The Pirate Queen (19 page)

By the time John Hawkins had returned to England in September 1565, Shane O’Neill’s rebellion in the northern part of Ireland was well under way. Sidney’s first task would be to find a way to deal with the man diplomatically, if possible, followed very closely by his attempts to settle the long-standing feud between the Earl of Desmond and the Earl of Ormonde. Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, had been lord lieutenant until 1564, when Leicester succeeded through a whispering campaign in having him removed from Ireland. Still, to Leicester’s great displeasure, the queen insisted that Sussex remain on the Privy Council. Sidney readily saw that Sussex’s policies were by and large just, and with studious topping and tailing, he had these reiterated as his own in his detailed instructions on Tudor Irish policy. The model colony at Laois-Offaly begun several years earlier was to be supported, with “the building of houses and towns and the setting up of husbandry.” By settling the northeast coast of the country, it would be the “surest and soonest way” to handle the Scots and “to inhabit between them and the sea whereby…all hope of succour may be taken from them.” From depriving O’Neill of his fierce Scottish mercenaries, it was only one short step in Sidney’s mind to expelling the Scots from Ireland.
⁸
The disturbing presence of Catholic Scots in Ireland to the queen cannot be overstated. Nothing, except the meddling of the pope or Spain in Irish affairs, drove the message home more clearly to England’s queen that she was surrounded by enemies than by the Scots in Ireland.

But, momentarily, all these troubles were forgotten. While John Hawkins unveiled the treasure trove to his investors, including the queen, ballads were written and pamphlets distributed recounting his daring adventures. Hawkins had become a national hero. To his investors, he presented a 60 percent profit on their initial stake. Though no precise reckoning of the takings was announced, we can get a fairly accurate picture not only of the profits, but also of the purpose of his voyage by the goods he had sold from the record of the royal treasurer in Borburata:

Since three
pesos de oro
were equal to one pound sterling at the time, that makes the total value in sterling, £4,176—or $1.51 million or £817,243 today.
⁹
This receipt shows quite clearly that John Hawkins had only intended for his voyages to open up the slave trade to England. Only 10 percent of the value of the sales were in the traditional export of England, textiles—and even then, most of those came from France and the Low Countries.
¹⁰

It’s no wonder that by the time the spoils had been divided, his third voyage was already in the planning. Hawkins should have also not been surprised when Ambassador de Silva took an undue interest in him personally, sidling up to him at court and inviting the new national hero to dinner. De Silva had already warned his king that he believed Hawkins was a danger to Spain, and so during his tête-à-têtes while wine and flattery flowed in equal abundance, the Spanish ambassador tried to “turn” Elizabeth’s slave trader and secure Hawkins’s allegiance to Spain. There can be little doubt that the mighty mariner sought the advice of William Cecil in the matter, who instructed Hawkins to play along. De Silva’s first letter dated October 22, 1565—written in code—recounts their first meeting:

Hawkins, who is the captain, I advised your Majesty had recently arrived from the Indies, conversed with me the day before yesterday at the palace and said that he had been on a long voyage of which he was very tired, and had traded in various parts of the Indies with your Majesty’s subjects, but with the permission of the Governors, from whom he brings certificates to show that he has fulfilled the orders given to him by his queen prior to his departure. I said that I should be glad for my own satisfaction and his to see the certificates, and he said he would show them to me. I asked him if it were true that all the Frenchmen who were in Florida had left, and he said they had, and that he had sold them a ship and victuals for their return, as I have already advised. He said the land is not worth much, and that the natives are savage and warlike…. I have not thought well to take any steps or make any representations about this voyage until I was well informed of the particulars. I am promised a detailed statement of the voyage—where he went and what he did…. The truth will be learnt.
¹¹

De Silva was determined to stop the English in their tracks and curb their growing passion for roving. Though not as yet as successful, others had already followed Hawkins’s lead. In September 1565, Vice Admiral William Winter and his brother, George, had prepared their ship the
Mary Fortune
for a voyage to Guinea, most probably in the hunt for gold rather than slaves. Within the month, the majority of the crew had been killed by the Portuguese, with the remaining few held in captivity in the slave fort at El Mina. Earlier, Thomas Fenner, described as a “pirate gentleman of Sussex” by de Silva, had tried to replicate Hawkins’s first voyage, but he, too, alas, failed.
¹²

If only, de Silva reasoned, he could get Hawkins to serve his former master, Philip, things might be different. After one of their more amiable dinners, the Spanish ambassador wrote to his king that he may have hit upon a solution:

He [Hawkins] is not satisfied with things here, and I will tell him he is not a fit man for this country, but would be much better off if he went and served your Majesty, where he would find plenty to do as other Englishmen have done; he did not appear disinclined to this. They have again asked him to make another voyage like the last, but he says he will not do so without your Majesty’s license…. It seems advisable to get this man out of the country, so that he may not teach others, for they have good ships and are greedy folk with more freedom than is good for them.
¹³

Hawkins continued to string de Silva along until February 1566, claiming that he would like to serve the King of Spain, when word reached the Spanish ambassador that Hawkins’s fleet would be ready to sail as soon as the weather was right. The game of cat
and mouse continued between the two men for another six months before de Silva finally confronted the queen. Did she not recall her promises that no Spanish subject should be harmed? Did she not also recall that she had given her word that John Hawkins would not be allowed to return to Spanish ports in the Caribbean? Why were her councillors, her gentlemen, and her merchant adventurers financing yet another slaving voyage? he persevered. The queen couldn’t deny any of his arguments. She found herself in the position of ordering Hawkins, George Fenner, John Chichester, and William Coke from sailing to “certain privileged places as is planned.” Finally on October 17, the Privy Council wrote to the mayor of Plymouth demanding that they

cause a ship that is there prepared to be set to the seas by John Hawkins, which is meant to be sent in voyage to the King of Spain’s Indias, to be stayed and not suffered in any wise to go to the seas until the matter be here better considered, charging the owner of the said ship or the setter forth of her, in the Queen’s Majesty’s name, to repair immediately hither to answer unto that shall be objected against him.

In early November, Hawkins was ordered to pay a bond of £500 in “sound royal English coinage” and that he must forbear to send any of his ships on a voyage to the West Indies, or lose the bond.
¹⁴
In fact, the bond went so far as to specifically prohibit Hawkins from sending “at this time into any place or places of the Indias, which are privileged by the King of Spain to any person, or persons there to traffic, And also if the master and company of the said ship, and the master, and company or any other ship, or ships, to be set further in this voyage by the said John Hawkins do not rob, spoil, or evil handle any of the Queen’s majesty’s subjects, allies, confederates or friends.”
¹⁵

De Silva, scarcely able to conceal his glee, was certain he had won. Yet five days later, on November 9, 1566, four of Hawkins’s ships—the
Paul
, the
Solomon
, the
Pascoe
, and the
Swallow
—sailed out of Plymouth harbor under the command of Captain John Lovell. One of Lovell’s ordinary seamen aboard the admiral ship, the
Swallow
, was Hawkins’s “cousin” Francis Drake.

10. Lovell’s Lamentable Voyage

Who seeks by worthy deeds to gain renown for hire, Whose heart, whose hand, whose purse is pressed to purchase his desire,

If any such there be, that thirsteth after fame,

Lo! Hear a means to win himself an everlasting name.

—SIR FRANCIS DRAKE,
1583

T
here can be no doubt that Hawkins never intended to travel on what became known as the Lovell voyage. His plan all along had been to marry Katherine Gonson, the attractive eighteen-year-old daughter of Benjamin Gonson, treasurer of the Navy Board, and move from Plymouth to London. The swashbuckling sea captain now saw himself at the heart of power, and while he cultivated court society, his deputies could continue the slave trade on his behalf.

Not much is known about John Lovell, other than that he was an uncompromising Protestant, and no diplomat. No physical description of Lovell survives, unlike the fiery, bearded, redheaded Hawkins of the 1560s, wearing the finest black velvet, bedecked with a bracelet of diamonds and pearls, jeweled scarf, and three gold rings.

Lovell and his crew had been charged with following the tried and tested method of slave trading pioneered by Hawkins, and there had been every expectation that they would succeed. After all, his fellow commanders, James Raunce in the
Solomon
, James Hampton in the
Paul
, and Robert Bolton in the
Pascoe
, were no novices. But things started badly and got steadily worse. In the Canaries, Lovell flaunted his devout Protestantism and scandalized Hawkins’s local partner, de Ponte. He even went so far as to claim to an official in Tenerife that “he had made a vow to God that he would come to these islands, burn the image of Our Lady in Candelaria, and roast a young goat in the coals.”
¹

Unlike the pragmatic Hawkins, who often masked his Protestantism to suit the occasion, Lovell obviously felt that his mariners, too, must exercise the “true faith” with the same excess that he did. Our only clear glimpse of Drake on the voyage survives, oddly enough, thanks to Spanish torture. In a confession given by a Welshman, Michael Morgan, after he had been captured and tortured by the Inquisition in Mexico City in 1574, we learn that Drake had converted Morgan to Protestantism on the 1566–67 Lovell voyage. The statement was written down by his inquisitor since Morgan was unable to write:

He said…although at that time he [Morgan] could have found a priest to whom to confess he did not confess but to God in his heart, believing that such a confession was sufficient to be saved, and this he had heard said by Francis Drake, an Englishman and a great Lutheran, who also came on the vessel and who converted him to his belief, alleging the authority of St Paul and saying that those who did not fast should not say evil of those who did, and those who fasted should not speak evil of those who did not, and that in either of those two doctrines, that of Rome and that of England, God would accept the good that they might do; that the true and best doctrine, the one in which man would be saved, was that of England…. On the deponent [Morgan] asking the said Drake whether his parents and forefathers would be lost for having kept the doctrines of Rome, he replied ‘no,’ because the good they had done would be taken into consideration by God, but that the true law and the one whereby they would be saved was that which they now kept in England.
²

Drake had taught Morgan “the Paternoster and Creed of the Lutheran Law and he had also learned to recite the Psalms from a book.”
³
Francis Drake, the eldest son of Edmund Drake, had learned to hate Catholics from his earliest days in Devon, when, according to family legend, the Drakes had been forced to take refuge in Plymouth harbor before fleeing the wrath of the Western Catholic Rebellion against King Edward. The truth of the matter is somewhat different, as we can now see from the entry in the patent rolls of 1548:

December 21, 1548. Whereas Edmund Drake, shearman, and John Hawking, alias Harte, tailor, late of Tavistock, Devon, are indicted of having on 25 April, 2 Edward VI [meaning second year of Edward’s reign], at Tavistock, stolen a horse worth £3, of one John Harte; and whereas William Master, cordyner, and Edmund Drake, shearman, late of Tavistock, are indicted of having on 16 April 2 Edward VI, at Peter Tavy, Devon, in the king’s highway
(via regia)
called “Le Crose Lane” assaulted Roger Langisforde and stolen 21s 7d which he had in his purse.