For in 1578 I went to sea at last.
8. “…You’ll Be Richer Than Croesus!”
“Soon, my love, you’ll be richer than Croesus!”
Yes, that is what I told my wife that day, the twenty-sixth of September in 1578, when at last, after many years of preparation and setback, I set out from Dartmouth with a strong ocean-going fleet. Despite every trouble which had beset us in the building of the fleet, I refused to doubt that soon I’d have success in my grasp. It had to be! The expedition had the backing of many friends of Discovery, but most importantly, Her Majesty was finally persuaded to support my dream. On the eleventh of June I had got my formal grant by letters-patent to colonise and govern in the name of England any “heathen and barbarous lands, countreys, and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people,” with rights extending to my heirs forever. I had drafted the document myself, months earlier, and it had been known to me for half a year or more that this time my plan would be approved. Four ships had been ready to sail by May, but enemies both elemental and human had obstructed us. Headwinds had held back several of my ships in the Thames for weeks; and worse, during the wait at Plymouth my second-in-command Knollys had deserted us, taking four ships with him. I’d put money it was Mendoza behind this treachery, for he had set spies and dissension among us at every chance, correctly suspecting that colonisation was not the chief intention of our well-armed fleet. Too sharp at his job by far: from a Spaniard viewpoint that old fox Philip had chosen his English ambassador well; but as far as I’m concerned it would have been no loss at all to have seen Bernardino de Mendoza strung up.
Early that day on which we first tried to leave it looked as if the weather might break at last. In the General’s Cabin on my flagship, the Anne Ager, I took counsel with my Captains and Masters. Brothers Carew and Walter were there with me as commanders (it was a wonder the Queen had let Walter go), and an agent from Secretary Walsingham, and Ferdinando our pilot, and my good friend Miles Morgan, whose Red Lion carried “Now or Never” for its motto. That was my mood too, and it’s a good thing we’re not all cunning men who can see the future. As to that long-ago foretelling of my fate at sea, yes it had me tense, making men doubt me, but I could not ignore my chance. So, after much argument, I gave orders:
“There’s been enough delay already,” I said. “Yes, it’s late in the year, but we are well-fitted, and God is with us if we are bold. We cannot stay here and brood on the treachery at Plymouth. We sail as soon as the winds permit.”
And it was agreed, but two or three were dubious and remained behind to hear my further persuasion. I convinced them, and dispersed them to wait in readiness on their ships, but I was in a tight state when next my mother and wife and three oldest sons—John, Humphrey, and Otho, came aboard and were shown in by Walter. He was bright with enthusiasm to set out, it being his first sea-venture too, and he had no more mind than I for the business of Farewell and Godspeed. “Mother, I must go over into the Falcon now,” he said soon in his perfect dapper way. “I am needed there, and it will spare you grief.” And so diplomatically he abandoned me to deal with a scene that was not happy. They tried to hide it, but both wife and mother betrayed doubt of me. Side-by-side they sat on the mercy seat, all cloaked-up, and Anne in particular was full of ifs and buts and whys.
“But Humfrey, it’s too late in the year! Our investment is too great to be risked on winter storms, and so are four hundred lives!”
“Too late? How can it be too late? I have waited all my life for this!” I paced up and down past them, head ducked to avoid the beams, my boys fidgeting, listening, told to sit down and not touch anything the moment they came in, and not by me. Anne’s face had that look on it, that relentless dutiful patience, her shield against what she saw as my folly. I know you won’t listen to a word I say, said her look, but I’ll say it anyway!
“If you have waited all your life, you can wait another six months, surely?” she objected.
“Her Majesty is eager for rapid return!” I was still pacing. “I cannot tell you everything, but I can promise that soon, my love, you’ll be richer than Croesus! This fine vessel that bears your sweet name will carry us to our goal no matter how dire the storm, how bitter the cold, how…”
“Humfrey, sit down and relax!” Mother suddenly commanded. She was old now, but indomitable. She had rallied great support for this business, and her voice still carried strong. I stopped pacing but would not sit. “Humfrey, look at us! We may mean very little to you now, but for the sake of God don’t make it so obvious you wish you were faraway! It is not flattering, any more than it is flattering that three of my sons should be quite so tightmouthed about what you’re all up to! D’you take us for fools?”
“No, Mother, but… it’s a matter of state…”
“But the Charter gives you rights for six years!” Anne jumped in. “Why does the Queen want you to go now? Why can’t you wait till spring?”
“If we disperse now,” I said, “we would lose too much.”
“Matter of state!” muttered my mother, shaking her head.
“But already you lost four ships at Plymouth,” Anne persisted. “What if there are more like Knollys to put a knife in your back?”
The clouds were lifting. A breeze was tugging at the waters. The boys listened wide-eyed, as impatient as I.
“Mendoza paid Knollys,” I said, mustering my utmost control. “He has given me trouble at every turn. The sooner we’re out of reach of him, the better!”
“But how can you be sure of your men?”
“I’ve got the bad apples out of the barrel!” I snapped. “We’re much stronger now, the mood is good, we are ready, we will go!”
“Humfrey, you have worked miracles, and all admit it,” Mother said quickly, “and if you must go now, you must go now. But… why do you take that Portuguese? Simon—what is it?—Fernandez? Ferdinando?” Her voice was soft. “I hear it’s the Spanish mid-part of America he knows, not the Northwest.”
“He comes for the… experience of new coasts,” I said.
“My son,” said Mother even more softly, “you’re not made like Francis Drake. You think too much. I am proud of you, but I do ask you please to pay heed to your Captains and Masters, who have been at sea all their lives.”
It was awkward, made worse when Anne started muttering against the Queen, accusing Her Majesty of driving me into making a “piratical bargain.” I would not take this, we had a most improper scene, and by God I was glad when John caught my eye. “Father, you said you’d show us how to fire a cast piece,” he complained, and Humphrey and Otho were immediately up in agreement, both talking at once, plucking my sleeve to lead me out. I met Anne’s eyes and for once we agreed. How can you argue with your nearest and dearest at such an hour? Out we went into the stiffening wind, to the bustle on deck. Grey cloud scudded broken and low over the crags above the sheltered harbour; I steered my boys up to the fo’c’s’le, to a good view of our seven ships and all the activity of final preparation: last-minute loadings from the quay and the rest of it. They were bright lads, seven and six and five now, and I was proud of them. I showed them how one of the big pieces was set and laid, then I told them the names of our ships—the Falcon, a Queen’s Ship of a hundred tons, that Walter commanded, and the Hope of Greenway, of a hundred and sixty, under brother Carew, and the Red Lion—but as I tousled their heads a cunning voice whispered I might never see them again, and I stiffened.
“Miles Morgan captains the Red Lion, doesn’t he, Father?” John was oldest. He would have my height one day. Humphrey was six, with Anne’s darker colouring. Otho already showed my brother John’s taciturn humour, and watched, but rarely spoke.
“Yes, John, he…”
“Why did Mr. Knollys try to kill Mr. Morgan?”
“Mr. Knollys is a foolish, conceited man! Mr. Morgan would not obey his traitorous orders while I was away, and Knollys would have killed him—but I came back and put a stop to that!”
“But he ran away with four ships, Father! Can’t you get them back to make you stronger at sea against the Spaniards?”
“How often must I tell you, John, we are not going against the Spaniards! We are going to the New World, to make a New England, which will bring us great wealth! Now, our smaller ships—that’s the Gallion over by the harbourmouth, forty tons, and the Swallow next to it is the same, and that very little boat you see is my Squirrel, a stout little fellow, only eight tons but made of the best!”
“Father, how big is this ship?” asked Humphrey.
“Two hundred and fifty tons!” I told him.
“And how many cannon are there?” asked John.
“Two hundred cast pieces in all,” I said.
“But what do you need them for,” John asked, grinning slyly, the little devil, “if you’re not going to fight Spaniards?”
It was then, to my great relief, that Mr. Pedley the Master of the Anne Ager came up to me.
“Zir Umfrey, uz can try it now. Du yu give the oarder?”
I felt a great surge of joy and apprehension.
“By all means, Mr. Pedley! By all means!”
For years it had looked as if I’d never get to sea at all, remaining a lubberly armchair sailor all my life.
In 1570, when I returned a knight from Ireland, my first attention was to marriage, which I soon contracted with Mistress Anne Ager of Otterden in Kent, whose father had been the last Marshal at Calais, dying there when we lost the port in 1558. Anne was a pretty, dark, spirited girl, and wealthy too, and she loved me greatly when we met, for in my early thirties I was not without looks and quality, being tall, wiry, active, and of a good colour. And yes, I loved her too, but soon enough she knew me too well, learning she would never wholly distract me from my fretful, constant fever to realise my dreams. I could never sit still with her long, and of course sometimes in my heat I ploughed other furrows, as she learned when that fraud Meadley the alchemist (well, he fooled Lord Burghley and the Earl of Leicester too) not only refused my advances but advertised them so that all knew my dual nature. Anne took this wearily but well, except that I had struck the knave: she was horrified I should stoop to strike. Yet by and large we got along for better and worse, and so in time she bore me six sons and a daughter that died, and myself I think perhaps she bore better than I deserved.
Those early years after Ireland were a confusion. I sat in the Commons as MP for Plymouth, and was insulted by old Wentworth the Dissenter (I mean Peter who died in the Tower, not his brother Paul). He called me names for supporting Her Majesty’s right to grant monopolies where she would, he accused me of reporting Commons business to her, and when I tried to speak in self-defense I was three times shouted down by the House. For this the Queen’s reward was my appointment as Surveyor of Artillery in the realm, which got me some commission over the years, though not enough to replace what I had spent in Ireland. As for Parliament, I bid it farewell.
In 1572, that year of New Star and Huguenot Massacre, I was at arms again. The Queen sent me to Flanders with a rabble-army, to hold Flushing and wage what she called “underhand” war against the Spaniards of Alva’s army. Walter was with me, it was his first campaign, and mad George Gascoigne too, but the campaign was a disaster. I am no good at Diplomacy and siege and patience, I like to rush and dash and charge. I raged in that mire for months before, disordered and beplagued as usual, we withdrew secretly back to England. There I “took the rap” of public reprimand to protect Her Majesty’s interest, as we were not officially at war with Spain.
After all this I was glad for some quiet life, but not too quiet: I settled my growing family in a good large house at Limehurst, or Limehouse, as some even then called it. I have learned that later it became part of a slum in the city, but then it was out in the country, though conveniently close to the centre of all affairs in which I was involved. So, children were born, and summers were spent in Devon with family, on the water and in the woods, eagerly planning Discovery while playing; and winter nights in my Library at Limehurst I studied and wrote, revising my Discourse on the Northwest Passage in the light of new scholarship, but for the most part working on proposals for a new sort of school, to be called Queen Elizabeth’s Achademy.
Yet at no time did I give up my hope of sailing west. Often I went into London to meet and talk with friends and with those who might help my designs. I was often at Court, and sometimes over to Mortlake to visit Doctor Dee and browse in his library, and meet with geographers there, like Ortelius; sometimes I met with Secretary Walsingham to discuss moneymaking schemes that might help me. I spoke boldly in many places about colonisation and the Northwest Passage, and now had the Muscovy Company (which had been the Merchant Adventurers) against me: they feared I might infringe what they considered their monopolies, and of them all I remained friendly only with Anthony Jenkinson, who’d travelled the length and breadth of the Russias. He was a man after my own heart, and so was the young cleric Richard Hakluyt, a map-enthusiast like myself.
Hakluyt was greatly unhappy when he could not come on my second voyage. Well for him and the world he did not. Parmenius went in his place and died: as I now learn Hakluyt lived to make a famous work out of the Narratives of English Discovery.
In fact it was Hakluyt they gave me to read in Florida, four hundred years later, to learn my own fate. It still disturbs me, this hindsight through recorded history of the ultimate fates of men whose lives I ran with until mine was translated. It is hard to reconcile my memory of Walter, for example, with a reading in history of how he met his fate on the block after years in jail and a last expedition as disastrous as mine. Such disconnection between living memory and recorded fact still bewilders me.
Yet then of course I knew none of it. I was a grown man, and zestful for my cause, and the cunning man was faraway. I had a dream to win. But most likely I’d never have got to sea at all if not for that scalawag genius, George Gascoigne, for he understood the value of what is now called publicity, where I did not… or would not.
George had a way with words and an even better way with trouble. He was kin to the sailor Martin Frobisher, which in part explains what he did. At the time I knew him as part of Leicester’s glittering gang, but thought him a wholehearted man, no empty fool, no matter what many said. He had been with me in Flanders, and wrote one of the worst poems I ever read about that disaster, but some of his comedies were reckoned good.
He was one of those who care deeply while passing off everything lightly: the world condemns them for the surface frivolity.
One night early in 1576 I met him at a gathering of the Mermaid Tavern Goodfellows. In fact he had asked me there, for I did not much frequent the theatric circles. We met, and drank to this and that, and at length he said:
“Sir Humfrey, Doctor Dee tells me you have written a fine thing on the Northwest Way. When will you publish it?”
“Oh,” I said, “I doubt I’ll do that. Who’d read it?”
“I would,” he said. “Can I call on you to read it?”
He visited a week or two after, and I took him into my library. In fact at that time I was more hot for my plans of education, so I sat him down with my proposals. “By these means,” I said, stalking up and down as he read, “the youth of gentry will be some use to England instead of wasting their time running after hounds! They’ll learn to serve and advance this great Nation! We must have broad education, not just book-learning, and…”
“My friend, your scheme is brilliant!” George announced. “So brilliant with all its grand new ideas that nobody will understand it for a minute.” He put down my manuscript with a thump, then eyed me questingly. “Humfrey, it’s your Northwest thing I really want to study. D’ye mind if I borrow it for a week or two?”
“Oh, take it!” I said crossly.
He did. Three weeks later he came by and returned it, and with it he gave me a printed work at the title-page of which I stared with slowly-mounting horror:
&nb
sp; A DISCOURSE
written by
SIR HUMFREY GYLBERTE, KNIGHT
To Prove a Passage by the Northwest to
CATAIA AND EAST INDIA
I stared at him in amazement. He gave me his fool’s grin. “You are too modest,” he said, “So I had to do it.”
“But you… you…” I couldn’t speak.
“Yes, I know,” he said calmly, “I’m a rogue. That’s what I’m for. Oh, and I wrote a little introduction explaining I’ve published it without your knowledge or permission, and that it’s all my fault.”
“How… how many of these…?”
“Well, five hundred at first,” said George, “but they were sold immediately, so we’re printing another two thousand! You’re famous, Humfrey! Look… back off!” he appealed as I advanced on him. “Sir Humfrey, if you truly want to get to sea, you have to come down to the practical level of things! This publication will win you much influence, which means money and support for expeditions! And while I’m about it, your Achademy scheme is all very well—but surely you realise the Queen will just put it away and forget it?”
He stopped me.
“In God’s Name, what do you mean?” I demanded.
“Humfrey, m’boy, if you want to get her to help you, you have to come up with something more to her taste! Your schemes are all about ideals! Surely you know what she really wants?”
“No,” I said. “What?”
“MONEY!” he said, “M-O-N-E-Y!”
He was right on all counts. The publication of my Discourse got me fame and helped persuade those who backed Frobisher’s first voyage to the Northwest in search of the Passage. It did George no good, poor man, for he got sick and died the next year, in his early prime. As for myself, I grew crafty. I took his advice and tailored a treatise to the Queen’s taste, on How to Annoy the King of Spain. I proposed covert attacks on Spain, among their Newfoundland fishers and in the West Indies. I said we should take those isles by force, striking Spain before Spain struck us. I said that Queen and Privy Council should disclaim all knowledge of such attacks, and afterwards imprison a scapegoat and seem to treat him harshly.
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