Sir Francis Drake

… he that sings of matchless Drake had need

To have all Helicon within his brain,

Who in his heart did all heaven’s worth contain.

IN THE MONTHS after his knighthood Drake made a major adjustment. The step from privateer to international folk hero, from master mariner to a knight of the realm, was a vast one. Sir Francis had now to carry himself among the rich and the great, without losing touch with the common people he had left behind. He must live in a style commensurate with his new status, and appropriate to the company he was now keeping. He had outgrown the little house in Plymouth, and he must find a family coat of arms, that indispensable testimonial to the dignity and honour of his line.

The queen moved quickly to secure Drake’s social standing. In 1581 she assigned him a coat of arms consisting ‘of sable a fesse wavy between two stars argent, the helm adorned with a globe terrestrial upon the height whereof is a ship under sail, trained about the same with golden haulsers by the direction of a hand appearing out of the clouds, all in proper colour with these words, “Auxilio Divino”.’¹ Put more simply, Sir Francis was to have a shield emblazoned with a horizontal undulating line. Above and below the line was a silver star, each representing a pole of the earth. Above the shield was a crest, a knight’s helmet surmounted with a globe, upon which rode a ship under sail, moored with a golden hawser to a hand from the clouds, and inscribed with the words quoted.

Drake fussed over this coat of arms like a child with a toy. Those jibes about the upstart, the social climber, were having some effect, and Sir Francis’s initial reaction was to deny his humble origins, and insist that his family had, after all, been distinguished. As the Clarenceux King of Arms put it, Drake protested that he was ‘well born and descended of worthy ancestors such as have of long time borne arms.’² The upshot was that while he was happy with the shield granted by the queen, he remained dissatisfied with the crest. He had come up with what he said was a family crest, a red-winged dragon, which he almost certainly had borrowed from the Drakes of Ashe in East Devon. Accordingly, a patent for his coat of arms was drafted that included the dragon, but when the final design was submitted to Drake, he found that for some reason it had been deleted. Possibly Sir Bernard Drake of Ashe had objected to the Clarenceux King of Arms that Sir Francis had purloined his crest. At any rate, Drake did not like his patent, and experimented with the whole design. He was wont to divide the shield into quarters, in two of which were the stars and fess, and in the other two his dragon. The crest troubled him greatly. Sometimes he depicted the demi-wyvern, or dragon, in the ship on the globe, and at other times he dispensed wholly with the ship, globe, hand and clouds and simply used the dragon upon a helmet. By 1591 he was so uncertain about his crest that he had it missed off the coat of arms inscribed upon a portrait for which he was sitting. It was not until the end of his life that he felt secure enough to forgo fretting about whether his family had had a crest or not. His last portrait, painted in 1594, contained the crest as originally granted, and at least one of his surviving seals, made of silver and ivory, did not display the dragon.

So much for the coat of arms. Now, what about property? He needed a country house where he could entertain his elevated guests and play the local squire. He did not have to look far – only some four miles north of Plymouth, to the old monastery of Buckland Abbey, built by Cistercian monks in the late thirteenth century in what must have then been a lonely spot conducive to a life of contemplation. For two and a half centuries the monks had ruled Buckland, and some of them were buried beneath the stone floor of the nave. Then, during the Dissolution in 1539, the abbey had passed to lay hands, and in 1541 it became the property of the Grenville family. Old Sir Richard, the Cornish knight, secured the building itself and that portion of the Cistercian estate bounded by the Tavy and a stream that emptied into it at Lopwell. His successor went down in the Mary Rose in 1545, and Buckland was acquired by the younger Richard Grenville, he of the South Seas project and the Revenge, who was then but an infant. In time Grenville expended effort and love in developing the property, and it was to his dedication that the transformation of it from church to house was due.

The building itself betrayed the simplicity and strength of its origin. The long nave, the chancel and the square, low central tower, were strong, with walls built of stone, flecked in green and brown, hewn from local quarries, but they lacked the ornamentation and stained glass favoured by more ostentatious monastic orders. Grenville changed all that. He pulled down the two transepts to streamline the building, leaving the roof marks to commemorate their passing. He built an east wing with two floors to house kitchens and the domestics. In the church itself he fixed three wooden floors, and partitioned them into rooms. The nave became three reception rooms, a drawing room and some bed chambers. Above all, Grenville enjoyed himself in creating a great hall out of the choir. Over the fireplace was inscribed the date 1576, and a plaster frieze was erected there symbolizing Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude. Along the length of the west wall ran another frieze that depicted an allegory of the retirement of a warrior – a knight forsaking his profession of arms to reflect upon a skull and an hourglass, his armour discarded upon the ground, his shield hung upon a tree, and his war-horse turned out to graze nearby. Perhaps it was to escape the introspection induced by the frieze that Grenville made a bowling green outside.

When Richard Grenville left Buckland Abbey it was L-shaped in plan with the shorter wing facing towards the north-east. To the north, beyond the small village of Buckland Monachorum, the River Walkham ran towards the Tavy, striking it only a little below Tavistock, where Drake was born. Westwards the sheltered valley of the abbey descended to the timbered bottoms of the Tavy itself, the way marked by orchards that had been planted by the monks. Eastwards, the house was overlooked a mile or more away by the gorse-covered and windswept Roborough Downs, and in the south the Tamar was just visible. About were parks full of deer, and the waters were rich in fish. Here was everything that the Elizabethan gentleman could desire.

Why did Grenville part with something into which he had poured his soul? The truth is probably that he was speculating in land and needed money to discharge various mortgages. Indeed, it is conceivable that he was raising money on Buckland but hoped subsequently to redeem it, because when he sold the house, partly furnished, with five hundred or so acres of land and fishing rights granted by the Marquis of Winchester, he agreed that if the buyers were dissatisfied he might repay the purchase price of £3,400 in two years’ time and repossess the property. This sort of agreement was not an unusual form of borrowing at the time, but in this instance the loss was permanent. On 19 December, 1580 Richard and Mary Grenville conveyed Buckland to Drake’s agents, John Hele and Christopher Harris. It took another year or two to complete the formalities of the transfer, but Drake and his wife may have taken residence as early as the following summer, because on 10 August he assigned the lease of two houses he had been using in Plymouth to his friends, Tremayne, Hele and Harris. The whereabouts of these town properties is not clear, although Drake had held the lease from a certain Thomas Edmonds, gentleman.³ One of the houses may have been the one Drake had in 1576, which we presume Mary had occupied in the long years her husband had been at sea. Whatever, Buckland was to be his official seat thereafter, and he was content with it. It was a country retreat in the valleys he had explored as a child, but close enough to Plymouth to serve his public business, and it required no further modification. Grenville had left one minor problem outstanding, for a charge against him of illegally enclosing nearby wood pastures was before the Court of Exchequer, but he had paid Drake’s agents £300 as security against any confiscation that might arise from the proceedings and had thus acted honourably.⁴

Buckland Abbey still stands, with its large tithe barn, managed by the National Trust as a monument to the monks who created it, to Grenville who transformed it, and to Drake, for whom it was mute but tangible attestation to his upward mobility. In Drake’s day property, particularly land, was the basis of power, privilege and prestige. A few were lucky enough to inherit land; even fewer converted wealth acquired by other means, such as trade, into land as soon as possible, as Drake had done. Land legitimized status and the right to influence. For a few years, indeed, Drake was obsessed with property, and amassed it by reward or purchase at a remarkable rate. The queen was still being generous to him, and sending him gifts – a pendant jewel of sardonyx and pearls, a richly decorated green scarf and matching silk cap, and a number of cups; but the most important rewards were properties. On 12 January, 1582, she granted him the manor of Sherford, in Devon, about three miles from Plymouth, another of those houses pilfered by the Crown through the Dissolution, this time at the expense of the monastery of Plympton St Mary. Drake held it from the queen for the service of one-twentieth of a knight’s fee, medieval jargon that was now little more than a form of words.⁵

Sir Francis quickly found this acquisition looked better on paper than in reality, for while the ownership of it now passed to him, and he was obliged to pay John Stanning 6s 8d per year to act as bailiff there, the house had sitting life tenants in John and Walter Maynarde. However, the queen also assigned other properties to her hero, and a handsome list they made too: the manors and patronage of Gayhurst and Stoke Goldingham in Buckinghamshire; land in Little Stainton, in the bishopric of Durham, that had once been part of the estate of Blanch-land Monastery; some territory in Buckland Newton in Dorset formerly possessed by Glastonbury Abbey; land and two houses, Burstone House and Burgoin House, in the parish of St Martin, Stamford Baron, Northamptonshire, late of Stamford Priory; and tracts in Morton on Swale, in Yorkshire, that had previously been allocated to supply the stipend of a schoolmaster for the village of Bedale.

There was a snag. Every one of them was granted in reversion, that is to say they would only pass to Drake upon the deaths of the present occupiers, and it is possible that he derived no benefit from some of them at all, or indeed that the prospects of doing so were so slight that he renounced his claims upon them. That not one of these properties other than Sherford is mentioned in Drake’s subsequent marriage settlement and wills affords reason to believe that he quickly disposed of them. But, knowing Drake, he found some means of gaining advantage. On 13 January, 1582, for example, only a day after receiving the grant, he sold Burstone House in Northamptonshire to Sir Thomas Cecil, the son of Lord Burghley.⁶

Records for 1581 and 1582 show that Drake was investing and speculating heavily in real estate, and that he was hobnobbing with those for whom it was second nature. Sir Arthur Bassett of Umberleigh, Devon, a West Country Puritan and associate of the Earl of Bedford and Richard Grenville, was one of them. Sometime Member of Parliament for Barnstaple and Devon, Bassett had inherited no less than eleven manors when he came of age. In 1582 Drake and Bassett were involved in mysterious transactions concerning the manor, barton and lands of Boringdon and the areas of Brixton Barton and Brixton, all situated just west of the River Plym and a little way from Plymouth. Possibly they merely acted as agents. It appears that John Hele, Thomas Brewerton and Thomas Walker conveyed the properties to Bassett, Drake and Anthony Monk, who (with John and Mary Hele and Jerome and Catherine Mayhow) forthwith transferred them to Humphrey Selwood and Anthony Mapowder.⁷

Nonetheless, if Sir Francis secured no lasting benefit from that deal, he soon secured two more Devonshire manors, Yarcombe, north-east of Honiton, and Sampford Spiney, west of Tavistock. Yarcombe had passed through several hands since the Crown had obtained it during the dissolution of the religious houses. In 1581 Leicester sold his rights in the property to Richard Drake, the younger brother of Sir Bernard Drake of Ashe, and the following year they were transferred to Sir Francis himself, who promptly acquired title to the remainder of the property by accepting the nominal obligation of knight’s service to the Crown.⁸ He then completed his acquisitions in the countryside by obtaining Sampford Spiney from the Earl of Devonshire.

This sweep of available country estates gave Drake four properties upon which to found his dynasty: Buckland Abbey, Sherford, Yarcombe and Sampford Spinney, On 20 October, 1582 he moved into the urban market with a single but gigantic investment of £1,500 that made him the third largest landlord in Plymouth, inferior only to the Hawkins family and the town corporation itself. For this sum William Hawkins and John Hele sold him forty separate freeholds about the town. Twenty-nine of them were houses, some of which included taverns and shops and one a bakehouse; four of the properties were gardens, two were stables, and five were warehouses or stores. In addition to these, the Hawkins brothers surrendered to Drake a half share in the old Plymouth tide mills at Millbay, and he got 50 per cent of the manor of Sidbury in East Devon, which he was to sell to Richard Hawkins ten years later. Finally, the deal apparently involved Drake in providing a mortgage. Jerome Mayhow agreed to settle his estates on the family of his prospective son-in-law, Edmund Parker, in return for £3,000 advanced by Parker, Drake, Bassett and Monk. The properties in question are not specified, but in 1592 after Mayhow’s death Parker owned Thornhill, in the tithing of Compton Gifford. He let it to Drake, and it is conceivable that the rents were offset against the mortgage, or that Drake’s tenure owed something to the agreement of ten years before.⁹

When Sir Francis rode about Plymouth he was now a man to whom many were bound by favour and financial obligation. We know little about his many tenants, but they included friends, relatives and camp-followers. One of two properties he had in the High Street was occupied by his brother, Thomas. A newly built house with an attached garden on the corner of Looe Street, one of several properties Drake had in that street in the heart of the town, was leased in March 1587 to Edward Gilman and his sister Florence. Gilman commanded the Scout for Drake in 1585, and Sir Francis once generously acknowledged that he was a greater mariner than Drake himself. During the Armada year one Anthony Plott, who had assumed responsibility for repairs to the premises and who married Florence, was admitted to that particular lease for 10 shillings a year. Other tenants may have had no connections with Drake. His only house on Southside Street was occupied by a ‘painter’, Robert Spry.¹⁰

Drake released some of his town properties, and at his death his holdings were said to be eighteen messuages, as many gardens, and 34 acres of land. But his standing in the community was secure and the immediate dividend was his selection to be the Mayor of Plymouth for the year beginning September 1581. The stipend was only £20, but the honour great, for Drake now held sway over his home town with the aid of twelve aldermen and twenty-four common councillors. He set up a compass upon the Hoe and passed a regulation controlling the local pilchard trade, and after surrendering his office to Thomas Edmonds in 1582 Sir Francis continued to act as a justice. His interest in law and order is reflected in a donation he made towards the maintenance of the city gaol about 1581, and his order for the arrest of a man who had killed another citizen on the Catdown in 1586 or 1587.¹¹

In all of this there was, perhaps, a flaw that troubled Drake. He had no heir for his estate. An attractive anecdote, preserved by Robert Hayman, at one time Governor of Newfoundland, attests to Drake’s love of children. Sir Francis was probably visiting Nicholas Hayman, Member of Parliament for Totnes in 1586 and 1587, and came upon young Robert outside the door. Recalling his childhood encounter in a poem, ‘Of the Great and Famous, Ever to be Honoured Knight, Sir Francis Drake, and of my Little, Little Self’, Hayman wrote:

That vacuum in his life, which he filled with his young cousin, John, whom he regarded as a son, was suddenly, immeasurably, extended. He lost them both, first John, on a voyage shortly to be described, and then Mary, his wife. She had been beside him in the worst of times, when he had been publicly tainted with cowardice when they had first married, and in those days of uncertainty when he had returned from his great voyage and waited to hear how the queen would receive him. The local sailor’s wife had become Lady Drake, dined with her husband at the expense of the Plymouth Corporation, and been driven in a carriage to a house that must have seemed from another world. And then, almost as if to protest at the social revolution in which her husband had engulfed her, she died, of what no records tell. Her burial is registered for both the church of St Andrew’s and that of St Budeaux for 25 January, 1583, and beyond there is silence. Sir Francis could do little more. But he took as his own his late wife’s nephew, and as he served and protected Jonas Bodenham perhaps in some way he held fast to her memory.¹³

There was one man who got nervous when information about Francis Drake dried up. Philip II knew Drake, his restless energy and his determination to injure Spain, and he jostled his negligent ambassador. ‘Tell me what has become of Drake and what you hear of arming of ships … It is most important that I should know all this.’¹⁴ The king’s fear was not misplaced, because Drake’s mind teemed with plans to Philip’s detriment. He was no sooner back from his circumnavigation than talking about a new voyage in which every pound invested would yield sevenfold. Scant details sketch a proposal for him to serve as the life governor of a company that would search for new territories in South America, but there were also rumours that he was bound for the Moluccas with ten ships and that he would rendezvous there with another force to come by the Strait of Magellan. The haze clears to reveal a new figure who had entered Drake’s life, the mercurial pretender to the Crown of Portugal, Dom Antonio.

He has been dismissed as a footnote, this enigmatic figure, but he was a barb in Philip’s side for fifteen years. Dom Antonio, the prior of Crato, had been the other claimant to the Portuguese throne after the death of King Henry in 1580. Although the king had recognized Philip as heir, many Portuguese, suspicious of Castilian supremacy, acclaimed Dom Antonio, Henry’s illegitimate nephew, and he had been sufficiently dangerous for the Spaniards to attempt to buy him off. Neither bribes nor the advance of Alba’s army into Portugal quenched the pretender’s spirit, but the Spanish conquest was unstoppable. Only Setúbal, Cascais, Oporto and Lisbon offered resistance, and while 10,000 Portuguese turned out for Dom Antonio in defence of the capital they were not soldiers and were quickly dispersed. The pretender himself was wounded in the brave but futile stand.

There followed a period in which Dom Antonio acted the part of a sixteenth-century Bonnie Prince Charlie, roving in disguise through remote mountains with a few loyal supporters, hiding in reed beds, and eventually shipping out on a Dutch vessel despite a price that had been placed on his head. He went to France, and then to England, full of promises for anyone who would give him back his kingdom. Dom Antonio’s cause did not die with his flight, for Terceira in the Azores still held out for him, and there was unrest in the Cape Verdes that might be fanned into rebellion. It was in connection with these islands that England was drawn into the pretender’s plans. Neither Elizabeth nor the French king, Henry III, was interested in seeing Philip’s power augmented by so rich a prize as Portugal, and the prospect of keeping the Azores out of Spanish hands and a potential source of insurrection against Philip on the Portuguese mainland was alluring. Besides, Dom Antonio was offering trading concessions in return for help, and English merchants had long wanted a foothold in the islands, so strategically placed in the path of the African, East Indian and transatlantic trades.

And so Dom Antonio and his retinue flitted stealthily about the court, lobbying for English support. A man of about fifty years of age, small, dark, thin-faced, with green eyes, his beard streaked in grey, the pretender did not cut an impressive figure. His talents were modest, and his cause doubtful. But there was undoubted charm in the man once he spoke, a certain gallantry in his manner, and there could be no question about his courage, determination or ability to inspire loyalty in his followers even in difficult circumstances. He began to make headway. Elizabeth was not prepared to go to war over Portugal, but she was well aware of the advantages to be gained if ‘King Antonio’ could be maintained in the Azores. Her councillors wrestled with trying to devise some way in which aid might be given Dom Antonio without constituting an open breach between England and Spain. One possibility was getting France to do the dirty work, and negotiations were opened with Henry, with the English suggesting that as their merchants were vulnerable to reprisals from Spain it would be better if Elizabeth merely underwrote a quarter of the cost of a French expedition to the Azores. Henry was still interested, but tried to make his support conditional upon Elizabeth agreeing to the French marriage. Talks began to flag.

Another possibility involved Sir Francis Drake. The English had not forgotten that Philip had allowed the Pope to recruit Spaniards for an expedition against Ireland. Very well then. Since England recognized the legitimacy of sovereignty by possession of territory, and since Terceira plainly adhered to Dom Antonio, what was to stop Elizabeth permitting the pretender to recruit Drake in its defence? No treaties would be broken, because there were none between England and Spain that concerned the islands, and if necessary the whole operation could be conducted under Dom Antonio’s flag. But even this plan depended upon French support in order to create a fleet large enough to defend the Azores.¹⁵

In April 1581 a band of politicos and naval men, Walsingham, Leicester, Drake, Hawkins, Winter and Richard Bingham (who had the distinction of having served not only under Winter but with the Spaniards at Lepanto), discussed sending eight ships, six pinnaces and perhaps a thousand men to the Azores. Drake would command, and some of Frobisher’s associates like Edward Fenton, Gilbert Yorke and Luke Ward, as well as Captain Brewer and Captain Gregory, were named as possible captains. Soon ships were being fitted out at Plymouth in ‘frantic haste’, as Mendoza reported to Philip. On 26 April Dom Antonio had provided his own view of the expedition. He wanted it to sail on 15 June, victualled for four months, and proposed to pay for a quarter of the costs of Drake’s fleet within two months, and high interest payments on the balance. The English would receive 75 per cent of Spanish prizes, and could keep any Portuguese ships that refused to declare for Dom Antonio. As for trading privileges, the pretender promised to license English merchants to trade with the Azores for two years, and they would be obliged to pay only half-duties. The only discordant note was Dom Antonio’s request that the fleet be ready to intervene on the mainland (‘If the Kingdom of Portugal needs succouring they shall do it’), a requirement that was likely not authorized by the English government.¹⁶

There was a strong profit motive in the venture, for once installed in the Azores Drake would have a base from which to intercept Spain’s ships from the West and East Indies, using letters of marque issued by Dom Antonio. Much has been written about these divergent goals of profit and national interest; it is important to understand that the two were not always incompatible. Philip’s ability to make war in Europe depended upon his credit with European financiers. His resources, from the ecclesiastical contributions of his dominions, the taxes in Castile and the American silver, were becoming inadequate against his enormous commitments, and his dependence upon the Genoese bankers, for all their high rates of interest, had been demonstrated five years before when Philip attempted to renege upon his debts, only to find his soldiery in the Netherlands breaking out in mutiny. In a sense the bankers, rather than Philip, ruled Europe, and although Spain’s principal revenues came from taxes, their confidence in her ability to redeem their loans rested heavily upon the regular and substantial shipments of treasure. Drake believed that cutting the silver route served both man and mammon.

There was still some uncertainty about the plan, but Drake intended landing on Terceira and throwing up a fortification. After that, one idea was to cruise about until the end of September in the hope of catching the flota, or failing that to attack the West Indies. The alternative was less provocative, and involved sailing from Terceira to Brazil and the East Indies. A cost of £10,320 was mentioned, and the use of some of the queen’s ships, including the Swiftsure, as well as private vessels like the Galleon Oughtred and the Primrose. In the summer Drake was in London, discussing the details with his principal confederates, Walsingham, Leicester, Hawkins and Winter, and with Dom Antonio himself. He found the pretender impatient, and had to tell him that the expedition could not be readied as quickly as he demanded, but finally Drake got away, and left for Plymouth with Hawkins and Dom Antonio’s agent, Juan Rodriguez de Sousa. Back in the West Country he did the best he could. Firearms, armour, weapons and ammunition were purchased, some of them by Dom Antonio; artillery and other arms were brought from the Tower; wagon-loads of victuals left London for the outports; Drake lobbied the merchants for money and ships, and it was said that twenty-five vessels in all were fitted, at Plymouth, London, Southampton and Bristol; Portuguese pilots were recruited for their local knowledge and to add a national colour to the voyage; men were raised in the west, and captains appointed, although none was apprised of their destination; and for a while it seemed that Drake was about to lead out the largest long-distance naval strike in English history.

And then, suddenly, it fell through. The expenses rose like a mountain, and when they topped £13,000 everyone felt they had reached the limits of their purses. The queen had contributed £5,000 but was being pressed for more. Drake and Hawkins, who had put up money, could go no further. Dom Antonio was using his jewels as collateral; he had given one to the queen and used others to buy three ships, commission a few privateers, and provide some necessaries. But much of his spending was on credit, and what was worse, credit dependent upon the successful outcome of the voyage. Linked with the strait circumstances of the English side of the adventure was the increasingly evident reluctance of the French to give firm assurances of support. At the end of July Walsingham himself went to France to negotiate with Henry and Catherine de Medici. England’s contribution, he was to explain, would be ‘indirect’, by which Elizabeth possibly meant that it would be one for which she might disclaim responsibility if the need arose. She may also have been wavering about the prudence of using armed force at all. Catherine, whose own distant claim upon the Portuguese throne Philip had brushed aside more imperiously than Dom Antonio’s, was prepared to assist the pretender, but no more desired to incur Spain’s wrath alone than did Elizabeth. The English were given the impression that if the queen would marry the Duke of Alençon and thereby commit herself more vigorously to French foreign policy a joint expedition to the Azores might be undertaken. Elizabeth, of course, had no intention of making any such commitment and acute observers must have doubted if the impasse between the positions of England and France could be negotiated away.

As late as 20 August it was intended that Drake’s expedition should sail as planned. But the next day, when Drake and Hawkins attended a conference with Burghley and other leading English participants, they found their backers tormented by doubts and misgivings. How would the King of Spain react? Would he send fresh support to Ireland? Would he take reprisals against English vessels trading in Spanish ports? Or would he interpret Elizabeth’s sanction of the enterprise as an outright declaration of war? They decided that the expedition must be contingent upon French support. Even then Drake’s freedom of action would be carefully circumscribed. Although he might relieve Terceira and attempt Madeira or ‘any other island that did belong to Dom Antonio as King of Portugal’ he could not justifiably attack Spanish shipping or colonies. But yet, if the Spaniards were not to be plundered, how could the adventurers realistically hope to make a profit?

Drake had little patience with such timorous talk. And certainly neither he nor Hawkins had any wish to preside over the demise of their Terceira project. So in order to salvage something from the preparations they eagerly endorsed a proposal for an immediate but reduced expedition. Burghley’s minutes tell us that it was suggested that ‘three ships and a bark might be presently sent to the isles to do service there, whereunto Drake & Hawkins assent, and think thereby great service may ensue, and in this case the rest of the ships may be reduced to a smaller charge, and yet remain in readiness, upon knowledge from France.’¹⁷

After this meeting the two seamen conferred with Dom Antonio again. But when they broached the idea of a reduced expedition under William Hawkins and John Norris the pretender would have none of it. That very month the Spaniards were attempting to reduce Terceira and greater forces were already being mustered to finish the job. The Azores, he contended, needed help, substantial help, now. Drake and Hawkins must have been dismayed. They would have pointed out that in the circumstances this was the best offer Dom Antonio was likely to get, but he was adamant. A marginal annotation, added subsequently to Burghley’s minutes of 21 August, reads simply: ‘The King Antonio will not assent hereto, as to bear any charges thereof.’

King Philip himself hammered the last nail into the coffin of the Azores expedition. On 14 August he instructed his ambassador to leave no doubt that if Dom Antonio sailed from England against him Spain would regard it as a declaration of war and he followed this up with a stern letter to Elizabeth to the same effect. If the queen ever believed that she could have unleashed Drake without making that great step, she now had her answer.

The men were discharged, the provisions and munitions sold. Dom Antonio demanded that the queen return his jewel and then, in September, followed his agent, Francisco, Conde de Vimioso, to Paris. To Drake, who had believed in the project so much and who had striven so mightily to realize it, it was all a terrible disappointment. He even failed to recoup all the money he had expended upon the preparations. But, more important, he subscribed fully to the view that Spain’s war effort rested upon the import of American silver. Ever the opportunist, Drake had seen in Dom Antonio a chance to acquire the perfect base from which he might strike at the treasure fleets. And how he would have relished the prospect of taking a flota!

It would have been a worthy sequel to his circumnavigation, but in fact neither Drake nor anyone else would accomplish that dazzling feat in his lifetime. Even the relief of the Azores proved to be more than the simple task Dom Antonio represented it to be. Stimulated by the pretender’s arrival, the French bungled it twice. In July 1582 a French fleet, commanded by Philippe Strozzi, was defeated in a five-hour sea battle. Some English vessels appear to have served in a private capacity on the French side. After the failure of a second French expedition, Dom Antonio skulked between France and England pressing for a third attempt, but for the moment no one could be persuaded, and Terceira was eventually captured by the Spaniards. Dom Antonio’s cause was not entirely crushed by these misfortunes, for he continued to proclaim himself the true King of Portugal and commissioned privateers to attack Spanish shipping, but his prospects certainly lost lustre. Philip strengthened his hold upon Portugal and the islands by tact as well as force. For perhaps a few Portuguese Dom Antonio symbolized independence of Castile, but most became reconciled to Philip, who avoided unnecessary interference in their internal affairs and kept the country’s offices out of the hands of Spaniards.

The collapse of the Terceira project left Drake with time on his hands. His letters of the autumn of 1581, barely one year after his return in the Golden Hind, reveal a man already itching for further action. ‘I am very desirous,’ he told Leicester in October, ‘to show that dutiful service I can possibly do in any action your good Lordship vouchsafeth to use me.’ There is no doubt that he was still hoping for a revival of the Azores venture. In November we find Sir Francis advising Leicester that ‘the bark which I sent of late to the island [of] Terceira is returned, by whom I have received certain letters … wherein your Lordship shall understand the state of that place more effectually than I can signify by writing’.¹⁸ But he was soon occupied in the preparations for a different if equally ill-starred enterprise – a trading voyage to the East Indies that would exploit the openings he himself had made with Ternate and use some of the ships and men originally assembled for the Azores.

Leading courtiers and members of the government, like Leicester, Walsingham, Hatton, Carleil (Walsingham’s dashing son-in-law) and the Earl of Lincoln, merchants from the Muscovy Company eager to expand their trade to the east, and Frobisher, Drake and other seamen pitched into the investment, Drake to the tune of £666 13s 4d. Leicester was the expedition’s principal organizer, but Drake was its inspiration and leading adviser. He indicated places where trade might be had and advised that some of his old crew be shipped to help with navigation, watering places and means of preserving health aboard ship. Upon his recommendation, more than a dozen of his old comrades joined the voyage, including both his young protégés, Jonas Bodenham and John Drake. Cousin John, barely twenty years old and high spirited, was now striking out on his own for the first time as captain of his cousin’s 40-ton Bark Francis, manned by about thirty-five men, some – like himself and the sailing master, William Markham – veterans of the Golden Hind. Sir Francis also interviewed for other appointments. Richard Madox, a preacher preferred by Leicester, recorded that on 15 January, 1582 he was examined in Muscovy House in London before a panel that included Drake and the merchant and alderman, George Barnes. When Madox was asked what remuneration he would demand for his services, he manfully declared that his only wish was to assist his country.

The leader of the East Indies voyage was to have been Martin Frobisher, but the cantankerous Yorkshireman stepped down when the Muscovy Company pressed him to accept Edward Fenton as his second-in-command. Fenton moved smartly into Frobisher’s place, and a bad move it was, for Fenton was little enough of a sailor and demonstrated an inability to control difficult crews. His vice-admiral was Luke Ward. Fenton raised his flag on the Leicester Galleon, a merchantman Leicester had purchased from another investor, Henry Oughtred, and there were three other ships, the Edward Bonaventure, the Elizabeth, and the Bark Francis. The rendezvous was Southampton, and we have a picture of Drake visiting the port on 22 April to encourage the officers with typical extravagance. And it was obviously impressive, for three people sat down to write of it the same day. First, Fenton himself beseeched Leicester ‘to be thankful to Sir Francis Drake for his good counsel towards me and persuasions to his companies for their obedience to that effect.’ Then the earl learned from the minister of the Edward Bonaventure that ‘the right worshipful Sir Francis Drake hath used me with the greatest friendship that any might desire, both in instructing me for the voyage and in dealing with me and my fellow preacher, for the which thanks.’ Richard Madox noted in his diary that ‘Sir Francis Drake was at Southampton and dealing liberally many ways. [He] gave M[aster John] Banister 50, and 50 more between me, M[aster John] Walker and M[aster] Lewis Otmore, but in that also M. Banister made himself a part.’¹⁹ Francis Drake was a man who made friends as easily as he earned enemies.

The expedition sailed in May 1582, but was little favoured. Drake had to help it out almost immediately by sending extra tackle with some wine out of Plymouth to Torbay. In the Atlantic the winds were unfavourable for a voyage around Africa, and many of the sailors, including the fiery John Drake, demanded that the instructions be thrown over the side and the ships run through the Strait of Magellan to plunder Peru as Sir Francis had done. Some of Fenton’s squadron reached Brazil, where they engaged three Spanish ships in battle and sank one, but they were refused trade and further separated. Despairing of any success, Fenton sailed for home, and when he reached the Downs in June 1583 he found that his vice-admiral had returned to England before him. It had been a fiasco, and for Drake worse, for John Drake remained missing.

As months passed, Drake’s anxiety for his cousin remained unrelieved. John never came home. In 1587 it was learned that he had been captured by the Spaniards, and although Drake must have prayed that John would survive and somehow find his way to England as a few other enslaved Englishmen did, the hopes dimmed with the years. Spanish records have told us a little of his fate. After parting from Fenton, John ran for the Magellan Strait, but was shipwrecked at the River Plate. Some of his men were killed by Indians, and others, including the captain, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. A long, miserable life awaited him. After his identity was discovered, he was interrogated at Santá Fe and Lima, and years of imprisonment brought him to repent his Lutheranism and to walk in the auto-da-fe of 1589, adorned with the red cross of the penitent. Although he escaped the grosser torments of the Inquisition, John lived out his life among his country’s enemies, far from home. Possibly our last glimpse of him is as a pathetic, shambling old man of about eighty-eight, for a John Drake participated in the auto-da-fe held in Cartagena in December 1650. If this was Drake’s cousin, the decades of captivity and humiliation must have contrasted vividly with the brilliant days of his youth, when he claimed the golden chain for sighting the treasure ship, sailed around the world with Sir Francis Drake, and excited wonder in the gaudy court of Gloriana.

Fenton’s voyage failed to fulfil the heady expectations of an England aroused by Drake’s circumnavigation, but in that it was apiece with other adventures of the time – with the efforts to find the North-west Passage and the first faltering steps to colonize America. Drake, like others who invested in oceanic endeavour, counted Fenton’s voyage as one of several losses. In November 1582 his Matthew was one of five vessels that sailed under old William Hawkins to the Cape Verdes and Brazil, hoping to capitalize upon Elizabeth’s support of Dom Antonio. But their reception in the islands was so frosty that the expedition was abandoned, and Hawkins tried to recoup its costs by dredging pearl oysters off Margarita and plundering the Caribbean.²⁰ Nearly two years afterwards Leicester, Drake, the Hawkins brothers and the Raleghs were preparing another voyage to the East Indies, proposing a force of eleven ships, four barks and twenty pinnaces to be fitted at a cost of £40,000, but nothing came of it. England would have no maritime successes to celebrate until Sir Francis put to sea again himself.

The years 1580 to 1585 are often portrayed as a lacuna in Drake’s life, but they were crammed not only with planning new expeditions but also with public service. His opinion on seafaring matters was eagerly sought by all parties. We find him subscribing £20 down plus an annual stipend of the same amount to Richard Hakluyt’s unsuccessful attempt to endow a lectureship in navigation. We see the Privy Council in 1581 requiring him to assist John Hawkins, Winter, Hakluyt, Thomas Digges, William Aborough, a Master Dyer, and the comptroller of the navy, William Holstocke, in considering how the crumbling pier in Dover harbour might be repaired. Two years later charges that the queen’s ships had decayed under the treasurership of John Hawkins and that Winter and other naval officials had been misappropriating money and materials or paying contractors excessive prices led to the establishment of a five-man committee under Burghley to investigate the navy, and Drake was one of eleven men named as possible assistants, although whether he actually served is unknown. The same year the Privy Council called upon Sir Francis to arrest some Dutch ships, and on 31 July, 1584 he was commissioned with the Lord Admiral and Carew Ralegh to apprehend pirates. The government was also finding Drake an efficient man in handling local business in the West Country, and began to unload upon him the duties generally associated with the Lord Lieutenants of the counties. His name, with those of members of the Champernowne family, is found appended to assessments of rates and musters of forces for South Devon.²¹

Perhaps the most testing of Sir Francis’s new obligations was his entry into Parliament, for it demanded of him skills in a combat different from any he had known and thrust him into the heart of the privileged society in which he now moved. Here, directly or through friends and relatives, Drake had access to everyone who mattered in Elizabeth’s England, and here, too, he exercised the power to oblige both the rich and the humble. The speed with which he entered this fraternity is surprising. When Parliament opened in January of 1581, only months after his return from the circumnavigation, Drake was part of it, because on 17 February he was granted leave of absence on account of ‘his necessary business in the service of Her Majesty.’ His constituency is not known, but he must have been slotted into some by-election, and Camelford, a Duchy of Cornwall borough in the parish of Lanteglos, has been suggested as the seat. It returned two Members, and one of them was nominated by none other than the great magnate Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, Drake’s own godfather. Now, for the first time perhaps, that connection was gathering its rewards. Bedford’s influence was profound. He was warden of the stanneries, Lord Lieutenant of Devon and Cornwall, and controlled several parliamentary seats, all of which he assigned to friends and relatives who would assist him in promoting his particular cause in government, the Puritan faith. Sir Francis Drake satisfied Bedford on all counts. He was the son of an old family tenant; he was his godson; he was a national hero; and he was an unbridled Puritan, a patriot who cheerfully signed the Devon Instrument of Association in 1584, proclaiming unreserved support for the queen and the Protestant succession, and who symbolized the nation’s rising pride and confidence. A vacancy at Camelford occurred after the death of one of the constituency’s Members in 1576, but although a by election was organized in 1579 there is doubt about whether a return was made, and it is possible that it was the seat provided Drake in 1581.²²

However, Drake had little to do with the Commons at that time. He was too busy with the treasure he had brought home, and the parliament was in its last days. Three years later another opportunity arose, for the general election of 1584 introduced a new parliament in which only one-fifth of the 460 Members returned had previous experience in the Commons. Sir Francis was elected one of the two Members for Bossiney, in Cornwall, on 28 October. His indenture was signed by a mere nine persons, creatures of Bedford, who controlled both the Bossiney seats, and simply presented the electors with their representative.

The Commons, which assembled in St Stephen’s Chapel of the Palace of Westminster, brought Drake to London again. He was used to the city now, familiar with its few principal arteries and its narrow garbage-ridden alleys, accustomed to watching the swans upon the Thames. Perhaps he lodged with friends, or rented a town house. A letter of the previous June suggests that Drake was then living in a house belonging to the father of Julius Caesar, the augustly named judge of the Admiralty court, in Cheapside, a well-paved area that was the pride of the capital. Drake and Caesar had a reasonable relationship, good enough for Sir Francis to intercede with the justice on behalf of deserving individuals (we find him entreating Caesar to assist ‘this poor man and divers others who have endured … much wrong at this Powell’s hands’ in 1584), and for the Caesars to provide for Drake as he confronted the unseemly hubbub that then, as now, passed for debate among the ignoble Members of the House.²³ Hardly had he taken his seat than on 27 November he was appointed to a committee to consider the first bill of the session, for the better preservation of the Sabbath.

The matter had long troubled churchmen – a year before eight people had been killed when a platform collapsed at a Sunday bear-baiting pit in Paris Green – and the committee was stacked with the devout, kindred spirits to Drake, among them the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir John Higham of Suffolk, Sir Richard Knightley, William Grice, Robert Beale, Peter Turner, William Strickland and Edward Lewkenor, Puritans every one. After labouring the subject in the Exchequer during the afternoon of the same day and late into the night, this fervent gathering had little to show, but by 3 December they had concocted a harsh bill that prohibited games, bear-baiting, hawking, hunting, wakes and even the rowing of barges on a Sunday. When an amended version eventually appeared before the queen, she considered it so extreme that she refused to sign it.

It is difficult to imagine Drake being impressed by the tiresome argument that was inextricably part of parliamentary business. By nature masterful and decisive, he preferred action to words, but he earned the reputation of an eloquent and bold speaker in the Commons, and was much in demand for the committee work that prepared bills for submission to the House. In December he was appointed to four more committees, all involving maritime affairs. The first, chaired by Sir Edward Dymock, the Sheriff of and Member of Parliament for Lincolnshire, was appointed on 7 December and met three days later to discuss the importation of fish and ling. On the 19th Sir Francis was required to consider the maintenance of the navy and on the 21st the preservation of Plymouth harbour. When this last committee convened in the Middle Temple the following February, Drake found himself with local men he probably already knew, including Peter Edgcombe, who represented the Cornish borough of Liskeard.

Unquestionably the most famous of the committees was organized on 14 December to report upon the issue of a licence to Walter Ralegh for the colonization of Virginia. Among its members were the poet Sidney, Hatton, Drake, Sir Richard Greenfield, Sir William Mohun and Sir William Courtenay. There can have been little doubt that Ralegh’s patent would be approved, although Drake was not passionate about colonization. But he was ready to endorse it, and even presented verses for Sir George Peckham’s tract promoting Gilbert’s plan to settle Newfoundland, published in 1583. It was to Sir Francis that the explorer John Davis wrote in October 1585, relating his discovery of an island that promised handsome yields of furs and leather. For Drake was not only a respected authority on all matters of the sea, but his approval and support were actively sought as invaluable assets to any oceanic enterprise. In the case of colonization there was one component that could not have failed to excite his interest, and that was the possibility of using a Virginian colony as a base for raids upon the Spanish West Indies.

The parliamentary session lasted until March 1585, with Drake joining Mohun, Edgcombe and others on the 15th of that month in his final committee, considering the manufacture of Devonshire kersies. Shortly afterwards, while Drake was preoccupied with his next great voyage in 1585 and 1586, he lost the seat at Bossiney. Partly it was because he was otherwise employed. Partly it arose from the death of Bedford in 1585. After his patron’s death, the control of the constituency fell between William Peryam and John Hender, who slipped relatives, John Peryam and William Pole, into the two seats in 1586. Yet, brief as it was, Drake’s experience in the Commons had been valuable, strengthening his power and widening his circle of influential friends. An impressive array of gentlemen had floundered with him in the committees – Sir Drew Drewry, Sir William Herbert, Sir Robert Germin, Sir Thomas Manners, Sir William Moore, Sir Nicholas Woodroofe, Sir Henry Neville … and on and on, all of them potential supporters, some possible investors for future voyages.

Sir Francis further advanced his new status in 1585. He married again, but the bride, young Elizabeth Sydenham, was very different from the wife he had lost two years before. Mary had belonged to the society from which Drake himself had sprung, from people who lived a step ahead of want and insecurity, and whose world was dominated by their economic betters. Elizabeth, by contrast, was no simple sailor’s wife, but the sophisticated and elegant heiress of one of the wealthiest men in the West Country, a member of an influential family accustomed to privileged company. The difference between Mary and Elizabeth measured the distance Drake had travelled.

Elizabeth was many years his junior. According to legal proceedings held at Tavistock in 1598 she would have been born about 1562 and was in her early twenties at the time she married. Of her appearance we perhaps have an indication. Dedicating a poem to her in 1596, Charles FitzGeffrey called her ‘the beauteous and virtuous Lady Elizabeth’, but since dedications were then made by permission and often to solicit favour, and since the poet’s patrons were the Rouse family of Halton, Elizabeth’s trustees, we may excuse FitzGeffrey if he was merely being gallant. Two portraits, however, would bear him out, although neither is fully authenticated. They show a regal lady in the full and elaborate dresses then fashionable, slender and trim, with long, sensitive hands, dark hair, and an oval face displaying a firm narrow chin and a petite mouth betokening some humour.²⁴

Nothing tells of how they met, but it may have been at Fitzford, in the parish of Tavistock, not far from Buckland. Drake knew the Fitz family, and at one time acted as trustee for another of their properties at Lewisham, and the wife of John Fitz, head of the household, was Mary Sydenham, one of Elizabeth’s four aunts. Or perhaps he met her through the many social occasions that brought the West Country élite together. Certainly, Miss Sydenham was well connected and made a good marriage. Her paternal grandfather had been Sir John Sydenham, Sheriff of Somerset, and his wife, who survived until 1608, was Ursula Bridges, the sister of John, first Lord Chandos. Their extensive brood were significant local figures. The oldest of Elizabeth’s five paternal uncles, Sir John Sydenham, inherited the estate of Brympton d’Every. An aunt, also called Elizabeth, married the Sheriff of Devonshire.

The father of Drake’s bride was Sir George Sydenham, sometime Sheriff of Somerset, who had inherited from his father the estate of Combe Sydenham in the same county and had added to it since. In 1561, for example, he had purchased the manor of Sutton Bingham from Sir William Kayleway of Rockborne. He played the local benefactor, providing £15 a year from his properties at Combe Sydenham and nearby Stogumber for the upkeep of six cottages he had donated to poor widows, and was a pillar of the county administration, regularly mustering the local levies at Bridgwater. Sir George’s wife, Elizabeth, was of no less distinguished a lineage than the Sydenhams. She was the daughter of Sir Christopher Hales, once Attorney-General to Henry VIII and the prosecutor of Wolsey, More, Fisher and Anne Boleyn.

As the only child of such a formidable union, Miss Elizabeth Sydenham had a most secure future long before she met Sir Francis Drake. She stood to inherit a battery of family properties, and in time she did so: the house of Combe Sydenham; the manors of Sutton Bingham and Bossington; tracts of land in Bossington, Selworthy, Luccombe, Porlock, Sutton Bingham, Coker, Wester Colcombe, Combe Sydenham, Stogumber and Monksilver, all varying in size and tenure, some held from the Crown and others from the Dean and Chapter of Bath and Wells; and the patronage of the rectories of Stogumber, Monksilver, Puriton and Woolavington. No ordinary bride, indeed.²⁵

The remains of the world of the Sydenhams are discernible today for those who journey, as Drake must often have done, into the deep and picturesque wooded valley in western Somerset where the house of Combe Sydenham, Elizabeth’s parental home and a family possession since the fourteenth century, still lies hidden. Not all of it stands now, but enough to give an impression of how it appeared to Sir Francis as he came to court his lady there centuries ago. Built of stone and remodelled by Sir George, the house possessed several towers and was E-shaped, with the south-facing front exhibiting a central doorway and the three wings, only one of which survives, to the north. As Drake passed through the wooden doors of the gatehouse, and arrived at the front door of the house, he may have paused before entering to gaze at the Sydenham coat of arms set in stone above the porch and the Latin inscription beneath the device that read, ‘I this door shall always be open to all your friends, noble George, but an open doorway is closed to unwelcome spirits’. Sir George’s initials and the date 1580 were engraved at the top of the pilasters on either side of the porch. Inside, a screen passage passed to the rear courtyard, with access on the right to kitchens and ultimately to the east wing that once housed the sleeping quarters, and on the left to the great hall, a room that once extended to the roof but for a minstrels’ gallery, but which was eventually (perhaps before Drake’s day) divided into two storeys by the insertion of a new floor. Today visitors can pass through the hall to the one surviving tower and into the ruins of the western and only remaining wing. Outside we can picture Sir Francis and Elizabeth lingering about the fish ponds set out south of the house, or riding into the little valley that contained what some believed to be the remains of a medieval hamlet, or further, into the rolling hills of western Somerset.

Drake may have been the most famous man in England, but Sir George Sydenham was not about to let his only daughter go without striking a hard bargain. On 9 February, 1585 a marriage settlement was signed by which Drake granted his manors of Yarcombe, Sherford and Sampford Spiney, and Buckland Abbey to Elizabeth, himself and their heirs forever. The document reveals that the marriage had then already taken place, but no record of it has been found.²⁶ Anthony Rouse of Halton, Cornwall and William Strode of Newnham were named as trustees of the agreement.

The couple retired to Buckland Abbey, and Elizabeth accompanied her husband to Plymouth and dined with the Corporation, as Mary had done, and with Harris and Strode and their other friends. By the middle of that year Sir Francis Drake could review his progress since the circumnavigation with considerable satisfaction. He had a title, a coat of arms, wealth and honour. He had the prospect of founding a dynasty, and of leaving to any children properties scattered across Devon and Somerset. He had served as the Mayor of Plymouth and Member of Parliament, and was courted by high and low. He was recognized and mobbed as a hero in the streets. In need he might call upon a network of powerful friends in all quarters. There was no better example of the self-made man. Yet Sir Francis was never complacent. He remained true to his faith, and continued to scheme for the downfall of King Philip of Spain. And in June 1585 another opportunity came.

² Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, 1: Appendix G. Drake, ‘Drake – The Arms of His Surname and Family’, argues that the Tavistock Drakes had been using the dragon symbol before 1581. Worth, ‘Sir Francis Drake’, strikes me as the more authoritative discussion. The story that Sir Bernard Drake and Francis Drake fell to blows over the family crest is apocryphal. Whatever difficulties there may have been the two men seem to have remained friends, and Sir Bernard borrowed £600 from Drake in 1585.

³ Assignment by Drake of lease of two houses in Plymouth to Tremayne, Hele and Harris, 10 August, 1581, West Devon Record Office, Plymouth, 277/9.

⁴ Youings, ‘Drake, Grenville and Buckland Abbey’; Gill, Buckland Abbey; Morton, ed., Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1580–82, 115. On Grenville’s method of borrowing, Drake similarly assisted Captain James Erisey in 1585, when Erisey was raising money to fit out the White Lion for Drake’s expedition of that year. On 6 September Erisey mortgaged his manor of Pensignance in Gwennap and Kea to Drake for £220, the terms being that if Erisey failed to redeem the sum at Sir Francis’s house at Michaelmas in 1586 the property would pass to Drake (Andrew, ‘Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Erisey’). The manor did eventually pass into Drake’s ownership because in 1595 he sold it to Richard Carew for £250 (Indenture between Drake and Carew, 27 August, 1595, West Devon Record Office, 277/11).

⁵ Royal letters patent, 12 January, 1582, granting manor of Sherford to Drake, West Devon Record Office, 277/14.

⁸ Ibid, 27; Eliott-Drake, Family and Heirs of Sir Francis Drake, 1: 62–3.

¹¹ Ibid, 18, 123, 127; Risk, ‘The Rise of Plymouth as a Naval Port’, 355.

¹⁴ Philip to Mendoza, 24 April, 1581, Hume, ed., Cal. Letters and State Papers … in the Archives of Simancas, 3: 102–3.

¹⁵ Articles to be considered relating to Drake’s proposed voyage to the Azores, 21 August, 1581, Lansdowne MS 102, article 104, British Library.

¹⁶ Terms granted the English fleet, 26 April, 1581, Butler, et. al., ed., Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 15: 132–3. For source materials on the Azores expedition, see Lansdowne MSS 31, articles 81–3, and 102, article 104; Taylor, ed., Troublesome Voyage of Captain Edward Fenton; Donno, ed., An Elizabethan in 1582; Hist. MSS Comm., Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury, 2: 420; Digges, ed., The Compleat Ambassador; Klarwill, ed., Fugger News-Letters, 2: 50–65; Brown, ed., Calendar of State Papers … in the Archives and Collections of Venice; Murdin, ed., Collection of State Papers, 351–60. A recent discussion of Dom Antonio is McBride, ‘Elizabethan Foreign Policy in Microcosm’.

¹⁷ Articles to be considered, etc., 21 August, 1581, Lansdowne MSS 31, article 81, and 102, article 104.

¹⁸ Drake to Leicester, 14 October, 1581, Cotton MSS, British Library, Otho. E. VIII f. 98; Drake to Leicester, 7 November, 1581, Ibid, f. 102.

¹⁹ Fenton to Leicester, 22 April, 1582, Taylor, 41–2; Walker to Leicester, 22 April, 1582, Ibid, 43–4; Madox diary, 22 April, 1582, Donno, 117. Banister and Otmore were surgeons on the expedition.

²⁰ Williamson, Sir John Hawkins, 402–5, and Hawkins of Plymouth, 218–25; Taylor, 1v.

²¹ Waters, Art of Navigation, 542–3; Dasent, ed., Acts of the Privy Council, 13: 80; Williamson, Sir John Hawkins, 347–51; State Papers, Domestic, Public Record Office S.P. 12/162: 33, S.P. 12/172: 38, S.P. 12/183: 33–4.

²² Hasler, The Commons, 1: 123–5, 2: 54, a valuable discussion of Drake’s parliamentary career; D’Ewes, Journals of All the Parliaments, summarizes house proceedings.

²³ Drake to Caesar, 12 February, 1584, Lansdowne MS 158, article 37; see also Lansdowne MS 158, article 32, and Additional MS 12,507, f. 117, British Library, for other occasions on which Drake lobbied Caesar in favour of various parties.

²⁴ One portrait, attributed to George Gower, now hangs in Buckland Abbey. The other, supposedly coming from Elizabeth’s family home of Combe Sydenham but purchased by the National Maritime Museum from the Heathcote Collection in 1938, is inscribed ‘Anno. Domi. 1583/aetatio suae: 22’, and (in a later hand) ‘Elizabeth, 2nd wife of Sir Francis Drake’.

²⁶ A letter of Sir Philip Sydenham, written in 1717, states that Drake’s marriage occurred on 18 June, 1585 at the church of Monksilver, near Combe Sydenham, with Archdeacon Barret of Exeter officiating. There was a small church of medieval origin at Monksilver, with a rector named John Pope, but the register does not survive. In any case, the date ascribed to the marriage by Philip Sydenham is disproved by the marriage settlement of 9 February, which speaks of a marriage ‘already had and solemnized between himself and Elizabeth’. Sir George Sydenham and his wife were eventually laid to rest beneath stone effigies and an elaborate canopy next to the altar of the neighbouring church of St Mary, in Stogumber, but the registers at the Somerset Record Office in Taunton contain no reference to Drake’s marriage. The couple may have been married in London, where Drake was generally attending Parliament at the turn of 1584 and 1585.