STORIES OF
ELIZABETHAN HEROES

Before we touch upon the lives of some of the heroes of the Maiden Queen, it were well to consider briefly what life was like in those days, and how it differed from our own.

When on a November day in 1558 Sir Nicholas Throckmorton spurred his steaming horse to Hatfield, in haste to inform the Princess Elizabeth that Queen Mary was dead, he was bidden to ride back to the Palace of St. James's and request one of the ladies of the bedchamber to give him, if the Queen were really dead, the black enamelled ring which her Majesty wore night and day. So cautious had the constant fear of death made Anne Boleyn's daughter.

Meanwhile a deputation from the Council had arrived at Hatfield to offer to the new Queen their dutiful homage.

Elizabeth sank upon her knees and exclaimed: "A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris" ("This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes")—a text which the Queen caused to be engraved on her gold coins, in memory of that day of release from anxiety. For the poor young Princess had lived for years in a state of alarm; she had been imprisoned in the Tower, the victim of plots for and against her; she had been kept under severe control at Woodstock under Sir Henry Bedingfeld, where she once saw a milkmaid singing merrily as she milked the cows in the Park, and exclaimed, "That milkmaid's lot is better than mine, and her life far merrier."

And now on a sudden her terrors were turned into a great joy; and what the Princess felt all England was soon experiencing, as soon as men realised that the tyranny of Rome and of Spain was shattered and gone.

Elizabeth was now at the close of her twenty-fifth year, of striking beauty and commanding presence, tall and comely, with a wealth of hair, yellow tinged with red; she inherited from her mother an air of coquetry, and her affable manners soon endeared her to her people. The English were tired of Smithfield fires and foreign priests and princes; a new era seemed to be dawning upon them at last—an era of freedom for soul and body; and imagination ran riot with hope to forecast a new and happier world. The homage of an admiring nation was stirred by her young beauty; and wild ambition, not content with the quiet fields of England, turned adventurously to the New World beyond the Atlantic, where men dreamed of real cities paved with gold. It is true that the Pope had given all the great West to his faithful daughter, Spain; but Englishmen thought they had as much right to colonise America as any son of Spain, and they soon obtained their Queen's leave to land and explore. But the first merchants who ventured west found that Spanish policy forbade "Christians to trade with heretics." Nay, if they were taken prisoners by the Spaniards they suffered the punishment of the rack and the stake; and if they escaped, they came home with tales of cruelty that set all England ablaze to take revenge. "Abroad, the sky is dark and wild," writes Kingsley, "and yet full of fantastic splendour. Spain stands strong and awful, a rising world-tyranny, with its dark-souled Cortezes and Pizarros, Alvas, Don Johns and Parmas, men whose path is like the lava stream: who go forth slaying and to slay in the names of their Gods.... Close to our own shores the Netherlands are struggling vainly for their liberties: abroad, the Western Islands, and the whole trade of Africa and India, will in a few years be hers ... and already Englishmen who go out to trade in Guinea, in the Azores and New Spain, are answered by shot and steel."

We know a good deal of the life in Elizabethan England from an account written by Harrison, Household Chaplain to Lord Cobham. He was an admirer of still older days, as we see from his complaint about improved houses: "See the change, for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but a great manie, through Persian delicacie crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration.... Now have we manie chimnies; and yet our tenderlings complain of rheumes, catarhs and poses. Then had we none but reredosses, and our heads did never ache. For as the smoke in those daies was supposed to be a sufficient hardning for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the goodman and his family from the quake or pose."

Harrison notes how rich men were beginning to use stoves for sweating baths, how glass was beginning to be used instead of lattice, which was made out of wicker or rifts of oak chequer-wise, how panels of horn for windows had been going out for beryl or fine crystal, as at Sudeley Castle. Then for furniture, it was not rare to see abundance of arras in noblemen's houses, with such store of silver vessels as might fill sundry cupboards. There were three things that old men remembered to have been marvellously changed; one was the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas only the great religious houses and manor places of the lords had formerly possessed them, but each one made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat in the smoke and smother; the second thing was the improved bedding. Formerly folks slept on straw pallets covered only with a sheet, and a good round log under their heads for a bolster. "As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them, it was well, for seldom had they any under them to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas and rased their hardened hides."

The third thing was the exchange from wooden cups and platters into pewter or tin. Now the farmers had featherbeds and carpets of tapestry instead of straw, sometimes even silver salt-cellars and a dozen spoons of pewter.

Harrison bewails the decay of archery, and says that all the young fellows above eighteen wear a dagger. Noblemen wear a sword too, while desperate cutters carry two rapiers, "wherewith in every drunken fray they are known to work much mischief"; and as the trampers carry long staves, the honest traveller is obliged to carry horse-pistols; for the tapsters and ostlers are in league with the highway robbers who rob chiefly at Christmas time, "till they be trussed up in a Tyburn tippet."

There was a proverb, "Young serving-men, old beggars," because servants were spoilt for any other service or craft; so that the country swarmed with idle serving-men, who often became highwaymen.

A German traveller writes of England thus: "The women there are charming, and by nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they do not falsify, paint or bedaub themselves as they do in Italy or other places, but they are some deal awkward in their style of dress; for they dress in splendid stuffs, and many a one wears three cloth gowns, one over the other. Then, when a stranger goeth to a citizen's house on business, or is invited as a guest, he is received by the master of the house and the ladies and by them welcomed: he has even a right to take them by the arm and to kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any one doth not do this, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on his part."

Erasmus, writing in 1500, after a visit to Sir Thomas More, exclaims merrily: "There is a custom which it would be impossible to praise too much. Wherever you go, every one welcomes you with a kiss, and the same on bidding you farewell. You call again, when there is more kissing.... You meet an acquaintance anywhere, you are kissed till you are tired. In short, turn where you will, there are kisses, kisses everywhere."

It was the same before and after a dance: you bowed, or curtseyed, and kissed your partner in all formal ceremony. So Shakespeare—

"Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtseyed when you have, and kissed,
The wild waves whist" (hushed).

Another foreigner describes the English as serious, like the Germans, liking to be followed by hosts of servants who wear their masters' arms in silver, fastened to their left arms: they excel in music and dancing, and their favourite sport is hawking: they are more polite than the French in eating, devour less bread but more meat, which they roast in perfection. They put a great deal of sugar in their drink, a habit which may account for their teeth turning black in age. Harrison tells us that the nobles had "for cooks musicall-headed Frenchmen, who concocted sundrie delicacies: every dish being first taken to the greatest personage at the table."

We are told that Sir Walter Raleigh was once staying with a noble lady, whom he heard in the morning scolding her servant and crying, "Have the pigs been fed? have the pigs been fed?"

At eleven o'clock Master Walter came down to dinner, and could not resist a sly remark to his hostess, "Have the pigs been fed?" The lady drew herself up haughtily and rejoined, "You should know best, Sir Walter, whether you have had your breakfast or no." So the laugh was turned on the wit for once: for indeed it had become unusual for people to require any breakfast before eleven o'clock in Queen Elizabeth's time. Formerly they had four meals a day, consisting of breakfast, dinner, nuntion or beverage, and supper. "Now these odd repasts," says Harrison, "thanked be God! are very well left, and each one (except here and there some young hungrie stomach that cannot fast till dinner-time) contenteth himself with dinner and supper only." It was the custom at table amongst yeomen and merchants for the guest to call for such drink as he desired, when a servant would bring him a cup from the cupboard; but when he had tasted of it, he delivered it again to the servant, who made it clean and restored it to the cupboard. "By this device much idle tippling is cut off, for if the full pots should continually stand neare the trencher, divers would be alwaies dealing with them." Yet in the houses of the nobles it was not so, but silver goblets or glasses of Venice graced the tables.

They were content with four or six dishes, finishing with jellies and march-paine "wrought with no small curiosity"; potatoes, too, began to be brought from Spain and the Indies. The best beer was usually kept for two years and brewed in March; of light wines there were fifty-six kinds, mostly foreign, from Italy, Greece, and Spain, clarets from France, and Malmsey wine.

"I might here talk somewhat of the great silence that is used at the tables of the honourable and wiser sort, likewise of the moderate eating and drinking that is daily seen, and finally of the regard that each one hath to keep himself from the note of surfeiting and drunkennesse."

They were a proud, self-respecting people in those spacious times, and even the poorer sort, when they could get a time to be merry, thought it no small disgrace if they happened to be "cup-shotten."

In regard to their dress the English at that time seem to have been somewhat extravagant, copying first the Spanish guise, then the French, anon the Italian or German—nay, even Turkish and Moorish fashions gained favour; "so that except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see any so disguised as are my countrymen of England."

Our good friend Harrison waxes quite sarcastic as he describes, "What chafing, what fretting, what reproachful language doth the poor workman bear away! ... Then must we put it on, then must the long seams of our hose be set by a plumb-line: then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us."

It became the fashion for ladies to dye their hair yellow out of compliment to the Queen, who however in her later years used wigs, and was reputed to have a choice of eighty attires of false hair.

In 1579 the Queen gave her command to the Privy Council to prevent excesses of apparel, and it was ordered that "No one shall use or wear such excessive long cloaks; being in common sight monstrous." Neither were they to wear such high ruffs of cambric about their necks as were growing common, both with men and women. Quilted doublets, curiously slashed, and lined with figured lace, Venetian hose and stockings of the finest black yarn, with shoes of white leather, betokened the courtier, the clank of whose gilded spurs announced his coming.

In regard to weapons, the long-bow had gone out of use, but they shot with the caliver, a clumsy musket with a short butt, and handled the pike with dexterity. Corslets and shirts of mail still remained; every village could furnish forth three or four soldiers, as one archer, one gunner, one pikeman, and a bill-man. As to artillery, the falconet weighed five hundred pounds, with a diameter of two inches at the mouth; the culverin weighed four thousand pounds, having a diameter of five inches and a half; the cannon weighed seven thousand, and the basilisk nine thousand pounds.

In 1582 Queen Elizabeth had twenty-five great ships of war, the largest being of 1000 tons burden, besides three galleys: there were 135 ships that exceeded 500 tons, which could fight at a pinch, for many private owners possessed ships of their own.

A man-of-war in those days was well worth two thousand pounds, and "it is incredible to say how greatly her Grace was delighted with her fleet." After all, it is the men that count most, and the men of that day were as full of good courage as the best of us.

On the Continent they had a saying that "England is a paradise for women, a prison for servants, and a purgatory for horses"; for the females had more liberty in England than on the Continent, and were almost like masters; while the servants could not escape from England without a passport, and the poor horses were worked all too hard.

For instance, when the Queen broke up her Court to go on progress, there commonly followed her more than three hundred carts laden with bag and baggage. For you must know that in Tudor England, besides coaches, they used no waggons for their goods, but had only two-wheeled carts, which were so large that they could carry quite as much as waggons, and as many as five or six horses were needed to draw them.

In those days they knew full well what deep ruts could do in the way of lowering speed, and the jaded horses must sometimes have thought that they were pulling a plough, and not a coach.

Fynes Moryson, a traveller, gives a pleasant account of his journeyings: "The world affords not such Innes as England hath, either for good and cheap entertainment after the guests' own pleasure, or for humble attendance upon passengers. For as soon as a traveller comes to an Inne, the servants run to him, and one takes his horse and walks him till he be cold, then rubs him and gives him meat. Another servant gives the traveller his private chamber and kindles his fire: the third pulls off his boots and makes them cleane. Then the Host or Hostess visits him; and if he will eat with the Host, or at a common table with others, his meal will cost him six pence, or in some places but four pence: but if he will eat in his chamber, the which course is more honourable, he commands what meat he will, according to his appetite, and when he sits at table the Host or Hostess will visit him, taking it for courtesie to be bid sit downe: while he eats he shall have musicke offered him: if he be solitary the musicians will give him the good day with musicke in the morning. It is the custom to set up part of supper for his breakfast. Ere he goeth he shall have a reckoning in writing, which the Host will abate, if it seem unreasonable. At parting, if he give some few pence to the chamberlain and ostler they wish him a happy journey."

We may add that folk did not use night-gowns, as we see from George Cavendishes "Life of Wolsey": "My master went to his naked bed." But a night-gown in those days meant a dressing-gown. Hentzner gives us a description of the life at Court, from which we will take a few passages. He was at Greenwich Palace, being admitted to the presence-chamber, which was hung with rich tapestry and strewn with hay, or rushes. After noticing the small hands and tapering fingers of the Queen, her stately air and pleasing speech, he says: "As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one foreign Minister, then to another: for, besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, and French, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling: now and then she will pull off her glove and give her hand to kiss, sparkling, with rings and jewels. The Ladies of the Court that followed her, very handsome and well-shaped, were dressed in white, while she was guarded on either side by her gentlemen Pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt battle-axes."

What a marvellous lady was this Queen, so taught by suffering to dissemble and deceive, so trained by her tutors, Ascham and others, that she could make a speech in Latin to the Doctors of Cambridge and Oxford, or converse with a Dutchman, nay, even with a Scot in his own tongue.

We rather suspect that Hentzner may have been mistaken about the Scot; for surely she could not speak with a Highlander in Gaelic, and to understand a Lowland Scot could not have taxed her royal powers much.

England was a strange mixture of richness and poverty, of learning and superstition, of refined luxury and brutal amusements at that age. Hentzner describes how in a theatre built of wood he one day sat to listen to excellent music and noble poetry of tragedy or comedy, the next time he witnessed the cruel baiting of bulls and bears by English bull-dogs. "To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men standing around in a circle with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them because of his chain: he defends himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his reach, and tearing the whips out of their hands and breaking them. At these spectacles" (he writes in 1598) "the English are constantly smoking tobacco, and in this manner: they have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the farther end of which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder; putting fire to it they draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils, like to funnels."

The writer has one of these Elizabethan pipes: it is made with an exceedingly small bowl, showing how precious was the weed which Raleigh had recently introduced. The pipes have been found by workmen employed on the banks of the Thames in Southwark.

We must remember, in criticising the conduct of Elizabethan heroes, that they lived in a cruel age; that torture was still employed by the law, even to delicate ladies; that much of their sport was brutal, and much of their merriment gross and indelicate. There is, and there has been, a decided progress in the manners of Europeans; so that it is with a moral effort that we try to see things with their eyes and judge them with discrimination. For instance, many of their great seamen may in one aspect be regarded as pirates; for the great Queen sometimes did not sanction their raids over western waters until they had brought her some priceless spoil. The pirate was then knighted and commended for his valiant deeds of patriotism. Even along the coasts of England local jealousy set the galleys of the Cinque Ports in the south at making reprisals upon the traders of Yarmouth. When these depredations were made upon foreigners there were few who denounced them; for it became a kind of sport, an adventure well worth the attention of any squire's son, to snatch some rich prize from the wide ocean and distribute largesse on safely coming to port.

These men were the Robin Hoods of the sea, and when from selfish plunderings they rose to be champions of religious freedom as well, their career seemed in most men's minds to be worthy of all admiration. But in order to understand fully the motives which induced the more noble spirits to go forth and do battle with Spain on private grounds, and at their own expense, we ought to have sat at the Mermaid, or other taverns, and heard the mariners' tales as they told them fresh from the salt sea. We should have listened to stories of cruel wrongs inflicted on the brave Indians of South America, which would have stirred any dormant spirit of chivalry within us, and made us long to champion the weak.

We should have heard the story of the Indian chief who was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and suffered the penalty of losing his hands because he had fought so strenuously for his mother-land. This Indian returned to his people, and devoted the rest of his life to encouraging and heartening his countrymen to the great work of fighting for life and liberty, showing his maimed arms, and calling to mind how many others had had half a foot hacked off by the Spaniards that they might not sit on horseback. Then, when a battle was being fought, we should have been told how this chief loaded his two stumps with bundles of arrows and supplied the fighters with fresh store, as they lacked them. Surely men so brave as this man challenged admiration and deserved succour.

The young Queen of England had suffered herself, and these stories must have stirred her heart to say with the Dido of Virgil—

"Haud ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco."

Raleigh and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, Shakespeare and Spenser may have sat by a coal-fire and heard or told such stories; for Raleigh writes: "Who will not be persuaded that now at length the great Judge of the world hath heard the sighs, groans, and lamentations, hath seen the tears and blood of so many millions of innocent men, women, and children, afflicted, robbed, reviled, branded with hot irons, roasted, dismembered, mangled, stabbed, whipped, racked, scalded with hot oil, put to the strapado, ripped alive, beheaded in sport, drowned, dashed against the rocks, famished, devoured by mastiffs, burned, and by infinite cruelties consumed,—and purposeth to scourge and plague that cursed nation, and to take the yoke of servitude from that distressed people, as free by nature as any Christian."

It was not the massacres under Cortez and Pizarro, earlier in this century, which roused the deepest indignation; it was the tales of inhuman cruelty perpetrated by Spanish colonists in time of peace, and of the noble conduct of the conquered Indians under the degrading conditions of their slavery, which most moved pity and wrath and feelings of revenge.

Men told the story of the Cacique who was forced to labour in the mines with his former subjects, how he called the miners together—ninety-five in all—and with a dignity befitting a prince made them the following speech:—

"My worthy companions and friends, why desire we to live any longer under so cruel a servitude? Let us now go unto the perpetual seat of our ancestors, for we shall there have rest from these intolerable cares and grievances which we endure under the subjection of the unthankful. Go ye before, I will presently follow." So speaking, the Indian chief held out handfuls of those leaves which take away life, prepared for the purpose; so they disdainfully sought in death relief from the cruel bondage of their Spanish masters.

Again, an officer named Orlando had taken to wife the daughter of a Cuban Cacique; but, because he was jealous, he caused her to be fastened to two wooden spits, set her before the fire to roast, and ordered the kitchen servants to keep her turning. The poor girl, either through panic, fear, or the torment of heat, swooned away and died. Now the Cacique her father, on hearing this, took thirty of his men, went to the officer's house and slew the woman whom he had married after torturing his former wife, slew her women and all her servants; then he shut the doors of the house and burnt himself and all his companions. Tales such as these might well sting a generous and kindly people into doing harsh actions. Froude says in his "Forgotten Worthies": "On the whole, the conduct and character of the English sailors present us all through that age with such a picture of gallantry and high heroic energy as has never been over-matched." So, when we feel inclined to pass judgment upon our "heroes" for their misdeeds, we must remember the spirit of the time, and the wrongs of the weaker, and the promptings of generosity and religion.

CHAPTER II
SIR JOHN HAWKINS, SEAMAN AND ADMINISTRATOR

This famous sea-captain was the grandson of John Hawkins of Tavistock, who was a merchant in the service of Henry VIII. John was born at Plymouth in the year 1520, and drank in the love of the salt seas from his earliest years. His father, William Hawkins, was known to be one of the most experienced sea-captains in the west of England: he had fitted out a "tall and goodly ship," the Paul of Plymouth, and made in her three voyages to Brazil and to Guinea. He treated the savage people so well that they became very friendly, and in 1531 he brought one of their chiefs to England, leaving a Plymouth man behind as hostage. This chief was presented to King Henry and became the lion of society. On his way home to Brazil he died of sea-sickness; but Hakluyt tells us that the savages, being fully persuaded of the honest dealing of William Hawkins with their king, believed his report and restored the hostage, without harm to any of his company.

William Hawkins married Joan Trelawny and had two sons, John and William, both of whom made their way as seamen and merchants.

John made some voyages to the Canary Islands when quite a youth, and with his quick eye for gain soon learnt that negroes might be cheaply gotten in Guinea and profitably sold in Hispaniola. John Hawkins was not the first to make and sell slaves, but he was the first Englishman to take part in this cruel and inhuman barter. The Spaniards and Portuguese had used slaves, both Moors and negroes, and Hawkins no doubt had seen plenty of cases of slave-holding along the west coast of Africa, where savage warfare was carried on between native tribes, and such of the conquered as were not eaten were retained as slaves. He may have thought therefore that he was only carrying them to a less barbarous captivity; and we should remember that slavery was defended even by some religious people until quite recent times: but we must deplore the fact that this daring sea-dog, who certainly was not without religious feelings, found in this traffic a source of gain.

No doubt John, on his return to England, discussed the matter openly with men of influence, for in October 1562, being now more than forty years old, he led an expedition of a hundred men in three ships, the Solomon of 120 tons, the Swallow of 100 tons, and the Jones of 40 tons burden, and sailed direct for the coast of Sierra Leone, in West Africa, just north of Guinea. Hakluyt draws a veil over the exact methods by which John Hawkins got possessed of 300 fine negroes, besides other merchandise; but he probably took sides in some local quarrel and carried off his share of the prisoners. These poor wretches were carried across the Atlantic in the stuffy holds of small ships, and landed at San Domingo, one of the largest of the Spanish islands in the West Indies.

John made due apologies for entering the Spanish port: they could see he was really in want of food and water. The Spaniards too were polite, and as they peeped into his hold they saw the very thing they wanted—negroes. A bargain was quickly made, and John Hawkins took off in return for his captives quite a goodly store of pearls, hides, sugar, and other innocent materials.

Hawkins himself arrived safely in England with his three ships, but his partner, Thomas Hampton, who took what was left over in two Spanish ships to Cadiz, did not fare so well. For when it became known at Cadiz that English merchants had been trading with Spain's colonies, Philip II. confiscated the cargo, and Hampton narrowly escaped the prisons of the Inquisition. Queen Elizabeth was warned by her ambassador at Madrid that further voyages of this nature might lead to war.

For it seems that Philip had been an admirer of the Maiden Queen, and had been rebuffed as a suitor; whereby his love had changed to hate, and he lost no opportunity of showing his resentment.

But Queen Bess had her father's spirit in her, and answered the Spanish threat by permitting one of her largest ships, the Jesus of Lübeck, to be chartered for a new voyage. The Earls of Leicester and Pembroke joined in raising money for the expedition—this time it was a Court affair; there sailed a hundred and seventy men in five vessels, and they were to meet another Queen's ship, the Minion, before they got out of the Channel.

Again Hawkins raided the West African coast, "going every day on shore to take the inhabitants, with burning and spoiling of their towns."

It is strange how men engaged in such ruthless work could yet believe that they were specially preserved by Providence. For on New Year's Day 1565 they were well-nigh surprised by natives as they were seeking water. But a pious seaman wrote thus in his journal: "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!" Then they set sail for the West Indies with a goodly cargo of miserable slaves; but for eighteen days they were becalmed—"as idle as a painted ship, upon a painted ocean." "And this 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 dearth of negroes and of themselves; but the Almighty God, which never suffereth His elect to perish, sent us the ordinary breeze."

Let us hope that they felt some pity for the poor negroes too, who must have suffered agonies of thirst on that hideous journey.

But King Philip had ordered his Christian subjects to have no dealings with heretics; and for some time they could sell no negroes in Dominica.

But some heathen Indians presented cakes of maize, hens, and potatoes, which the English crews bought for beads, pewter whistles, knives, and other trifles. "These potatoes be the most delicate roots that may be eaten, and do far exceed our parsnips and carrots."

We need to remind ourselves occasionally of some of the luxuries which our ancestors never knew till these old seadogs brought them home—tobacco and potatoes! and later on, tea and coffee! It is difficult to imagine what the want of such things would mean to us now.

But not all the Indians were so kind as these they first met; for on the American mainland they fell in with a tribe whom the devilries of Spain had turned to "ferocious bloodsuckers," and whom they only narrowly avoided. Hawkins, according to his instructions from the Queen's Council, kept away from the larger dependencies and islands, and tried to sell his cargo in out-of-the-way places which Philip's orders might not have reached. At Barbarotta he was refused permission to trade. But Hawkins sent in a message: "I have with me one of Queen Elizabeth's own ships. I need refreshment and without it I cannot depart; if you do not allow me to have my way, I shall have to displease you."

Thereat he ran out a few of his guns to mark the form which his displeasure might assume: the Spaniards improved in politeness. At Curacoa they feasted on roast lamb to their heart's content: near Darien they again had to use threats of violence in order to get licence to trade; but the price offered by the Spaniards for the negroes so disgusted the equitable mind of John Hawkins that he wrote the Governor a letter saying that they dealt too rigorously with him, to go about to cut his throat in the price of his commodities ... but seeing they had sent him this to his supper, he would in the morning bring them as good a breakfast.

When that breakfast was served—and served hot—it proved to be garnished with a handsome volley of ordnance, with ships' boats landing at full speed a hundred armed Englishmen: the Spaniards fled.

"After that we made our traffic full quietly, and sold all our negroes." Hawkins then sailed for Hispaniola, but being misled by his pilot he found himself at Jamaica and then at Cuba, and so along the coast of Florida, meeting many Indians whenever they landed who were of so fierce a character that of five hundred Spaniards who had recently set foot in the country only a very few returned; and a certain friar who essayed to preach to them "was by them taken and his skin cruelly pulled over his ears and his flesh eaten." "These Indians as they fight will clasp a tree in their arms and yet shoot their arrows: this is their way of taking cover."

In coasting along Florida they found a Huguenot colony that had been founded there at the advice of Admiral Coligny. They had been reduced by fighting the Indians from two hundred to forty, and were glad to accept a passage home in the Tiger. On the 28th of July the English ships started for home, but, owing to contrary winds, their provisions fell so short they "were in despair of ever coming home, had not God of His goodness better provided for us than our deserving." On the 20th September they landed at Padstow in Cornwall, having lost twenty persons in all the voyage, and with great profit in gold, silver, pearls, "and other jewels great store." The Queen was delighted with the bold way in which Hawkins had traded in defiance of the Spanish king, and by patent she conferred on him a crest and coat of arms.

The Spanish ambassador at once wrote off to his master, saying he had met Hawkins in the Queen's palace, who gave him a full account of his trading with full permission of the governors of towns (he did not say by what means he had obtained such licence); "The vast profit made by the voyage has excited other merchants to undertake similar expeditions. Hawkins himself is going out again next May, and the thing needs immediate attention." The result of this letter was that Hawkins was strictly forbidden by Sir William Cecil from "repairing armed, for the purpose of traffic, to places privileged by the King of Spain." So the ships went, but Hawkins stayed at home; his ships returned next summer laden with gold and silver. The crews did not publish any account of how they had obtained their cargoes, and as the Queen had recently been assisting the Netherlands in their struggle for liberty against Spain, she made no indiscreet inquiries, and proceeded to lend the Jesus of Lübeck and the Minion for another expedition. One of the volunteers was young Francis Drake, now twenty-two years of age, whom Hawkins made captain of one of his six vessels.

As they left Plymouth they fell in with a Spanish galley en route for Cadiz with a cargo of prisoners from the Netherlands. Hawkins fired upon the Spanish flag, and in the confusion many of the captives escaped to the Jesus, whence they were sent back to Holland.

The Spanish ambassador wrote strongly to the Queen, and the Queen wrote strongly to Hawkins; but Hawkins had sailed away and was encountering storms off Cape Finisterre, so that he had a mind to return for repairs. But the weather moderating he went on to the Canaries and Cape Verde. Here he landed 150 men in search of negroes, but eight of his men died of lockjaw from being shot by poisoned arrows. "I myself," writes Hawkins, "had one of the greatest wounds, yet, thanks be to God, escaped."

In Sierra Leone they joined a negro king in his war against his enemies, attacked a strongly paled fort, and put the natives to flight. "We took 250 persons, men, women, and children, and our friend the king took 600 prisoners," which by agreement were to go to the English, but the wily negro decamped with them in the night, and Hawkins had to be content with his own few. They were at sea from February 3rd until March 27th, when they sighted Dominica, but found it difficult to trade, until after a show of force the Spaniards gave in and eagerly bought the slaves. At Vera Cruz the inhabitants mistook our ships for the Spanish fleet. There is a rocky island at the mouth of the harbour which Hawkins seized. The next morning the Spanish fleet arrived in reality, but Hawkins would not admit them until they had promised him security for his ships. Now there was no good anchorage outside, and if the north wind blew "there had been present shipwreck of all the fleet, in value of our money some £1,800,000." So he let them in under conditions, for even Hawkins thought that he ought not to risk incurring his Queen's indignation. On Thursday Hawkins had entered the port, on Friday he saw the Spanish fleet, and on Monday at night the Spaniards entered the port with salutes, after swearing by King and Crown that Hawkins might barter and go in peace.

For two days both sides laboured, placing the English ships apart from the Spanish, with mutual amity and kindness. But Hawkins began to notice suspicious changes in guns and men, and sent to the Viceroy to ask what it meant. The answer was a trumpet-blast and a sudden attack. Meanwhile a Spaniard sitting at table with Hawkins had a dagger in his sleeve, but was disarmed before he could use it. The Spaniards landed on the island and slew all our men without mercy. The Jesus of Lübeck had five shots through her mainmast, the Angel and Swallow were sunk, and the Jesus was so battered that she served only to lie beside the Minion, and take all the battery from the land guns.

ATTEMPT ON SIR JOHN HAWKINS' LIFE

As the Spanish and English fleets were anchored at Vera Cruz apparent amity and goodwill existed between the two, but as Hawkins was sitting at dinner one day a Spaniard sitting at table with him was discovered with a dagger up his sleeve, but fortunately was disarmed before he could use it.

Hawkins cheered his soldiers and gunners, called his page to serve him a cup of beer, whereat he stood up and drank to their good luck. He had no sooner set down the silver cup than a demi-culverin shot struck it away. "Fear nothing," shouted Hawkins, "for God, who hath preserved me from this shot, will also deliver us from these traitors and villains."

Francis Drake was bidden to come in with the Judith, a barque of 50 tons, and take in men from the sinking ships: at night the English in the Minion and Judith sailed out and anchored under the island. The English taken by the Spaniards received no mercy. "They took our men and hung them up by the arms upon high posts until the blood burst out of their fingers' ends."

The Judith under Drake sailed for England and reached Plymouth in January 1569; the Minion, with 200 men, suffered hunger and had to eat rats and mice and dogs. One hundred men elected to be landed and left behind to the mercies of Indians and Spaniards. "When we were landed," said a survivor, "Master Hawkins 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." Thus writes Job Hartop. So we see that John Hawkins, the slave-dealer, sincerely tried after his fashion to serve God as well as his Queen. His men loved him and spoke well of him when he failed; a good test of a man's worth when men will speak well of you though all your plans be broken and your credit gone. But alas! for the poor hundred men left ashore on the Mexican coast! They wandered for fourteen days through marshes and brambles, some poisoned by bad water, others shot by Indians or plagued by mosquitoes, until they came to the Spanish town of Panluco, where the Governor thrust them into a little hog-stye and fed them on pigs' food. After three days of this they were manacled two and two and driven over ninety leagues of road to the city of Mexico. One of their officers used them very spitefully and would strike his javelin into neck or shoulders, if from faintness any lagged behind, crying, "March on, English dogs, Lutherans, enemies to God." After four months in gaol they were sent out as servants to the Spanish colonists. For six years they fared passing well, but in 1575 the Inquisition was introduced into Mexico, and then their "sorrows began afresh." On the eve of Good Friday all were dressed for an auto-da-fé and paraded through the streets. Some were then burnt, others sent to the galleys, the more favoured ones got three hundred lashes apiece. One who had escaped had spent twenty-three years in various galleys, prisons, and farms.

Meanwhile Hawkins was taking his other hundred men back to England, meeting violent storms, but "God again had mercy on them." Then food became scarce and many died of starvation: the rest were so weak they could hardly manage the sails. At last they sighted the coast of Spain and put in at Vigo for supplies; here more died from eating excess of fresh meat after their famine. At length, with the help of twelve English sailors they reached Mount's Bay in Cornwall, in January 1569.

Here was a miserable ending of an ambitious expedition: no profits, no gold, no silver for the rich merchants and courtiers who had subscribed for the fitting out of the ships; no jewels for the lady who graced the throne. Sadly John Hawkins wrote to Sir William Cecil: "All our business hath had infelicity, misfortune, and an unhappy end: if I should write of all our calamities, I am sure a volume as great as the Bible will scarcely suffice."

Thus our hero, ruined but not broken, bided his time for revenge. As the years wore on England and Spain grew more embittered. Private warfare had existed for some time, and Philip had wished to declare open war in 1568; but the Duke of Alva cautioned him against making more enemies, while they still found it hard to subdue the Low Countries. So, for a while, the King contented himself with underhand efforts to stir up rebellion in Ireland and England.

In the year 1578 John Hawkins was summoned by the Queen from Devon and appointed Comptroller of the Navy. His business was to see to the building of new ships, the repairing of old ones, and the victualling and manning of all about to take the sea. Hawkins is said to have invented "false netting" for ships to fight in, chain-pumps and other devices. Acting with Drake he founded the "Chest" at Chatham, a fund made up by voluntary subscriptions from seamen on behalf of their poorer brethren. In fact he entered upon his work with the same zeal which he had shown in the West Indies. Lucky was it for him that he had a mistress like Elizabeth; for under the craven James he would certainly have been handed over to the Inquisition, or put to death by Spanish order, like Raleigh. In 1572 Hawkins and George Winter were commissioned to do their utmost to clear the British seas of pirates and freebooters, for of late the coasts of Norfolk and the East had been much troubled by sea-robbers. But through all his multifarious duties the old sea-rover was ever most bent on paying off old scores against King Philip. So many of his friends, beside himself, had lost their all or endured sharp punishment in Spanish dungeons, that he grimly chuckled when he heard of Drake having "singed King Philip's beard"; and when the news came that the invasion of England was only put off, and Pope Sixtus V. had spurred his Spanish Majesty to quick action by the oft-quoted taunt, "The Queen of England's distaff is worth more than Philip's sword," then John Hawkins rubbed his hands gleefully, and lost no time in getting all the Queen's ships taut and in order, well victualled and well manned. But Hawkins did not mince matters when he saw anything amiss; any hesitation or signs of parsimony met with his blunt disapproval. He writes in February 1588 to urge that peace could only be won by resolute fighting: "We might have peace, but not with God. Rather than serve Baal, let us die a thousand deaths. Let us have open war with these Jesuits, and every man will contribute, fight, devise or do, for the liberty of our country."

Hawkins also wrote to ask for the use of six large and six small ships for four months, with 1800 mariners and soldiers, which he would employ in another raid upon the Spanish coast, so as to hinder Philip's grand Armada. "I promise I will distress anything that goeth through the seas: and in addition to the injury done to Spain, I shall acquire booty enough to pay four times over the cost of the expedition."

But Burghley, like his mistress, kept a tight hand over slender resources, and he rejected Hawkins' offer. Macaulay says that even Burghley's jests were only neatly expressed reasons for keeping money carefully. Lord Howard bitterly complained to Walsingham that "her Majesty was keeping her ships to protect Chatham Church withal, when they should be serving their turn abroad"; and again, when Drake was being prevented from getting his Plymouth squadron in order for sea-service, he writes: "I pray God her Majesty do not repent her slack dealing.... I fear ere long her Majesty will be sorry she hath believed some so much as she hath done." Lord Burghley's task was to defeat the Armada with an almost empty exchequer. We find calculations of his as to whether it will not be cheaper to feed the sailors of the fleet on fish three days a week and bacon once, instead of the usual ration of four pennyworth of beef each day. And naturally these attempts to cut down expenses were misconstrued into parsimony. But with all her rigid economy, Elizabeth could show a brave front when the crisis came; as in the camp at Tilbury, when she addressed the little army that was expecting every hour to be called to meet the fierce onset of the invaders: "I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects; and therefore am I come amongst you, as ye see, at this time, 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 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 shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your General, Judge, and Rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."

The Great Armada had left the Tagus on the 20th of May 1588. It consisted of one hundred and thirty-two ships under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. Besides 8766 sailors, there were on board 2088 galley slaves, 21,855 officers and soldiers ready for action as soon as they should land; 300 monks and friars were pacing the decks, sent to take spiritual charge in partibus infidelium.

Against this force Queen Elizabeth had only thirty-four of her own ships, but all the seaports from Bristol to Hull sent small armed vessels, while noblemen and merchants contributed to swell the total, which came to nearly two hundred in all.

John Hawkins was there as Rear-Admiral under Howard, making with Drake and Frobisher his headquarters at Plymouth. "For the love of God," he writes to Walsingham, on the 19th of June, "let her Majesty care not now for charges," and in the same vein he wrote also to the Queen.

As he kept watch the Spanish fleet came slowly on, intending to surprise Plymouth; but Hawkins and his vessels were already awaiting the foe outside, so they anchored for the night off Looe. The next day was Sunday, the 21st of July, and Medina Sidonia seems to have made up his mind to go on to the Isle of Wight. All that day the little English ships were barking round the unwieldy galleys of Spain. "We had some small fight with them that Sunday afternoon," said Hawkins. By three o'clock the Spanish fleet was in a pretty confusion, hasting to get away from their tormentors. On Monday and Tuesday the fight continued, the details of which may be reserved for a later chapter; but every day more reinforcements came to Howard, as courtiers and merchants hurried down from London to serve in pinnace or frigate. By Wednesday morning the English ships had spent nearly all their ammunition, and were begging for powder and shot at every village they passed. On Friday Lord Howard knighted Frobisher and Hawkins for their valiant conduct; he then allowed the Armada to sail along the Sussex coast and cross the Straits of Dover towards Calais. There through Saturday and Sunday vast crowds of Flemings and Frenchmen gathered to gaze at the two great fleets, which were waiting, the Spaniards for the Prince of Parma to join them from Dunkirk, the English to carry out a little device which Sir William Winter had suggested.

Six of the oldest vessels were filled with combustibles and guns loaded to the mouth with old iron, and at midnight were conducted in the pitchy darkness of a rising storm within bow-shot of the Armada.

A train was fired, and the fierce south-west wind bore the fire-ships into the crescent of the Spaniards. The blaze, the explosions, the cannon-shot, struck a panic into the Armada. "The fire of Antwerp!" they cried. "Cut cable, up anchor!" In a few minutes they were all colliding together in their hurry to get away from the flames, and all that night they sped away past Dunkirk and Parma even to the mouth of the Scheldt.

"God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward," wrote Drake, "as I hope in God, the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia will not shake hands these few days.... I assure your honour, this day's service hath much appalled the enemy."

Then on the Monday Hawkins in the Victory, Drake in the Revenge, and Frobisher in the Triumph, led the English to the attack upon a fleet disorganised and cowed, fearing alike the sands, the storm, and the foe. Every ship in the Spanish fleet had received damage, some had been taken and others sunk, while a score or so went on shore and were lost.

FIRE-SHIPS

The Spanish fleet lay safely moored in Calais Harbour, huge impregnable castles of timber, but Howard's fire-ships caused them to scurry away before the wind like frightened fowls.

"We pluck their feathers by little and little," wrote Lord Howard, and if Burghley had only given them powder enough, the victory would have been complete. The English had no more ammunition left, but still, as the Spaniards forged ahead to the north, they grimly followed: "We set on a brag countenance and gave them chase."

It was not until Friday the 2nd of August that Howard abandoned the pursuit. He made for the Firth of Forth, took in victuals, powder, and shot, and sailed southwards to be ready for Parma, should he cross from Dunkirk. As they sailed, a storm burst upon them, scattering them so that they did not assemble again in Margate Roads until the 9th of August. A note from Lord Burghley suggests that as the danger is over, the ships shall be at once discharged; but there was no money to pay the men who had saved England in her hour of danger. Towards the end of August, Sir John wrote urgently to Burghley for money to pay the seamen—£19,000 were already due to them before the fight off Gravelines—and Lord Howard added a postscript: "Hawkins cannot make a better return. God knows how the lieutenants and corporals will be paid." Howard and Hawkins could not pay them off. The men were kept hanging on, ill-fed, ill-clad, housed like hogs and dying as by a pestilence. "'Tis a most pitiful sight to see how the men here at Margate, having no place where they can be received, die in the streets. The best lodging I can get is barns and such outhouses, and the relief is small that I can provide for them here. It would grieve any man's heart to see men that have served so valiantly die so miserably." So Howard writes to Burghley.

Burghley, at his wits' end, writes to Hawkins a melancholy letter: "Why do you ask for money when you know the exchequer is so empty?"

Howard tells the Queen how the men sicken one day and die the next; and as woman she pitied them, but could not find means to help her sailors. "Alas! these things must be—after a famous victory!" Her minister may have suggested some such reflection.

Meanwhile the great Armada, left to the judgment of God, was leaving its wrecks on the coasts of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland. It was not until October that fifty-three ships out of one hundred and thirty-two came back wearily to a Spanish port.

Sir Francis Drake tells us that many Spanish seamen landed in Scotland and Ireland, of whom a few remained to live amongst the peasantry, but the most part were coupled in halters and sent from village to village till they were shipped to England. "But her Majesty, disdaining to put them to death, and scorning either to retain or entertain them, they were all sent back again to their own country to bear witness to the worthy achievement of their Invincible Navy."

Sir John Hawkins in 1589 proposed to Lord Burghley a scheme for capturing Cadiz and sinking all the Spanish galleys he could find there. "It is not honourable for her Majesty to seem to be in any fear of the King of Spain." But Burghley did not approve of any more expenditure of money, and the scheme was dropped.

But every year English merchantmen were held up by Spanish galleys and had to fight for their existence: so in 1590 we hear of Sir John proposing another attack on Spain; and when this too was rejected, he wrote to Burghley, saying that he was now out of hope that he should be allowed to perform "any royal thing." So out of heart was he now that he begged he might be relieved of his duties as Treasurer of the Navy. "No man living hath so careful, so miserable, so unfortunate, and so dangerous a life." This request too was declined. But in May 1590 Sir John was sent, with Sir Martin Frobisher as Vice-Admiral, in command of fourteen ships to try and intercept a fleet of Portuguese carracks coming from India. They ransacked nearly every port on the Spanish coast for five months, so that all valuables were hastily removed inland, and all the Spanish galleys were hidden behind rocky promontories. But Philip had ordered the trading fleets to be kept back, and therefore no prizes were captured, and the adventurers returned empty-handed.

Queen Elizabeth was mightily incensed, though it was through no fault of the admirals that the expedition had been a financial failure.

Hawkins wrote the Queen a lengthy epistle explaining why they had failed, and he finished with a Biblical allusion: "Paul might plant, and Apollos might water, but it was God only who gave the increase." The Queen, stamping her foot, exclaimed hotly, "This fool went out a soldier, and is come home a divine!"

So the poor seaman returned to his hated desk as Treasurer, though he wrote to Burghley that he was fain to serve her Majesty in any other calling. "This endless and unsavoury occupation in calling for money is always unpleasant." He was now over seventy years of age, and his son Richard had for some years been distinguishing himself on the sea. But when that son had to surrender to the Spaniards and was sent to a Spanish prison, the old sea-dog thirsted to go abroad again and rescue his son, or at least take a great revenge.

His old friend Sir Francis Drake was to go with him, for the Queen had assented; but rumours of a fresh Armada kept them in England, for "all men," says Camden, "buckled themselves to war," and mothers only bewailed that their sons had been killed in France instead of being alive and well to defend hearth and home in England. But all the Spaniards did was to cross from Brittany with four galleys and land at Penzance. This town they sacked and burnt, but as the inhabitants had fled inland, no lives were lost. This was the last hostile landing made by the Spaniards on England's shore.

Next year, in August 1595, Drake and Hawkins left Plymouth with twenty-seven ships and 2500 men, Drake sailing in the Defiance as Admiral, Hawkins in the Garland as Vice-Admiral; Sir Thomas Baskerville was the Commander by land. The plan was to sail to Nombre de Dios and march across the isthmus to Panama, there to seize what treasure they could. But just before they sailed letters came from the Queen informing them that they were too late to intercept the West Indian fleet; it had already arrived in Spain; but one treasure-ship had lost a mast and put back to Puerto Rico; they were to seek for this and take it. So they sailed on the 28th of August, and in four weeks reached the Grand Canary. Drake and Baskerville wished to land, victual the fleet, and take the island; Hawkins, still smarting under Elizabeth's lash, was for strictly obeying the Queen's instructions. However, Baskerville promised he would take the place in four days, and Hawkins consented to wait. But finding that a strong mole had been built, and that the landing-place was defended by guns, and as a nasty sea was rising, they just landed to get water on the western side of the island and made for Dominica.

After making some traffic in tobacco they went on to Guadaloupe, where they cleaned their ships and let the men land. The next day, seeing some Spanish ships passing towards Puerto Rico, Drake concluded that the treasure-ship was still there, and that this force had been sent to convoy it. Captain Wignol in the Francis, having straggled behind out of Hawkins' fleet, fell in with these Spanish ships under Don Pedro Tello, and was captured. Tello put his men to torture, and drew from them the object and proposed course of the English ships. When Hawkins heard of this from a small vessel that had escaped the Spaniards, he suddenly fell sick: age, the troubles of the voyage, this last disappointment—all were too much for him; he struggled bravely against his malady, but every day he grew weaker. They started in three days from Guadaloupe and reached the Virgin Islands, where they took plenty of fish. Drake and Hawkins had some dispute here, some difference of opinion, and this was the last straw to weigh down the balance of death. For on the morning of the 12th of November the fleet passed through the Strait; and at night, when it was off the eastern end of Puerto Rico, Hawkins breathed his last.

Drake sailed in imprudently under the forts; one shot wounded his mizzen-mast, another entered the steerage, where he was at supper, and struck the stool from under him, killing two of his officers, but not hurting him. The treasure had been removed from the galleon, and the empty galleon had been sunk in the mouth of the channel. After a fierce fight Drake had to give up the attempt to get the treasure and sail away.

He only survived his old friend by eleven weeks. Thus England lost two of her grandest seamen in this expedition. Hawkins was seventy-five years old—too old to be exposed to the burning sun and all the anxieties of warfare. Then came bitter disappointment, and the feeling that he had done nothing to rescue his son, and little to avenge his wrongs. For six weeks Sir John Hawkins strove to make head against this "sea of troubles," but his work had been done, his body was worn out, and he could endure no more. In his adventurous life he had done many questionable things; but we ought not to judge him by the moral standard of another age; in his day, the rights of the slave had not yet been thought of. Hawkins had tried to do his duty to God and man, as he conceived that duty, and to his unflagging labours and zeal as Treasurer of the Navy, the success of England against the Armada was largely due.

CHAPTER III
GEORGE CLIFFORD, EARL OF CUMBERLAND, THE
CHAMPION OF THE TILT-YARD

When a nobleman neglects his private duties to his home estates and spends his fortune in fitting out ships to seek gold and jewels, and to damage the trade of a country he hates, different estimates will be formed of the honesty and nobility of the motives by which he is prompted.

We shall see in the sketch of George Clifford's life how various motives, good and indifferent, urged him to play the sea-king.

He was born in his father's castle at Brougham, Westmorland, in August 1558, being fourteenth baron Clifford of Westmorland. His family history had been distinguished, for the Fair Rosamond of Henry II. was a Clifford, and in the wars of York and Lancaster the Cliffords took a prominent part on the Lancastrian side. When George was still a boy his father brought about his betrothment to the Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of the second Earl of Bedford. He was being educated at Battle Abbey when his father died, and later he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, to complete his studies under Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who was then Master of Trinity. He also proceeded to Oxford for a time, as was not unusual in those days.

Before he was nineteen he was married to his betrothed in St. Mary Overy's Church, Southwark: the young lady was scarce seventeen years old. Clifford was a young man of expensive tastes. Amongst his other qualifications for Court life he excelled all the nobles of his time in tilting, and soon won the recognition of the Queen by his prowess in the Westminster tilt-yard. So he was made a Knight of the Garter, and in the twenty-eighth year of his age was appointed one of the forty Peers by whom Mary Queen of Scots was tried at Fotheringay Castle, in Nottinghamshire.

Was it policy, or love of adventure, or just desire for gain? The Earl soon began to form schemes for sending ships to plunder the Spaniards; he fitted out at his own cost the Red Dragon of 260 tons, and the barque Clifford of 130. Raleigh sent a pinnace to join them, and they sailed in 1586 under the command of Robert Withrington. They took a few merchantmen on their way to Sierra Leone; the principle on which they acted was a mixture of courtesy and bullying. Hakluyt says: "Our Admiral hailed their Admiral with courteous words, willing him to strike his sails and come aboard, but he refused; whereupon our Admiral lent him a piece of ordnance" (it sounds so kind and friendly) "which they repaid double, so that we grew to some little quarrel." The result was that the English boarded the hulks and helped themselves. For they found the hulks were laden in Lisbon with Spanish goods, and so thought them fair game. When they reached Guinea they went ashore, and in their search for water and wood came suddenly upon a town of negroes, who struck up the drum, raised a yell, and shot off arrows as thick as hail.

The English returned the fire, having about thirty calivers, and retired to their boats, "having reasonable store of fish"; "and amongst the rest we hauled up a great foul monster, whose head and back were so hard that no sword could enter it; but being thrust in under the belly in divers places, much wounded, he bent a sword in his mouth as a man would do a girdle of leather about his hand: he was in length about nine feet, and had nothing in his belly but a certain quantity of small stones." Later on they found another town of about two hundred houses and "walled about with mighty great trees and stakes, so thick that a rat could hardly get in or out." They got in, for the negroes had fled, and found the town finely and cleanly kept, "that it was an admiration to us all, for that neither in the houses nor streets was so much dust to be found as would fill an egg-shell." The English found little to take except some mats and earthen pots; was it for this that they, on their departure, set the town on fire? "It was burnt in a quarter of an hour, the houses being covered with reeds and straw."

Thence they sailed across to America, having no little trouble with a disease which they had caught ashore. They came to Buenos Ayres, where was great store of corn, cattle, and wine; but no gold or silver was to be had. Here they fell into some contention as to their further course, but as food was growing scarce they sailed northwards, till they came to Bahia, where they met a hot welcome of balls and bullets, but took some prizes. Then came a storm, and some of their prizes got loose and were lost. "Anon the people of the country came down amaine upon us and beset us round, and shot at us with their bows and arrows."

Of another fight which occurred shortly after, when the barque Clifford was boarded by the enemy, the merchant Sarracoll says: "Giving a mighty shout they came all aboard together, crying, 'Entrad! Entrad!' but our men received them so hotly, with small shot and pikes, that they killed them like dogs. And thus they continued aboard almost a quarter of an hour, thinking to have devoured our men, pinnace and all ... but God, who is the giver of all victories, so blessed our small company that the enemy having received a mighty foil was glad to rid himself from their hands: whereas at their entrance we esteemed them to be no less than betwixt two and three hundred men in the galley, we could scarce perceive twenty men at their departure stand on their legs; but the greater part of them was slain, their oars broken and the galley hanging upon one side, as a sow that hath lost her left ear, with the number of dead and dying that lay one upon another." While this terrible havoc was a doing, others of the crew had gone ashore and fetched sixteen young bullocks, "which was to our great comforts and refreshing."

After committing what havoc they could along the coast, with little profit to themselves, the commander resolved to go home; which resolution was "taken heavily of all the company—for very grief to see my Lord's hopes thus deceived, and his great expenses cast away."

The Earl took part in the Armada fight on board the Bonadventure, and the Queen, to mark her approbation, gave him a commission to go the same year as General to the Court of Spain, lending him the Golden Lion; this ship he victualled and furnished at his own expense. After taking one merchant ship and weathering a storm, he was obliged to turn.

But the Queen was his good friend and lent him the Victory, and with three smaller ships and 400 men he sailed from Plymouth in 1589. We do not hear what his Countess thought of so much wandering into danger, but duty, or profit, called her lord to the high seas. He made a few prizes, French and German, for he was not too scrupulous about nationalities, and made for the Azores, where he cut out four ships. At Flores he manned his boats and obtained food and water from Don Antonio, a pretender to the throne of Portugal. As they were rowing back to their ship, "the boat was pursued two miles by a monstrous fish, whose fins many times appeared 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"; they rowed at last away from the monster. They were now joined by a ship of Raleigh's and two others.

Meanwhile the richly laden vessels of Spain were on their way home, with orders to rendezvous at St. Helena. Some of the Earl's cruisers sighted them, but did not dare attack the huge carracks, though Linschoten tells us—and he was aboard one of them—that if the English had attacked they must easily have been taken; for scurvy, caused by bad food, was making ravages on the crews. "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." But all the English cruisers did was to insult them with reproaches and annoy them with musketry, and such small cannon-shot as vessels of thirty tons could carry. As Admiral Colomb used to say, "A captain of a man-of-war in those days could carry a cannon-ball in his coat-tail pocket," so small and light were they.

When the Earl was told that the West Indian fleet had sailed past, he returned to Fayal and took possession of the town, consisting then of some five hundred well-built houses; the inhabitants had abandoned it at his approach. He set a guard to preserve the churches and monasteries and stayed there four days, till a ransom of 2000 ducats, mostly in church-plate, was brought to him, with sixty butts of wine.

While taking two Brazilian ships at St. Mary's laden with sugar, the bar detained his vessel in a position exposed to the enemy; eighty of his men were killed, the Earl was wounded 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."

On their way home they fell in with a Portuguese ship laden with sugar, hides, and silver. Full of joy at their good speed they resolved upon going home. Captain Lister was sent in the prize to Portsmouth. He was wrecked at Helcliff, in Cornwall; all in her was lost, and only five lives saved. The Earl was delayed so long by bad weather that drink began to fail, and they had to collect what they could in sheets during a storm of rain. Many licked the moist boards and masts with their tongues, like dogs. In every corner of the ship were heard the lamentable cries of the sick and hurt, ten or twelve men died every night. Yet, we are told, the Earl ever encouraged his men by his presence of mind and his example; then they spoke a vessel which helped them with a little beer, and at last they put into Ventre-haven on the west coast of Ireland.

On arriving in London, as if the Earl had not suffered enough already, news was brought him that his eldest son was dead. But shortly after came another messenger announcing the birth of a daughter; this was the Lady Anne Clifford, who became, first, Countess of Dorset, and then of Pembroke. In this voyage thirteen prizes had been taken, and the profit doubled the outlay on his adventure in spite of the loss of his richest prize. It is difficult to realise the exceeding bitter feeling that existed between Spain and England at that time—a bitterness sharpened by religious differences, and kept in memory by private revenge.

For instance, Hakluyt tells us of a small English ship of about forty tons which was captured on the seas. Her crew were put by the Spaniards under hatches and coupled in bolts together; these men, after they had been prisoners three or four days, were murdered by a Spanish ensign-bearer, who had had a brother killed in the Armada fight, and who wished to revenge his death. This man took a poniard in his hand and went down under the hatches, where he found eight Englishmen sitting in chains, and with the same poniard he stabbed six of them to the heart; the remaining two clasped each other about the middle and threw themselves into the sea and there were drowned.

It is only fair to say that this act was much disliked by the other Spaniards, who carried the ensign-bearer a prisoner to Lisbon. The King of Spain willed he should be sent to England, that the Queen might treat him as she thought good; however, his friends interceded that he might be beheaded instead. On a Good Friday, as the Cardinal was going to Mass, captains and commanders stopped his Eminence and entreated for the man's pardon, and in the end they got his pardon, and his life was saved.

In 1592 the Earl of Cumberland hired the Tiger of 600 tons, and with his own ship the Samson, the Golden Noble, and two small vessels, he set forth. Contrary winds kept him east of Plymouth so long that it became too late to intercept the outward-bound carracks, so the Earl transferred his command to Captain Norton and returned to London. After some hard fighting the ships returned with a richly laden carrack. The narrator of the voyage moralises upon the happy finding thus: "I cannot but enter into the 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 from us ... whereby it should seem that the will of God for our good is 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 pious sailor then goes on to enumerate the goods that were stored in the holds of the Spanish carrack—from jewels and silks of China to spices and carpets of Turkey—in all estimated to be worth £150,000. This was of course to be divided amongst the adventurers.

But exaggerated expectations ended in general discontent, for the Queen had one small ship at the capture of the carrack, and because the Earl was not commanding in person his share was adjudged to depend on her Majesty's mercy and bounty. The royal lioness "dealt but indifferently with him." She took her share, and the other jackals helped themselves as largely as they dared; so that the Earl was fain to accept of £36,000 for him and his, as a pure gift. The carrack was unloaded at Dartmouth, and being so huge and unwieldy she was never removed from the river, "but there laid up her bones."

The spirit of adventure in the Earl was not quenched by this disappointment, for in the latter end of 1593 he got ready two ships royal and seven others, which set sail next spring. Off the isle of Flores he met the Portuguese fleet and had to stand off to avoid them, as they were too numerous to attack. He was taken ill and would have died, had not Monson gone ashore on Corvo and stolen a milch cow, which they brought aboard. Twelve hulks yielded him some treasure, and he left for home after a gainful voyage.

Three of his ships he had sent to the West Indies, and they made for the pearl fisheries at Margarita. A Spaniard treacherously showed them where the pearls were stored in a ranckeria; they surprised it by night with twenty-eight men and carried off £2000 worth of pearls. Coasting along, two of them fell in with seven ships, moored alongside head and stern, and fought all day, hammer-and-tongs. The Spaniards got into their boats next day and made for the land, carrying the rudders with them; the English helped themselves and fired the ships. They then brought the chief ship of 250 tons safely to Plymouth.

Next year the Earl set forth on his eighth voyage, and in June came in sight of a big Indian ship whose name was Las Cinque Llagas ("the Five Wounds"), and she carried 1400 persons, of whom 270 were slaves.

The Earl's Mayflower was the first to get up to her, and was hotly fired into; for the Portuguese had sworn to defend their ship to the last, and fought with desperation. Don Rodrigo de Cordoba, having both his legs shattered, cried out, "Sirs, I have got this in the discharge of my duty. Be of good heart. Let no one forsake his post; let us perish rather than be taken."

Twice did the English board, and twice were they driven out with great loss. Downton the rear-admiral was crippled for life, and Cave, who commanded the Earl's ship, was mortally wounded by a shot through both legs. To make the hideous scene worse, fire was thrown about and the Cinque Llagas caught and began to burn.

A Franciscan friar, Antonio, was seen standing with a crucifix in his hand, encouraging the crew to commit themselves to the waves and God's mercy, rather than die in the flames, and a vast number plunged into the sea. It is said that the English boats made no attempt to save these unfortunates, but the English themselves were on fire and were probably busy putting their own ships in order. But the rear-admiral's boat picked up Nuno Velho and some others; Nuno had been Governor of Mozambique and had been only recently shipwrecked and rescued by the Cinque Llagas. There were also on board two Portuguese ladies of high birth, Doña Isabel Pereira and her beautiful daughter, Doña Luiza de Mello. They had been wrecked in the Santo Alberto, and had since travelled through Kaffraria on foot nearly a thousand miles. The young lady was travelling home to take possession of her entailed property at Evora. In the confusion and panic they could get no attention, and fear of something worse than death urged them to fasten themselves together with a Franciscan cord and leap into the sea. Their bodies, so bound together, were at length cast up on the shore of the island of Fayal.

Nuno Velho and Braz Correa, captain of the Nazareth, were taken as prisoners to England, where the Earl treated them hospitably for a whole year. It was perhaps not wholly from kindly and unselfish motives, for in the end Nuno Velho paid three thousand cruzados for the ransom of both.

As for the Cinque Llagas, she burned all day and all night, but "the next morning her powder, being sixty barrels, blew her abroad, so that most of the ship did swim in parts above the water."

Towards the end of June they fell in with another great ship, which they at first took for S. Philip, the admiral of Spain, and were mighty cautious how they approached her guns. But seeing she was a carrack they bestowed on her some shot and summoned her to yield, unless she would undergo the same fate as the Five Wounds. But the Portuguese captain was a brave man and replied: "I acknowledge Don Philip, King of Spain, not the Queen of England. If the Earl of Cumberland has been at the burning of the Cinque Llagas, so have I, D. Luis Continho, been at the defeat and capture of Sir Richard Grenville in the Revenge. Do what you dare, Earl, for your Queen, and I, Luis, will do what I can for my King. My ship is homeward bound from India, laden with riches, and with many jewels on board. Come and take her if ye can."

The fight was renewed, but the English, having already many officers killed and wounded, and by reason of the "murmuring of some disordered and cowardly companions," sailed away for England, having done much harm to the enemy and little good to themselves.

So the Earl returned to England, and at once set about building a ship big enough to lie alongside any of the Spanish vessels; she was 900 tons, the largest ship ever yet built by a British subject. The Queen was so pleased by the Earl's spirit that she, at the launching of the big ship, gave it the name of the Scourge of Malice.

Her first voyage in 1595 was not a success, for as they reached Plymouth a command was received from her Majesty that the Earl should return. So he sent Captain Langton on, who took three Dutch ships that were carrying ammunition and provisions for the King of Spain, and returned to England.

The ninth expedition in 1596, led by the Earl in his new ship, with the Dreadnought of the Royal Navy, was also a failure; for a violent storm split the Earl's mainmast and he had to return home.

In 1597 the Earl obtained letters-patent authorising him to levy sea and land forces, and he began to prepare the largest expedition which had ever been undertaken by a private individual without royal help; it consisted of eighteen sail, and the Earl took the command in person.

His design was, first, to impoverish the King of Spain; secondly, to catch the outward-bound fleet as it sailed from the Tagus. If this failed, then thirdly, to seize some town or island that would yield him riches.

They set out on the 6th of March, but in a few hours the masts of the Scourge of Malice began to show weakness, and she had to put in near Lisbon and be repaired. They worked night and day, fearing to be discovered, while the other vessels kept out at sea. On rejoining his fleet he heard that a ship from England with Spaniards on board had sailed into the Tagus and warned the Indian fleet. The carracks remained therefore under cover of the fort's guns, and the Earl sailed for the Canaries, where he landed on Lancerota, "borrowed some necessaries," as the looting was described, and found his men had got drunk and were mutinous. So the Earl preached them a sermon and threatened to hang the sinners on the next offence. Hence they sailed across the Atlantic to Dominica, where the inhabitants welcomed them, as they too hated the Spaniards; here they found a hot spring at the north-west end of the island. "The bath is as hot as the King's bath in the city of Bath." Here their sick men disported themselves and found "good refreshing." They were enchanted with the beauty of the valleys and trees and rivers and gathered new strength. Then they went on to Puerto Rico, the key of all the Indies, and the Earl assured his men that the island was rich, and they must take the town. "The Indian soldiers," he said, "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!"

So they landed on a beach four leagues from the town and marched on the hot sand, now and again paddling in the cool waves like merry children. A negro was compelled to lead them, and they had to clamber over rough rocks till they came to an entrance of an arm of the sea and saw that the town was set upon a little island. Then were they at their wits' ends how to cross over, but as they had seen some horsemen, the Earl thought there must be a passage. By dint of bullying the negro they made him show a path "through the most wickedest wood that ever I was in in all my life." By sunset they came to a long and narrow causeway leading to a drawbridge which linked the little island with the greater one. But the bridge was up, and they asked the negro if it were possible to ford the passage: "Yes, at ebb-tide, massa," he replied. So they lay down and slept, being very tired. Two hours before day the alarm was quietly given, "for we needed not but to shake our ears." As they advanced along the rugged causeway the Earl's shield-bearer stumbled and fell against his master, knocking him into the sea, where, being by reason of his heavy armour unable to rise, he was in great danger of drowning. He swallowed so much salt-water that he was extremely sick, and had to lie down whilst the assault was going on. But the Spaniards resisted stoutly, the tide too came up, and the English had to retire with a loss of fifty men.

A second attempt with a vessel was more successful and the Spaniards were driven from their fort. When the Earl's men entered the town they found only women and old men. The men had retired to another fort and refused to yield; so two batteries were brought up and "began to speak very loud."

During the siege the Earl had to punish a good soldier of his "for over-violent spoiling a gentlewoman of her jewels." The man was hanged in the market-place in the presence of many Spaniards. A sailor too, who had defaced a church, was condemned to die. Twice he was taken to the gallows, and twice he was removed in obedience to the clamours for his pardon. In a few days the Spaniards demanded a parley and surrendered, carrying their arms.

But the climate of the island began to tell on the health of the English. Books had their glued backs melted by the heat, candied fruits lost their crust, and English comfits grew liquid. In July more than 200 died, and twice as many were sick of a flux and hot ague, with the limbs cold and weak. So the Earl made haste to store the hides, ginger, and sugar, also the town's guns and ammunition. He put on board, too, specimens of the sensitive plant, of which the chaplain said: "It hath a property confounding my understanding, for if you lay a finger upon the leaves of it, the leaves will contract and wither and disdainfully withdraw themselves, as if they would slip themselves rather than be touched."

The Earl soon sailed for the Azores, hoping to catch the Mexican fleet; but he found that the homeward-bound carracks had already passed and the Mexican fleet was not expected, so in disappointment they sailed home. Seven hundred out of the thousand men who had landed at Puerto Rico had died, and the Spaniards had, knowing this, refused to ransom the city. So this grand expedition became a very serious loss to the Earl, but it was the cause of a greater loss to Spain, by preventing the carracks from going to or returning from the Indies. This was the Earl of Cumberland's last venture. Fuller eulogises him as "a person wholly composed of true honour and valour." But when we reflect that prodigal expenditure at Court, display at the tilting-field, and losses in horse-racing were amongst the incentives to these rash exploits, we must place him a little lower than old Fuller does. However, the Earl compares to advantage with our modern spendthrifts, most of whom will make no effort to retrieve their ruined fortunes, and expect their kind relations to support them in idleness. The Earl of Cumberland played a man's part, and was not above serving his country as well as his personal interests. There was something heroic about him even in his actions at Court.

For they say that on one of these occasions the Queen dropped her glove, either by accident, or from some coquettish fancy natural to her. The Earl picked it up, and on his knee presented the glove to her. "My Lord, an it please thee, keep it in my memory," she murmured. The courtier put the glove into his bosom and bowed low. Another would have hidden it in a cabinet, labelled and dated, but the Earl sent the glove to his jeweller, and had it emblazoned with diamonds. It was then set in front of his hat and worn at all public assemblies when he was likely to appear before the Queen.

In his youth the Earl had fallen in love with the daughter of Sir William Hollis, a lovely and beautiful girl. But her father rejected the proposal of the Earl, much to his discontent—"My daughter shall marry a good gentleman with whom I can enjoy society and friendship, and I will not have a son-in-law before whom I must stand cap in hand." He next paid his addresses to Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis, Earl of Bedford, and was accepted. She bore him two sons, both of whom died in infancy, and a daughter, to whom he left £15,000—a young lady who inherited the common sense of her mother and the high spirit of both parents.

This charming girl, Lady Anne, married first Sackville, Earl of Dorset, and afterwards Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. She seems to have been one of the last in England to support the old baronial dignity of feudal times. She had the honour of erecting a monument to the poet Spenser, founded two hospitals, and repaired or built seven churches and six castles—no bad record for one lady of noble blood.

It is said that one of her friends advised her to be more sparing in building churches and castles now the Lord Protector Cromwell was in power; for he might take it in hand to demolish them.

"Let him destroy them if he will," she replied proudly; "he shall surely find, as often as he does so, I will rebuild them while he leaves me a shilling in my pocket."

CHAPTER IV
SIR MARTIN FROBISHER, THE EXPLORER OF
THE NORTHERN SEAS

It has been conjectured that Martin Frobisher was the son of Francis Frobisher, who in the year 1535 was Mayor of Doncaster, and lived at Finningley, some seven miles south-east of Doncaster. One historian claims Frobisher as a Devon man, but Fuller in his "Worthies" writes: "Why should Devonshire, which hath a flock of worthies of her own, take a lamb from another county?" Another tells us that Frobisher was born at Normanton in Yorkshire, and was about as old as Humphrey Gilbert.

Lock, an adventurer and merchant of London, says in his Memoir that Martin "was born of honest parentage, a gentleman of a good house and antiquity, who in his youth, for lack of schools thereabout, sent him to London, where he was put to Sir John York, knight, being his kinsman; he, perceiving Martin to be of great spirit and bold courage and natural hardness of body, sent him in a ship to the Gold Country of Guinea, in company of other ships sent out by divers merchants of London." This was in the autumn of 1554: it was one of the first expeditions sent out from England to explore the western coast of Africa, and was commanded by John Lock. They landed on the Gold Coast and began a prosperous trade in gold and elephants' teeth, returning to London in 1555. For eleven years after this little is known of Frobisher's doings, except that he made more voyages to West Africa and to the Levant in the Mediterranean.

In 1566 he had risen to the rank of captain, and was apparently noted for his daring voyages, as in May of that year he was examined by order of the Queen's Council on suspicion of having fitted out a ship for piracy.

In 1572, when he was lodging at Lambeth after one of his voyages, one Ralph Whalley called upon him at his lodging and introduced himself as a follower of the Earl of Desmond, an Anglo-Irish nobleman, at that time imprisoned in the Tower for treason. He was the head of the great house of the southern Fitzgeralds, who were all-powerful in Munster, but Sir Henry Sidney, by Queen Elizabeth's orders, had sent him on arrest to England. He surrendered his property into the Queen's hands, but was committed for security to the Tower.

Whalley explained all this to Frobisher, and suggested how profitable it would be to help this deserving gentleman to escape out of England. Why should he be kept in the Tower? he had done no ill to any one. Frobisher was appealed to as a daring sailor, well known by repute in all the ale-houses where the sign of the bush was hung out, and as generous as he was brave.

Well, the idea was that the Earl, having got free out of the Tower, should be carried in an oyster-boat as far as Gravesend, and there should embark on board a ship to be provided by Frobisher.

The reward which Whalley held out, to counterbalance the risk incurred in helping a prisoner to escape, was a share in the vessel of the value of £500, and a free gift from Earl Desmond of his island of Valentia, on the coast of Derry. We do not know whether Frobisher entertained the idea of helping Desmond; probably he thought it too risky, for the attempt was not made. Possibly on thinking it over Frobisher believed it to be his duty to inform the Government, for he signed a declaration four months later in which he describes the Lambeth incident. Desmond did get away later on and broke out in rebellion in Ireland, only to be killed at last in an Irish cabin. Frobisher had latterly been employed by the Government in sailing along the Irish coast to intimidate rebels and prevent the landing of foreign sympathisers. This he continued to do for three or four years after the Lambeth incident, and so he came under the notice of Burghley and the Queen, and won the friendship of Sir Henry Sidney and Sidney's favourite, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Now Sir Humphrey was the chief promoter of attempts to find a north-west passage to the Indies; he and Frobisher must have had many a long talk together over the Arctic map; and at last the Queen heard of the idea and granted a licence in 1575 to Master Martin Frobisher, and divers gentlemen associated with him, for finding a north-west passage to Cathay.

The chief argument in Frobisher's mind which proved the existence of such a passage was that Nature did all things in harmony. Now, as she had made a fair communication between the Southern Atlantic and the Pacific, so she would be found to have established the same water-way between the Northern Atlantic and the Pacific. It was of the same order of reasoning as the old theory that "Nature abhors a vacuum."

However, it seemed so very reasonable that many moneyed men in the city of London were willing and anxious to spend money on the search. Lock subscribed £100, Sir Thomas Gresham £100, Lord Burghley £50, the Earls of Sussex, Leicester, Warwick £50 each, and others smaller sums, until a fund of £875 was secured; in modern currency this was equivalent to some £6000, but was not sufficient for carrying out the project.

Frobisher went about London, Lock tells us, a sad man and thoughtful; Lock lent him books and maps, and got him friends and subscriptions, but still the fund remained insufficient. "I made my house his home, my purse his purse, and my credit his credit, when he was utterly destitute both of money and credit and of friends."

The ships were, however, being furnished in the docks, and after all the many conferences in Fleet Street and Mark Lane, and even at Greenwich Court, still the money came slowly in. At last, by May 1576, two strongly built barques, the Gabriel and the Michael, each of 25 tons burden, together with a small pinnace of 10 tons, lay ready in the Thames, hard by old London Bridge. Frobisher received his commission as admiral, Hall and Griffin were masters, and Chancellor purser of the voyage. They numbered about forty officers and men, and started on the 7th of June.

As they sailed off Deptford the pinnace was run down by a vessel coming up stream; her bowsprit and foremast were broken, and twenty-four hours were spent in doing repairs.

At midday on Friday the vessels sailed past Greenwich, firing guns as a salute in honour of the Court. The Queen sat at a window watching them, and waved her hand in token of farewell.

Anon she sent a messenger in a rowing-boat to tell her brave seamen that she liked well their doings and thanked them for it, and also willed that Master Frobisher should come the next day to the Court to take his leave of her. This he did with a beating heart; for was not his ambition of fifteen years being now satisfied!

They sailed round the western coast of England and Scotland, and halted in the Shetlands to calk the Gabriel, for she was leaking, and to take in water. Sailing west from the Faroe Islands they caught sight of "some high and ragged land rising like pinnacles of steeples"—perhaps the south of Greenland. They could not land for "the great store of ice that lay along the coast, and the great mists that troubled them not a little."

As they sailed north and west a great storm arose and swept away the pinnace, so that they saw her no more. Next day they lost the Michael, but her crew, after waiting about on the ice-bound coast of Labrador, concluded that Frobisher and the rest in the Gabriel were drowned, and so they returned home and came to Bristol on the 1st of September.

And now Frobisher in the Gabriel, with eighteen mariners and gentlemen, pushed boldly on, undaunted by the strange perils that surrounded them, and they reached the group of islands lying westward of what is now called Davis's Straits. Neither could they land for the ice, snow, and fog, but at last found a resting-place on an island which Frobisher called "Hall's Island," for that Hall, master of the Gabriel, there first landed. Thence he sailed into a bay and called it "Frobisher's Straits," thinking it would lead them to India.

Once, on landing, they saw some things floating in the sea afar off, which they thought to be porpoises, but on coming nearer they found they were men in small leathern boats. These brought salmon for barter, laying it down on the rocks and signing to the English to do the same with their goods. If not satisfied the natives took up their fish and went away.

They were disposed to be friendly, and liked to climb the rigging of our ships, and "tried many masteries upon the ropes after our mariners' fashion."

Others reported less favourably of them, saying that their manner of life and food was "very beastly." "They be like to Tartars, with long black hair, broad faces and flat noses, tawny in colour, wearing sealskins ... the women are marked in the face with blue streaks down the cheeks and round about the eyes."

On the 20th of August one of the Eskimos was brought on board the Gabriel, to whom Frobisher gave a bell and a knife, sending him ashore in the ship's boat with five of the crew to manage it. They were ordered not to go out of sight, but curiosity led them to land, and they never returned.

Five days were spent in coasting along the shore, in blowing of trumpets and firing guns to attract his men's attention, but all in vain; they were believed to have been murdered. Now Frobisher had only thirteen men left and no ship's boat; he felt he could do no more that year.

CAPTURE OF AN ESKIMO

Frobisher had lost several men through the treachery of the natives, and determined to make an example of one of them. He enticed one by holding out a bell and other trinkets, and as soon as he came within reach he dropped the bell, seized the man by the arm, and hauled him bodily on board.

But before he left the land "he wrought a pretty policy; for, knowing how they greatly delighted in our toys, and especially in bells, he rang a pretty, low bell, making signs that he would give him the same that would fetch it." At first they feared to come, but at last one of them came near the ship's side to receive the bell. But as he stretched out his hand to take the bell, Frobisher let the bell fall and caught the man fast, plucking him with main force, boat and all, out of the sea on to the Gabriel's deck.

This was not the only time that Martin Frobisher thus proved his strength. But the Eskimo, when he found he was caught, bit his tongue in twain within his mouth, for very anger and vexation.

On the voyage home, as they passed Iceland, one of the crew was blown overboard by a violent gust of wind, but he chanced to lay hold of the foresail sheet and hung on till Frobisher, leaning down, picked him up and hauled him dripping aboard again.

On the 2nd of October the Gabriel entered the river at Harwich, having been rather less than four months absent from England, after exploring much northern territory, but without finding the desired passage to Cathay.

"Why! we thought you were all lost! The Michael came home and they said you were nowhere to be found!" was the first greeting they received.

But in London they were joyfully welcomed on October 9th, bringing with them the strange infidel and his boat, whose like was never seen, read, nor heard of before, and whose language was neither known nor understood of any.

But the poor stranger, who could resist the inclemency of an Arctic winter, could not withstand our damp autumn gales; he caught a cold at sea, and lingered only a few weeks, after being the brief wonder of the town. But a more extraordinary discovery, and one which afterwards spoiled all Frobisher's attempts at scientific research, was this.

Philip Sidney, writing in 1577, says to his tutor: "I wrote to you about a certain Frobisher, who, in rivalry of Magellan, has explored the sea which, as he thinks, washes the north part of America. It is a marvellous history. He touched at a certain island in order to rest his crew; there by chance a young man picked up a piece of earth which he saw glittering on the ground and showed it to Frobisher; but he, being busy with other matters, and not believing that precious metals were produced so far north, considered it of no value. But the young man kept the earth by him till his return to London. And there, when one of his friends saw it shining in an extraordinary manner, he tested it and found it was the purest gold."

Another account says that this "earth" was a black stone, much like to sea-coal in colour; "and it fortuned a gentlewoman, one of the adventurers' wives, to have a piece thereof, which by chance she threw and burnt in the fire so long that at length, being taken forth and quenched in a little vinegar, it glittered with a bright glistening of gold." So the stuff was taken with some show of excitement to certain gold-refiners in the City to make an assay-thereof; and their verdict was that it held gold and that in very rich measure.

Immediately this news got bruited about, there was no small stir among the merchants and courtiers—all, seamen and men of learning alike, clamoured for another expedition; for they argued that it was of small importance to find a passage to Cathay, if treasures equally valuable lay so near at hand.

Queen Elizabeth and Burghley were both ready to throw economy to the winds, if good gold could be gotten by "Master Frobisher."

So a charter was granted to the "Company of Cathay," and Frobisher was to have 1 per cent. of all he found, together with a fixed yearly stipend. He was to take his own ships Gabriel and Michael, each of 25 tons burden, and a Queen's ship, the Aid, of 200 tons, and furnished with sixty-five sailors and twenty-five soldiers.

Among the crews were ten convicts—highway robbers—taken out of prison and lent to Frobisher as "likely men of their hands."

Frobisher had no relish for such gentry, as being men who might lead mutinies and do lawless deeds; he therefore dropped them on the English coast and carefully forgot to take them with him.

When Frobisher opened his "instructions" he found to his disgust that the finding of a North-West Passage was a very subordinate part of his duty. He was to go to Hall's Island, leave his large ship in safe harbour, and search for gold with the two smaller vessels. He was to plant a colony and capture eight or ten people of the country, "whom we mind shall not return again thither, and therefore you shall have great care how you do take them, for avoiding of offence towards them and the country."

On taking leave, Frobisher had the honour of kissing her Majesty's hand as he knelt before her, who dismissed him "with gracious countenance and comfortable words." At Gravesend they went to church and received the Sacrament—"prepared as good Christians towards God and resolute men for all fortunes."

At Harwich they tarried three days to take in provisions and weed out the convicts. The next place they stopped at was Orkney, where they found the people so strange that they fled from their pebble-built cottages with shrieks at their approach. "The goodman, wife, children, and others of the family eat and sleep on the one side of the house, and the cattle on the other—very beastly and rudely in respect of civility."

As they sailed north great fir-trees came floating by, torn by the roots out of the rocky soil by the great storms, also some icebergs came in their way. When they reached Greenland they could find no place to land; for three days Frobisher wandered up and down in a rowing-boat, but saw only a ragged coast-line of high mountains and snow-clad rocks, looking like lumps of ice in the misty sea. At Hall's Island all the ships met after being separated by a storm.

Then for five weeks Frobisher searched the land for gold ore, and found little. They met some natives near Frobisher's Straits and very pleasantly spent a great part of one day in exchanging merchandise, the Eskimos making all possible signs of friendship. But Frobisher, in obedience to the Queen's orders, tried to coax two of the natives into his boat, and at once the new-found friends were turned into enemies; for they ran for their bows and wounded several of our men. Soon after they were menaced by a host of icebergs, a thousand or more, and the whole night long was spent in evading these dangerous visitors. "Some scraped us, and some escaped us. In the end we were saved, God being our best steersman."

In the morning Frobisher called his men to thank God heartily for His protection of them in the time of danger. The storm cleared Frobisher's Straits of pack-ice, and sailing up they found a big fish embayed with ice, about twelve feet long, having a horn of two yards long growing out of its snout. This horn, "wreathed and straight, like in fashion to a taper made of wax," they took home and presented to the Queen at Windsor.

In their explorations they thought they saw much gold ore, and entered some houses built two fathoms under ground, round like ovens, and strengthened above ground by bones of whales, for lack of timber. The men were of the colour of a ripe olive, very active and nimble, clad in sealskins and hides of bear, deer, and fox. They loved music, could keep time to any tune that was sung to them, and could soon sing aptly any tune they heard. They were excellent marksmen, and when they shot at a fish they used to tie a bladder to the arrow, which, by buoying the dart, at length wearied out and killed the fish. All they had to burn was heath and moss, and they kindled a fire by fretting one stick against another.

"The women carry their sucking children at their backs and do feed them with raw flesh, which first they do a little chew in their own mouths." They believed in magic and said prayers to stones in order to cure a headache, and would lie on the ground face downwards, and by groans do obeisance to the foul fiend.

Once the English had a desperate fight with natives, who would never give in, but if mortally wounded, despairing of mercy, would leap headlong off the rocks into the sea, lest they should be eaten. In this fight in York Sound two women were caught; one being old was taken by the sailors for a witch, so they plucked off her buskins to see if she were cloven-footed! She was not; and the poor thing, for her ugly hue and deformity, was let go. The other was young and encumbered with a young child. As she was hiding behind some rocks, she was taken for a man and shot through the hair of her head; her child's arm too was pierced by an arrow. When brought to the surgeon she cried out, and the surgeon with kind intent applied salves to the baby's arm. But the mother plucked the salves away, and by constant licking of her tongue healed the wound.

By the middle of August Frobisher had loaded his ships with some two hundred tons of mineral, and as cold weather was coming he decided to return. So lighting a bonfire in the Countess of Warwick's Island, and all marching round it with blare of trumpets and echo of guns, they said good-bye to the "Meta Incognita" for this year, 1577.

The Aid arrived at Milford Haven on September 23rd and proceeded to Bristol, when they learnt that the Gabriel had already arrived, and that the Michael had sailed safely to Yarmouth.

Frobisher was invited to Windsor and there heartily thanked by the Queen. "Two hundred tons of gold ore you have brought, Master Frobisher? and pray, where shall this treasure be stored? That asks some considering."

Poor Frobisher! not a question asked about his geographical discoveries, or the North-West Passage; but two hundred tons of gold ore were enough to make all England merry—let us not blame the Queen. Most of it was deposited in Bristol Castle, the rest conveyed to the Tower of London; and the Queen sent a special messenger to remind the Warden that four locks were to be placed upon the door of the treasury, and that one key should be handed over to Martin Frobisher, one to Michael Lock, one to the Warden of the Tower, and one to the Master of the Mint. Ah! if only all these tons had contained gold, how happy would Master Frobisher have made his Queen and her subjects! But as yet all were agog with the wonderful news and with hopes of still more treasure to be gotten another year.

At once small parcels were doled out to the best gold-refiners in London, and at Bristol, where Sir William Winter controlled the ore. The refiners heated their furnaces—and themselves week after week. It was passing strange! they could not induce the gold to show itself.

On the 30th of November Michael Lock, Frobisher's great friend and financier, informed Secretary Walsingham that some unbelief in the quality of the mineral was growing up; and Winter at Bristol confessed that they had not been able to get a furnace hot enough "to bring the work to the desired perfection." The general verdict was that "the ore was poor in respect of that brought last year, and of that which we know may be brought the next year."

So the merchant adventurers, the Cathay Company, the Queen's Court, and all the little subscribers in county towns tried to comfort themselves. And to prove that the gold was there—must be there—a much larger expedition was preparing for 1578, Frobisher's third voyage!

Fifteen ships were being fitted out to bring home two thousand tons of good rock. One wonders where it all lies now!

Six months were occupied in the work; for they were to leave a colony of a hundred men in "Meta Incognita"; and for these they were to take out a strong fort of timber to defend the colonists against cold and enemies. Besides these Frobisher was to select one hundred and thirty able seamen, a hundred and sixty pioneers, sixty soldiers, besides gunners, carpenters, surgeons, and two or three ministers to conduct divine service according to the rites of the Church of England. Captain E. Fenton was to be vice-admiral and captain of the colony, and he, with Captains Yorke, Philpott, Best, and Carew, were to be Frobisher's chief advisers.

The ships assembled at Harwich on the 27th of May; on the 28th Frobisher and his fourteen captains repaired to the Court at Greenwich, and there they had a splendid "send-off." Her Highness bestowed on the General a fair chain of gold, and the other captains had the honour of kissing her hand. We may gather something to elucidate Frobisher's character from the code of instructions which he drew up to be observed by his fleet:—

"Art. 1. Imprimis. To banishe swearing, dice, cards' playing and all filthie talk, and to serve God twice a day with the ordinary service, usual in the Church of England.

"Art. 8. If any man in the fleete come upon other in the nyghte and haile his fellow, knowing him not, he shall give him this watch-worde, 'Before the world was God'; the other shall make answer, 'After God came Christ, His sonne'—Martyn Furbusher."

It was no uncommon thing in those days for an educated man to be rather vague about the spelling of words, and even his own name might have variations. Frobisher, with all his passionate temper, tried to serve God according to his lights; he was resolute that his men should do so too.

They sailed from Harwich on the 31st of May, and on the 6th of June fell in with some Bristol traders who had been assailed by French pirates, and were so wounded and hungry that they were like to perish in the sea, their food for many days having been olives and stinking water.

Frobisher sent his surgeons to dress their wounds, gave them store of food, and steering north-west reached the south of Greenland.

He this time found a good harbour, native boats, and tents. The people ran away, and Frobisher only took two white dogs, leaving some knives for payment.

Soon after, the Solomon struck a great whale with her full stern so violently that the ship stood still. "The whale thereat made a great and ugly noise and cast up his body and tail, and so went under water; within two days there was found a great whale dead, swimming above water." The creature had probably been asleep on the surface.

On the 2nd of July they had reached Frobisher's Straits, which to their discontent they found choked up with ice, and the ships were in great danger for some days. The Denis, of 100 tons, was struck by an iceberg and lost. She carried the movable fort; her crew only were saved.

Then followed a great storm, and they had much ado to defend the sides of their ships from "the outrageous sway and strokes" of the fleeting ice. For planks of timber of more than three inches thick were shivered and cut asunder by the surging of the sea and ice-floes, and the noise of the tides and currents reminded them of the waterfall under London Bridge. When the storm abated, under the lee of a huge iceberg Frobisher mustered his ships and caused the crews to offer up special thanksgivings for their great deliverance. After the storm came fogs, and they lost their bearings. Frobisher said the coast was in Frobisher Straits; Hall averred it was not, and they quarrelled like schoolboys; for "Frobisher fell into a great rage and sware that it was so, or else take his life."

However, Frobisher was afterwards proved to be in the wrong; he had discovered the great inlet, called subsequently "Hudson's Strait." This he followed up for three hundred miles, trying to persuade his comrades that they were in the right course. He himself began to see he had been misled, but a strong desire and hope came upon him—he would now find the passage to Cathay! But his crew cared little for such poor ambition; they talked against their leader behind his back, and soon openly demanded to be taken home. So they turned once more to the region of fog, and after imminent risks, the mariners being scared in the darkness and crying continually, "Lord, now help or never!" they cleared the corner of "Meta Incognita" on the 23rd of July. Then the mutineers murmured again because Frobisher wished to wait for the rest of the fleet; but Frobisher mastered them and brought his ships to the Countess of Warwick's Sound. There he was welcomed by the crews of the Judith and the Michael, and two days afterwards Hall appeared with the remaining vessels.

Special services of thanksgiving were offered and the mutinous men were forgiven, though they continued to be sulky and obeyed under protest. No colony could be left, because the timber for the fort was lost. When they reached Bear's Sound the flame of discontent blazed up so fiercely that it was even proposed to put their admiral ashore and leave him to perish in the snow. However, this was voted against by the majority, who perhaps were wondering what the Queen might say. For it was well known that she had a high opinion of her "trusty and well-beloved" Master Frobisher.

They embarked for home after they had filled their bunkers, and had hardly entered the open sea with their cargoes of mineral than a violent storm dispersed them; the Aid was nearly wrecked, and lost her pinnace. So with contrary winds and heavy storms they battled their way south, and reached port somewhere in England by October.

As before, their coming was welcomed with hearty delight, and once more the hopes of speculators stirred the enthusiasm of the nation.

One old chronicler writes: "Such great quantity of gold appeared that some letted not to give out for certaintie that Solomon had his gold from thence, wherewith he builded his temple."

The Queen had advanced £4000 herself, to show her belief in Frobisher and in the gold ore, and all were now waiting for the refiners' verdict. It came very rapidly—no gold to be got out of all these tons of rock! Enthusiasm and shouting gave way to abuse and slander, not only in the Court and City, but the mutinous part openly accused Frobisher of having misled them: "his vainglorious mind would not suffer any discovery to be made without his own presence."

Stories of Elizabethan heroes

STORIES OFELIZABETHAN HEROES

CHAPTER ITHE ELIZABETHAN WORLD

CHAPTER IISIR JOHN HAWKINS, SEAMAN AND ADMINISTRATOR

CHAPTER IIIGEORGE CLIFFORD, EARL OF CUMBERLAND, THECHAMPION OF THE TILT-YARD

CHAPTER IVSIR MARTIN FROBISHER, THE EXPLORER OFTHE NORTHERN SEAS

STORIES OF
ELIZABETHAN HEROES

CHAPTER I
THE ELIZABETHAN WORLD

CHAPTER II
SIR JOHN HAWKINS, SEAMAN AND ADMINISTRATOR

CHAPTER III
GEORGE CLIFFORD, EARL OF CUMBERLAND, THE
CHAMPION OF THE TILT-YARD

CHAPTER IV
SIR MARTIN FROBISHER, THE EXPLORER OF
THE NORTHERN SEAS