know who he was, or why Hawkins chose him for his purpose. The Duke of
Feria was one of Philip's most trusted ministers. He had married an
English lady who had been a maid of honour to Queen Mary. It is possible
that Fitzwilliam had some acquaintance with her or with her family. At
any rate, he went to the Spanish Court; he addressed himself to the
Ferias; he won their confidence, and by their means was admitted to an
interview with Philip. He represented Hawkins as a faithful Catholic who
was indignant at the progress of heresy in England, who was eager to
assist in the overthrow of Elizabeth and the elevation of the Queen of
Scots, and was able and willing to carry along with him the great
Western privateer fleet, which had become so dreadful to the Spanish
mind. Philip listened and was interested. It was only natural, he
thought, that heretics should be robbers and pirates. If they could be
recovered to the Church, their bad habits would leave them. The English
navy was the most serious obstacle to the intended invasion. Still,
Hawkins! The Achines of his nightmares! It could not be. He asked
Fitzwilliam if his friend was acquainted with the Queen of Scots or the
Duke of Norfolk. Fitzwilliam was obliged to say that he was not. The
credentials of John Hawkins were his own right hand. He was making the
King a magnificent offer: nothing less than a squadron of the finest
ships in the world--not perhaps in the best condition, he added, with
cool British impudence, owing to the Queen's parsimony, but easily to be
put in order again if the King would pay the seamen's wages and advance
some money for repairs. The release of a few poor prisoners was a small
price to ask for such a service.
The King was still wary, watching the bait like an old pike, but
hesitating to seize it; but the duke and duchess were willing to be
themselves securities for Fitzwilliam's faith, and Philip promised at
last that if Hawkins would send him a letter of recommendation from the
Queen of Scots herself, he would then see what could be done. The Ferias
were dangerously enthusiastic. They talked freely to Fitzwilliam of the
Queen of Scots and her prospects. They trusted him with letters and
presents to her which would secure his admittance to her confidence.
Hawkins had sent him over for the single purpose of cheating Philip into
releasing his comrades from the Inquisition; and he had been introduced
to secrets of high political moment; like Saul, the son of Kish, he had
gone to seek his father's asses and he had found a kingdom. Fitzwilliam
hurried home with his letters and his news. Things were now serious.
Hawkins could act no further on his own responsibility. He consulted
Cecil. Cecil consulted the Queen, and it was agreed that the practice,
as it was called, should be carried further. It might lead to the
discovery of the whole secret.
Very treacherous, think some good people. Well, there are times when
one admires even treachery--
nec lex est justior ulla
Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.
King Philip was confessedly preparing to encourage an English subject in
treason to his sovereign. Was it so wrong to hoist the engineer with his
own petard? Was it wrong of Hamlet to finger the packet of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern and rewrite his uncle's despatch? Let us have done with
cant in these matters. Mary Stuart was at Sheffield Castle in charge of
Lord Shrewsbury, and Fitzwilliam could not see her without an order from
the Crown. Shrewsbury, though loyal to Elizabeth, was notoriously well
inclined to Mary, and therefore could not be taken into confidence. In
writing to him Cecil merely said that friends of Fitzwilliam's were in
prison in Spain; that if the Queen of Scots would intercede for them,
Philip might be induced to let them go. He might therefore allow
Fitzwilliam to have a private audience with that Queen.
Thus armed, Fitzwilliam went down to Sheffield. He was introduced. He
began with presenting Mary with the letters and remembrances from the
Ferias, which at once opened her heart. It was impossible for her to
suspect a friend of the duke and duchess. She was delighted at receiving
a visitor from the Court of Spain. She was prudent enough to avoid
dangerous confidences, but she said she was always pleased when she
could do a service to Englishmen, and with all her heart would intercede
for the prisoners. She wrote to Philip, she wrote to the duke and
duchess, and gave the letters to Fitzwilliam to deliver. He took them to
London, called on Don Gerald, and told him of his success. Don Gerald
also wrote to his master, wrote unguardedly, and also trusted
Fitzwilliam with the despatch.
The various packets were taken first to Cecil, and were next shown to
the Queen. They were then returned to Fitzwilliam, who once more went
off with them to Madrid. If the letters produced the expected effect,
Cecil calmly observed that divers commodities would ensue. English
sailors would be released from the Inquisition and the galleys. The
enemy's intentions would be discovered. If the King of Spain could be
induced to do as Fitzwilliam had suggested, and assist in the repairs of
the ships at Plymouth, credit would be obtained for a sum of money which
could be employed to his own detriment. If Alva attempted the projected
invasion, Hawkins might take the ships as if to escort him, and then do
some notable exploit in mid-Channel.
You will observe the downright directness of Cecil, Hawkins, and the
other parties in the matter. There is no wrapping up their intentions in
fine phrases, no parade of justification. They went straight to their
point. It was very characteristic of Englishmen in those stern,
dangerous times. They looked facts in the face, and did what fact
required. All really happened exactly as I have described it: the story
is told in letters and documents of the authenticity of which there is
not the smallest doubt.
We will follow Fitzwilliam. He arrived at the Spanish Court at the
moment when Ridolfi had brought from Rome the Pope's blessing on the
conspiracy. The final touches were being added by the Spanish Council of
State. All was hope; all was the credulity of enthusiasm! Mary Stuart's
letter satisfied Philip. The prisoners were dismissed, each with ten
dollars in his pocket. An agreement was formally drawn and signed in the
Escurial in which Philip gave Hawkins a pardon for his misdemeanours in
the West Indies, a patent for a Spanish peerage, and a letter of credit
for 40,000_l._ to put the privateers in a condition to do service, and
the money was actually paid by Philip's London agent. Admitted as he now
was to full confidence, Fitzwilliam learnt all particulars of the great
plot. The story reads like a chapter from _Monte Cristo_ and yet it is
literally true.
It ends with a letter which I will read to you, from Hawkins to Cecil:--
'My very good Lord,--It may please your Honour to be advertised
that Fitzwilliam is returned from Spain, where his message was
acceptably received, both by the King himself, the Duke of Feria,
and others of the Privy Council. His despatch and answer were with
great expedition and great countenance and favour of the King. The
Articles are sent to the Ambassador with orders also for the money
to be paid to me by him, for the enterprise to proceed with all
diligence. The pretence is that my powers should join with the Duke
of Alva's powers, which he doth secretly provide in Flanders, as
well as with powers which will come with the Duke of Medina Celi
out of Spain, and to invade this realm and set up the Queen of
Scots. They have practised with us for the burning of Her Majesty's
ships. Therefore there should be some good care had of them, but
not as it may appear that anything is discovered. The King has sent
a ruby of good price to the Queen of Scots, with letters also which
in my judgment were good to be delivered. The letters be of no
importance, but his message by word is to comfort her, and say that
he hath now none other care but to place her in her own. It were
good also that Fitzwilliam may have access to the Queen of Scots to
render thanks for the delivery of the prisoners who are now at
liberty. It will be a very good colour for your Lordship to confer
with him more largely.
'I have sent your Lordship the copy of my pardon from the King of
Spain, in the order and manner I have it, with my great titles and
honours from the King, from which God deliver me. Their practices
be very mischievous, and they be never idle; but God, I hope, will
confound them and turn their devices on their own necks.
'Your Lordship's most faithfully to my power,
'JOHN HAWKINS.'
A few more words will conclude this curious episode. With the clue
obtained by Fitzwilliam, and confessions twisted out of Story and other
unwilling witnesses, the Ridolfi conspiracy was unravelled before it
broke into act. Norfolk lost his head. The inferior miscreants were
hanged. The Queen of Scots had a narrow escape, and the Parliament
accentuated the Protestant character of the Church of England by
embodying the Thirty-nine Articles in a statute. Alva, who distrusted
Ridolfi from the first and disliked encouraging rebellion, refused to
interest himself further in Anglo-Catholic plots. Elizabeth and Cecil
could now breathe more freely, and read Philip a lesson on the danger
of plotting against the lives of sovereigns.
So long as England and Spain were nominally at peace, the presence of De
la Mark and his privateers in the Downs was at least indecent. A
committee of merchants at Bruges represented that their losses by it
amounted (as I said) to three million ducats. Elizabeth, being now in
comparative safety, affected to listen to remonstrances, and orders were
sent down to De la Mark that he must prepare to leave. It is likely that
both the Queen and he understood each other, and that De la Mark quite
well knew where he was to go, and what he was to do.
Alva now held every fortress in the Low Countries, whether inland or on
the coast. The people were crushed. The duke's great statue stood in the
square at Antwerp as a symbol of the annihilation of the ancient
liberties of the Provinces. By sea alone the Prince of Orange still
continued the unequal struggle; but if he was to maintain himself as a
sea power anywhere, he required a harbour of his own in his own country.
Dover and the Thames had served for a time as a base of operations, but
it could not last, and without a footing in Holland itself eventual
success was impossible. All the Protestant world was interested in his
fate, and De la Mark, with his miscellaneous gathering of Dutch,
English, and Huguenot rovers, were ready for any desperate exploit.
The order was to leave Dover immediately, but it was not construed
strictly. He lingered in the Downs for six weeks. At length, one morning
at the end of March 1572, a Spanish convoy known to be richly loaded
appeared in the Straits. De la Mark lifted anchor, darted out on it,
seized two of the largest hulks, rifled them, flung their crews
overboard, and chased the rest up Channel. A day or two after he
suddenly showed himself off Brille, at the mouth of the Meuse. A boat
was sent on shore with a note to the governor, demanding the instant
surrender of the town to the admiral of the Prince of Orange. The
inhabitants rose in enthusiasm; the garrison was small, and the governor
was obliged to comply. De la Mark took possession. A few priests and
monks attempted resistance, but were put down without difficulty, and
the leaders killed. The churches were cleared of their idols, and the
mass replaced by the Calvinistic service. Cannon and stores, furnished
from London, were landed, and Brille was made impregnable before Alva
had realised what had happened to him. He is said to have torn his beard
for anger. Flushing followed suit. In a week or two all the strongest
places on the coast had revolted, and the pirate fleet had laid the
foundation of the great Dutch Republic, which at England's side was to
strike out of Philip's hand the sceptre of the seas, and to save the
Protestant religion.
We may think as we please of these Beggars of the Ocean, these Norse
corsairs come to life again with the flavour of Genevan theology in
them; but for daring, for ingenuity, for obstinate determination to be
spiritually free or to die for it, the like of the Protestant privateers
of the sixteenth century has been rarely met with in this world.
England rang with joy when the news came that Brille was taken. Church
bells pealed, and bonfires blazed. Money poured across in streams.
Exiled families went back to their homes--which were to be their homes
once more--and the Zealanders and Hollanders, entrenched among their
ditches, prepared for an amphibious conflict with the greatest power
then upon the earth.
LECTURE IV
DRAKE'S VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD
I suppose some persons present have heard the name of Lope de Vega, the
Spanish poet of Philip II.'s time. Very few of you probably know more of
him than his name, and yet he ought to have some interest for us, as he
was one of the many enthusiastic young Spaniards who sailed in the Great
Armada. He had been disappointed in some love affair. He was an earnest
Catholic. He wanted distraction, and it is needless to say that he found
distraction enough in the English Channel to put his love troubles out
of his mind. His adventures brought before him with some vividness the
character of the nation with which his own country was then in the
death-grapple, especially the character of the great English seaman to
whom the Spaniards universally attributed their defeat. Lope studied
the exploits of Francis Drake from his first appearance to his end, and
he celebrated those exploits, as England herself has never yet thought
it worth her while to do, by making him the hero of an epic poem. There
are heroes and heroes. Lope de Vega's epic is called 'The Dragontea.'
Drake himself is the dragon, the ancient serpent of the Apocalypse. We
English have been contented to allow Drake a certain qualified praise.
We admit that he was a bold, dexterous sailor, that he did his country
good service at the Invasion. We allow that he was a famous navigator,
and sailed round the world, which no one else had done before him.
But--there is always a but--of course he was a robber and a corsair, and
the only excuse for him is that he was no worse than most of his
contemporaries. To Lope de Vega he was a great deal worse. He was Satan
himself, the incarnation of the Genius of Evil, the arch-enemy of the
Church of God.
It is worth while to look more particularly at the figure of a man who
appeared to the Spaniards in such terrible proportions. I, for my part,
believe a time will come when we shall see better than we see now what
the Reformation was, and what we owe to it, and these sea-captains of
Elizabeth will then form the subject of a great English national epic as
grand as the 'Odyssey.'
In my own poor way meanwhile I shall try in these lectures to draw you a
sketch of Drake and his doings as they appear to myself. To-day I can
but give you a part of the rich and varied story, but if all goes well I
hope I may be able to continue it at a future time.
I have not yet done with Sir John Hawkins. We shall hear of him again.
He became the manager of Elizabeth's dockyards. He it was who turned out
the ships that fought Philip's fleet in the Channel in such condition
that not a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, not a rope parted at an
unseasonable moment, and this at a minimum of cost. He served himself in
the squadron which he had equipped. He was one of the small group of
admirals who met that Sunday afternoon in the cabin of the ark _Raleigh_
and sent the fire-ships down to stir Medina Sidonia out of his anchorage
at Calais. He was a child of the sea, and at sea he died, sinking at
last into his mother's arms. But of this hereafter. I must speak now of
his still more illustrious kinsman, Francis Drake.
I told you the other day generally who Drake was and where he came from;
how he went to sea as a boy, found favour with his master, became early
an owner of his own ship, sticking steadily to trade. You hear nothing
of him in connection with the Channel pirates. It was not till he was
five-and-twenty that he was tempted by Hawkins into the negro-catching
business, and of this one experiment was enough. He never tried it
again.
The portraits of him vary very much, as indeed it is natural that they
should, for most of those which pass for Drake were not meant for Drake
at all. It is the fashion in this country, and a very bad fashion, when
we find a remarkable portrait with no name authoritatively attached to
it, to christen it at random after some eminent man, and there it
remains to perplex or mislead.
The best likeness of Drake that I know is an engraving in Sir William
Stirling-Maxwell's collection of sixteenth-century notabilities,
representing him, as a scroll says at the foot of the plate, at the age
of forty-three. The face is round, the forehead broad and full, with the
short brown hair curling crisply on either side. The eyebrows are highly
arched, the eyes firm, clear, and open. I cannot undertake for the
colour, but I should judge they would be dark grey, like an eagle's. The
nose is short and thick, the mouth and chin hid by a heavy moustache on
the upper lip, and a close-clipped beard well spread over chin and
cheek. The expression is good-humoured, but absolutely inflexible, not a
weak line to be seen. He was of middle height, powerfully built, perhaps
too powerfully for grace, unless the quilted doublet in which the artist
has dressed him exaggerates his breadth.
I have seen another portrait of him, with pretensions to authenticity,
in which he appears with a slighter figure, eyes dark, full, thoughtful,
and stern, a sailor's cord about his neck with a whistle attached to it,
and a ring into which a thumb is carelessly thrust, the weight of the
arms resting on it, as if in a characteristic attitude. Evidently this
is a carefully drawn likeness of some remarkable seaman of the time. I
should like to believe it to be Drake, but I can feel no certainty about
it.
We left him returned home in the Judith from San Juan de Ulloa, a ruined
man. He had never injured the Spaniards. He had gone out with his cousin
merely to trade, and he had met with a hearty reception from the
settlers wherever he had been. A Spanish admiral had treacherously set
upon him and his kinsman, destroyed half their vessels, and robbed them
of all that they had. They had left a hundred of their comrades behind
them, for whose fate they might fear the worst. Drake thenceforth
considered Spanish property as fair game till he had made up his own
losses. He waited quietly for four years till he had re-established
himself, and then prepared to try fortune again in a more daring form.
The ill-luck at San Juan de Ulloa had risen from loose tongues. There
had been too much talk about it. Too many parties had been concerned.
The Spanish Government had notice and were prepared. Drake determined to
act for himself, have no partners, and keep his own secret. He found
friends to trust him with money without asking for explanations. The
Plymouth sailors were eager to take their chance with him. His force was
absurdly small: a sloop or brigantine of a hundred tons, which he called
the _Dragon_ (perhaps, like Lope de Vega, playing on his own name), and
two small pinnaces. With these he left Plymouth in the fall of the
summer of 1572. He had ascertained that Philip's gold and silver from
the Peruvian mines was landed at Panama, carried across the isthmus on
mules' backs on the line of M. de Lesseps' canal, and re-shipped at
Nombre de Dios, at the mouth of the Chagre River.
He told no one where he was going. He was no more communicative than
necessary after his return, and the results, rather than the
particulars, of his adventure are all that can be certainly known.
Discretion told him to keep his counsel, and he kept it.
The Drake family published an account of this voyage in the middle of
the next century, but obviously mythical, in parts demonstrably false,
and nowhere to be depended on. It can be made out, however, that he did
go to Nombre de Dios, that he found his way into the town, and saw
stores of bullion there which he would have liked to carry off but could
not. A romantic story of a fight in the town I disbelieve, first because
his numbers were so small that to try force would have been absurd, and
next because if there had been really anything like a battle an alarm
would have been raised in the neighbourhood, and it is evident that no
alarm was given. In the woods were parties of runaway slaves, who were
called Cimarons. It was to these that Drake addressed himself, and they
volunteered to guide him where he could surprise the treasure convoy on
the way from Panama. His movements were silent and rapid. One
interesting incident is mentioned which is authentic. The Cimarons took
him through the forest to the watershed from which the streams flow to
both oceans. Nothing could be seen through the jungle of undergrowth;
but Drake climbed a tall tree, saw from the top of it the Pacific
glittering below him, and made a vow that one day he would himself sail
a ship in those waters.
For the present he had immediate work on hand. His guides kept their
word. They led him to the track from Panama, and he had not long to wait
before the tinkling was heard of the mule bells as they were coming up
the pass. There was no suspicion of danger, not the faintest. The mule
train had but its ordinary guard, who fled at the first surprise. The
immense booty fell all into Drake's hands--gold, jewels, silver
bars--and got with much ease, as Prince Hal said at Gadshill. The silver
they buried, as too heavy for transport. The gold, pearls, rubies,
emeralds, and diamonds they carried down straight to their ship. The
voyage home went prosperously. The spoils were shared among the
adventurers, and they had no reason to complain. They were wise enough
to hold their tongues, and Drake was in a condition to look about him
and prepare for bigger enterprises.
Rumours got abroad, spite of reticence. Imagination was high in flight
just then; rash amateurs thought they could make their fortunes in the
same way, and tried it, to their sorrow. A sort of inflation can be
traced in English sailors' minds as their work expanded. Even
Hawkins--the clear, practical Hawkins--was infected. This was not in
Drake's line. He kept to prose and fact. He studied the globe. He
examined all the charts that he could get. He became known to the Privy
Council and the Queen, and prepared for an enterprise which would make
his name and frighten Philip in earnest.
The ships which the Spaniards used on the Pacific were usually built on
the spot. But Magellan was known to have gone by the Horn, and where a
Portuguese could go an Englishman could go. Drake proposed to try. There
was a party in Elizabeth's Council against these adventures, and in
favour of peace with Spain; but Elizabeth herself was always for
enterprises of pith and moment. She was willing to help, and others of
her Council were willing too, provided their names were not to appear.
The responsibility was to be Drake's own. Again the vessels in which he
was preparing to tempt fortune seem preposterously small. The _Pelican_,
or _Golden Hinde_, which belonged to Drake himself, was called but 120
tons, at best no larger than a modern racing yawl, though perhaps no
racing yawl ever left White's yard better found for the work which she
had to do. The next, the _Elizabeth_, of London, was said to be eighty
tons; a small pinnace of twelve tons, in which we should hardly risk a
summer cruise round the Land's End, with two sloops or frigates of fifty
and thirty tons, made the rest. The _Elizabeth_ was commanded by Captain
Winter, a Queen's officer, and perhaps a son of the old admiral.
We may credit Drake with knowing what he was about. He and his comrades
were carrying their lives in their hands. If they were taken they would
be inevitably hanged. Their safety depended on speed of sailing, and
specially on the power of working fast to windward, which the heavy
square-rigged ships could not do. The crews all told were 160 men and
boys. Drake had his brother John with him. Among his officers were the
chaplain, Mr. Fletcher, another minister of some kind who spoke Spanish,
and in one of the sloops a mysterious Mr. Doughty. Who Mr. Doughty was,
and why he was sent out, is uncertain. When an expedition of consequence
was on hand, the Spanish party in the Cabinet usually attached to it
some second in command whose business was to defeat the object. When
Drake went to Cadiz in after years to singe King Philip's beard, he had
a colleague sent with him whom he had to lock into his cabin before he
could get to his work. So far as I can make out, Mr. Doughty had a
similar commission. On this occasion secrecy was impossible. It was
generally known that Drake was going to the Pacific through Magellan
Straits, to act afterwards on his own judgment. The Spanish ambassador,
now Don Bernardino de Mendoza, in informing Philip of what was intended,
advised him to send out orders for the instant sinking of every English
ship, and the execution of every English sailor, that appeared on either
side the isthmus in West Indian waters. The orders were despatched, but
so impossible it seemed that an English pirate could reach the Pacific,
that the attention was confined to the Caribbean Sea, and not a hint of
alarm was sent across to the other side.