As she rounded Rame Head the Golden Hind passed a fishing-boat, and a voice from her deck cried out:
“Is the Queen alive?”
The astonished fishermen replied that she was very much alive; and the answer relieved the General of a great anxiety. Three years before, he had refused Walsingham’s request that he should mark upon a chart the spots where the King of Spain might be best annoyed. The Queen being mortal, a prince friendly to Spain might come to the throne and there would be Drake’s figures to testify against Drake. He had avoided that peril but had charged himself with one far graver, since his ship was loaded down with the King of Spain’s gold.
The fishermen added to their reply a warning that a pestilence was raging in the town, and Drake allowed no one to land. But the Mayor and Drake’s wife came off to him in a rowing-boat. Of what news and what messages they brought to men so long absent from their homes we know nothing. But we may guess that he was told in how equivocal a light his name and voyage were seen, for he sent off John Brewer, the young trumpeter whom he had got from Sir Christopher Hatton, post-haste to London with letters to the Queen and his friends. John Brewer returned with sad news. Drake was written large in the Queen’s black books. The more sober merchants of the city were frightened out of their wits by his piracies. Don Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish Ambassador, a soldier who used the bluff language of his calling, demanded the restoration of the plunder and the punishment of the thief. Burghley, Clinton and Sussex agreed with, at all events, the first of these demands. Whilst the advice of Drake’s friends who counted on the frugal and unstable disposition of the Queen was all upon one note: “Lie close until she changes her mind.”
Drake lay close. The island which had sheltered him in his childhood from the anger of the Catholics befriended him again. He anchored on the seaward side of it and lay hidden from the town. In a little while came better news. Drake was to fear nothing, for the Queen would protect him. He was to travel at once to London and bring with him some samples of the curiosities which he had collected on his voyage. Drake had no doubts, in his selection, of the sort of sea-shell and native idol which would give most pleasure to his Royal mistress. He loaded five pack-horses with gold and jewels and brought them all to Sion House, where for six hours the Queen talked to him with no other people present. She, though fitful and irresolute herself, had, like so many others, a passionate admiration for the qualities which she did not possess, audacity, the power to plan far ahead and the resolution to keep to the plan in spite of desertions and treacheries and unexpected calamities.
The unusual favour of this long audience, and no doubt some rumour of those samples which Drake had brought to Sion House, fairly set the town of London by the ears. “The Company of Merchants trading to Spain and Portugal” — a corporation of great importance — was to a director opposed to Drake. The cruelties of the Inquisition practised on the seafaring Protestants of England, the preposterous claims of Philip to the monopoly of the Western World, no doubt there was a word or so to be said about them at the proper time and in the proper manner, but their property, their business, were imperilled by a pirate. And the Queen took the pirate’s money and talked to him privately for six hours at a stretch. The City felt that the world was upside down. On the other hand, Drake was the hero of the people, the theme of the broadsheets and the ballads. People crowded to the windows to cheer him as he passed. In the nave of St. Paul’s Church, the fashionable promenade of the day, Drake in his fine clothes was the only cynosure. The staid and prosperous drew their robes aside; the adventurous, the romantics, the young in mind or body who were aflame with the glory of this renascent England, crowded about him; and he, after his three years of endeavour, took his sunbath of their flattery. On the other hand, again, Mendoza indignantly clamoured for an audience with the Queen, full of the threats he was going to fire at her, but did not get it so easily. Mendoza had put a weapon in Elizabeth’s hand which she was quick to use. He had accused Drake of cruelty towards his enemies in the South Sea — the kind of cruelty quite alien from his character. He declared that he had cut off their hands and feet.
Elizabeth had another advantage. An expedition to relieve the Catholics in Ireland had been undertaken at the instigation of the Pope in 1579, and Spaniards were amongst the invaders. In the autumn of 1580, and about three weeks before Drake’s homecoming to Plymouth, a second detachment, of which Spanish contingents were a part, had been landed at Smerwick. The Queen refused to see Mendoza as the Ambassador of Spain until the Spanish troops had been withdrawn from her realm. But she sent a secretary to him with a message. She was quite certain, she said, that Drake had practised no cruelties, but the matter would be investigated. She was sure that he had done no injury whatever to any of the subjects of her brother and friend King Philip, but meanwhile King Philip was undoubtedly doing a great deal of harm to her. Until, then, King Philip had withdrawn the help and sustenance he was giving to her Irish insurgents, she could not possibly receive Don Bernardino as an Ambassador. But as a private person she had always found him charming, and if he would pay her a visit as plain Don Bernardino she would be happy to receive him.
“I have thought it my duty,” Mendoza wrote to King Philip, “to answer their large talk with some choler.” He could not strip himself of his office in order to have the pleasure of kissing Her Majesty’s hands, and unless complete restitution of Drake’s plunder was made there would be war with Spain, and war without respite. These were brave words enough, but Don Bernardino could not have made them good. He had orders not to press the quarrel at this moment to the point from which there could be no withdrawal. King Philip had seized Portugal in July of this year, and with Portugal eleven fine galleons. He had no navy at present beyond the Indian Guard, and would be enormously strengthened once he had commissioned and armed the eleven Portuguese ships. But he had no money wherewith to provide them, and the bankers of Genoa and Frankfurt and Augsburg were shy of adding to their loans to the Royal bankrupt. Moreover, by his capture of Lisbon and his threat to the Azores, he had aroused the hostility of France. His crops had been poor, and as he had relied upon England for textiles, so now he must look to her for food. He was not in a position to force England to an open defiance.
Mendoza found, however, in England itself support from higher sources than the great Spanish company. The Council met whilst Drake was in London and resolved that the treasure which he had brought home should be fetched up to the Tower and registered with a view to its return to its Spanish owners. The session was attended by few, and those councillors of the deliberate and formal school, Burghley, Clinton, Sussex. Wrongs had been done by Spain to England, by Spaniards to Englishmen? No doubt. Even at this moment Spanish soldiers were at Smerwick in Ireland taking their part in a Papal invasion. That also was true. But redress and reprisal were the prerogative of the Queen and her Ministers, not of a buccaneer, however supreme his knowledge of the sea. The order was made that Drake’s booty should be registered and deposited in the Tower with a view to its return to its proper owners. The order was presented to the remaining councillors that they might add their signature. Amongst them were Walsingham, Leicester and Hatton, all of whom believed in a more frank and aggressive policy. All of them were shareholders in Drake’s adventure. They refused to sign and took the order to the Queen, who was herself their partner. She suspended it, to the fury of Mendoza. “The Spanish Ambassador doth burn with passion against Drake.”
The Queen still refused to see him, but she conceded the registration of the treasure — and carried it out in her own style. First of all she granted Drake permission to take from it ten thousand pounds for himself and what he considered to be a fair return to his crew for their hardships and bravery. Was anything more to be deducted? No one knows. But she confided the registration to her friend the magistrate at Plymouth, Mr. Edmund Tremayne, who was already investigating the charges of cruelty brought against Drake. And a letter written in November by Tremayne to Walsin
gham indicates that the form of registration which she required was one more satisfactory to her own furtive disposition than to an honest registrar.
“To give you some understanding how I in particular proceeded with Mr. Drake, I have at no time entered into the account to know more of the very value of the treasure than he made me acquainted with. And to say truth, I persuaded him to impart to me no more than need, for so I commanded him in Her Majesty’s behalf that he should reveal the certainty to no man living. I have only taken notice of so much as he has revealed and the same I have seen to be weighed, registered and packed....And to observe Her Majesty’s command for the secret delivery on leaving of the ten thousand pounds to remain in his hands, we agreed that he should take it to himself out of the portion that was landed secretly and to remove the same out of the place before my son Henry and I should come to the weighing and registering of that which was left; and so it was done and no creature living by me made privy to it but himself and myself no privier to it than as you perceive by this.”
The registration took place at Saltash Castle, whither upon Drake’s return from London the treasure, after his deductions, was transferred from the hold of the Golden Hind. From Saltash Castle it was carried to Sion House before it passed on to the Tower. One is inclined to wonder why; and whether, like the Golden Hind itself, it didn’t leak a little and wanted caulking. However, in due course twenty tons of silver bullion, five blocks of gold each eighteen inches long, and a quantity of pearls and other jewels were deposited there.
The total value of the treasure which Drake brought back from his voyage is no more accurately known than are the details of its disposition. Mendoza put it at a million and a half of ducats, that is a little less than half a million pounds sterling; and half a million pounds sterling in Elizabeth’s day would be equal to five million in ours. It was thus an enormous fortune, and in addition we must reckon the pearls, the emeralds, the jewelled crosses and cups. The bold spirits who had ventured their money were well repaid for their boldness. They received a dividend of four thousand seven hundred pounds per cent. Drake received a second sum of ten thousand pounds. But this leaves still three hundred thousand pounds to be accounted for.
A mysterious Basque, Pedro de Zubiaur, claimed it on behalf of the Spanish merchants of Seville, who declared that the losses in Peru fell upon their shoulders. Zubiaur — he is generally called Sebure by the authors of the day, an easier and more euphonious name — was a spy employed by Mendoza. But after a visit to Seville he returned to England and set himself forward as the agent and attorney of the Seville Guild, though, according to Camden, he could show no authority to be so accepted. Whether he succeeded in extracting any of the prize shining behind those gloomy doors on Tower Hill is as doubtful as whether he was genuine agent or impostor. But, even if he did, the Spanish merchants had no good of him, for — so the story runs — he handed it over for the sustenance of the Spanish army in Flanders. It is, happily, more probable that the Queen’s Majesty, who knew as well as anyone how to tire out an importunate creditor, slipped the whole sum into her treasury on the excuse that the destruction of the foreign troops in Smerwick had put her to great expense.
Mr. Tremayne’s duties did not end with the departure of the precious cargo from Saltash. It fell to him to investigate the charges of cruelty which Mendoza had brought against Drake. He administered an interrogatory to forty-nine members of Drake’s company, including Francis Fletcher. All of them agreed that ships had been taken but none sunk, and that none of King Philip’s subjects had had their hands and feet cut off or been mishandled in any way. To his answers each one set his name, and Tremayne sent the deposition off to Walsingham with the comment: “By which you may soon see how much things be inferred beyond the truth.”
The deposition was perhaps a stronger proof of the devotion of Drake’s company to its General than a disproof of Mendoza’s calumny. But it was very valuable on that account. For amongst the evil rumours with which his enemies or his envious friends strove to cloud his name was one that he was avaricious and had meanly recompensed those adventurers who had sailed with him. The warmth of the letter with which Tremayne covered the despatch of the deposition can be accepted as a sufficient refutation of that particular slander.
“...and withal, I must say, as I find by apparent demonstration, he (Drake) is so inclined to advance the value to be delivered to Her Majesty, and seeking in general to recompense all men that have been in this case dealers with him, as I dare take an oath with him he will rather diminish his own portion than leave any of them unsatisfied. And for his mariners and followers, I have been an eye witness, and have heard with mine ears upon the shutting up of these matters, such certain show of good will as I cannot yet see that many of them will leave his company wheresoever. His whole course of his voyage hath showed him to be of great valour, but my hap has been to see some particularities, and namely in this discharge of his company as doth assure me that he is a man of great government and that by the rules of God and his Book. So as proceeding upon such a foundation, his doings cannot but prosper.”
Drake sailed his ship round the coast and up the Thames as far as Deptford, where for some months she lay at anchor. He himself set to work to strengthen the goodwill of his friends and appease the hostility of his enemies. In such a campaign gifts are the first line of attack, and gifts were forthcoming. My Lord Chancellor Bromley, for instance, received a wagon-load of engraved plate, and the Queen’s Majesty a diamond cross and an emerald crown. But all whom he thus sought to propitiate were not so complacent. And there was still a good deal for Drake to learn. It was forgivable, perhaps, to tempt Mendoza with an offer of fifty thousand ducats if he would drop his tirades and demands, even though the offer brought the fierce reply that he would give more than fifty thousand ducats if he had them to secure the punishment of such a pestilent thief as Drake. Indeed, Leicester and others of the syndicate were at the back of that manœuvre. But to imagine that Burghley and Sussex would accept bars of gold and chased goblets from the man whom they believed to have gained his entire fortune by piracy, implied a deficiency in discretion and the knowledge of men which one would hardly have expected in the Drake of the last ten years.
But Drake the student took second place to Drake the conquering hero during these hectic days. It is no wonder that he lost his head a little when the crowd swarmed after him in the streets and Her Majesty received him nine times in one day. There was good sound reason for his popularity in both cases.
“The treasure,” wrote Stow, “would fully defray the charge of seven years wars, prevent and save the common subject from Taxes, Loans, Privy Seals, Subsidies and Fifteens and give them good advantage against a daring adversary.”
Stow was not so far out in his reckoning, for the defeat of the Armada cost Elizabeth £161,000; and throughout her life she was as anxious to avoid imposing taxes upon her subjects as they were to escape them. Charges of parsimony and avarice are often levelled against this great Queen, but she was avaricious and parsimonious for her people. She watched with an ever-increasing pride a young and splendid nation growing to its proper stature, and she would not bow its shoulders under the burden of heavy taxes if by any means she could avoid it. Drake’s booty from the South Sea was a real and instant help. It was natural that she should pet him and that the crowd should flatter him.
But the high favour of a Queen and the wonder of the people make a potent brew for a man flashing suddenly out of obscurity. Drake in London was boastful, arrogant. He was moving daily amongst people of a station and quality far different from those to which he was used; and the nervousness of anyone not quite sure of his footing leads more often than not to bombast. Mendoza quotes such an instance. Drake was at supper with the Earl of Sussex, Lord Arundel and other gentlemen of high rank. He was boasting of his exploits, when Sussex interrupted him with the comment that there was nothing marvellous in an armed galleon capturing a treasure ship which had only eight armed men
to protect her. Drake replied that he was quite able to make war on the King of Spain himself, and was sharply rebuked by Sussex for his impudence.
Indeed, his footing was not secure. Winter, the Captain of the Elizabeth, had returned to England a year before Drake and had explained, in the best manner of a sixteenth-century Mr. Pecksniff, that he had been horrified by the capture of the Portuguese prize Mary, and that when an opportunity occurred in the gale on the western opening of the Straits of Magellan he had abandoned so lawless an expedition. It was true that he had sails and that his crew wore clothes made from the stuff carried in the cargo of the Mary, but he pleaded that this circumstance was due to the necessities of his condition. His intention was to anticipate any charge of desertion which might be made against him by Drake, if he were subsequently to return; and there was no sincerity in his statement of his disgust at the capture of the Mary. But circumstances in England were inclining the Government to treat gently Portuguese things and Portuguese men. Philip had seized Portugal in July of that year, but the Azores held out against him and recognized Don Antonio the Pretender. Antonio had come to England, seeking a fleet; and there was much from the political point of view to be said for helping him. The Azores bestrode the seaway from the West Indies to Spain. Who held the Azores had the Spanish Treasure Fleet at his mercy. Elizabeth was cooing softly to the Portuguese, and the Portuguese owners of Nuño da Silva’s ship took their benefit accordingly. Winter’s story had a larger audience than it would have gained at another time. He was, moreover, nephew to Sir William Winter, the Surveyor of the Navy, and his wings were the stronger by a feather or two on account of that relationship. So that even before Drake’s return there was a party against him as a meddler in great matters for the sake of his private gain. Add the clamour raised by the English merchants of the Spanish company when he did return, and it is easy to understand Stow’s statement: “there were others that devised and divulged all possible disgraces against Drake and his followers terming him the Master Thief of the unknown world.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 878