, 439. Lediard, 274. 
 
 22
 
 338 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 burst of anger : " God's death ! " she exclaimed : " this 
 fool went out a soldier, and is come home a divine ".* 
 
 This was but a momentary feeling ; and when Drake and 
 Hawkins, " presuming much upon their own experience and 
 knowledge," proposed that a West Indian voyage should be 
 undertaken, and offered to engage deeply in it, the queen 
 concurred in a project, of which, in the opinion of all men, 
 the most promising expectations were entertained. Much 
 had been done to impede the preparations of Philip for a 
 second attempt at invasion, much to injure the Spaniards, 
 and more to irritate them ; but Philip was both a determined 
 and a powerful enemy. Till the forced union with Portugal, 
 Spain had made little account of its navy, its only maritime 
 war having long been what was carried on with the Mahome- 
 dan powers within the Straits ; but the spoil committed by 
 the English expeditions, far and near, not upon the seas 
 alone, but in the islands, in the West Indies, upon the coasts 
 of Chili and Peru, and even in its own most important and 
 best fortified ports, made the government feel the necessity 
 of raising a maritime force, wherewith at once to be protected 
 and revenged. This object had been pursued with such 
 diligence, that within three years after the failure of the 
 armada, the Spaniards had a formidable fleet ; and in three 
 years more 69 ships, built at the king's charge, had been 
 added to it, most of them of 1000 tons' burden and upwards. 
 When hostilities begun, the Spanish ships were " huge and 
 mighty in burden, weak and ill-fashioned in building, lame 
 and slow in sailing, and fitter for merchandise than war," 
 having indeed " been more intended for it " : old seamen, 
 like Hawkins, used to maintain that one of the queen's ships 
 could beat four of them. They were now constructed for 
 war, and were so superior to the English ships in strength 
 and weight of metal, that nothing but English seamanship and 
 
 * Monson, 162, 247. Lediard, 274.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 339 
 
 English courage could have contended against such superi- 
 ority. But the Spaniards also had good sailors, though only 
 from their northern ports ; for the Catalans no longer sup- 
 ported their ancient reputation. Most of their officers, from 
 the rank of captain downward, were Biscayans, with whom 
 (it is the testimony of an English admiral than whom none 
 of his age had seen more service) there were few that could 
 be compared for knowledge, hardiness, and valour. But the 
 Biscayans made but a small part of the sailors : the discipline 
 of the navy was bad ; and the naval service was regarded 
 with contempt by the military. 
 
 Rumours were abroad that a second and more formidable 
 armada had been completed, and intelligence came from 
 many quarters that the conquest of England would again be 
 attempted. Upon this, men were levied in all the maritime 
 counties, and watch and ward appointed to be kept upon the 
 sea coast. The apprehension was as general as it had been 
 in 1588 ; and now, too, as then, the sense of danger brought 
 with it nothing like dismay. It was, indeed, lamented, that 
 so much brave blood and so much treasure had been lost in 
 France, wasted, as it were, in aid of insincere allies ; but " all 
 men," says Camden, * " buckled themselves to war ; and 
 wailing women, with renewed grief, lamented that their sons 
 and brethren who had fallen in that thankless service had 
 not been reserved for these times ". On this account the 
 West Indian voyage was delayed, to the great cost of the 
 adventurers : it was deemed unfit to send away so many good 
 ships and men while there was reason to think they might 
 be wanted in our own seas, and on English ground. The 
 Spaniards, however, effected no more than what sufficed to 
 show that however vigilantly the Channel might be guarded, 
 partial descents were always possible. They had possession 
 at that time of Blavet in Bretagne, a small but strong place 
 
 P. 497.
 
 340 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 upon the river of that name, from the ruins of which Port 
 Louis was afterwards constructed. From thence D. Diego 
 Brochen, with four galleys, under favourable opportunity of 
 weather, crossed the mouth of the Channel, and effected a 
 landing at Penzance. They sacked and burnt that place, 
 with the two poor fishing towns of Mousehole and Newlin ; 
 but the inhabitants had taken flight. No life was lost, and 
 no prisoner taken ; and the galleys returned as safely as they 
 came. * 
 
 If the object of this descent was to impress the English 
 with the belief that a great invasion was to follow, it not only 
 failed, but produced an opposite effect. Tyrone, indeed, in- 
 duced by Romish instigations, and relying upon Spanish 
 support, commenced a rebellion in Ireland, which added 
 new horrors to the barbarous history of that most barbarous 
 island. But though this disquieted Elizabeth's councils, so 
 little apprehension was entertained of any danger from the 
 Spaniards at home, that Hawkins and Drake were allowed 
 to begin their voyage. Their force consisted of 26 sail, and 
 about 2500 men. Six were queen's ships, Drake sailing in 
 the Defiance, and his colleague in the Garland. Sir Thomas 
 Baskerville was the commander by land, and Sir Nicholas 
 Clifford his lieutenant-general. The first intent of this ex- 
 pedition was, that they should land at Nombre de Dios, 
 march across the isthmus to Panama, and seize what treasure 
 might be there, which it was supposed would be much, and, 
 if they thought it feasible, keep possession of that place. 
 But a few days only before they sailed from Plymouth 
 letters came from the queen, informing them, upon sure 
 intelligence from Spain, that the West Indian fleet had 
 arrived, but that one treasure ship, having lost a mast, had 
 
 * Camden, 499. Monson, 167. Lediard, 310. " These," says Camden, 
 " were the first and last Spaniards that ever made any hostile landing in 
 England." It seems that Pero Nino's name was never so well (or, rather, 
 so ill) known here, as that of his contemporary, Arripay, in Spain.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 341 
 
 put back to Puerto Rico ; wherefore she ordered them to 
 take the good opportunity thus presented, and make for this 
 great prize, a course which was the more advised, because 
 it was not much out of their way to Nombre de Dios. * 
 
 They " brake ground " (in the phrase of their own jour- 
 nalist) "out of Plymouth Sound on the 28th of August, 1595, 
 and at the end of four weeks arrived off the Isle of Grand 
 Canary. Drake and Baskerville were for landing here, for 
 the honour of conquering it, as well as for the sake of 
 victualling the fleet. Hawkins was for obeying the queen's 
 instructions, and losing no time in accomplishing the main 
 enterprise ; but the sailors represented their need of a supply 
 of provisions : this is said to have been a pretence on their 
 part, who had the hope of plunder before their eyes ; and 
 when Baskerville engaged to take the place within four days, 
 Hawkins consented. This having been determined, they 
 found at daybreak that they had overshot their mark ; so 
 they stood about, and by nine o'clock were at anchor before 
 the fort, about a league eastward of the city of St. Anna, and 
 at one, 1400 men were in readiness to land in a sandy bay 
 between the city and the fort. But the hours which had 
 elapsed since the fleet first hove in sight had been well 
 employed in erecting a bulwark, and planting ordnance to 
 command the landing-place ; seeing which, and that a heavy 
 surf was then breaking on the beach, the generals perceived 
 that they could not make the attempt without too great and 
 manifest a risk. After a vain demonstration, therefore, in 
 which some of the smaller ships riding at anchor within 
 musket shot of the shore were in some danger, they went to 
 the western side of the island, and there watered. A few 
 men venturing rashly to some distance from the shore were 
 set upon by the herdsmen, who with their dogs and staves 
 killed most of them, and took prisoner the surgeon of one of 
 
 * Monson, 167.
 
 342 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the ships, from whom they learnt all that he knew con- 
 cerning the objects of the voyage. And upon this the 
 governor despatched a caraval to all those places which were 
 threatened. This warning, however, had been anticipated 
 by advices from the Spanish Government which reached 
 the West Indies before the expedition sailed from England, 
 such early and sure intelligence had that government 
 obtained. * 
 
 A month afterwards, when they were near Martinico, 
 Drake, being ahead with four or five other ships, was separ- 
 ated from the rest of the fleet in a gale. They made for 
 Dominica, he for Marigalante, and they joined company 
 again at Guadaloupe. Some traffic had been carried on at 
 Dominica, where great store of tobacco was grown, which 
 " most of the English and French used to purchase from the 
 Caribs, with knives, hatchets, saws, and such like iron tools," 
 - no slight indication of improvement in the Indians, if 
 beads, hawk-bells, prisms, and other toys had ceased to be 
 received in payment. It is said that these Indians had 
 plantations of various fruits in Marigalante, which they kept 
 like gardens ; but there seems no assignable reason why they 
 should have made their plantations on another island instead 
 of their own. Having reached Guadaloupe, the expedition 
 watered there, washed the ships, set up the pinnaces, the 
 materials of which they had taken out, and landed the men 
 that they might refresh themselves on shore, t 
 
 The day after Drake's arrival there, five Spanish zabras 
 were seen, ships of 200 tons ; from which, as their course 
 was by Dominica toward Puerto Rico, Drake rightly con- 
 cluded + that the treasure was still in that island, and that 
 this force had been ordered thither to convoy it : they 
 belonging to a squadron of eight, which had been sent for 
 that purpose, under Don Pedro Tello. Captain Wignol in 
 the Francis, a barque of thirty-five tons, being the last 
 
 * Hakluyt, 583. f Ibid., 584. \ Purchas, iv., 1171.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 343 
 
 straggler of Hawkins's fleet, fell in with them, and was cap- 
 tured in sight of a caraval that escaped, and carried tidings 
 of the capture to the commanders. It is said that Hawkins, 
 foreseeing but too clearly the consequences of this misfortune, 
 immediately sickened. Tello, in fact, put his prisoners to 
 the torture, * and thus extracted from them a declaration 
 of what he might, with sufficient certainty, have inferred 
 from the appearance of an English force in those seas. The 
 exped tion tarried at Guadaloupe three days after this mishap, 
 and fo- this the commanders have been censured ; but it may 
 be dovbted whether any haste which they could now have 
 made vould have been attended with better speed. Sailing 
 once nr>re on the 4th of November, they came to anchor, on 
 the morning of the 8th, within the Virgin Islands : this had 
 
 * Lop: de Vega relates this in lines, some of which are as atrocious 
 as the otiers are characteristic : 
 
 " Siguiendo pues su curso por la plata, 
 
 Y la del mar rompiendo en blanca espuma, 
 Llevando cada prospera fragata 
 
 El mar y el viento como leve pluma ; 
 Dos navios encuentra y desbarata 
 
 De aquella Inglesa referida suma, 
 Entre la Dominica y Matalino, 
 Islas del mar, y ventas del camino. 
 
 " Huye el uno, ganando el barlovento, 
 
 Y abriendo los costados las espuelas 
 Al cavallo del mar, que yguala al viento, 
 
 Lleno de paramentos de sus velas ; 
 Echando el otro a fondo, y siempre atento 
 
 A entender sus ardides y cautelas, 
 Diez y ocho Ingleses que tomo pregunta, 
 Y el cuero y nervios con los hue ssos junta. 
 
 " Al tormento confiessan los que tienen 
 Tan gran odio, senor, al confessarse, 
 Que de Plemua con el Draque vienen," etc. 
 
 Dragontea, c. 4.
 
 344 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 been accounted dangerous, but they found a good road, " in 
 which 1000 sail might have lain in fourteen, twelve, and eight 
 fathom, fair sand and good anchorage, with high islands on 
 either side ". They could find no fresh water, but plenty 
 of fish to be taken either with hooks or net, and the men 
 went ashore and fowled ; after tarrying two days here, they 
 lingered two more in a lesser sound, about a league disiant, 
 which Drake explored the preceding night in his barge. If 
 it be true that a difference of opinion had arisen between the 
 commanders, it may explain a delay for which there would 
 otherwise be no apparent reason. That dispute is said to 
 have caused or accelerated Hawkins's death : on the morn- 
 ing of the 1 2th the fleet passed through the strait ; and at 
 night, when it was off the easternmost end of Puerto Rico, 
 he breathed his last. * 
 
 Sir Thomas Baskerville took the place of this brive old 
 seaman in the Garland, and at two in the afternoon of the 
 same day the fleet anchored in a sandy bay, two mies east 
 of Puerto Rico city, and within reach of its forts. Drake 
 paid dearly for this imprudence. One shot woundsd his 
 mizzen, another entered the steerage, where he was at supper, 
 and struck the stool from under him : he, indeed, eicaped 
 unhurt ; but several of the party were wounded, and two of 
 them to death. Sir Nicholas Clifford was one, the other was 
 Sir Francis's bosom friend, Master Brown, who had been 
 christened by the unseemly name of Brute, taken, no loubt, 
 from the fabled story of our Trojan descent. "Ah. dear 
 Brute," said Drake, " I could grieve for thee ! but now is no 
 time for me to let down my spirits ! " t No time was bst in 
 removing to a safer distance ; and on the following mcming 
 they came to anchor " before the point without the ;own, 
 
 * Hakluyt, 584. Lediard, 310, 311. 
 
 t Fuller relates this, " from the mouth of Henry Drake, Esq., there 
 present," whom he speaks of as his " dear and worthy parishioner, ately 
 deceased" (Holy State, 129).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 345 
 
 a little to the westward : there they remained till nightfall, 
 and then twenty-five pinnaces, boats, and shallops, well 
 manned, and furnished with fireworks and small shot, entered 
 the road ". 
 
 The galleon which was the great object of this enterprise 
 had been completely repaired, and was even on the point of 
 sailing for Spain, when the certain intelligence of this in- 
 tended attack reached the island. The Spaniards prepared 
 themselves with equal promptitude and determination for 
 defence : they landed the treasure, sunk the galleon in the 
 mouth of the channel, and made a floating barrier of masts, 
 on both sides, almost to the forts and castle, so as to render 
 the passage impassable. Within this barrier the five zabras 
 were stationed : their lading had been taken out ; and, that 
 nothing might be unnecessarily risked, all women, children, 
 and unable persons had been sent into the interior, none 
 remaining in the town but men who were able to defend it. 
 A heavy fire was opened, both from the ships and forts, upon 
 the English ; and it became more destructive when they had 
 succeeded with their firewoi-ks in setting the ships in flames, 
 for by that broad light the forts were enabled to direct their 
 shot. Yet the adventurers persisted in their desperate at- 
 tempt, till they had lost some forty or fifty men, by their 
 own account, killed, and as many more wounded ; consoling 
 themselves with the thought that " there was also great 
 death of the Spaniards aboard the frigates, with burning, 
 drowning, and killing, besides some taken prisoners". De- 
 feated, but not disheartened, they returned to the fleet, and 
 remained at anchor the next day. One of the zabras had 
 been consumed to the water's edge : the Spaniards employed 
 the day in warping up the other four, all of which had been 
 more or less injured ; and one, as they were removing her, 
 was seen to sink. But no renewal of the attack was at- 
 tempted ; Drake lingered another day as if unwilling to 
 abandon the enterprise, though he now perceived it to be
 
 346 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 hopeless : two more he was detained by calms ; then pro- 
 ceeded to the south-west point of the island, and there set 
 up more pinnaces, washed his ships, and refreshed his men 
 on shore. * And here a Spanish man and woman took refuge 
 with him. The man's story was, " that he feared some great 
 torment for not having repaired to the town, according to 
 the governor's command, to assist in its defence, and that 
 the woman was his wife ". Whatever may have been the 
 motives for their flight, Drake was too humane a man to 
 refuse them the means of escape. 
 
 Taking a final departure from Puerto Rico on the 25th of 
 November, the fleet anchored under Cape de la Vela on the 
 last day of the month ; and on the morrow the troops were 
 landed, and without resistance took possession of Rio de la 
 Hacha, " one of the ancientest towns in all the main, al- 
 though not very large ". After a while the Spaniards " came 
 in to talk of a ransom, but not to the general's liking " ; 
 finding this negotiation fruitless, Drake went with some 150 
 men by water to the Rancheria, six leagues distant, which 
 was the station for the pearl fishery, and there a few soldiers 
 were taken and many negroes, with some store of pearls and 
 other pillage : after this an agreement was made that the 
 Spaniards should pay 24,000 ducats for the ransom of the 
 town, and one prisoner 4000 for his own. Four days elapsed : 
 the ransom was then proffered in pearls ; but these were 
 rated so dear, that Drake refused to accept them, and sent 
 them back, giving the Spaniards four hours to make a more 
 satisfactory payment, or abide the consequence. His pro- 
 ceeding here was more honourable than theirs ; for after a 
 farther delay of two days, the governor having obtained a 
 safe conduct, came into the town, and told Drake plainly 
 that no ransom would be paid ; that the pearls had been 
 offered without his command or consent ; and, in fact, that 
 he had drawn out the time in negotiations for no other intent 
 
 * Hakluyt, 584. Lediard, 311,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 347 
 
 than to send intelligence to those towns which were not 
 strong enough to defend themselves, that so they might 
 secure their property by carrying it into the woods. How- 
 ever incensed Drake may have been by this avowal (if it were 
 actually made), he respected the word which he had given, 
 and the Spaniard was allowed to depart in safety. * 
 
 The vengeance which the invaders took was to burn the 
 town and the Rancheria " clean down to the ground," the 
 churches only excepted, and the house of a lady, who wrote 
 to Drake, requesting him to spare it. Proceeding now along 
 the coast they came to Santa Martha, and found in the town 
 nothing " but the houses swept clean " ; but in the course of 
 the night the lieutenant-general of the Spaniards was taken, 
 and a little booty brought in from the Avoods. That town 
 also they burnt on the 21st, and on the 27th entered the 
 harbour of Nombre de Dios. The place was abandoned at 
 their approach ; but about 100 men kept the fort, played 
 upon the invaders with a few small pieces of ordnance, 
 waited till they could give also a volley of small shot, and 
 then, as the English were running to the assault, took to 
 flight, and struck into the woods. " The name of Nombre de 
 Dios was greater than its strength," this fort being its only 
 work of defence, " though they might have made it stronger 
 if they would ". So the invaders thought : they soon dis- 
 covered that the Spaniards relied, with sufficient wisdom, 
 upon the attachment of the natives, the strength of the 
 country, and its climate being " very unhealthy as any 
 place in the Indies," and its abundant fruits being " very 
 dangerous to be eaten for breeding of diseases ". The re- 
 moval of property had been complete : nothing of any value 
 had been left ; and " there was a show in their shops of 
 great store of merchandise that had been there ". Nothing 
 fell into the conquerors' hands except twenty tons of silver, 
 two bars of gold, some money, and other pillage which they 
 
 * Hakluyt, 585,
 
 348 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 found in a little watch-house, on the summit of a hill, in the 
 woods. * 
 
 Drake remained here with the fleet while Baskerville 
 with 750 men went for Panama, on the second day after 
 their arrival. Two days longer Drake waited, apparently, to 
 see whether the Spaniards would ransom the town : they had 
 either been strictly forbidden to do this, or they were too 
 high-minded, or, perhaps, did not think it worth ransoming ; 
 for, though large, the houses were all built of timber, and 
 the single church, " which was very fair and large, was of no 
 better materials ". On the last day of the year he burnt 
 half the town, and the other half on the morrow, together 
 with all the frigates, barques, and galliots, which were in the 
 harbour, or drawn up on the beach, where houses were built 
 over them to keep the pitch from melting. Baskerville, 
 meantime, found the march on which he had entered " so 
 sore as never Englishman marched before": the way was very 
 narrow, cut through the woods and rocks, and at that season 
 full of mire and water ; and the enemy, knowing the ground 
 well, played upon them from every point of most advantage. 
 When they had advanced some ten leagues, according to 
 their computation, which seems to have measured the distance 
 by the difficulty, they came suddenly upon a fort in a mar- 
 vellous strait way, by which they needs must pass, and 
 from which, before they were aware, a fire was opened upon 
 them, whereby more than twenty men, including four officers, 
 were killed. This check made Baskerville come to a stand ; 
 and understanding then that if he succeeded in taking this 
 fort t there were two other such on the way, and that 
 
 * Hakluyt, 586. 
 
 t Fuller says : " They had so much of this breakfast, they thought they 
 should surfeit of a dinner and supper of the same. No hope of conquest, 
 except with cloying the jaws of death, and thrusting men on the mouth 
 of the cannon. Wherefore, fearing to find the proverb true, that gold 
 may be bought too dear, they returned to their ships " (Holy State, 130).
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 349 
 
 Panama had been rendered very strong, "the Spaniards 
 knowing of their coming long before/' he thought it neces- 
 sary to return ; for which resolution, mortifying as it was, 
 there was this farther urgent motive, that his men had no 
 food left, nor any means of getting it. There had either 
 been great improvidence on his part in not being better pro- 
 vided, or Drake had relied upon his old friends the Maroons, 
 who on this occasion failed him. He returned, therefore, 
 with a weary, hungry, and dispirited army to Nombre de 
 Dios on the fourth day. * 
 
 Nor was this the last disaster that befell this unfortunate 
 expedition. There was an Indian settlement some half a 
 league inland, toward which a detachment of about 100 men 
 advanced, while Drake and Baskerville were with a watering 
 party in the river about a mile distant. The Indians broke 
 down a bridge to impede their passage, and from an ambush 
 killed an officer, and wounded several others ; then taking to 
 flight, fired their own houses, thereby manifesting the deep 
 hatred against the English with which the Spaniards had now 
 possessed them. On the 5th the fleet departed, having 
 tarried there too long, and on the 10th anchored off an 
 island called Escudo, some thirty leagues westward of 
 Nombre de Dios, and nine or ten from the main. There 
 was good anchorage there, on fair sand, in twelve fathoms, 
 and the island was covered with wood, and abounded with 
 excellent water. Here they washed their ships, and set up 
 the rest of their pinnaces. But this also was " a sickly 
 climate, and given to much rain : one of the captains died 
 here, and Drake began to keep his cabin, being extremely 
 sick of a flux ". Death was now busy in the fleet. Two 
 more captains and the chief surgeon died of the prevailing 
 sickness. On the night of the 27th, Drake's disease stopped 
 on him, but there was no symptom of amendment. His 
 mind seems to have wandered at three in the morning : " he 
 
 * Hakluyt, 586, 587.
 
 350 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 used some speeches a little before his death, rising and 
 apparelling himself ; but, being brought to his bed again, he 
 died within an hour ". Some have asserted that he was 
 poisoned ; * but of this there is neither proof nor probability : 
 the climate was poison enough, and a wounded spirit t may, 
 perhaps, have predisposed the body to imbibe it. J 
 
 * " Sir Francis Drake," says Monson, " who was wont to rule fortune, 
 now finding his error, and the difference between the present strength of 
 the Indies and what it was when he first knew it, grew melancholy upon 
 this disappointment, and suddenly (and I hope naturally) died at Puerto 
 Bello, not far from the place where he got his first reputation " (p. 167).' 
 And again (p. 368) : " Fortune did much for him ; but at his death she 
 was angry with him : first, in that there was a doubt whether it was 
 natural ; secondly (and the best his friends can say), that it was caused 
 by grief, for failing of his expectation in that voyage ". 
 
 Lope de Vega represents his own people as giving him poison, at the 
 instigation of one of the furies. " Drake," he says, " was aware of this 
 intention, and would taste no food till it had been tasted ; upon which 
 they administered the poison en una mcdicina, and by that means 
 reached his heart. 
 
 " Mirad la desventura la ruin a 
 
 De aquel hombre atrevido y indomable ! 
 
 Mirad que triste genero de muerte 
 
 Del cuerpo el alma a los infiernos vierte." 
 
 Dragontea, p. 472. 
 
 t This was Fuller's opinion, who had heard the particulars from a 
 kinsman of Drake's present in the expedition. His account is, that Sir 
 Francis's discontent began " to feed upon him. He conceived that 
 expectation a merciless usurer computing each day since his departure, 
 exacted an interest and return of honour and profit proportionable to 
 his great preparations, and transcending his former achievements. He 
 saw that all the good which he had done in this voyage consisted in the 
 evil he had done to the Spaniards afar off ; whereof he could present 
 but small visible proofs in England. These apprehensions, accompany- 
 ing, if not causing, the disease of the flux, wrought his sudden death. 
 And sickness did not so much untie his clothes, as sorrow did rend at 
 once the robe of his mortality asunder " (p. 130). 
 
 I Hakluyt, 587, 588.
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 351 
 
 The fleet anchored the same day at Puerto Bello ; and it 
 was in sight of that place " from whence he had borrowed so 
 large a reputation by his fortunate successes " that Drake 
 received a sailor's funeral, * his body in a leaden coffin being 
 committed to the deep, with the solemn service of the 
 English Church, rendered more impressive by volleys of 
 musketry, and firing of guns in all the ships of the fleet. 
 He had made his will, appointing Thomas his brother and 
 Captain Jonas Bodenham executors, and leaving all his lands 
 to that brother's son, except one manor, which he bequeathed 
 to Bodenham. t 
 
 The remaining history of the expedition may briefly be 
 told. Baskerville succeeded to the command of the admiral, 
 Bodenham to the Defiance. They found nothing to plunder 
 at Puerto Bello and little to destroy. A council was held, 
 and it was determined to " turn up again for Santa Martha," 
 if by any means they could, otherwise to go directly for 
 England ; their whole number at this time, sick and sound, 
 amounting only to 2000. Baskerville put all his prisoners 
 
 * Instead of an epitaph, these verses were written on him : 
 " Where Drake first found, there last he lost his name, 
 And for a tomb left nothing but his fame. 
 His body's buried under some great wave ; 
 The sea, that was his glory, is his grave : 
 On whom an epitaph none can truly make, 
 For who can say, ' Here lies Sir Francis Drake ' ? " 
 
 " Nor shall I here pass over in silence," Prince adds, " what another in 
 those days added on the same occasion : 
 
 " ' The waves became his winding sheet, the waters were his tomb ; 
 
 But for his fame the ocean sea was not sufficient room '." 
 The notice of his death in the Indicc Chronologico Peruano is curious 
 for its double error, and as showing how important a personage he 
 appeared to the Spaniards : "El ano de 96 murio Francisco Draque el 
 Cosario que dio tanto cuidado en ambos mares. Su muete fue de en- 
 fermedad en Portobelo. Su madre le abia parido en un navio en el mar, 
 y fue harto muriesse en tierra." 
 
 t Hakluyt, 588.
 
 352 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ashore ; an act of commendable humanity on his part, for two of 
 them had been liberated on condition of returning with the 
 ransom agreed on for some of the rest, and nothing had been 
 heard of them. It was an act of consideration also for those 
 of his own people who were in the Spaniards' hands. As he 
 was setting sail, there came one with a flag of truce, to say 
 that, if he would tarry eight or ten days, eighteen of his 
 men, who had been taken prisoners and well used, should be 
 brought to him from Panama. The Spaniards were probably 
 sincere in this ; but the English supposed their offer was 
 meant only as " a delay to keep them there till the king's 
 forces had come about by sea, as they daily expected " ; and, 
 perhaps, they were as desirous of hastening from that deadly 
 region as of escaping a conflict with a far superior force. So 
 they departed ; and not being able to hold their course for 
 Santa Martha, fell in off the Isle of Pinos with twenty sail, 
 which having been refreshed at the Havannah, were then 
 standing for Cape de los Corrientes. This was a third part 
 of the Carthagena fleet, which was sent out with instructions 
 to seek the English with its whole force wheresoever they 
 might be heard of. " As soon as they descried us," says the 
 writer, " they kept close upon a track, thinking to get the 
 wind of us, but we weathered them. And when our admiral 
 with all the rest of our fleet were right in the wind's eye of 
 them, Sir Thomas Baskerville putting out the queen's arms, 
 and all the rest of our fleet their bravery, bare room witli 
 them, and commanded the Defiance not to shoot, but to keep 
 close by to succour him. The vice-admiral of the Spaniards 
 being a greater ship than any of ours, and the best sailer in 
 all their fleet, luffed by and gave the Concord the two first 
 great shot, which she repaid presently again. Thus the fight 
 began : the Bonaventura bare full with her, ringing her such 
 a peal of ordnance and small shot withal, that he left her 
 with torn sides. The admiral, also, made no spare of powder 
 and shot. But the Defiance, in the midst of the Spanish fleet,
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 353 
 
 thundering off her ordnance and small shot, continued the 
 fight to the end ; so that the vice-admiral and three or four 
 of her consorts were forced to tack about to the eastward, 
 leaving their admiral and the rest of the fleet, who came 
 not so hotly into the fight as they did. The fight continued 
 two hours and better. At sunset all the fleet tacked about 
 to the eastward : we continued our course to the westward. 
 That night, some half hour after, their fleet keeping upon 
 their weather quarter, we saw a mighty smoke rise out of 
 one of their great ships which stayed behind, which happened 
 by means of powder, as we think ; and presently after she 
 was all on a light fire, and so was consumed, and all burnt, 
 as we might well perceive." * 
 
 The English were evidently so weak that they did not 
 seek a renewal of the action, and the Spaniards were glad to 
 shun it. Baskerville touched at Flores on his way home, and 
 there landed two Portuguese pilots whom they had taken 
 with them from England. They reached Plymouth early in 
 May ; and as the expedition had utterly disappointed the 
 expectation which had been encouraged of its success, 
 Baskerville seems to have obtained little credit t for the con- 
 cluding action in which he had deserved much. If Hawkins 
 and Drake had returned, their characters, and the signal 
 services which both had formerly performed, were such, that 
 
 * Hakluyt, 588, 589. 
 
 t Camden says : " Baskerville and Troughton, the latter in the vice- 
 admiral, the other in the admiral, did so entertain the Spaniards, that 
 with small loss received and greater given (if a man may believe them), 
 our fleet escaped " (502). Monson's account is not more favourable : 
 " Baskerville," he says, " met and fought with a fleet of Spain ; though 
 not long, by reason of the sickness and weakness of his men. This fleet 
 was sent to take the advantage of ours on its return ; thinking, as indeed 
 it happened, that they should find them both weak and in want : but 
 the swiftness of our ships, in which we had the advantage of the 
 Spaniards, preserved us " (167). Monson here ascribes to the ships what 
 was due to the courage of the sailors. 
 
 23
 
 354 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 they would have retained their place in the queen's judgment, 
 and soon have recovered it in the opinion of the people. 
 There were no two commanders in that age whose names 
 inspired their followers with more confidence, or struck so 
 much fear into their enemies. Drake, indeed, has attained 
 the highest degree of fame : no other military or naval name 
 is so universally known among his countrymen ; and it is the 
 only one of modern history which has acquired in local 
 tradition a sort of mythological celebrity. This probably 
 originated with the Spaniards, who may truly be said to have 
 honoured his memory in the bitterness of their enmity to- 
 wards him. Two days' holidays were kept at Panama for his 
 death and damnation ; and the most popular of the Spanish 
 poets composed an epic poem to revile him. It was likely, 
 according to a Spaniard's belief, that being a heretic Drake 
 should have dealings with the devil ; that notion prevented 
 them from feeling any mortification at his successes, which 
 they imputed to the devil's aid ; and it enhanced their 
 exultation over the failure of his last expedition, which they 
 considered as the triumph of their religion over heresy and 
 magic. The imputation of magic, when it reached his own 
 country, was readily received, not by the Hispaniolised 
 Romanists alone, with whose persuasions political and re- 
 ligious it accorded, but by the common people also, who 
 believed that there was a white as well as a black art magic ; 
 and that Drake, like Shakespeare's Prospero, and Friars 
 Bacon and Bungay, with whom they were better acquainted, 
 employed the spirits under his command only in good works. 
 The fables which have been grafted upon this belief are 
 fanciful enough for the legend of a British or Irish saint. 
 According to the popular traditions of the western counties, 
 it was not by his skill as an engineer, and the munificent ex- 
 penditure of wealth the which he had so daringly obtained, that 
 Drake supplied Plymouth with fresh water ; but by mounting 
 his horse, riding about Dartmoor till he came to a spring
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 355 
 
 sufficiently copious for his design, then wheeling round, 
 pronouncing some magical words, and galloping back into 
 the town, with the stream in full flow, and forming its own 
 channel at the horse's heels. Nor was it with the queen's 
 ships that he defied and baffled the Invincible Armada, but by 
 taking a piece of wood and cutting it in pieces over the side 
 of his own vessel, when every chip as it fell into the sea 
 became a man of war. There is another version of this 
 miracle, that he was playing at kales (or skittles) on the 
 Hoe at Plymouth, when tidings came that the Spanish fleet 
 was sailing into the harbour, and that he heard the news 
 without the slightest emotion, and played out his game. 
 But when that was ended he called for a block of wood and 
 an axe, bared his arms, chopped the block into smaller 
 pieces, and threw them into the sea, when every piece 
 became a fine ship, and presently formed a fleet by which 
 the enemy were attacked and destroyed. 
 
 To sail round the world was in the popular belief an ad- 
 venture of the most formidable kind, and not to be per- 
 formed by plain sailing, but by reaching the end of this 
 round flat earth, and there shooting the gulf, which is the 
 only passage from one side of the world to the other : Drake 
 shot the gulf, one day : when on the other side, he asked his 
 men if any of them knew where they were, a boy made 
 answer that he knew, and that they were then just under 
 London Bridge : upon which, stung by jealousy, Drake ex- 
 claimed, " Hast thou too a devil ? If I let thee live there 
 will then be one greater man than myself" ; and with that 
 he threw him overboard. When Sir Francis left home to 
 embark for this long voyage, upon taking leave of his wife, 
 he told her that if he did not return wuthin a certain number 
 of years she might conclude him to be dead, and consider 
 herself at liberty to take a second husband. One version 
 fixes the term at seven years, another at ten. During those 
 years, Madam Drake, though assailed by many suitors,
 
 356 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 remained true as Penelope to her absent lord ; but after the 
 term had expired, she accepted an offer. One of Drake's 
 ministering spirits, whose charge it was to convey to him any 
 intelligence in which he was nearly concerned, brought him 
 the tidings. Immediately he loaded one of his great guns, 
 and fired it right down through the globe on one side, and 
 up on the other, with so true an aim, that it made its way 
 into the church, between the two parties most concerned, 
 just as the marriage service was beginning. " It comes from 
 Drake ! " cried the w r ife to the now unbrided bridegroom ; 
 " he is alive ! and there must be neither troth nor ring 
 between thee and me." This is the Devonshire tradition of 
 the " old warrior," as they call him, and his lady. The story 
 in Somersetshire is, that as they were on the way to church 
 a huge round stone fell from the sky, close by the intended 
 bride, and alighted upon the train of her gown. She said, 
 " It came from my husband," and immediately turned back ; 
 and it was not long before he returned, and, imitating Guy, 
 Earl of Warwick, asked alms of her at his own door in 
 disguise : a smile betrayed that he was telling a feigned 
 tale, and the faithful wife recognised him, and fell upon his 
 neck. It is said that the stone still remains upon the estate 
 where it fell ; that it is there used as a weight upon the 
 harrow ; and is so well contented with this usage, uncere- 
 monious as for so extraordinary a relic it may be deemed, 
 that if it be removed from the estate, it always returns 
 thither, no person knows how. 
 
 This is the latest instance in which such fictions have been 
 invented unconnected with Romish fraud or sectarian fana- 
 ticism ; and it shows how strongly the romantic character of 
 Drake's exploits, and the extraordinary celebrity which he 
 obtained, impressed the imagination of his countrymen. He 
 left a widow, Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of Sir 
 George Sydenham, of Combe-Sydenham, in the county of 
 Devon : she afterwards married William Courtenay, Esq., of
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE 357 
 
 Powderham Castle. He had no children, and of his eleven 
 brothers nine also died childless. The property which he 
 left was much diminished by a prosecution which the crown 
 instituted against his executor Thomas Drake, for what is 
 said to have been " a pretended debt " : it would have been 
 becoming in the government to have relinquished even a just 
 claim. Drake, however, though a bountiful man, possessed 
 the virtue of economy ; and the estate which remained 
 placed his nephew in such a station that he was created a 
 baronet by James I., and represented the county of Devon 
 in the beginning of the ensuing reign. Sir Francis himself 
 was twice returned to Parliament for Bossiney alias Tintagal 
 in Cornwall, afterwards for Plymouth. He was of low stature, 
 but well set ; his chest broad, his hair a fine brown, his beard 
 full and comely, his head remarkably round, his eyes large 
 and clear, his complexion fair, and the expression of his fresh 
 and cheerful countenance open and engaging. His temper 
 was quick, and he is said to have been " hard to be recon- 
 ciled " ; but the same strength of feeling made him constant 
 in friendship. The gift of eloquence he possessed in a re- 
 markable degree, and was fond of displaying it. One who 
 served under him says that he was ambitious to a fault ; and 
 the vanity which usually accompanies that sin laid him open 
 to flattery : but he encouraged and preferred merit wherever 
 he found it ; and his affable manners gave him a sure hold 
 upon the affections of his men, while they had the most 
 perfect confidence in his unrivalled skill as a seaman, and 
 his never-failing promptitude in all cases of emergency. At 
 all times he was a willing hearer of every man's opinion ; but 
 for the most part as a truly great man for the most part 
 must be a follower of his own. 
 
 Hawkins led the way to the West Indies, Drake to the 
 South Sea ; opening thereby a course for adventurers who at 
 length rivalled the vikingar in atrocity. The effect upon the 
 Spanish colonies was most injurious ; for rising and flourish-
 
 358 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ing settlements were some subverted, and others removed 
 into the interior, to be beyond the reach of a descent : hereby 
 much growing civilisation was destroyed, and the people 
 were withdrawn from the influence of maritime commerce, 
 which is of all things most conducive to its progress. The 
 expeditions undertaken in Elizabeth's reign against the 
 Spaniards are said to have produced no advantage to England 
 in any degree commensurate with the cost of money and 
 expense of life with which they were performed, though 
 great evil was inflicted upon the enemy. If the advantage 
 were to be calculated by the rule of profit and loss, and 
 consisted only in tangible gain, this would be undeniable ; 
 but the effects produced upon the navy and upon the national 
 character must be taken into the account. In these expedi- 
 tions it was that those seamen were trained by whose skill, so 
 far as human skill was rendered instrumental in our deliver- 
 ance, the Spanish armada was averted from our shores ; and a 
 succession of such seamen has from that time been unin- 
 terruptedly maintained from generation to generation.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 
 
 THE most successful of all those adventurers who followed 
 in Drake's track was Thomas Cavendish, who was born 
 to a large possession and a fine mansion at Trimley St. 
 Martin, in the county of Suffolk. Having in a few years 
 almost consumed his whole estate in extravagance, and 
 following the court, he " thought to recover himself by a 
 voyage into the South Sea, at a time when the war having 
 openly begun it was lawful to make any spoil upon the 
 Spaniards ". This resolution was taken while he had yet 
 means enough remaining from the waste of his fortune to 
 build from the stocks one ship of 120 and one of 60 tons, to 
 purchase a barque of 40, fit them out, and victual them for 
 two years ; and with 123 persons of all sorts in this little 
 squadron he sailed from Plymouth on the 21st of July, 1586. 
 The names of his vessels were the Desire, the Content and 
 the Hugh Gallant. 
 
 They made the Canaries on the 5th of August, and on the 
 26th anchored at Sierra Leone. The next day two negroes 
 came aboard, but not without first requiring that a hostage 
 should be sent ashore for their own security ; for European 
 villainy had taught them the necessity of such a precaution. 
 They informed him by signs that there was a Portuguese ship 
 farther up the river ; and the Hugh Gallant was sent after 
 her ; but, after going three or four leagues up, returned for 
 want of a pilot, " for the harbour runneth up three or four 
 leagues more, and is of a marvellous breadth, and very 
 dangerous ". On the morrow some of the men went ashore,
 
 360 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and played and danced all the forenoon with the negroes, 
 with a view to learning some good news of the ship on which 
 they had fixed their hopes. They spied a Portuguese among 
 the bushes, whom they seized and carried aboard : the 
 account of the navigation which they obtained from him 
 convinced them that it was prudent to leave the ship un- 
 molested ; " Whereupon/' says Master Francis Pretty, of Ely 
 in Suffolk, a gentleman employed in the voyage, " we went 
 not to seek her, because we knew he told us the truth ; for 
 we bound him, and made him fast, and so examined him ". 
 Whether this means that they tortured him is uncertain, 
 and is of little consequence to the character of this com- 
 mander. Cavendish landed the next day with some seventy 
 men, and for no assigned provocation attacked the negro 
 town, burnt some of the houses, and took what little spoil 
 was worth taking. In consequence, when his people were 
 watering and washing " very quietly afterwards, they were 
 suddenly attacked, many of them hurt, and one mortally 
 wounded ". * 
 
 They now sailed for Brazil, went in between the Island of 
 St. Sebastians and the shore, landed, and remained there 
 from the 1st of November to the 23rd, building a pinnace, 
 repairing their casks and completing their water. While 
 they were thus employed, a canoe, bound from Rio de 
 Janeiro to San Vicente, fell into their hands. One Portu- 
 guese was on board, with six naked Indian slaves. The Portu- 
 guese knew the master of the admiral, who had been at St. 
 Vicente in the Minion of London five years before. There 
 was an Englishman residing then at the port, probably the 
 first of his nation who settled in Brazil : by his means 
 Cavendish thought to obtain fresh provisions, little caring to 
 what after account his countryman might be called for 
 communicating with him ; so pretending to the Portuguese 
 
 * Hakluyt, iii., 803, 804. Burney, iv., 84, 85.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 361 
 
 that they were merchants, and would gladly traffic with him, 
 he set him at liberty, on condition of his carrying a letter 
 to Whital, and returning with an answer, or sending one in 
 ten days. The distance was about twenty leagues. But 
 the merchant seems to have been too wary to hold any inter- 
 course Avith so suspicious a squadron : nothing more was 
 heard of the messenger ; and Cavendish, having despatched 
 his business, sailed toward the south, and on the 17th of 
 December anchored in a harbour, which he named Port 
 Desire, the discovery of which is the only one of any im- 
 portance that can be attributed to him. * This being a good 
 place for laying the ships aground, they " graved and 
 trimmed them " there, finding, meantime, " marvellous good 
 meat " in the young seals, which, " being roasted or boiled, 
 were hardly to be known from lamb or mutton " ; and in 
 the penguins, which burrowed in the ground like rabbits, t 
 
 The greatest inconvenience in this port was the want of 
 fresh water. The best they could obtain was by digging, 
 and that proved brackish ; and some of their people, while 
 engaged at this well, were attacked with bows and arrows by 
 about fifty Indians. Two of them were severely wounded, 
 and the savages were pursued in vain by Cavendish himself 
 and some twenty men. These Indians had old wrongs to 
 avenge, and nothing is more tenaciously remembered in that 
 stage of society. On the 6th of January Cavendish arrived 
 at the entrance of the straits, and in the evening anchored 
 near what is called the first Angostura, or Strait of the Straits. 
 During the night lights were observed on the north shore, 
 apparently intended as signals to the ships, and lights 
 accordingly were shown as answers. In the morning Caven- 
 xlish went himself in a boat to that side of the strait, and 
 ^ three men were seen on the shore waving a white flag. 
 Upon this the boat stood in : it was asked, in Spanish, what 
 
 * Burney, 93. f Hakluyt, 804, 805. Burney, 66.
 
 362 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ships they were ? and answered in the same language that 
 they were English, bound for Peru. Bitterly, no doubt, dis- 
 appointed by this reply, the Spaniards were silent, till the 
 English spokesman told them that if they chose to embark, 
 the general would carry them to Peru. To this the reply 
 was, that they would not trust themselves to the English 
 for fear they should be thrown into the sea. The interpreter 
 made answer they might very well trust themselves, for the 
 English were better Christians than they. With this the 
 boat put off, leaving them to abide by their own determina- 
 tion. But they presently considered that it were better at 
 any risk to embark than remain where they must inevitably 
 perish ; and they called after the boat, which put back, took 
 one of them aboard, Tome' Hernandez by name, and again 
 pushed off, not receiving the other two. Hernandez en- 
 treated that they also might be taken, in reply to which 
 Cavendish inquired how many Spaniards there were in those 
 parts ? The answer was, twelve more men and three women. 
 Cavendish then bade him tell his companions to go to them, 
 and bid them all come and embark, and he would wait for 
 them. With this joyful message the poor men went their 
 way. But when Cavendish got on board again, the wind was 
 fair for advancing up the straits : he ordered the anchors to 
 be taken up ; and not thinking it proper to lose, even for 
 two or three hours, a fair wind for the sake of humanity, 
 sailed away. * 
 
 These men belonged to an expedition, which, in conse- 
 quence of Drake's appearance in the South Sea, had been 
 sent from Spain to fortify the strait, and form settlements 
 there. The viceroy of Peru, D. Francisco de Toledo, appre- 
 hending, from the daring conduct of such an enemy, and 
 that enemy an English heretic, that nothing less than the 
 Spanish dominion in those seas, with the property, bodies, 
 
 * Viage al Eitreche, etc., Declaration de Tome" Hernandez, xvi.-xviii. 
 Burney, ii., 67-70. Hakluyt, 806.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 863 
 
 and souls of the inhabitants, was at stake, * had with great 
 personal exertions and extraordinary speed despatched Captain 
 Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, with two ships, to survey the 
 strait, and take especial notice of all places therein which 
 appeared convenient for a settlement, or to be fortified for 
 guarding the passage. When this service was performed he 
 was to send one ship back with advices to Lima, and proceed 
 in the other to Spain to lay the business before the king 
 and the supreme council of the Indies. Part of his instructions 
 was, that he was to take and carry away some of the natives, 
 in order to acquire by that means some knowledge of their 
 language. Sarmiento, though abandoned by his consort, 
 completed with great diligence and ability the service on 
 which he was sent. He marked two points near the eastern 
 entrance, in the narrowest part, as well adapted for defence ; 
 the breadth at the westernmost being a geographical league 
 and a half, at the easternmost less than half a league ; and 
 he made it known to all men by a declaration, a copy of 
 which was buried there in an earthen jar at the foot of a 
 cross, which he erected pursuant to the usual form of taking 
 possession, that " having, in conformity to the viceroy's in- 
 structions, taken our most serene Lady, the Virgin St. Mary, 
 for the advocate and patroness of this voyage, for that reason, 
 and because of the wonders which, through her intercession, 
 had been wrought in its behalf, he had given to the strait 
 formerly called after Magellan the name of Estrecho de la 
 Madre de Dios, the Strait of the Mother of God ". t 
 
 When Sarmiento arrived in Spain he proposed that both 
 shores of the eastern Angostura should be fortified, whereby, 
 in his opinion, the passage would be completely defended ; 
 and he represented that there were places within the strait 
 convenient for the settlement of colonies. The Duke of 
 Alva opposed the project, though his own son had originated 
 it : " if a ship," he said, " only carried out anchors and cables 
 
 * Viage, etc., 4. t Ibid., 239. Burney, ii., 39.
 
 364 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 enough for her security against the storms in that part of the 
 world, she would go well laden ". But it was believed by the 
 Spanish government at that time that the English were 
 making preparations for establishing themselves in the strait, 
 and so taking possession of the passage ; and under this belief 
 an armament of twenty-three ships and 3500 men was 
 equipped at Seville for South America. Diego Flores de 
 Valdes was appointed commander ; and with the whole fleet, 
 which was formed into three divisions, each for a separate 
 service, he was first to sail for the straits, and there assist 
 Sarmiento in planting the projected colony, for the use of 
 which one division was allotted. That done, another division 
 was to proceed to Chili, and the third put back to Brazil. 
 This expedition sailed at the autumnal equinox, against the 
 pilots' remonstrance, but by peremptory orders from the 
 government ; and on the eighth day after leaving Seville, 
 while yet near their own coast, five of the ships went down in 
 a violent storm from the S.W., and 800 men perished. The 
 remainder put back to Cadiz in distress, two of them being 
 totally disabled for service.* 
 
 It was December before the fleet, now reduced in number 
 to sixteen, was again ready for sea ; and as the season was 
 thought too far advanced for their proceeding directly to the 
 strait, they were ordered to winter at Rio de Janeiro. Sar- 
 miento and other officers objected against this port, because 
 the ships, while lying there, would be liable to much injury 
 from the worm. This objection, like that of the pilots at 
 their first outset, was disregarded. The fleet sailed, stopped 
 a month at the Cape de Verds, and took from thence a disease 
 which carried off 150 men during the passage to Brazil, where 
 they arrived toward the end of March : as many more died 
 while they remained at the Rio, and many of the intended 
 settlers (happily for themselves) deserted, and remained in a 
 
 * Burney, 45, 46.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 365 
 
 good country. Here the frames of a brigantine and launch, 
 intended for service in the strait, were set up, and those of 
 two wooden houses were made for immediate use on their 
 arrival there. But the evil which Sarmiento anticipated took 
 place ; the ships were attacked by the worm ; several became 
 leaky ; one was abandoned as unserviceable ; and when, at 
 the end of November, the fleet proceeded on its destination, 
 the brigantine and launch were lost in the first boisterous 
 weather ; and one of the largest ships, of 500 tons, with most 
 of the stores for the new colony on board, and 350 persons, 
 twenty of whom had embarked as female settlers, sprung so 
 fatal a leak, that before any assistance could reach her she 
 went down. Disheartened by this last calamity, Valdes put 
 back toward Brazil, and, before he reached the island of St. 
 Catalina, another of his ships was wrecked on the coast. 
 After some dispute between the commanders it was at length 
 agreed to make another attempt ; but three of the largest 
 ships were now in too shattered a state for such a service, 
 and they were left here with 300 of the sick and least 
 serviceable men, and with orders to return to the Rio.* 
 
 Once more this unfortunate fleet set forth for the strait, 
 and as they were leaving the island another ship got on a 
 bank, and was wrecked. Sarmiento' s vessel became leaky 
 and unfit for proceeding : it was again taken into considera- 
 tion what should be done, and, against the opinion of Valdes, 
 the determination was to persevere ; but it was agreed that 
 the part of the force which was intended for Chili, and which 
 was now contained in three vessels, should make for the 
 Plata, and from thence proceed to their destination by land. 
 The remainder of the fleet, now reduced to five, arrived on 
 the 7th of February in the mouth of the strait, and cast 
 anchor in the first Angostura. During the night they were 
 forced out by a gale of wind ; and after beating about till the 
 
 * Burney, 47, 48.
 
 366 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 end of March, without being able to regain an entrance, 
 Valdes returned in despair to Rio de Janeiro. There they 
 found four ships from Spain, laden with stores for their use, 
 and bringing letters which exhorted the chiefs to persever- 
 ance. Valdes, however, quitted the command, and sailed 
 for Europe, leaving Diego de la Ribera to act in his stead. 
 On the 2nd of December the expedition again sailed, con- 
 sisting now of five ships and 530 souls. They arrived safely 
 in the strait on the 1st of February, passed the first Angostura, 
 and anchored between it and the second ; but the ebb tide 
 forced them from their anchors, and carried them back into 
 the open sea. They anchored again close to Cape de las 
 Virgenes, and because Ribera would risk no farther loss of 
 time, there they began to disembark. Three hundred 
 persons had landed, when, on the 5th, a gale of wind com- 
 pelled the ships to quit the anchorage ; on regaining it one 
 of them ran aground within the entrance, and was wrecked : 
 the people, artillery, and provisions were saved, but the 
 provisions damaged. Before all the stores could be landed, 
 Ribera, with three ships, left the strait during the night, and 
 returned to it no more. He has been reproached as if he 
 had wilfully abandoned the settlers, and sailed for Spain ; 
 but it is more likely that he was forced from his anchors, and 
 that his people, finding the opportunity favourable, insisted 
 upon bending their course for Spain. * 
 
 Sarmiento was now left with one ship, 400 men, thirty 
 women, and eight months' provisions. He laid the founda- 
 tion of a town near the entrance, on the north side, and 
 named it the City of the Name of Jesus, la Ciudad del Nombre 
 de Jesus. Leaving Andres de Viedma in the command there 
 with 150 men, he sent the ship to Point St. Anna, which is 
 on the same shore, about twenty-five Spanish leagues with- 
 in the first Angostura, while he, with 100 men, proceeded 
 
 * Burney, 50-52.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 367 
 
 thither by land. During a difficult and inauspicious march 
 skirmishes took place with the Indians, whom he should have 
 sought by every possible means to conciliate : several of his 
 own people were wounded, and one of their chiefs killed. 
 Near the point he founded his second town, which he called 
 San Felipe : the situation was well chosen. There was a port 
 with good anchorage, from whence a boat could reach the 
 first Angostura in one tide : there was a fresh-water river, 
 the country was well wooded, the port abounded with fish, 
 and the shore with birds ; but the snow which, during the 
 month of April, fell for fifteen days, without intermission, 
 made the unfortunate Spaniards apprehend what sort of 
 winter they might expect in this inhospitable region. This, 
 however, was to be their abiding place : they surrounded it 
 with a strong palisade, and at each of its three entrances, one 
 towards the port, the other towards the interior, planted two 
 pieces of artillery. Sarmiento, nevertheless, found it neces- 
 sary for his own security to sleep every night on board, 
 lest the dissatisfaction which was felt toward him as the 
 promoter of so disastrous an undertaking should break into 
 open mutiny, and end in his destruction. In fact, he was 
 secretly informed that a soldier, by name Juan Rodriguez, 
 and Alonso Sanchez, a secular priest, had formed a conspiracy 
 for murdering him, seizing the ship, and escaping in it to 
 Brazil. Of this information he made such good use, that 
 he got Rodriguez, the priest, and three others of the ring- 
 leaders, on board, and charged them with their guilt. They 
 confessed it : the four lay culprits were taken ashore, labelled 
 as traitors on their shoulders ; they were beheaded back- 
 wards for the greater infamy, and their heads exposed upon 
 poles. The priest was kept prisoner on board. This execu- 
 tion is said to have made the settlers quiet and peaceable ; 
 and Sarmiento, with thirty men, left them for Nombre de 
 Jesus on the 25th of May : his intention was to give direc- 
 tions for fortifying the Angosturas, to convey more settlers
 
 36*8 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 to San Felipe, and then sail for Chili in order to obtain 
 supplies. * 
 
 He reached Nombre de Jesus, was driven from his anchor- 
 age, and, after contending twenty days against the weather, 
 saw that his only course must be to steer for Brazil, and there 
 obtain provisions, which it was now impossible for him to seek 
 in Chili. It was midwinter in those regions when he arrived 
 at Rio de Janeiro. There he procured a barque, loaded her 
 with meal, and, leaving directions for her to sail at the proper 
 season, proceeded along the coast in search of further supplies : 
 his ship was driven ashore and wrecked, many of the crew 
 perished, and he himself with difficulty escaped on a plank. 
 He procured another barque, freighted her with necessaries 
 for his colony, and sailed in her from the Rio : but when he 
 had got as far as 39 S. a storm compelled him to throw every- 
 thing overboard, and return to the port from whence he had 
 departed more than seven weeks before ; and where he found 
 that the vessel which he had first despatched had put back 
 without effecting her passage. Hitherto Sarmiento, when he 
 reflected upon his multiplied disappointments, could call none 
 but the elements unkind ; but the Portuguese governors were 
 now weary of his solicitations : they had learned from Spain 
 that both he and his undertaking were out of favour there ; 
 Ribera having reported on his return that the strait was more 
 than a league across in its narrowest part, and that if a ship 
 had wind and current in her favour no ordnance on shore 
 could stop her. Sarmiento, therefore, as a last resource, 
 sailed for Spain, there to justify his own statements, and, it 
 may be hoped, to urge upon the government the duty of 
 taking some measures for the relief of the miserable settlers. 
 After his departure, the governor of the Rio sent one ship 
 with supplies for them ; but this vessel also was driven back, 
 and no farther effort was made for their relief, either by the 
 
 * Burney, 52-54. Tome Hernandez, viii.-xiii.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 369 
 
 colonial governors or Spain : those in America, upon whom 
 any responsibility might be supposed to lie, transferred it in 
 their own minds each from himself to another ; and all, no 
 doubt, rested in the persuasion, that the Spanish government, 
 having planted the colony, would take all necessary measures 
 for preserving it. But in Spain ample provision having been 
 made in fitting out the expedition, the possibility of so many 
 losses, and of such repeated failures, had evidently never 
 been considered as it ought. If Sarmiento's ill fortune had 
 not still pursued him, his personal representations might, 
 probably, have produced some effect in Spain. But he was 
 captured by some English cruisers off the Azores, and carried 
 to England ; and though Elizabeth, it is said, gave him his 
 liberty, after an interview in which she conversed with him in 
 Latin, provided him with a passport, and presented him with 
 1000 crowns, various misadventures retarded for some years 
 his retum to his own country. And from the time he left 
 the straits no vessel reached them till Cavendish appeared 
 there.* 
 
 There are few tales in colonial history more calamitous 
 than the fate of this forlorn and forsaken colony. Sarmiento 
 had left them at the end of May. In August (which cor- 
 responds to our February, and is, therefore, one of the 
 severest months in that miserable climate), the settlers at 
 Nombre de Jesus thought it necessary to remove to San 
 Felipe. Thither, accordingly, they went by land ; but 
 Viedma, who commanded there, having no provisions for 
 such increased numbers, sent 200 men back under Juan 
 Iniguez, to support themselves as they could by picking up 
 shell fish, and in other ways, and to be on the look-out for a 
 ship with succours. Spring and summer passed, and no 
 relief : winter was approaching ; and lest those at San Felipe, 
 who had thus long endured, should irremediably perish of 
 
 * Burney, 54,-56. Hernandez, xiv.-xviii. 
 24
 
 370 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 hunger, as they must if they remained there, Viedma built 
 two boats, embarked in them with all the survivors there, 
 then reduced to fifty men, five women, a friar, Sarmiento's 
 nephew, Juan Suarez, and Viedma himself. They had 
 proceeded some six leagues toward Nombre de Jesus, when 
 one of the boats got upon a reef and was lost. The people 
 were saved ; but in so hopeless a situation that it was deemed 
 best for Viedma to return in the other boat with the friar 
 and twenty men, and for the remainder to remain where 
 they got to shore, hut themselves there, and find provisions 
 as they could. The seals and penguins, of which our navi- 
 gators made such use, were inaccessible to them ; and they 
 divided themselves into small parties of three or four, for 
 the better chance of finding wherewith to prolong a wretched 
 existence. When summer came, and Viedma collected the 
 survivors, only fifteen men and three women were left ; and 
 with these Viedma was endeavouring to reach Nombre de 
 Jesus when the English ships appeared. They had passed 
 on their way many dead bodies of their countrymen. * 
 
 The utter want of compassion with which Cavendish left 
 these poor wretches to their fate, after he had promised to 
 take them on board, excited no animadversion in his own 
 times. The single Spaniard, who was fortunate enough to 
 escape with him, relates it without any expression of feeling : 
 the weather was fair for sailing, he says, and he did not 
 choose to wait. Whether there were any survivors at that 
 time at Nombre de Jesus is not known : probably not ; for it 
 may well be supposed that they also would have made signals 
 to the ships. An English vessel which entered the strait in 
 the year following took one Spaniard on board near San 
 Felipe : he had supported himself with his gun, having long 
 lived in a house by himself, being the last survivor of these 
 poor colonists ; and, except Hernandez, the only one who 
 
 * Burney, 71-73.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 371 
 
 escaped from the deplorable situation in which their govern- 
 ment had first placed and then abandoned them. All that 
 is known of the others, whom Cavendish might have saved, 
 is that their intention was to travel towards the Plata, and 
 that they must have perished on the way. 
 
 At San Felipe, which had been founded for the sole pur- 
 pose of securing the passage of the strait against all foreigners, 
 the English ships " watered and wooded well and quietly, 
 and remained there five days thus employed ". The journal- 
 ist of Cavendish's voyage says, " they had contrived their 
 city very well, and seated it in the best place of the straits 
 for wood and water ". By his account there were four forts, 
 each having one cast piece : the pieces had been dismantled 
 and buried, but the English dug for them, and " had them 
 all". "They had built their churches apart," he says, "and 
 they had laws very severe," of which the gibbet bore cer- 
 tain proof. But all attempts to raise provision having failed, 
 their stores being consumed, and game rendered so scarce 
 and wild that it was hopeless for men, in their weak state, to 
 go in search of it, they had "died like dogs in their houses, 
 and in their clothes ". Thus the survivors, when they took 
 their miserable departure, had left them ; and thus they were 
 found by Cavendish, who named the place, in memorial of 
 their fate, Port Famine. That name it still retains in English 
 charts ; the Spaniards themselves have adopted it, and Puerto 
 de Hambre marks in their maps the place where the Ciudad 
 de San Felipe had been founded ! 
 
 Cavendish buried one of his men on the northern shore. 
 This was the only loss that he sustained in the passage ; but 
 he acted inconsiderately toward the natives, believing them 
 to be treacherous cannibals, on the report of Hernandez, and 
 seeing that they had fastened knives and pieces of swords to 
 their spears.* Instead of endeavouring to make them under- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 807. Burney, 78.
 
 372 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 stand that the English were not their enemies, like the 
 Spaniards, he ordered his men to fire upon them after some 
 friendly intercourse had previously taken place ; and in this 
 unprovoked attack many were killed. He entered the South 
 Sea on the 24th of February, with a favourable wind ; and in 
 the middle of March a party landed on the Isle of Mocha, 
 near the coast of Chili, "where the Indians attacked them 
 with bows and arrows, but were marvellous wary of the 
 calivers ". The English supposed these to be Araucans, 
 whose heroic efforts in defence of their country the Spaniards 
 themselves had rendered famous ; recording at the same time 
 the magnanimity of their enemies and their own atrocious 
 cruelty. Cavendish landed next on the Island of St. Maria 
 with seventy men, where they were mistaken for Spaniards, 
 submissively received, and "plentifully supplied with wheat 
 and barley ready threshed, as fair, as clean, and every way as 
 good as any in England ; and with potato roots very good to 
 eat," all stored in vessels, and lodged in storehouses, as tribute 
 for the Spaniards, who had erected a church there. In addi- 
 tion to these welcome supplies, the Indians brought them 
 hogs, fowls, maize, and dried dog fish ; and Cavendish, in 
 return, entertained some of the chief people on board, and 
 made them merry with wine.* 
 
 Missing Valparaiso, where he meant to have stopped, 
 Cavendish anchored about seven leagues N. of that port, in 
 Puerto de Quintero. A herdsman who was sleeping on the 
 brow of the hill at this time awoke ; and seeing three ships, 
 was observed to catch a horse that was grazing near, and to 
 ride away as fast as he could. The general landed with 
 thirty men: before he had been an hour on shore, three 
 horsemen came galloping toward them sword in hand ; but 
 stopped short at respectful distance. He sent two of his 
 people with Hernandez toward them : they made signs that 
 
 * Hakluyt, 808.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 373 
 
 only one should approach, and without arms. Hernandez 
 went ; and after much talk returned, telling Cavendish that 
 he had parleyed with them concerning provisions, and had 
 been promised as much as might be wanted. He was sent 
 back to complete the negotiation, and a man with him ; but, 
 as before, the Spaniards made signs that they would not hold 
 parley with two persons ; Hemandez was again trusted ; and 
 being at some distance from the English, after a few words 
 he leaped up behind one of his countrymen, and rode off; 
 " for all his deep and damnable oaths which he had made," 
 says Pretty, " continually to our general and all his company, 
 never to forsake him, but to die on his side before he would 
 be false. Our general, seeing how he was dealt withal, 
 filled water all that day with good watch, and carried it 
 aboard ; and night being come, he determined next day to 
 send into the country to find their town, and take the spoil 
 of it, and fire it if it could be found." In this he failed; the 
 party which was ordered upon the service discovering nothing 
 but great store of cattle which were " wonderful wild, and of 
 horse which were unhandled," and of dogs as wild as the 
 cattle, on which they fed. They returned after a whole day's 
 march, without loss, though without success in their search 
 for the town. But on the morrow, as they were carelessly 
 watering about a quarter of a mile from the shore, a strong 
 party of horsemen, who had been too cautious to attack them 
 when they were on their guard the preceding day, surprised 
 them, and twelve * of the English were cut off ; of these 
 
 * Pretty states the loss at twelve, and gives the names of all and of 
 the ships to which they belonged. He says the prisoners were rescued, 
 and that some twenty-four Spaniards were killed in the skirmish, which 
 continued an hour. Hernandez says no Spaniard was hurt, twelve 
 English were killed, and nine taken ; and he mentions the execution of 
 six of these ; the others, perhaps, called themselves Roman Catholics. 
 Admiral Burney thinks this may have been an act of vengeance for the 
 Spaniards in the strait, whom Cavendish, when he might so easily have
 
 374 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 three appear to have been slain, and six of the prisoners 
 were hanged at Santiago. 
 
 After this loss Cavendish remained in the road four days, 
 and watered in despite of the Spaniards, with good watch and 
 ward. On the 23rd he took a small barque coming out from 
 Arica, which he kept, and named the George. The crew 
 took to their boat, and were pursued by the admiral's pinnace 
 into Arica road : they got ashore, and the pinnace laid aboard 
 a great ship of 100 tons, in which, however, neither men nor 
 goods were found. The admiral and the Hugh Gallant fol- 
 lowed into the road, but the Content was out of sight, other- 
 wise Cavendish " would resolutely have landed to take the 
 town, whatsoever had come of it ". The Content had been 
 more pleasantly employed than in attacking a town which 
 was likely to be well defended : she had found at a place 
 where some Spaniards had landed a whole ship's lading of 
 Spanish wine, and tarried to take on board as much as she 
 could conveniently carry, then in the course of the same day 
 joined the squadron. By that time Cavendish perceived that 
 Arica was well prepared for defence, found reason for believ- 
 ing that the treasure had been carried away and secured 
 upon the alarm of his approach, and saw that there was no 
 landing without the loss of many men ; " wherefore he gave 
 over that enterprise ". However, he fetched out another 
 barque, in spite of their forts, and then sent a flag of truce to 
 ask if they would redeem their ship. He did this in hope 
 that he might recover some of his men who had been 
 captured, otherwise he would have made no offer of parley ; 
 but their answer was that they had received special orders 
 neither to buy any ship nor ransom any man on pain of 
 
 saved them, had left to perish there. There could be no plea for putting 
 them to death as pirates, because Spain and England were then at open 
 war. But the law of nations was as little regarded by the one people 
 as the other, when there happened to be both inclination and opportunity 
 to violate it.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 375 
 
 death : upon this he burnt the ship, sunk the barque, and so 
 departed, having been three days in the road. * 
 
 On the 27th they took a small barque sent from a place 
 near Quintero, where Cavendish had lost his men, with de- 
 spatches concerning him to Lima. There were on board three 
 Spaniards, an old Fleming, and one George a Greek, who was 
 " a reasonable pilot for all the coast of Chili ". In obedience 
 to their orders, and to an oath which had been administered 
 to them by some friars before they set sail, these men, as 
 soon as they saw themselves in danger, threw the despatches 
 overboard ; but Cavendish " wrought so with them/' that 
 they confessed their errand : " But he was fain," says his 
 journalist, "to cause them to be tormented with their thumbs 
 in a winch, and to continue them at several times with 
 extreme pain. Also he made the old Fleming believe that 
 he would hang him ; and the rope being about his neck, he 
 was pulled up a little from the hatches ; and yet he would 
 not confess, choosing rather to die than be perjured. In the 
 end it was confessed by one of the Spaniards ; whereupon 
 we burnt the barque, and carried the men with us." This 
 cruelty was a work of supererogation, for which there was 
 no such pretext as in those days was thought to justify such 
 actions. After plundering two little settlements, the ships 
 were all separated for awhile, during which time the Hugh 
 Gallant, with sixteen hands, captured, after half an hour's 
 fight, a ship of 300 tons with a crew of twenty-four men. 
 They took from her her foresails, and left her, " seven 
 leagues from land, very leaky and ready to sink " : it is to 
 be hoped the men were taken out. On the 17th of May the 
 fleet was again collected ; two other prizes meantime had 
 been captured, of which one " would have been worth 
 20,000/. in England, or in any other place of Christendom, 
 where it might have been sold ". They took out as much as 
 
 * Hakluyt, 809, 810. Burney, 82.
 
 376 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 they could stow, and burnt the rest with the ship. The men 
 and women, " who were not killed," were set on shore. * 
 
 The next enterprise was at Paita. Cavendish anchored 
 in the road, landed with sixty or seventy men, and drove the 
 inhabitants out of the town, " which was very well built, and 
 marvellous clean kept in every street, with a town-house in 
 the midst, and to the number of 200 houses at the least ". 
 This flourishing place he burnt to the ground, he and his 
 people deriving no other advantage from this exploit than 
 twenty-five pounds' weight of silver among them, and the 
 satisfaction of reflecting upon the mischief they had clone. 
 Thence they went to the Island of Puna, where most of the 
 cables used in the South Sea were made : there they sunk a 
 ship " with all her furniture/' which was lying ready to be 
 hauled ashore, being in " a special good place for that pur- 
 pose ". It was learnt from an Indian, whom they took at 
 sea, that the lord of the island, with most of the inhabitants, 
 had fled to the mainland, seeing his fleet, when (luckily for 
 them) it was becalmed ; and that they had taken with them 
 treasure to the amount of 100,000 crowns. This lord was an 
 Indian cacique, who, " by reason of his pleasant habitation, 
 and of his great wealth, had got a beautiful Spanish woman 
 for his wife ". His " sumptuous house," which stood by the 
 water-side, was " marvellous well contrived, with very many 
 singular good rooms and chambers ; and out of every chamber 
 was framed a gallery, with a stately prospect to the sea on 
 one side, and into the island on the other, with a marvellous 
 great hall below, and a very great storehouse at one end, 
 filled with jars of pitch, and bass for making cables. On one 
 side was a fair garden, in which were fig trees, that bore 
 continually, pompions, melons, cucumbers, radishes, rosemary, 
 and thyme, with many other herbs and fruits. There was a 
 well in this garden, and a cotton plantation round it. On 
 
 * Hakluyt, 810, 8n. Burney, 83.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 377 
 
 the other side was an orchard, stocked with oranges, sweet 
 and sour, lemons, limes, and pomegranates. Hard by was a 
 very large and great church, with five bells. There were at 
 least 200 houses in the town, near the palace, and as many in 
 one or two towns more upon the island, which is almost as 
 big as the Isle of Wight/' * 
 
 " This great cacique," says Pretty, " doth make all the 
 Indians upon the island to work and to drudge for him." 
 But if the description be not overcharged, he had brought 
 his island to a degree of civilisation which had not then been 
 exceeded in any part of Spanish America, if it has since. 
 " The Spanish woman, his wife," he continues, " is honoured 
 as a queen, and never goeth on the ground upon her feet ; 
 holding it too base a thing for her. But when her pleasure 
 is to take the air, or to go abroad, she is always carried, in a 
 conveyance, like unto a horse-litter, upon four men's shoulders, 
 with a veil or canopy over her, for the sun or the wind ; 
 having her gentlewomen still attending about her, with a 
 great troop of the best men of the island." Cavendish had 
 been told by an Indian prisoner that he might easily take 
 the cacique, and the treasure which he had carried off, for 
 the place to which he had retreated consisted of only three 
 or four houses, without any means of defence. Relying 
 upon this, he crossed over to the mainland ; and on reaching 
 the place where he designed to land, found there four or five 
 large balsas, which had newly arrived, laden with provisions. 
 Marvelling " what they were and what they meant," Caven- 
 dish commanded the Indian to speak the truth, as he valued 
 his life. The poor wretch was bound fast, for torture or for 
 execution he might well suppose, or both : he answered, 
 " being very much abashed," says Pretty, " as well as our 
 company were, that he neither knew whence they came, nor 
 who they might be ; for there was never a man in any one 
 
 *Hakluyt, 811-813.
 
 378 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 of the balsas ; but he supposed they might have brought 
 threescore soldiers, who he had heard were to go to Guayquil 
 (six leagues from the island), and reinforce the garrison of 
 100 men, for the better protection of some king's ships then 
 on the stocks there. Not discouraged at this, Cavendish 
 animated his company to the exploit, and marched by night, 
 " along a most desert path in the woods," till he reached the 
 place of which the Indian had truly informed him. * But 
 the cacique had kept a good look-out ; the people and the 
 treasure were gone. It would have been rash to pursue the 
 one, and hopeless to search for the other in the woods and in 
 the darkness; and the adventurers were fain to console them- 
 selves for their disappointment by regaling upon the food, 
 which they found at the fire, prepared for the cacique's 
 supper. 
 
 So little did Cavendish apprehend any activity on the part 
 of the Spaniards, notwithstanding they had received this 
 reinforcement, that he laid the admiral aground at Puna, to 
 examine and clean her bottom ; keeping, however, continual 
 watch and ward on the cacique's great house night and day. 
 In an adjacent island he discovered a great quantity of stores 
 which had been removed thither for concealment, with all 
 the cacique's " household stuff, and his chamber-hangings, 
 which were of Cordovan leather, all gilded over, and painted 
 very fair and rich ". A Spanish wife had inspired him with 
 a taste for the refinements and luxuries of Spanish civilisation ; 
 and he seems to have inspired the Spaniards with more 
 promptitude and resolution than at this time they were wont 
 to display. The English had got their ship into the water 
 again ; when, early one morning, every one of the watch 
 being gone abroad marauding, " some one way, some another, 
 some for hens, some for sheep, some for goats," about 100 
 Spaniards, who had landed during the night, with all the 
 
 * Hakluyt, 812.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 379 
 
 Indians of the island, came upon them ; and of twenty 
 Englishmen who were ashore only eight escaped. In the 
 course of the day, Cavendish landed, with seventy men, to 
 revenge their loss, drove the enemy from the town, set fire 
 to it, and burned it to the ground. He burned, also, four 
 ships which were building on the stocks ; burned the church, 
 and brought away the bells, and " made havoc " of the fields, 
 orchards, and gardens ; then hauled the vice-admiral ashore 
 " to grave at the same place in despite of the Spaniards," 
 and repaired his pinnace, which they had set on fire, and in 
 which one of his men had perished in the flames. There can 
 be no excuse for the negligence which allowed his people to 
 be a second time surprised, and little for the ferocious spirit 
 of revenge in which he laid waste what, when in evil hour he 
 landed there, was a happy and an improving island. A 
 hundred years * afterwards it had not recovered from the 
 devastation then committed, t 
 
 Having remained at Puna eleven days, Cavendish departed 
 on the 5th of' June, sunk the Hugh Gallant for want of men, 
 proceeded to the coast of New Spain, and there captured a 
 ship in which was one Michael Sancius, a Marseillois by birth, 
 who was one of the best coasters in the South Sea, and who 
 was, therefore, detained '' to serve their turn in watering 
 along the coast ". He served it another way, by giving them 
 news that a great ship, called the Santa Anna, was expected 
 
 * In Dampier's time there was only one Indian town in the island, 
 consisting of about twenty houses, and a small church. The Indians 
 were all seamen, and the only pilots in those seas. " The houses stand 
 all on posts ten or twelve feet high, with ladders on the outside to go up 
 into them. I did never see the like building anywhere but among the 
 Malayans in the East Indies. They are thatched with palmetto leaves, 
 and their chambers well boarded ; in which last they excel the Malayans " 
 (i., 151). What a contrast to the cacique's mansion, with its Cordovan 
 hangings, and its gardens ! 
 
 t Hakluyt, 813, 814. Burney, 84.
 
 380 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 at Acapulco from the Philippines. There were six men more 
 in the prize, whom they took out, together with the sails, 
 ropes, and firewood, and then set the vessel on fire. She 
 was going along the coast to give the alarm ; and another 
 vessel, upon the same service, came to the same fate, except 
 that the men got to shore. Cavendish next landed at 
 Guatulco, a town of about 100 houses, which he plundered 
 and burned. In the custom house, " a very fair and large " 
 building, they found 600 bags of indigo, valued at forty 
 crowns each ; and 400 bags of cacao, each worth ten crowns. 
 " These cacaos go among them for meat and money : 150 of 
 them are in value one real of plate in ready payment. They 
 are very like an almond, but are nothing so pleasant in taste : 
 they eat them, and make drink of them.'' The Spaniards 
 found these nuts in use as currency among the Mexicans, and 
 learned from that people the preparation of chocolate, which 
 everywhere retains its Mexican name. * 
 
 Cavendish burned the church here as he had done at Puna. 
 He might have known that by burning a church he excited, 
 among the Spaniards, greater horror and hatred against 
 England than was felt there when the Spaniards burned an 
 Englishman ; sacrilege being a crime less frequent in the one 
 country than cruelty in the other, and a crime by which even 
 criminals were shocked. Advantage was made of this feeling 
 at Guatulco in another way. There was a wooden cross 
 there, five fathoms in height, which, the Spaniards say, 
 Cavendish's men pulled down, smeared it with pitch, piled 
 dry reeds around it, and then endeavoured to consume it by 
 fire. The reeds burned and the pitch, not so the cross: more 
 and more combustibles were thrown on ; and when the in- 
 vaders re-embarked after three days' tarriance, during all 
 which time they had continued their vain endeavours, they 
 left it under a heap of ashes and burning brands unconsumed. 
 
 * Hakluyt, 814,
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 381 
 
 And when the Spaniards returned to their ruined dwellings, 
 they found it brightened and beautified by its fiery trial, and 
 were consoled for their own injuries by seeing that Heaven 
 had manifested itself in the protection of the holy rood. The 
 cross, before it underwent this assay, had been in good odour: 
 it was made of a fragrant wood which was not known to 
 grow within forty leagues of that place : it had been pre- 
 sumed that one of the Apostles had planted it there, and that 
 one was supposed to have been St. Andrew. Now, however, 
 when it had merits enough of its own, the likelier opinion 
 was preferred that it had been erected when Cortes built 
 some ships there for a voyage of discovery. The report of 
 its miraculous preservation spread far and wide ; and from all 
 parts devotees who could came to visit it, and to carry away 
 fragments, the smallest splinter of which, if cast into the sea, 
 stilled a tempest ; if thrown into a fire, quenched the flames ; 
 and if put in water, changed it into a sovereign medicine. 
 This waste of its substance was not miraculously supplied ; 
 and when about a fifth part only was left, the Bishop of 
 Antiquera removed it to his city, built a chapel for it, and 
 enshrined it there with all possible honours upon a holy day 
 appointed for the occasion. There its history continued to 
 be told to the reproach of the English name. * 
 
 Sailing from thence, Cavendish overshot the haven of 
 Acapulco ; and on the 24th of August he landed with thirty 
 men at Puerto de Navidad, where they surprised a man in his 
 bed who had been sent with letters to give the alarm along 
 the coast of Nueva Galicia : they took his despatches, killed 
 his horse, set fire to the town, burnt two ships on the stocks, 
 and re-embarked. In the river of Santiago his people dragged 
 for pearls, and took " some quantity " ; and in the Indian 
 town of Acatlan, from which the inhabitants fled at their 
 approach, they " defaced " a church, the commander being of 
 
 * Torquemada, 1. xvi., c. 28, pp. 205, 206.
 
 382 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 the party. The Marseillois by this time had entered 
 thoroughly into the interests of his captors ; he guided a 
 party of them from Chaccalla Road to a settlement some two 
 leagues inland, " by a most villainous path through the woods 
 and wilderness " : there they surprised three householders, 
 with their wives and children, some Indians, a Portuguese, 
 and a Spai ..h carpenter ; all whom they bound and carried 
 to the seaside. The women were then ordered to fetch 
 " plantains, lemons, oranges, pine-apples, and other fruits, 
 whereof they had abundance " ; and when this was done the 
 rest were liberated, except the Portuguese and the carpenter. 
 They tarried five days at the little woody Island of St. 
 Andrew, where they dried and salted as many birds as they 
 thought fit, and killed abundance of seals and yguans, which 
 they describe as " a kind of serpents, with four feet and a 
 long sharp tail ; strange to them that have not seen them, 
 but very good meat ". In another week they reached the 
 Bay of Mazatlan : " there is a very great river within, but it 
 is barred at the mouth ; upon the north side of the bar withal 
 is good fresh water, but there is very evil filling of it, because 
 at low water, it is shoal half a mile off the shore ". Their 
 intention of watering here was disappointed, and what little 
 fruit they obtained was " not without danger ". * 
 
 They trimmed their ships and new built their pinnace at 
 an island about a league from this bay ; " and there," says 
 Pretty, " we found fresh water, by the assistance of God, in 
 that our great need, and where no water nor sign of water 
 was before to be perceived ; otherwise we had gone back 
 twenty or thirty leagues for it, which might have been 
 occasion that we might have missed our prey we had so long 
 waited for. But God raised one Flores, a Spaniard, which 
 was also a prisoner with us, to make a motion to dig in the 
 ?ands. Now our general, having had experience once before 
 
 * Hakluyt, 815.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 383 
 
 of the like, commanded to put his motion in practice ; and in 
 digging three feet deep we found very good and fresh water : 
 so we watered our ships, and might have filled 1000 tons 
 more, if we had would." How much suffering might have 
 been averted, and how many lives saved, had it been gener- 
 ally known that filtered water may always thus easily be 
 obtained ! 
 
 Cavendish now quitted the coast of New Spain, and sailed 
 for the south Cape of California. Within that cape is the bay 
 called Aguada Segura, into which " a fair fresh river falls ". 
 They watered there, and lay off and on from the 14th of 
 October to the 4th of November, looking out for their 
 expected prey, " the winds hanging still westerly ". On 
 that day, between seven and eight in the morning, the 
 admiral's trumpeter going into the top, espied a sail standing 
 in for the cape. The cheerful tidings were presently verified ; 
 and Cavendish, " who was no less glad than the cause re- 
 quired, ordered the whole company to put all things in readi- 
 ness ". That done, he gave chase some three or four hours, 
 standing with the best advantage, and working for the wind : in 
 the afternoon he came up with her, gave a broadside with his 
 great ordnance, and a volley of small shot, and presently 
 laid the enemy aboard. The size of the ship, 700 tons, made 
 it evident that it was the galleon for which they had been 
 lying in wait, the Santa Anna, from the Philippines, with the 
 king's treasure on board ; and, in his eagerness for such a 
 prize, Cavendish began the fight with more spirit than dis- 
 cretion. When his men, who were not more than sixty in his 
 own vessel, were on their ship's side ready to board, they 
 perceived that the Spaniards "had made fights fore and 
 aft, and laid their sails close to the poop, the midship, and 
 the forecastle," and stood close under their covering, so that 
 not a man was to be seen, from whence they plied their 
 pikes, and threw great stones upon the heads of the assailants 
 so fast, that they beat them off, with the loss of two killed
 
 384 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 and some four or five wounded. For all this, the English 
 " new trimmed their sails, and fitted every man his furniture, 
 and gave them a fresh encounter with the great ordnance, 
 and also with small shot, raking them through and through ". 
 The Spanish captain Don Tomas de Alzola, still, " like a 
 valiant man, stood stoutly to his close fights," * and this, 
 " second encounter " was resisted as successfully as the first ; 
 but Cavendish appears to have fallen off in time to avoid 
 further loss, and to have carried on the remainder of the 
 action with guns, " encouraging his men afresh with the 
 whole noise of trumpets ". After an action of five or six 
 hours, the Spaniards being " in danger of sinking by reason 
 of the great shot, some of which were under water, set out 
 a flag of truce, and parleyed for mercy, requesting the 
 English commander to spare their lives and take their 
 goods ". 
 
 Then, in the characteristic words of one of the fortunate 
 adventurers, " our general of his goodness promised them 
 mercy, and willed them to strike their sails, and to hoyse out 
 their boat, and to come aboard ; which news they were full 
 glad to hear of, and presently one of their chief merchants 
 came aboard ; and, falling down upon his knees, offered to 
 have kissed our general's feet, and craved mercy. Our 
 general most graciously pardoned both him and the rest, 
 upon promise of their true dealing with him and his company 
 concerning such riches as were in the ship ; and he sent for 
 the captain and the pilot, who, at their coming aboard, used 
 the like duty and reverence that the former did. The 
 general, of his great mercy and humanity, promised their 
 lives and good usage. The said captain and pilot presently 
 
 * Yet Christoval Suraz de Figueroa represents the ship as unprepared 
 for, and taken without, resistance : " Hallavase (por ser aquel mar 
 pacifico) sin una espada, y bien segura de semejante novedad. Candi 
 abordando, la entro y robo" (p. 211). He says also that Cavendish hung 
 a priest who was on board.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 385 
 
 certified the general what goods they had within board, to 
 wit, 122,000 pesos of gold : the rest of the riches that the 
 ship was laden with was in rich silks, satins, and damasks, 
 with musk, and divers other merchandise, and great store of 
 all manner of victuals, with choice of many conserves of all 
 sorts for to eat, and of sundry sorts of very good wines." 
 
 On the second day after the action Cavendish brought 
 his prize into the bay, then called Aguada Segura, but now 
 Bahia de San Bernabe', on the east side of Cape San Lucas, 
 and there he set " the whole company of the Spaniards, both 
 of men and women, to the number of 1.90, on shore ". It was 
 not his intention to keep the Santa Anna, with which, indeed, 
 it would have been unwise to encumber himself ; nevertheless, 
 he would not, " of his great mercy and humanity," after he 
 had despoiled the ship, give it to these poor people.* His 
 journalist, who seems to have had about as much humanity as 
 himself, complacently relates that they had a fair river of 
 fresh water, with great store of fresh fish, fowl, and wood, 
 and that there were many hares and conies upon the main- 
 land. How they were to reach the mainland, he neither 
 knew nor cared ; and he did not know that a colony which 
 Cortes had sent to that part of California had abandoned it, 
 because they could not find means of subsistence there. 
 " Our general also gave them great store of victuals, of gar- 
 vanzos, pease, and some wine. Also they had all the sails of 
 their ship to make them tents on shore, with licence to take 
 such store of planks as should be sufficient to make them a 
 
 * Fuller says : " Mr. Cavendish's mercy after, equalled his valour in the 
 fight, landing the Spaniards on the shore, and leaving them plentiful 
 provisions". Mercy, indeed! But this is not the only reprehensible 
 passage in his brief and very inaccurate account of this commander . 
 Speaking of the Spaniards' design to fortify the straits, he says : " But 
 God, the promoter of the public good, destroyed their intended monopoly, 
 sending such a mortality among their men, that scarce five of five hundred 
 did survive ". 
 
 25
 
 386 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 bark. Then," says Pretty, " we fell to hauling in of our goods, 
 sharing of the treasure, and allotting to every man his portion ; 
 in division whereof many of the company fell into a mutiny 
 against our general, especially those in the Content, which, 
 nevertheless, were after a sort pacified for the time." The 
 discontents of the Content were soon, after another sort, put 
 to rest for ever ! 
 
 To stow their booty was a work of some time. It was on 
 the 6th of November that they anchored in the bay. On 
 the 17th, the day of Queen Elizabeth's "happy coronation," 
 salutes were fired from both ships with all their guns and 
 small shot ; and at night they " had many fireworks and 
 more ordnance discharged, to the great admiration of the 
 Spaniards, for the most part of them had never seen the like 
 before ". This ended, he discharged the captain, and gave 
 him, in Pretty's words, "a royal reward, with provision for 
 his defence against the Indians, and his company, both of 
 swords, targets, pieces, shot, and powder, to his contentment". 
 But he took into his own ship three Philippine boys, and 
 two Japanese youths, who could read and write their own 
 language, and were both of very good capacity. He like- 
 wise detained one Nicolas Rodriguez, a Portuguese, who 
 had " not only been in Canton and other parts of China, but 
 also in the Islands of Japan, being a country most rich in 
 silver mines, and also in the Philippines " ; and a Spaniard, 
 Tomas de Ersola by name, " which was a very good pilot from 
 Acapulco and the coast of New Spain to the Ladrones, where 
 the Spaniards, sailing between Acapulco and the Philippines, 
 put in, and find fresh water, plantains, and potato roots ". 
 All having been done, on the 19th, about three in the after- 
 noon, he set fire to the Santa Anna, which had still goods in 
 her to the quantity of 500 tons, waited till he saw her burned, 
 as he believed, to the water's edge, then fired a piece of 
 ordnance ; and, with this triumphant mark of barbarous ani- 
 mosity against the Spaniards, set sail "joyfully homewards
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 387 
 
 toward England with a fair wind ". Night was closing when 
 they sailed out of the road, leaving the Content astern ; when 
 morning came that ship was not in sight, and she was never 
 heard of afterwards. * 
 
 Cavendish had delayed his departure till evening, that he 
 might see the Santa Anna destroyed ; nevertheless, that 
 malicious purpose was defeated. Down to the water's edge 
 he saw her burned, but the fire then freed her from her 
 anchor, and the hull drifted ashore, for the salvation of the 
 Spaniards, t They lightened it by throwing out the ballast, 
 fitted it with jury masts, and were thus enabled to reach 
 Acapulco, instead of perishing, as in all likelihood they 
 otherwise must, upon that dreary peninsula. J 
 
 The Desire (now the only remaining ship of Cavendish's 
 fleet) pursued her course across the Pacific, with a fair wind 
 for five and forty days, when they came in sight of Guahan, 
 one of the Ladrones. Some sixty or seventy boats came off 
 to them with fruits, potatoes, and fish, which they exchanged 
 
 * Hakluyt, 817. It was supposed that the captain, Stephen Hare, 
 " was gone for the north-west passage ". The people in that ship were 
 discontented with Cavendish, and probably had got their share of the 
 booty on board. 
 
 Fuller says : " The ship called the Content did not answer her name, 
 whose men took all occasions to be mutinous" (Worthies, ii., 339). 
 
 t Yet these Spaniards, though thus providentially delivered them- 
 selves, acted tyrannically and wickedly toward the natives, carrying away 
 a man and woman by force, and in bonds. Fifteen years afterwards, 
 when a Spanish squadron was sent from Acapulco to survey those parts, 
 the loss of these two Indians was still lamented by their countrymen ; 
 and they would hold no communication with the ships. " This is 
 related," says Torquemada, " that care may be taken to do no injury to 
 such people, because it may prevent them from ever peaceably submitting 
 to the Spaniards, or believing them when they preach the Gospel. The 
 devil desires nothing more than that any handle should be given them 
 for refusing to be converted." 
 
 \ Torquemada, t. i., p. 699. Burney, 89.
 
 388 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 for little pieces of old iron : but when the English were 
 sufficiently supplied, and would have closed the market, these 
 pertinacious traders were for forcing their commodities upon 
 them ; and swarmed so thick about the ship, that it stemmed 
 and broke one or two of their canoes. Nor could Cavendish 
 be rid of them till he ordered some half dozen harquebusses 
 to be made ready, and struck one of them himself; the others 
 then fired; but these islanders were "so yare and nimble, 
 that it could not be seen whether they were killed or not, so 
 ready were they at falling backward into the sea and diving". 
 On the 14th they made the Philippines at Cape del Espiritu 
 Santo, and passing on the morrow through the strait of San 
 Bernardino anchored at the isl e of Capul. A cacique, " whose 
 skin was carved with sundry strokes and devices all over his 
 body," came off to trade with them, taking them for Spaniards : 
 under this notion a friendly intercourse was established ; and 
 the English refreshed themselves " marvellously well with 
 hens, hogs, cocoas, and camotes".* This was an unfortunate 
 tarriance for the Spaniard Tomas de Ersola : he prepared a 
 letter to the governor of Manilla, intending to send it by one 
 of these natives. Rodriguez the Portuguese betrayed him : 
 the letter was found in his chest ; and Cavendish " willed that 
 he should be hanged, which was accordingly performed ". 
 
 Here Cavendish remained nine days, demanding and receiv- 
 ing tribute, as if he had been a Spanish commander, from that 
 and the adjacent islands. It was paid in pigs, poultry, cocoa 
 nuts, and camotes. The day before his departure he caused 
 the chief of this island, " and of a hundred more," says Pretty, 
 " to appear before him, and then made himself and his company 
 
 * The English took these for potatoes. But in the description of these 
 islands, prefixed by F. Juan Francisco de S. Antonio to his Chronicles of 
 the barefoot Franciscans in the Philippines, China, and Japan (a most 
 rare work, printed in a convent at Manilla), the camote is mentioned 
 with several other wild roots, que equivalen a las batatas en el gusto, 
 (p. 28).
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 389 
 
 known that they were Englishmen, and enemies to the Span- 
 iards ; and thereupon spread his ensign, and sounded up the 
 drums, which they much marvelled at. To conclude, they 
 promised, both for themselves and all the islands thereabout, 
 to aid him whensoever he should come again to overcome the 
 Spaniards. Also our general gave them money back again for 
 all the tribute which they had paid ; which they took mar- 
 vellous friendly, and rowed about our ships to show us pleasure, 
 marvellous swiftly. At the last he caused a saker to be shot 
 off, whereat they wondered, and with great contentment took 
 their leave of us." 
 
 Leaving this place on the 24th, they chased on the 28th a 
 vessel from Manilla, along the coast of Panamao, and came so 
 near that she stood in to shore close by a wind until she was 
 becalmed, and then struck her sail, and " banked up with her 
 oars ". Cavendish anchored, manned his boat with twelve men, 
 and sent them to pursue this vessel up the river into which she 
 had run. They were, luckily for themselves, not able to find 
 the opening ; but they took a Spaniard out of a balsa, though 
 fired at by a body of Spaniards from the shore, and pursued by 
 a frigate which was sent in chase of the only prisoner aboard. 
 He proved to be neither soldier nor sailor, but "a very simple 
 soul," and one who could answer to very little that he was 
 asked concerning the state of the country. Cavendish dis- 
 missed him with a message to the Spanish commander, whom 
 he desired to provide good gold against the next visit, which 
 he and his company meant to make him in a few years : 
 nothing, he said, but the want of a larger boat to have landed 
 his men had prevented him from seeing him now. 
 
 After passing the Moluccas, several of the men sickened, 
 " by reason of the extreme heat and untemperateness of the 
 climate," and Captain Havers died, to Cavendish's no small 
 grief. Three guns with a volley of small arms served for his 
 passing bell : the corpse was shrouded in a sheet ; and after 
 a prayer said was heaved overboard with great lamentation
 
 390 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 of all. They passed through one of the straits formed by 
 the islands east of Java, and anchored in a port on the south 
 side of that great island, where, by means of a negro, * taken 
 out of the St. Anna, they could communicate with the in- 
 habitants. But when the rajah of that district knew of their 
 arrival, he sent to visit them ; and an interpreter came, who, 
 being a mestizo, spoke Portuguese as his father tongue. 
 Cavendish had now been taught by experience to guard 
 against all surprise ; and when the rajah's minister passed a 
 night on board, he commanded every man in the ship to 
 provide his harquebuss and his shot, and so with shooting off 
 forty or fifty small shot and one saker, himself set the watch 
 with them. " This was no small marvel unto these heathen 
 people, which had not commonly seen any ship so furnished 
 with men and ordnance." Here they were plentifully 
 supplied by the rajah's orders ; and two Portuguese came on 
 board, " men of marvellous proper personage, each in a loose 
 jerkin and hose, which came down from the waist to the 
 ankle, because of the use of the country, and partly because 
 it was Lent, and a time for doing of their penance (for they 
 account it as a thing of great dislike among these heathen 
 to wear either hose or shoes on their feet) ; they had on 
 each of them a very fair and white lawn shirt with falling 
 bands on the same, very decently, only their bare legs ex- 
 cepted. These Portugals," says Pretty, " were no small joy 
 to our general, and all the rest of our company ; for we had 
 not seen any Christian that was our friend of a year and half 
 before. Our general entreated them singularly well with 
 banquets and music. They told us they were no less glad 
 to see us than we to see them, and enquired of the state of 
 their country, and what was become of Don Antonio their 
 king, and whether he were living or no, for they had not for 
 long time been in Portugal, and the Spaniards had always 
 
 * Pretty says he could speak the Morisco tongue. The Malay is 
 probably meant.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 391 
 
 brought them word that he was dead. Then our general 
 satisfied them in every demand, assuring them that their 
 king was alive and in England, and had honourable allow- 
 ance from our queen ; and that there was war between Spain 
 and England, and that we were come under the King of 
 Portugal into the South Sea, and had warred upon the Span- 
 iards there, and had fired, spoiled, and sunk all the ships along 
 the coast that we could meet withal, to the number of 
 eighteen or twenty sail. With this report they were suffi- 
 ciently satisfied. They told us that if their king Don Antonio 
 would come unto them, they would warrant him to have all 
 the Moluccas at command, besides China, Sangles (?), and 
 the Isles of the Philippines, and that he might be sure to 
 have all the Indians on his side. They took their leave 
 with promise of all good entertainment at our return." * 
 
 Cavendish sailed from Java on the l6th of March, passed 
 round the Cape of Good Hope on the 18th of May, and on the 
 9th of June anchored in the road of St. Helena. Landing 
 there they found "a fair and pleasant valley, wherein divers 
 handsome buildings and houses were set up, and a church tiled 
 and whited on the outside, very fair, and with a porch ". The 
 inside was hung with stained cloths, " having many devices 
 drawn on them. There were two houses adjoining the church, 
 one on each side, serving for kitchens to dress meat in, with 
 necessary rooms and houses of offices : the coverings of the 
 said houses were flat, whereon was planted a very fair vine, and 
 through both ran a good and wholesome stream of fresh 
 water." Opposite was a fair stone causeway leading to a 
 valley wherein a garden had been planted with great store of 
 pompions and melons. And upon this causeway was erected 
 a frame with two bells, wherewith they rang to mass ; and 
 hard by a weil-made stone cross, bearing date 1571, in which 
 year it had been erected. The Portuguese had stocked the 
 
 * Hakluyt, 821, 822.
 
 392 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 island with all sorts of fruits and esculent herbs, partridges, 
 pheasants, guinea-fowl, goats, and swine. They had thus colon- 
 ised it for the use of their ships homeward bound from India ; 
 " and when they come they have all things plentiful for their 
 relief, by reason that they suffer none to inhabit there who 
 might consume the fruit of the island, except some very few 
 sick persons which they stand in doubt will not live until they 
 come home : these they leave to refresh themselves, and take 
 away in the next year's fleet, if they live so long". Three 
 negroes were the only persons there when Cavendish arrived. 
 They told him that the fleet had left it twenty days before, 
 consisting of five sail, the least of which was in burden 800 or 
 900 tons, " laden with spice and calicut cloth, with store of 
 treasure, and very rich stores and pearls". 
 
 Having cleaned their ship, taken in wood and water, and 
 refreshed themselves during eleven days, they now sailed for 
 England, the wind and weather favouring them. On the 3rd 
 of September they were informed by a Flemish hulk coming 
 from Lisbon of the discomfiture of the armada, " to their 
 singular rejoicing and comfort ". And on the 9th, " after a 
 terrible tempest which carried away most part of their sails, 
 by the merciful favour of the Almighty they recovered their 
 long wished for port of Plymouth, two years and fifty days 
 after their departure from that place ". * As the third 
 circumnavigation of the globe, Cavendish's voyage deserved 
 to be thus fully related : the circumstances are creditable to 
 
 * " He who went forth with a fleet," says Fuller, " came home with a 
 ship. Thus having circumnavigated the whole earth, let his ship no 
 longer be termed the Desire, but the Performance. He was the third 
 man, and second Englishman, of such universal undertakings." 
 
 Suraz de Figueroa says, that he entered London with sails of green 
 damask, and his sailors all dressed in silk (p. 211). 
 
 It is remarkable that Lope de Vega, in the explanation prefixed to his 
 Dragontea, of " lo que se ha de advertir para la inteligencia deste libro,'' 
 confounds Oxenham with Cavendish, and gives an account of him under 
 the name of Thomas Candir.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 393 
 
 his activity, and seamanship, and courage, but honourable in 
 no other way. Immediately on landing he wrote to the 
 lord chamberlain Hunsdon, to inform the queen of his 
 success ; " and as it hath pleased God," said he, " to give 
 her the victory over part of her enemies, so I trust ere long 
 to see her overcome them all : for the places of their wealth, 
 whereby they have maintained and made their wars, are now 
 perfectly discovered, and, if it please her majesty, with a very 
 small power she may take the spoil of them all. It hath 
 pleased the Almighty to suffer me to circompass the whole 
 globe of the world, entering in at the Straits of Magellan, 
 and returning by the Cape de Buena Esperanza. In which 
 voyage I have either discovered or brought certain intelligence 
 of all the rich places of the world that ever were known or 
 discovered by any Christian. I navigated along the coast of 
 Chili, Peru, and Nueva Espanna, where I made great spoils. 
 I burnt and sunk nineteen sail of ships, small and great. 
 All the villages and towns that ever I landed at, I burnt and 
 spoiled ; and had I not been discovered upon the coast, I 
 had taken great quantity of treasure. The matter of most 
 profit unto me was a great ship of the king's which I took 
 at California ; which ship came from the Philippinas, being 
 one of the richest of merchandise that ever passed those 
 seas, as the king's register and merchants' accounts did 
 show, for it did amount in value to in Mexico to be 
 
 sold ; which goods, for that my ships were not able to contain 
 the least part of them, I was enforced to set on fire. From 
 the Cape of California, being the uttermost part of all Nueva 
 Espanna, I navigated to the Islands of the Philippinas, hard 
 upon the coast of China ; of which country I have brought 
 such intelligence as hath not been heard of in these parts : 
 the stateliness and riches of which country I fear to make 
 report of, lest I should not be credited ; for if I had not 
 known sufficiently the incomparable wealth of that country, 
 I should have been as incredulous thereof, as others will be
 
 39* ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 that have not had the like experience. I sailed along the 
 islands of the Malucos, where among some of the heathen 
 people I was well entreated, where our countrymen may have 
 trade as freely as the Portugals, if they will themselves. 
 From thence I passed by the Cape of Buena Esperanza, and 
 found out by the way homeward the Island of St. Helena, 
 where the Portugals use to relieve themselves, and from that 
 island God hath suffered me to return to England. All 
 which services, with myself, I humbly prostrate at her 
 majesty's feet, desiring the Almighty long to continue her 
 reign among us, for at this day she is the most famous and 
 victorious prince that liveth in the world." * 
 
 In what a different odour would the memory of Cavendish be 
 held, if he could have said, in this brief summary of his pro- 
 ceedings, that having found in the Straits of Magellan the 
 miserable remains of a Spanish colony, he had taken them on 
 board to save them from perishing by famine, and on the first 
 safe opportunity had landed them among their own country- 
 men ! 
 
 The success of this voyage induced him to tempt his fortune 
 in a second with three tall ships and two barks : one of the 
 barks was the property of Mr. Adrian Gilbert, a great pro- 
 moter of the attempts for discovering a north-west passage. 
 The other four were fitted out by Cavendish : they were the 
 Leicester Galleon, in which he sailed himself, his old ship the 
 Desire, commanded by Master John Davis, one of the best sea- 
 men of those times ; the Roebuck, under Master Cocke ; and the 
 Black Pinnace. The number of men is supposed to have 
 been little short of 400 : among them were the two Japanese 
 youths whom he had taken out of the St. Anna. But the fleet 
 was ill-fitted for such an expedition : his means would probably 
 have been inadequate to the great expenditure that it required, 
 had they been strictly applied to it; but he advanced 1500/. 
 
 * Hakluyt, 837.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 395 
 
 to adventurers, who, instead of equipping themselves, abs- 
 conded with the money.* Having reached the coast of Brazil, 
 Coeke was sent forward with two ships to attack Santos, in 
 order to obtain provisions. He surprised the inhabitants at 
 mass ; but instead of bargaining with them for a supply, made 
 good cheer upon what he found, while they escaped and car- 
 ried away whatever was portable. Here Cavendish waited five 
 precious weeks, and departed worse furnished than he came : 
 then having burned St. Vincente by the way, proceeded to the 
 straits. The fleet was separated in a storrn : Gilbert took the 
 opportunity of returning to England, leaving his captain on 
 board one of the other ships " without any provision more than 
 the apparel he had on". Davis fell in with the Roebuck: 
 both proceeded to Port Desire, and there the Black Pinnace 
 and the admiral joined them.f Cavendish had lost his boats, 
 and quarrelled with his company : in consequence of this he 
 removed into the Desire.^ 
 
 By this time it was the middle of March : " such/' says 
 Cavendish, " was the adverseness of our fortunes, that in coming 
 thither we spent the summer, and found the straits in the 
 beginning of a most extreme winter". They entered it on the 
 14th of April with favourable weather; but on the 21st were 
 stopped by a wind from the W.N.W., and put into a small 
 
 * " These varlets, whom the justice hs.d before sought with great dili- 
 gence, I saw, within a few days after his departure," says Sir Richard 
 Hawkins, "walking the streets of Plymouth without punishment" 
 (Observations, etc., 15). 
 
 f Mr. John Jane's remark, therefore, seems hardly to be warranted 
 when he says, that his " captain (Davis) could never get any direction 
 what course to take in any such extremities, though many times he had 
 entreated for it, as often I have heard him with grief report" (Hakluyt, 842). 
 
 Jane's narrative is written evidently with a malevolent feeling towards 
 Cavendish. And in this he is contradicted by Knyvet, who, though a 
 liar, could have no motive for lying in this case. 
 
 \ Hakluyt, 842, 843. Burney, 98, 100.
 
 396 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 cove on the south shore opposite to Cape Froward. There 
 they remained above three weeks, during which they endured 
 great storms, with perpetual snow ; and many of the men 
 "died with cursed famine and miserable cold, not having 
 wherewith to cover their bodies, nor to fill their bellies, but 
 living by muscles, water, and weeds of the sea, with a small 
 relief of the ship's store in meal sometimes ".* Discouraged 
 by these hardships, and doubting what the end would be, 
 Cavendish asked Davis's opinion, "because he was a man that 
 had good experience of the north-west parts in his three 
 several discoveries that way, employed by the merchants of 
 London ". Davis, who felt as much at home among ice and 
 snow as a white bear, or a walrus, told him the snow was a 
 matter of no long continuance. However, he called together 
 the whole company, and told them he would tarry no longer 
 in the straits, but turn back, and make for the Cape of Good 
 Hope. The general opinion was, that being within forty 
 leagues of the South Sea, it was better to " stay God's favour 
 for a wind," and endure any hardships rather than give over 
 the voyage ; nevertheless, what he determined on they would 
 perform. Upon this he declared his resolution to go for the 
 Cape of Good Hope. But when he returned on board the 
 Desire Davis represented to him that this would be a desperate 
 undertaking : " if the rest of your ships," said he, " be fur- 
 nished answerable to this, it is impossible to perform it ; for 
 we have no more sails than masts, no victuals, no ground- 
 tackling, no cordage more than is overhead, and among 
 seventy and five persons there is but the master alone that 
 can order the ship, and but fourteen sailors ; the rest are 
 gentlemen, serving-men, and artificers ". Davis made the 
 
 * Jane says : " All the sick men in the Galleon were most uncharitably 
 put ashore into the woods, in the snow, rain, and cold, when men of good 
 health could scarcely endure it, where they ended their lives in the 
 highest degree of misery ; Master Cavendish all this while being in the 
 Desire ".
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 397 
 
 same representations to Cocke : the " chiefs of the whole 
 company " drew up a petition in consequence ; and Cavendish, 
 yielding to the general voice so far as to give up his own rash 
 intention, determined to leave the straits and return for Santos. 
 But as if he had been displeased with Davis for having in- 
 fluenced others in this matter, he left the Desire, and went 
 again on board the Leicester Galleon.* 
 
 On the 1 8th they were free of the straits : on the 20th the 
 Desire and the Black Pinnace separated from the other two 
 vessels ; Cavendish thought wilfully : but, according to their 
 protestation, by unaccountable accident. \ They returned 
 to Port Desire, thinking that he would put back there ; 
 waited there till that expectation could no longer be enter- 
 tained ; were driven to the Falkland Islands, " which had 
 never before been discovered by any known relation"; 
 entered and passed the straits ; were driven back, and, after 
 enduring such sufferings as none but sailors can be exposed 
 to, and with a perseverance and patient fortitude which never 
 has been exceeded, reached Ireland in the June of the follow- 
 
 * Hakluyt, 843, 844. 
 
 t Admiral Burney says : " The circumstances are certainly of a sus- 
 picious nature ; and there is some reason for believing that Captain Davis 
 considered the engagement mutual between Mr. Cavendish and himself 
 to make a voyage into the South Sea ; and that he was determined, if 
 possible, not to be disappointed of an enterprise which he had been 
 brought thus far to prosecute. Instances without number are to be met 
 with of ships deserting their commander-in-chief, to escape the perils of a 
 long or dangerous undertaking ; but the case of Captain Davis is of a 
 different character, and is one of the few in which the separation, if 
 contrived, was for the purpose of persevering in a pursuit after it had 
 been abandoned by the chief commander as hopeless and impracticable" 
 (pp. 101, 102). 
 
 " This is the same distinguished seaman who discovered and has left his 
 name to Davis's Strait. He afterwards made several voyages to the 
 East Indies, and lost his life there in a quarrel with the crew of a 
 Japanese vessel " (ibid., 106).
 
 398 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 ing year, having lost sixty men out of a crew of seventy-six. 
 Jane was one of the survivors. 
 
 Cavendish, who had parted from the Roebuck also, arrived 
 with only his own ship on the coast of Brazil, and landed 
 twenty-five men about three leagues from Santos, to seize 
 provisions for the relief of their sick and starving comrades. 
 The principal persons in the ship were of this party, and not 
 a man returned. The Indians, who carried two of their 
 prisoners to Santos, entered that town in savage triumph 
 with the heads of all the rest. After these mishaps, Caven- 
 dish was joined by the Roebuck : they coasted along, ravaging 
 houses and plantations as they went, and attempted with 
 their boats to cut out some ships which were at anchor in the 
 river near the town of Espirito Santo. The attempt was 
 rashly made, and ended in the loss of eighty men killed, 
 wounded, or basely abandoned by their comrades ; after 
 which the master of the Roebuck, by whose orders they were 
 thus abandoned, and whom Cavendish calls " a most coAvardly 
 villain that ever was born of a woman," thought proper to 
 shift for himself with that ship, and desert his unfortunate 
 commander. * Nothing remained for Cavendish then but to 
 make for England ; but his heart was broken. Assured by 
 his own unerring feelings that death was at hand, he wrote 
 a letter to Sir Tristram Gorges, giving a brief account of this 
 unhappy voyage, and complaining of the conduct of his 
 officers and men. Having vented his complaints, he pro- 
 ceeded thus : 
 
 "And now to tell you of my greatest grief, which was the 
 sickness of my dear kinsman John Locke, who by this time 
 was grown in great weakness, by reason whereof he desired 
 rather quietness and contentedness in our course, than such 
 continual disquietness, which never ceased us. And now by 
 this, what with grief for him, and the continual trouble I 
 
 * Purchas, b. vi., c. 6., p. 1195. History of Brazil, i., 359-364.
 
 THOMAS CAVENDISH 399 
 
 endured among such hell-hounds, my spirits were clean spent, 
 wishing myself upon any desert place in the world, there to 
 die, rather than thus basely to return home again ; which 
 course I had put in execution, had I found an island which 
 the cards make to be eight degrees to the southward of the 
 line. I swear to you, I sought for it with all diligence, 
 meaning, if I had found it, to have there ended my unfor- 
 tunate life. But God suffered not such happiness to light 
 upon me, for I could by no means find it ; so as I was 
 forced to go towards England, and having gotten eight 
 degrees by north the line, I lost my most dearest cousin. 
 
 " And now consider whether a heart made of flesh be able 
 to endure so many misfortunes, all falling upon me without 
 intermission ! I thank my God that, in ending of me, He 
 hath pleased to rid me of all further trouble and mishaps. 
 And now to return to our private matters : I have made my 
 will, wherein I have given special charge that all goods (what- 
 soever belong unto me) be delivered into your hands. For 
 God's sake refuse not to do this last request for me. I owe 
 little that I know of, and, therefore, it will be the less 
 trouble ; but if there be any debt that, of truth, is owing by 
 me, for God's sake see it paid. To use compliments of love, 
 now at my last breath, were frivolous : but know that I left 
 none in England whom I loved half so well as yourself; 
 which you in such sort deserved at my hands as I can by no 
 means requite. I have left all (that little remaining) unto 
 you, not to be accountable for anything. That which you 
 will, if you find any overplus (yourself especially being satis- 
 fied to your own desire), give unto my sister Anne Candish. 
 I have written to no man living but yourself, leaving all 
 friends and kinsmen, only reputing you as dearest. Commend 
 me to both your brethren, being glad that your brother 
 Edward escaped so unfortunate a voyage. I pray give this 
 copy of my unhappy proceedings to none but only to Sir 
 George Gary, and tell him, that if I had thought the letter
 
 400 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 of a dead man acceptable, I would have written unto him. 
 I have taken order with the master of my ship to see his 
 pieces of ordnance delivered unto him, for he knoweth them. 
 And if the Roebuck be not returned, then I have appointed 
 him to deliver him two brass pieces out of this ship, which I 
 pray you see performed. I have now no more to say ; and 
 take this last farewell, that you have lost the lovingest friend 
 that ever was lost by any. Commend me to your wife. No 
 more ! But as you love God, do not refuse to undertake 
 this last request of mine. I pray, forget not Master Carey 
 of Coakington : gratify him with something, for he used me 
 kindly at my departure. Bear with this scribbling ; for I 
 protest I am scarce able to hold a pen in my hand." ' 
 
 Cavendish's history cannot be concluded better than by 
 these his dying words : they are most touching in themselves, 
 and leave us with an opinion of him far more favourable than 
 could be deduced from anything that is recorded of his life. 
 
 * Purchas, b. vi., c. 6., p. 1200.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 LORD HOWARD. 
 
 Southey has not gone much into details in his account of Lord 
 Howard, thinking, perhaps, that he was rather the nominal than 
 the real commander of the different enterprises in which he took 
 part. Lord Howard, however, it should have been recorded, had 
 at least some share in founding the " chest " for disabled seamen 
 at Chatham. He sat on the trial of Essex, and was one of the 
 lords who had a share in all the various commissions appointed 
 by the Government for administrative purposes. During his 
 latter years as Lord High Admiral many abuses crept into the 
 navy. His age, and perhaps his easy-going profuse habits, 
 disqualified him for the work of vigilant minute administration. 
 His retirement was hastened by the adverse report of a commis- 
 sion, and perhaps by the pressure of Buckingham, who desired his 
 place, and offered him good pecuniary terms as an inducement 
 to retire. 
 
 EARL OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Research has added nothing of moment to this account of the 
 Earl of Cumberland. 
 
 HAWKINS AND DRAKE. 
 
 The fame of these two men has made all inquirers into the 
 history of that time eager to discover all there was to learn about 
 them in the long hidden records of public offices, or private libraries. 
 As regards Hawkins some curious facts have been revealed which 
 serve to intensify the opinion a shrewd impartial critic would 
 from the first have formed of him from accessible evidence. We 
 have learned, for instance, that on his first voyage he plundered 
 Portuguese slavers whom he found upon the coast a fact 
 naturally left unmentioned in his own published accounts. It 
 
 26
 
 402 ENGLISH SEAMEN 
 
 has been revealed also, that in 1570 he entered, with the know- 
 ledge, if not at the instigation of Cecil, into a plot to cheat King 
 Philip out of money, and valuable information. He made an 
 offer to the king's ambassador, Don Guerau (Gerald) de Spes, 
 to betray a part of the queen's ships to the Spaniard for a suffi- 
 cient reward. Philip was for a time incredulous, but finally fell 
 into the trap. He released some of Hawkins* men who were in 
 prison at Seville, sent him 4O,ooo/. and a patent of Grandee. 
 Some of the money at least must have remained in the pocket of 
 Sir John, and Cecil gained evidence that the King of Spain's 
 intentions were mischievous. Both were no doubt well pleased, 
 and the story is characteristic of the diplomacy of the time. It 
 is also quite in keeping with the methods of that heroic, but lying 
 and intriguing, period, that Hawkins was contemporaneously 
 engaged in a negotiation to supply ships to the King of Spain's 
 enemy, Louis of Nassau. In 1573, he was stabbed in the Strand 
 by a fanatic who mistook him for Sir Christopher Hatton. Before 
 sailing in 1567, he had taken an active part in driving a packet 
 belonging to King Philip which endeavoured to take refuge in 
 Plymouth, into the hands of the Beggars of the Sea, who were 
 cruising outside. Cecil, who did not like him, recorded his 
 opinion that Hawkins had been guilty of malversation in office, 
 but of this there is no direct evidence. 
 
 Investigation has rather disproved the truth of some of the 
 stories told about Drake, than added anything of note to what was 
 known. The story of the quarrel with Bernard Drake must be at 
 least exaggerated. The family of Ash recognised Sir Francis' right 
 to bear their arms though with the "difference" of a third brother. 
 Perhaps he attempted to use them without a "difference". The 
 statement that he was of " mean parentage " is a mere mistrans- 
 lation of Camden's Latin, but his branch of the Drakes were 
 sinking into the mass of working people when his energy saved 
 them. His father cannot have been Vicar of Upnor, where there 
 has never been a church, but he may have had the living at 
 Upchurch. Nothing deserving to be called evidence has been 
 published to clear up the supposed mystery of Doughty's exe- 
 cution, but there is a curious statement in the malignant narrative 
 of one Cooke that Drake believed the man to be a wizard who 
 raised unfavourable winds to spoil the voyage. As a sailor,
 
 NOTES 403 
 
 Devonshire man, and Elizabethan, it is probable that Drake did 
 believe in witchcraft. During his voyage in 1587, he put his 
 Vice-Admiral Borough under arrest for insubordination. During 
 the Armada war he had a violent quarrel with Sir Martin 
 Frobisher over their respective rights to the prize money of the 
 galleon Rosario. Drake apparently had to be satisfied with the 
 ransom of Don Pedro de Valdes, which amounted to 3000^. 
 
 CAVENDISH. 
 
 Contrary to his custom Southey has overlooked a voyage of 
 Cavendish's. If was the first, and was undertaken, in a ship of 
 his own, in 1585, in company with Sir R. Grenville. Raleigh was 
 the promoter of the venture, and the design was to plant the 
 first colony in Virginia. The adventurers spent some time among 
 the West Indian Islands plundering the Spaniards, and some 
 time in Virginia harrying the natives, and returned to England 
 at the close of summer. Some of the party stayed, but Cavendish 
 was not one of them.
 
 
 
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