And since it failed, it made it certain, as nothing else in that changing world was certain, that within a few years watchmen on Dennis Head would see the topsails of the Invincible Armada rising over the rim of the sea. Santa Cruz had opposed the idea of an invasion of England, and since the death of Menendez, the founder of the Indian Guard, there had been no admiral in Spain to match him in authority. For, outside the small swift galleons of the Indian Guard, Spain had no navy. But his opposition had weakened with the capture of Portugal. For in the harbour of Lisbon eleven great ships had been taken, and eleven great ships were the pith and marrow of a real navy. After his defeat of Strozzi, he swung over to the other side. The enterprise of England was no longer a dream for an idle afternoon. It was a possibility to be made fact by long days of work. The shipyards of Italy and Spain began to ring with hammers, the foundries of cannon began to glow, the enterprise was on foot.
In England, Walsingham’s second plan was taken in hand. Drake had made a vague treaty with the King of Ternate. That treaty was to be enacted and enlarged. The flag of Don Antonio was to be carried into the Moluccas. The Muscovy Company promoted the expedition and insisted unwisely that Edward Fenton should be its General. Drake contributed a frigate of forty tons which was named after him Francis, and sent his young cousin John Drake as its Captain and young William Hawkins as the Lieutenant-General. The expedition left Southampton on May 1st of the year 1582, and carried on to Sierra Leone, meeting the baffling winds of the Equator. Fenton lost the heart to proceed. John Drake, however, refused to turn back. He gave Fenton the slip, sailed the Francis across the Atlantic to the River Plate, and by a mistake ran his frigate on a rock. All on board were taken prisoners. John Drake was carried to Buenos Aires, where he was lodged in the Governor’s house and by him pleasantly entertained. But gradually the word spread that he was the cousin of that accursed marauder who had ravaged the coast of Peru; and he was thrown into prison. He only emerged from it to enter upon a life of servitude.
Francis Drake had hardly moved into Buckland Abbey when his wife Mary died. She had married him twelve years before, on July 4th, 1569, in the bad days after his return from St. John de Ulua. She had seen him go twice on his secret voyages in his little frigate the Swan; she had welcomed him back with a fortune gained and a name redeemed after his triumphant expedition to Nombre de Dios. She had known him as an Officer of the Government on the patrol of the Irish coast. She had watched his leap into fame as the first Englishman to sail round the world, and into great wealth as the first raider of the Pacific Ocean; and all we know of her is that she married Francis Drake on July 4th, 1569, was rowed out with the Mayor to greet him when he returned to Plymouth on the Golden Hind, and died in January of the year 1583. Of her friends, of her life with her husband or alone in his long absences, of her station, her parents — not a word has come down. Even the cause of her death is — not a mystery, for mystery implies enquiry — unknown. She is a blank with a date at either end.
Early in 1582 Queen Elizabeth granted to Drake and his heirs the manor of Sherford, and in the summer of that year he added to his possessions by buying the manor of Yarcombe. He was “mere English,” like the Queen, and during these few years on shore he walked the traditional path of the ambitious Englishman. He had made a colossal fortune whilst still in the middle thirties. He received the honour of a knighthood. He bought land. And now he was brought back to London to sit upon a special Committee appointed by a Royal Commission.
The importance of that Commission and of its subordinate Committee can hardly be overrated. For some years complaints of incompetence and corruption in the Royal dockyards had been rife. Ships had been built of green instead of seasoned wood. The cost had been the double of the estimates. Stores had been paid for, but not provided. In spite of the clink of hammers which was growing louder and louder in the ports of Biscay, of Lisbon, of Cadiz and the two Sicilies, the complaints might have gone on swelling unheeded in the English way. But the Paris Plot exploded like a bombshell. The great family of Guise, which wielded authority in France more papistical and violent and hardly weaker than that of the King himself, was planning a swift and immediate invasion of Scotland and England. The Duc de Guise was to have under his command a French army and the support of King Philip of Spain. The great Catholic families in the north of England were to rise in sympathy. Mary Queen of Scots was to be released from her prison in the Cotswolds and set upon the throne of Elizabeth. Protestant England was to cease to be. Under the cloud of this immediate threat a Royal Commission was appointed from the highest officers of the State. Lord Burghley, Walsingham and the Lord Chancellor served upon it. The Commission had the widest reference. It was to report generally on the condition of the Navy, to suppress abuses, to supervise the construction of new ships and to estimate the cost and the quantity of the stores which should be kept in readiness against a sudden attack.
This Commission appointed a subsidiary Committee of practical and famous sailors to help it. Drake was appointed to the Sub-Commission, and with him Frobisher, Carew, Raleigh and other captains less known to after-days. The whole theory of sea-power was now in debate. According to the English strategy, the fleet in war should be divided into three great squadrons, one to guard the Narrow Seas, one stationed off the Isle of Wight, one pivoted upon the Scillies. It was a strategy of defence and based upon the belief that the defending fleet, even if smaller than the challenger’s, could still do so much damage to the enemy that he dare not risk attempting an invasion. Was this strategy, if strategy it can be called, still to prevail? Or was the newer policy which Drake had used with so much success to take its place? To muster as many ships as he could, and strike first and unexpectedly with the full weight of the body behind the blow. The great campaign in the year 1940 has given a decisive answer to that question as a general principle of war. Was it true of the sea?
There was another question which vexed the minds of naval pundits in Elizabeth’s day. The big ship with its straight towering sides and its lofty castles, or the little ship built for speed and gunnery? The ship which was built to cripple and board, or the ship built to stand off and sink by the lower trajectory of its guns? Something has already been written upon this subject in this chapter. The choice to be made would settle that other difficult problem. Who were the men you relied upon to win your battle — the soldiers or the sailors? The structure of the ships depended upon it. Those towering sides and bulletproof castles were excellent for boarding, excellent too for a land battle on the deck, in the waist of the ship. On the other hand, such ships rolled — rolled abominably in the lightest wind, and soldiers were not half or even a quarter soldiers when they were sea-sick. We know Drake’s answer to this question as clearly as we know that he put attack above defence. He had made it at Port Saint Julian. The gentlemen must hale and draw with the mariners. There must be no division of a warship’s complement into superior people who fought and lower people who sailed. All must fight and all must sail. Sir Richard Hawkins took the same view. He wrote of the Spanish ships:
“The mariners are but as slaves to the rest, to moil and toil day and night, and those but few and bad and not suffered to sleep or harbour themselves under the decks. For in fair or foul weather, in storms, sun, or rain they must pass void of covert or succour.”
We may be very sure that the other sea-captains, like Frobisher and Raleigh, from their experience agreed, and to the recommendations of that subordinate Committee we must attribute the change of thought in naval strategy which four years later dispersed the Armada over the coasts of Ireland and Scotland.
Whilst this Commission was sitting, the enterprise of the Duc de Guise came to nothing. There were money troubles, Philip of the leaden foot was slower than ever to come to the scratch, the Duc d’Alva, a famous soldier, opposed it. As the scare lessened, Queen Elizabeth and her Council resolved that the time had arrived to establish by yet another armed expedition to the Indies the right of English commerce to trade with the New World,
and to stop Philip’s naval preparations by cutting off his gold. Even the cautious Burghley was in favour of the scheme. The expedition was to be the usual Joint-Stock affair, with Queen Elizabeth amongst the chief contributors, and some ships of the Royal Navy to form its backbone. Drake was chosen to be its General and he would fly his ensign as an officer of flag-rank.
The preparations were on foot when the Queen began once more to hesitate. Philip was an old friend. Philip had nothing to gain by putting Mary Queen of Scots, the friend of France, upon the English throne. Elizabeth might, after all, make a permanent peace with Philip. Whilst the Queen was hesitating, Drake took another step on the traditional road. He was returned to the House of Commons as Member for the borough of Bossiney in November of 1584, and during the six months’ session he made a few speeches and sat on a few committees like a proper dutiful Member. For instance, he was on the committee which considered the clauses of a Bill “for the better and more reverent observing of the Sabbath Day.” No one could have been more at home with this Bill than Drake who had read prayers twice a day on the Golden Hind and preached a sermon when he had a mind to. He sat on another Bill for bringing in staple fish and ling, and yet on a third which was Walter Raleigh’s Bill for the planting of Virginia. Meanwhile the preparations for the voyage to the Indies went slowly forward, and on Christmas Eve he received Her Majesty’s signed Commission to organize and command a fleet.
But he had not got far with his organization when the Queen withdrew his Commission. She shut her ears to the clang of the tools in the Spanish shipyards. Old grievances were to be forgotten. Philip and she were going to be real friends. She prorogued Parliament on April 7th and left Drake free to take yet a further step in the traditional progress. He married again, and this time into an aristocratic landed family. Elizabeth Sydenham was the beautiful young daughter of Sir George Sydenham. She belonged to the Sydenhams of Coombe Sydenham in Somersetshire, but the romance, the daring and the wealth of the great sailor annulled for her the difference in their ages. It is said that Elizabeth Sydenham had been one of the Queen’s Maids of Honour when Drake brought his treasure-laden horses to Sion House and the Golden Hind to Deptford; and that thus they met. It was rumoured that the Sydenhams of Coombe Sydenham were opposed to the match on the ground that millionaire and knight he might be, but he was not of an origin which permitted him to mate with a Sydenham of Coombe Sydenham in Somersetshire. Amongst all these rumours one thing only is certain. The Sydenhams of Coombe Sydenham knew about marriage settlements, and on the marriage day Drake handed over to trustees his manors of Yarcombe and Sherford, Samford Spinney and Buckland Abbey, to hold for the use of “the aforesaid Francis Drake and the Lady Elizabeth his wife, and the heirs and assigns of the aforesaid Francis for ever.”
Thus it looked as if Francis Drake, like so many good sailors after him, was going to settle down to the life of a country gentleman with a lodging in London for the session of Parliament. But on June 8th of the year 1585 a ship named the Primrose sailed up the river to the Port of London; and the sea claimed her own again.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CASE OF THE BARK “PRIMROSE.” PHILIP’S TREACHERY. DRAKE’S FOURTH EXPEDITION TO THE WEST INDIES. DESTRUCTION OF SANTIAGO. CAPTURE OF SAN DOMINGO.
THE CROPS HAD failed that year in Spain. Galicia and Andalusia were faced with starvation. Ships must put to sea without biscuit. Labour would be wanting on the galleons laid down for the Enterprise of England. To forestall these calamities, Philip invited English ships to bring their English wheat to Spain. Privileges would be conceded to them. Above all, they would go free when they had discharged their cargoes. There was a vile treachery hidden behind this invitation, but the English merchants did not so much as suspect it. They knew that the distress in Spain was real and a golden mist blinded them. Their barks, big and little, loaded deep with grain, put out across the Bay, but they did not come back. They were seized, their cargoes confiscated and their crews clapped in gaol. One escaped, the Primrose, a bark of a hundred and fifty tons, and she brought with her a story which set all England in a flame. The Queen discarded her hesitations; even the cautious Burghley cried for reprisals.
The Primrose with a crew of twenty-seven and a Master named Foster reached the Bay of Bilbao on the 24th of May and lay there for two days waiting her turn. On the 26th a pinnace from the shore came alongside bringing the Corregidor of Biscay and six others who gave themselves out to be merchants of the province. They were very friendly and brought cherries with them as a token of their goodwill. Foster the Master was not to be left behind in such courtesies. His ship was very well found, and he entertained his guests in his cabin in true English style, with beer, beef and biscuit. But whilst this solid meal was still in progress, the Corregidor and three of his companions made their excuses and returned in the pinnace to Bilbao. Whether it was that the idea of four hungry Spaniards leaving so stout a meal half-eaten was incomprehensible to Foster, or whether some enlightening words were carelessly dropped by one of the seven, is not known. But the Master became suspicious of their intentions, and having politely seen off the Corregidor and his companions at the gangway, he passed a warning to his crew before he returned to his cabin. There he set himself to play the confiding host until it was announced that the Corregidor was returning in a large ship’s cutter with seventy men dressed as merchants and that the pinnace was following him with twenty-four men in addition. The Master allowed the Corregidor and four others to come on board and asked that the rest should stay in their boats. To this the Corregidor agreed, but whilst he was still speaking, the merchants who were soldiers in disguise seized their rapiers, which had been lying ready to their hands in the bottom of the boats, and swarmed over the bulwarks. They rushed the deck and invaded the cabin with a drum beating the attack, and some threatened the Master by holding daggers to his breast. The Corregidor had arrived on this second visit with an officer bearing a white wand, and he spoke with the authority of his position to Foster.
“Yield yourself, for you are the King’s prisoner.”
But the crew had been warned. They had set muskets, lances, javelins, and whatever arms they possessed in secret places about the deck, and they had five calivers already charged with small shot.
“We are betrayed,” cried the Master, and the sailors taking the words as a signal so leapt to their weapons and so faithfully used them that, as the chronicler describes, “they dismayed at every stroke two or three Spaniards.” They indeed who had planned to surprise were themselves surprised instead. Their plight was the worse in that some of the English were stationed with the calivers below the deck and they shot upwards through grates and hatches at their enemies crowded overhead. Blood flowed about the deck and “they came not so fast in on the one side but now they tumbled as fast overboard on both sides with their weapons in their hands, some falling into the sea and some getting into their boats, making haste towards the City...although they came very thick thither, there returned but a small company of them. Only one Englishman was slain, whose name was John Tristram, and six other hurt.”
There were twenty-seven of them, the Master making twenty-eight, and ninety-eight Spaniards with the Corregidor on the other side. It was the sort of hurly-burly English sailors went into with a happy confidence and came out of with a compassion for the poor devils who had tried such tricks on them. “It was great pity to behold how the Spaniards lay swimming in the sea and were not able to save their lives.” Four of them who managed to cling to some port-hole or the bobstay were hauled on board, their bosoms, oddly enough, stuffed with paper to protect them from bullets, and amongst the four was the Corregidor himself, Governor of a hundred towns with an income of six hundred pounds a year. Brought to book for his treachery, that distinguished official replied that he acted under the direct orders of the King, and feeling in the pocket of his soaking breeches he plucked forth the King’s Commission given under Philip’s hand at Barcelona on May 29th, 1585. Here it is in full.
“Licentiate de Escober, my Corregidor of my Signoria of Biscay, I have caused a great fleet to be put in readiness in the haven of Lisbon and the river of Seville. There is required for the soldiers, armour, victual and munition that are to be employed in the same great store of shipping of all sorts against the time of service and to the end there may be choice made of the best upon knowledge of their burden and goodness; I therefore do require you that presently upon the arrival of this carrier, and with as much dissimulation as may be (that the matter may not be known until it be put in execution), you take order for the staying and arresting (with great foresight) of all the shipping that may be found upon the coast, and in the ports of the said Signoria, excepting none of Holland, Zeeland, Easterland, Germany, England and other provinces that are in rebellion against me, saving those of France which being little and of small burden and weak, are thought unfit to serve the turn. And the stay being thus made you shall have a special care that such merchandise as the said ships or hulks have brought, whether they be all or part unladen, may be taken out and that the armour, munition, tackle, sails and victuals may be safely bestowed, as also that it may be well foreseen that none of the ships or men may escape away. Which things being thus executed, you shall advertise me by an express messenger of your proceeding therein: and send me a plain and distinct declaration of the number of ships that you shall have so stayed in that coast and parts, whence everyone of them is, which belong to my rebels, what burthen and goods they are and what number of men is in every of them and what quantity they have of armour, ordnance, munition, tacklings and other necessaries to the end that on sight thereof, having made choice of such as shall befit for the service, we may further direct you what you shall do. In the meantime you shall presently see this my commandment put into execution, and if there come thither any more ships you shall also cause them to be stayed and arrested after the same order, using therein such care and diligence as may answer the trust that I repose in you wherein you shall do me great service.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 880