The Pirate Queen (25 page)
Authors: Susan Ronald
19. Item in the said ship called the
Jesus
a little sack of gold and silver containing 600 pesos of gold and silver
£2,400
20. Item in the said ship a chest containing various pieces of silver work, commonly called silver plate
£200
21. Item in the said ship silver called currency
£500
22. Item in the said four ships, or some of them, twenty jars of Cretan and Spanish wine, commonly 20 butts of malmseys [sweet wines] and secs [dry wines]
£300
23. Item, in the said four ships or some of them 36 containers of flour, commonly 36 barrels meal, each of which is worth £4
£144
24. Item in the said four ships or some of them, other victuals and necessaries to the value of
£150
25. Item in the said ship called the
Jesus
clothing belonging to the said John Hawkins and other things brought for his personal use
£300
26. Item in the said ship called the
Jesus
chests and trunks of seamen’s belongings
£900
27. Item in the said ship called the
Jesus
a bale of 20 mantles, commonly called a pack of 20 cloaks, each of which is worth £4,
£80
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The accounting made for a claim of £28,914 ($10.27 million or £5.55 million today). The glaring losses relate to the prime motivation of the voyage, with £9,120 being the loss of the value of 57 “Ethiopians,” £320 for their seven tons of manacles, and probably the sterling receipts of £2,400 (600
pesos de oro
) representing the value of slaves already sold.
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When the value of the armaments and munitions are added—the very tools required for “harvesting” the Africans—a total of £21,900, or 76 percent, relates directly to so-called losses sustained relating specifically to the slave trade.
Yet this “reckoning” omits the losses of human life. The Africans themselves were doomed either to a curtailed life in misery or an agonizing death from the moment of their capture. Their deaths were never counted. The English sustained losses of 130 dead in the San Juan de Ulúa attack, with a further fifty-two taken prisoner. Hawkins abandoned around 100 more in the Gulf of Mexico, and a further forty-five or so were lost to starvation, disease, or their gluttonous meal on arrival in Galicia.
But still, the High Court of the Admiralty refused to issue a letter of reprisal late in the summer of 1569. According to the French ambassador residing in London at the time, La Mothe Fénélon, “the affairs of the Queen of England are in a condition of peace which appears to be bordering upon war, because the great majority of the English expect to have war….”
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The government had bigger fish to fry than the granting of an inflated letter of reprisal to Hawkins. The Northern Rising of two of the country’s most prominent Catholic dukes had been quashed—but not without implicating trusted Catholic councillors like the Earl of Pembroke. And to top it all, Spanish forces were gathering a head of steam in the Netherlands. Trade had been suspended between England and Spain, the Netherlands, and Ireland. To make matters worse, Cecil had uncovered a Privy Council–led faction—headed by Leicester—to have Mary Queen of Scots marry the Duke of Norfolk, the queen’s cousin.
So when La Mothe Fénélon reported that “…money is being raised in every possible way; all the merchandise of Spain is to be sold; new angels are being coined in the Tower in order to pay foreigners, and cash payments to private individuals are being stopped, so that no money is in circulation…in truth…the queen receives hardly any revenue.”
7
What had started as a promising year had become an
annus horribilis
for the queen. And the only way out, as far as she was concerned, was to wage peace as if it were war.
For that, she needed the services of men like Francis Drake.
I am so keen to achieve the consummation of this enterprise, I am so attached to it in my heart, and I am so convinced that God our Saviour must embrace it as His own cause, that I cannot be dissuaded. Nor can I accept or believe the contrary.
—PHILIP II TO THE DUKE OF ALBA, SEPTEMBER
14, 1571,
ON THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
I
t was obvious to the Privy Council and the queen that Hawkins had not only exaggerated his losses, but also that he had intended to shout his dubious tactics in the West Indies from the rooftops, in an attempt to embarrass the government into action. Hawkins had resolved to make a clear record of the Spanish “treachery,” oblivious to the fact that he was hurting his own case for a letter of reprisal. While Hawkins was preparing his “True declaration of the troublesome voyage of M. John Hawkins to the parties of Guinea and the West Indies, in the Years of our Lord 1567 and 1568” in May 1569, Francis Drake had simply vanished. Reprisal was on everyone’s lips, and Hawkins’s pamphlet outlining in graphic terms the wrongs done to the English was whipping up the general population onto a war footing.
Meanwhile, back in the West Indies, Spain’s new viceroy to Mexico, Don Martín Enríquez de Almansa, gave the order to fortify all ports and towns. He sent word to Philip, detailing quite a different picture to the one painted by the aggrieved Hawkins. He, and virtually all of Philip’s governors in the West Indies, had become strong proponents for a fleet of galleons to patrol their waters to stop the interlopers before they could come ashore.
Yet while these belated preparations were under way, the Spanish had precious little to fear from the English in 1569. It was the Sea
Beggars and the Huguenots in the Narrow Seas, as well as the Huguenots in the West Indies, who had become active. Instead, England was marshaling its naval resources to protect trade to France (again in a state of civil war) and Germany, bringing troops to and from Ireland, and carrying men and weapons to the north. Still, the rumor machine persisted. “They tell me too,” La Mothe Fénélon wrote after citing the movements of the queen’s navy, “that Hawkins is pushing forward the armament of seven other good men-of-war, but they want to make me believe that they are for a new voyage he is undertaking to the Indies.”
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The truth of the matter was that the entire navy—both royal and merchant vessels—was on alert against a potential invasion that had been urged by de Spes, the King of Spain, and lately the pope. In the dark days of the autumn of 1569, Elizabeth knew that the time for prevarication was over. A general muster had been called, and every available man was pressed into service. Ever the wily stateswoman, she also drew upon the services of the fugitive Sea Beggars to help protect England’s shores. Their action was particularly appealing to England’s parsimonious queen: they defended England, and she bore no expense.
While Hawkins and his personal squadrons were reported in dispatches many times for their activities safeguarding the realm, the only sure sighting we have of Drake in the year was his marriage at St. Budeaux’s Church on July 4 to Mary Newman, daughter of seaman Harry Newman, “a great Lutheran who spoke much against the Roman Church and argued for Protestant doctrines” and who had served aboard the
Jesus
in Hawkins’s last slaving voyage.
2
Nonetheless, Drake himself claimed to have made a reconnaissance mission back to the West Indies for a future mission with the
Swan
, and he reported that he continued to serve in the queen’s navy to his “great advantage.”
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With the Elizabethan penchant for talking in riddles, there may well have been some truth in his boast.
While the queen and her men were protecting the realm from its foes, the Duke of Alba made a pivotal decision. He had no desire to replace Elizabeth with Mary, and he couldn’t understand Philip’s inclination to replace good military strategy with royal will or religious fervor. Rather than invade England, where Alba ran
the double risk of losing his grip in the Netherlands and possibly not succeeding with an invasion force, he resolved to blockade the recalcitrant island nation instead. The wine fleet bound for La Rochelle had been hopelessly delayed at London, and the wool fleet was desperate to sail to Germany. La Mothe Fénélon hit the nail on the head when he claimed that there was a shortage of cash. Without fresh sales of merchandise and healthy international trade, the country’s economy would collapse.
So it is entirely likely, that a fabulous navigator and daring captain like Drake would have been among the volunteers in the squadron to protect England’s number-one export—wool. It is also likely that Drake, aboard whatever ship he captained, would have been double counted among the forty or so ships roving in the Channel and the Narrow Seas, snapping up the Spanish and Portuguese shipping foolhardy enough to come within his sights.
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The ferocious defense of England’s shores came as no surprise to Alba, who, alone among Philip’s governors and generals, understood and admired the fearlessness of the English. Five months after the Catholic-inspired Northern Rising failed, Pope Pius V at last took measures that had been mooted on the queen’s accession—he published the
Regnans in excelsis
, excommunicating England’s heretic queen on February 25, 1570. The papal bull radiated from Rome like wildfire and was published throughout Europe. Alba ensured that it was published in the Netherlands in March, especially in the ports for all who dealt with England to see. The main clause that so shocked the queen and her Privy Councillors stated,
We declare the said Elizabeth heretic and fautress [patroness] of heretics, and her adherents, to have fallen under sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the Body of Christ, and her, Elizabeth, to be deprived of her pretended right to the said realm and of all and every dominion, dignity and privilege; and also the nobles, subjects and peoples of the said realm, and all else who in any manner have made oath to her, to be for ever absolved from such oath, and all duty of liege-fealty and obedience, as by the authority of these presents We absolve them, and deprive the said Elizabeth of her pretended right to the realm and of all else aforesaid, and lay upon all and singular nobles, subjects and peoples, and others aforesaid, our injunction and interdict, that they resume not to yield obedience to her, or her admonitions, mandates and laws; otherwise We involve them in the like sentence of anathema.
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The effect that the papal bull had on the English—both loyal Protestants and Catholics—was the decided awareness that the powers of Rome had declared war on England. For Drake, it was the declaration of war that he had long awaited. Since Good Queen Bess had come to the throne, the Spanish and Portuguese had regarded the English as Lutheran smugglers, interlopers, and pirates—even if their sole intention had been to engage in legitimate trade. Elizabeth—now faced with war at home, in the Netherlands, in France, and in Ireland—had been branded as a common criminal by the pope, with the hefty price of papal sanction to rebel put on the queen’s head.
It was nothing less than religious imperialism from Pius V. He hadn’t even consulted Philip of Spain, or the man whom he expected to carry his Catholic arms into war with England, the Duke of Alba. In fact, by the time the dastardly deed had been pinned to the door of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s residence in London, Lambeth Palace, that spring, it had become an open invitation for anyone with a plan to assassinate the English queen.
Certainly, Drake, and in particular all of his fellow West Countrymen, were having none of it. The age of hostile commerce under Hawkins was over. The age of Drake’s war had dawned.
As there is a general vengeance which secretly pursues the doers of wrong and suffers them not to prosper…so is there a particular indignation engraffed [inset] in the bosom of all that are wronged, which ceases not seeking, by all means possible, to redress or remedy the wrong received.
—SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, QUOTED FROM
Sir Francis Drake Revived
T
here is an old military adage, “Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom time wasted.” Drake claimed long after the event that he had spent part of 1570 in the Caribbean on reconnaissance, and while there is scant surviving evidence to support his claim, there is no particular reason to disbelieve him. It was a relatively quiet year in the West Indies, and since the Spanish interchanged the term
Luterano
freely for either Huguenots or Englishmen, it is impossible to know for sure whether Drake featured among the five or so corsair-related incidents on the Spanish Main in that year. In many ways, the Spaniards were right to mix up the two peoples. Despite their very different backgrounds, languages, and countries, English gunners and crossbow archers had long served aboard Huguenot rovers.
1
What is noteworthy is that until the arrival of Drake, no Englishman had ever entered the Spanish colonies of the Main or West Indies intent solely on revenge and plunder.
2
But even a reconnaissance mission is not without its rewards. According to a contemporaneous account entitled
A Summary Relation of the Harms and Robberies Done by Fr. Drake an Englishman, with the Assistance and Help of Other Englishmen
:
In the year 1570, he went to the Indies in a bark of 40 tons, with whom there went an English merchant of Exeter called Richard Dennys and others, and upon the coast of Nombre de Díos they did rob divers barks in the river Chagres that were transporting merchandise of 40,000 ducats [$3.52 million or £1.9 million today] of velvets, and taffetas, beside other merchandise, besides gold and silver in other barks, and with the same came to Plymouth where it was divided amongst his partners.
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