was known should always be recorded to his honour. He
received it as a dispensation of Providence ; and gave, and
commanded to be given, throughout Spain, thanks to God
and the saints that it was no greater.

England having thus been " delivered by the hand of the
Omnipotent, and the boar put back that sought to lay her
vineyard waste," Elizabeth ordered a solemn thanksgiving
to be celebrated at St. Paul's, where eleven of the Spanish
ensigns were hung upon the lower battlements, " as palms of
praise," says Speed, "for England's deliverance, a show, no
doubt, more acceptable to God than when their spread colours
did set out the pride of their ships, threatening the blood of

* Fiennes Moryson, 8. Carte's Ormond, i., 58.
f It is now in Lord Sligo's possession.

7



98 ENGLISH SEAMEN

so many innocent and faithful Christians ". On the following
day, which was Southwark fair, the same flags were displayed
upon London bridge. They were finally suspended in St.
Paul's. Less perishable trophies were deposited in the
Tower, where many of the arms taken in the captured ships
are still preserved ; and not a few instruments of torture,
wickedly devised, but more probably intended for the punish-
ment of offences on board, than for the use of their inquisitors,
who, if the conquest had been effected, might have found
racks in England, and would have had fire and faggot at
command. Another great thanksgiving day was celebrated
on the anniversary of the queen's succession, which was long
and most fitly observed as a holiday in these kingdoms : one
of greater solemnity, two days after, throughout the realm ;
and, on the Sunday following, the queen repaired as in public,
but Christian triumph, to St. Paul's. Her privy council, her
nobility, the French ambassador, the judges, and the heralds,
attended her. The streets were hung with blue cloth, " the
several companies, in their liveries, being drawn up on both
sides the way, with their banners in becoming and gallant
order ". Her chariot * was made in the form of a throne with
four pillars, and drawn by four white horses ; alighting from it
at the west door of St. Paul's, she there knelt, and, with
great devotion, audibly praised God, acknowledging Him her
only defender, who had thus delivered the land from the rage
of the enemy. Pierce, Bishop of Salisbury, who was her lord
almoner, preached a sermon, "wherein none other argument
was handled, but only of praise and glory to be rendered
unto God. And, when he had concluded, the queen herself
(like unto another Joshua, David and Josias), with most
princely and Christian speeches, exhorted the people to the
due performance of those religious services of thankfulness

*" Coaches," says Camden, " were not then so much in use among
princes as now they are amongst private men."



LORD HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM 99

unto God."* It was manifest, indeed, that over-ruling
Providence had preserved them. Well and properly has it
been observed by the ablest of our naval biographers, t that,
great as were the exploits of the English fleet, they were as
nothing compared with what the elements wrought for Eng-
land ; and that this our ancestors proclaimed with one accord,
"breathing the pure spirit of that blessed Reformation which
had been so recently achieved for them ". The people of
England have never, since the Norman conquest, been
chastised by the hand of a foreign enemy : when their own
folly and their own sins have brought upon them God's
judgments, the instructive punishment has been administered
by their own hands.

Lord Effingham was rewarded with a pension. The queen
many times commended him and the captains of her ships,
as men born for the preservation of their country. A greater
service it has never fallen to the lot of any Englishman to
perform. " True it is," says Fuller, " he was no deep sea-
man (not to be expected from one of his extraction) ; but he
had skill enough to know those who had more skill than
himself, and to follow their instructions, and would not starve
the queen's service by feeding his own sturdy wilfulness, but
was ruled by the experienced in sea matters ; the queen
having a navy of oak, and an admiral of osier." He did
good service afterwards at Cadiz, being joint commander
with the Earl of Essex in that famous expedition, and, for
that service, was advanced to the title of Earl of Nottingham,
as descended from the Mowbrays, some of whom had been

* Memoirs of Celebrated Naval Commanders, illustrated by engravings
from original pictures in the Naval Gallery of Greenwich Hospital, by
Edward Hawke Locker, Esq. I cannot refer to this work without re-
gretting that Mr. Locker should have been compelled by ill health to
limit to a single volume a work for which he was in every respect so
eminently qualified.

f Speed, 862. Camden, 418. Strype, 27.



100 ENGLISH SEAMEN

earls of that county. On the apprehension of another
invasion, at a time when it was known that Essex entertained
rash and dangerous designs, Lord Nottingham was entrusted
with the command of both fleet and army, " with the high
and very unusual title of Lord Lieutenant-General of all
England ; an office scarcely known to former, never owned
of succeeding times, and which he held with almost regal
authority for the space of six weeks, being sometimes with
the fleet in the Downs, and sometimes on shore with the
forces ".* It was to him, who, the queen said, was "born to
serve and save his country," that Essex, after his insane
insurrection, yielded himself a prisoner ; and to him that
the queen, upon her death, made that wise and constitutional
declaration concerning her successor : " My throne has been
held by princes in the way of succession, and ought not to go
to any but my next and immediate heir ".

James continued him in his post of lord admiral, appointed
him lord high steward at his coronation, sent him ambassador
to Spain, and chose him for one of the commissioners to treat
of a union between England and Scotland. The last honour
which fell to his lot was that of conveying the elector palatine
and his bride, the Princess Elizabeth, to Flushing. At the
age of eighty-three he resigned his post, retaining, by special
patent, the precedence which it had given him ; and, in his
eighty-seventh year, dying in peace at Haling House, in
Surrey, was buried in the family vault under the chancel of
Ryegate Church. His office had been " of great profit, prizes
being so frequent in that age ; but great," says Fuller, " his
necessary, and vast his voluntary, expenses ; keeping seven
standing houses at the same time : so that the wonder is not
great if he died not very wealthy ".

* Campbell, i.,377-



THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND

AMONG the naval adventurers who distinguished them-
selves during Queen Elizabeth's reign, there was no
one who took to the seas so much in the spirit of a
northern sea king as the Earl of Cumberland. Some of his
most noted contemporaries were sailors by their vocation,
some became so incidentally when called upon in the queen's
service, and others pursued that course with the hope of
repairing a broken fortune, or of raising one ; but it was this
nobleman's mere choice, which he followed to the great
injury of his own ample estates, and to the neglect of all
his private and domestic duties.

George Clifford, in the male line of his family, fourteenth
Baron Clifford of Westmoreland, and sheriff of that county
by inheritance, and in the same descent thirteenth Lord of
the Honour of Skipton in Craven, and also Lord Vipont and
Baron Vesey, was born in his father's castle at Brougham, on
the 8th of August, 1558. Few names are more conspicuous
than that of Clifford in the York and Lancaster wars, none
more distinguished for fidelity to the cause it had espoused ;
and Shakespeare has given it a wider renown than could
have been conferred by genealogists and chroniclers. To this
family, also, Fair Rosamond belongs ; and the Shepherd Lord,
whose memory is embalmed in everlasting verse. Lord
Clifford was yet a boy when his father began to treat concern-
ing his marriage with a daughter of Francis, second Earl of
Bedford ; and he was in the twelfth year of his age when his
father died. Upon the first intelligence that such an event



102 ENGLISH SEAMEN

was likely, Bedford, upon the alleged ground of this marriage-
treaty, made suit to the queen for the wardship, and it was
granted him. The boy was at Battle Abbey when the earl
died at Brougham : no doubt he had been placed there to
receive the first part of his education in the family by whom
that venerable edifice was then possessed. It seems not to
have been unusual in those days for youths of rank to connect
themselves with both universities ; thus this earl is said to
have been educated at Peter House, Cambridge, and also to.
have studied at Oxford, under the tuition of Whitgift, after-
wards archbishop ; " and here he obtained some knowledge
in the arts, and especially in the mathematics, which did not
only incline him thereto, but rendered him more fit for mari-
time employment ". Before he was nineteen he was married
in St. Mary Overy's Church, Southwark, to his long-engaged
spouse, the Lady Margaret Russell, who was some two years
younger.

The earl is said to have excelled all the nobles of his time
in tilting, so that in such exhibitions he was always the
queen's champion ; and in this and other costly recreations
he consumed much of his ample patrimony. Elizabeth made
him Knight of the Garter, and appointed him to be one of the
forty peers by whom the Queen of Scots was tried, and one of
the four earls who were present at the catastrophe of that
tragedy. His first maritime adventure was designed for the
South Seas : he did not embark in it himself, but fitted out at
his own cost the Red Dragon of 260 tons, and the barque
Clifford of 130: a pinnace of Raleigh's and another ship
completed the force, and Master Robert Withrington was the
commander. Instead of passing the Straits of Magellan,
Withrington thought he might make a more profitable venture
by plundering Bahia ; but the Jesuits, with their Indian
archers, preserved that city ; and the expedition having
committed much havoc upon the coast of Brazil, with little
gain, he resolved upon returning home, a resolution which



THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 103

was " taken heavily of all the company/' and heard by them
in silence, " for very grief to see my lord's hopes thus
deceived, and his great expenses cast away ".*

In the ensuing year he sailed for Sluys, hoping to assist
Sir Roger Williams in the defence of that town against the
Duke of Parma ; but it had surrendered before his arrival.
He bore his part in the defeat of the Armada, on board the
Bonadventure, Captain George Raymond, when, says Purchas,
" they won that honour that no sea can drown, no age wear
out ". The queen was so satisfied with his behaviour, that
she gave him a commission to go the same year to the Spanish
coast as general ; and for his greater honour and ability, was
pleased to lend him the Golden Lion, one of the ships royal,
to be the admiral ; but he victualled and furnished it at
his own cost. After some fight he took a merchant ship
in the narrow seas ; but it was now late in the autumn :
contrary winds baffled his course : he was compelled to cut
away his mainmast in a storm, and returned when it was
impossible for him to prosecute what Purchas calls his true
designs.f

" His spirit remaining, nevertheless, higher than the winds,
and more resolutely by storms compact and united in itself/'
he obtained of the queen one of the royal navy called the
Viciory ; with which, two small ships, the Meg or Margaret
and a caravel, set forth at his charges, and with 400 men on
board, he sailed from Plymouth in June, 1 589- The Margaret,
being not able to endure the sea, was sent home in a few days,
with two French ships, which, belonging to the party of the
League, were deemed fair prizes. The earl was not very
scrupulous on such occasions. He fell in with eleven ships
from Hamburgh and the Baltic : after a few shot, they sent

* Sarracoll, 100. Hakluyt, iii., 769-778. History of Brazil, i., 377,
378.

f- Purchas, part iv., 1142.



104 ENGLISH SEAMEN

their masters on board, showing their passports ; these were
respected for themselves, but not for some property belonging
to a Jew of Lisbon, which they confessed was on board, and
which was valued at 4500/. He then made for the Azores,
hoisted Spanish colours when he came in sight of St. Michael's,
and in a night expedition succeeded in cutting four ships out
of the road ; one of them, however, proved to be a Londoner,
trading there under the Scotch flag, and with a Scotch pilot.
His great object was to intercept the carracks, and so reim-
burse himself for all his costs. At Flores he manned his
boats, and obtained refreshments as being a friend to the
prior, Don Antonio, whose pretended title to the Portuguese
crown was acknowledged by England. " From thence rowing
a ship-board, the boat was pursued two miles by a monstrous
fish, whose fins many times appeared about the gills above
water four or five yards asunder, and his jaws gaping a yard
and a half wide, not without great danger of overturning the
pinnace, and devouring some of the company." But from
this, which was as formidable to the earl's boat as his ship
was to a harmless trader, they at last escaped. Here he met
and " accepted into consort " Captain Davies, with his ship
and pinnace, Captain Markesbury, in a ship of Raleigh's, and
the barque Lime.

The earl knew not at this time how narrowly the home-
ward-bound fleet from the East Indies had escaped him.
Seven of its huge and richly laden vessels had sailed for
Europe early in the year, separately, as they were ready, but
with orders to rendezvous at St. Helena, and from thence to
proceed in company, -no danger being apprehended from
cruisers on the first part of the voyage, but much afterwards.
The richest of these vessels suffered, on the coast of Natal,
one of the most lamentable shipwrecks of which the details
have been recorded ; the others reached the Azores in the
middle of July ; and some of the smaller cruisers fell in with
them when they were ill able to defend themselves. What



THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 105

with the length of the voyage (for they had been six months
on the way), the scarcity of water and of provisions, and the
bad quality of the stores that were left (for every kind of
knavery was practised in the equipment of the Portuguese
ships), the scurvy was making great ravages on board ; and
every day men who had been some days dead were discovered
in the places whither they had crept that they might lie
down and die in peace.* If the light vessels which played
about them and harassed them, in the hope, as it seemed,
of delaying them till others should come up, had been aware of
their condition, they might have carried some of them almost
without resistance ; for there was the utmost confusion as well
as misery on board. Those who were in the best plight showed
no disposition to assist their weaker comrades, all seeking
to secure themselves with all speed under some of their own
fortresses ; while the English insulted them with reproaches
for their cowardice, and annoyed them with musketry, and
with such small pieces as vessels of thirty tons could carry.
The Portuguese, however, made their way good to Tercera,
and anchored in the road before the city of Angra : there, to
their dismay, they found that the island was in arms, expecting
to be attacked by Drake, and that instructions had arrived
from Portugal, ordering them to remain there till they should
receive further directions. The alarm occasioned by the
destruction of the Armada, the attempt upon Lisbon, and the
activity of the English privateers, was such, that it was thought
better to expose these rich ships to the danger of an un-
sheltered road in the worst season of the year than let them
run for the Tagus. Luckily for the Portuguese officers they
were not expected to render more obedience to the Govern-
ment than they could exact from their men ; after a gale
from the south had driven one of the ships on shore, the

* Linschoten, c. xcvi.



106 ENGLISH SEAMEN

other captains ventured to act upon their own judgment, and
sail for Lisbon, where they happily arrived.*

Some English prisoners who stole from Tercera in a small
boat, having no other yard for their mainsail than two pipe
staves, fell in with the earl, and gave him the unwelcome
tidings that these carracks had sailed from that island a
week before. This induced him to return to Fayal (where he
had just taken some small Guinea ships and sent them to
England) : he now landed there, and took possession of the
town, consisting of about 500 well-built houses. It was
abandoned at his approach. He set a guard to preserve the
churches and monasteries, and stayed there four days, till a
ransom of 2000 ducats was brought him, mostly in church
plate. He shipped from the platform fifty-eight pieces of
iron ordnance; and the Governor of Graciosa, as if to deprecate
such a visit, sent him sixty butts of wine. Here a Weymouth
privateer, which arrived with a Spanish prize worth I6,000l. }
brought news that ^the West India fleet was expected; and
after plying three or four days to and fro in rough weather,
he saw it,?fifteen sail in number, enter Angra Roads ; but he
being " too far to]leeward, and they being strong and fortified
with castle and fort," he could make no attempt upon them ;
and the pinnace which he left to observe them returned with
information that they had " taken off their sails and down
their topmasts, with the intention of longer stay". The earl
then made; for j ; St. Michael's, and was there repelled from
watering ; next he went to St. Mary's, where he found two
Brazilian ships laden with sugar. The islanders endeavoured
to bring them ashore; but Lister, the earl's captain,
"hastening the attempt in the face of the enemy, and in
danger of continual shoreshot, boarded the one, cut her cables



* Linschoten, Schip vaert naer Oost, ofte Portugaels Indien, c. xcvi.
Linschoten was .in the fleet, and he congratulates himself on having
escaped mlllort Commerlandt, p. 146.



THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 107

and hawser, and rowed her away". Captain Davies entered
the other, which was aground, and had been abandoned ; but
he was forced to forsake her by a fire from the shore, with the
loss of two slain and sixteen wounded. In bringing out their
prize the bar detained them in a position exposed to an
enemy whose force had been rashly undervalued : eighty
men were killed ; the earl received three shot upon his
target, a fourth wounded him slightly in the side, "his head,
also, was broken with stones, so that the blood covered his
face," and both his face and legs were burnt with fire-balls.
The prize, however, was brought off, and "the Meg being
leaky " was sent with it to England.

The earl himself held his course for Spain. On the way
he fell in with a Portuguese ship laden with sugar, from
Brazil, and afterwards with one of the fleet which had taken
shelter from him in Angra Roads. It proved to be a ship of
400 tons, from St. Juan de Ulloa, laden with hides, cochineal,
sugar and silver, and the captain had with him a venture to
the amount of 25,000 ducats. Full of joy at their good speed,
they now resolved upon returning home. " But sea-fortunes,"
says Purchas, "are variable, having two inconstant parents,
air and water " ; and, in the words of one of the adventurers,*
" these summer services and ships of sugar proved not so sweet
and pleasant as the winter was afterwards sharp and painful ".
Captain Lister was sent in the Mexican prize for Portsmouth.
She was wrecked at Helcliff, in Cornwall : everything was
lost in her, and five or six only of the people were saved.
Contrary weather delayed the earl so long upon his home-
ward passage that drink began to fail, and he endeavoured
to make some Irish harbour, but there, too, was beaten off by
the wind ; and, the beer and water being by that time all
spent, three spoonfuls of vinegar were allowed to each man at a
meal, with some small relief, squeezed out of the lees of their

* Sir William Monson, Churchill's Coll., iii., 161.



108 ENGLISH SEAMEN

wine vessels. During fourteen days they had no other drink
than this, except what they could collect in rain and hail
storms in their sheets and napkins. " Some drank up the
soiled running water at the scupper holes ; others saved, by
device, the running down the masts and tarred ropes ; and
many licked the moist boards, rails and masts with their
tongues, like dogs. Yet was that rain so intermingled with
the spray of the foaming sea, in that extreme storm, that it
could not be healthful ; yea, some in their extremity of thirst,
drank themselves to death, with their cans of salt water in
their hands." " By this time, the lamentable cries of the
sick and hurt men for drink were heard in every corner of
the ship." Many perished for want of it "tenor twelve
every night " ; and in this] manner more were lost " than
otherwise had miscarried in the whole voyage ". The mortality,
indeed, was so great " that the like befell not any other fleet
during the war.* The storm continuing added to their
misery, tearing the ship in such sort that his lordship's cabin,
the dining-room, and the half-deck became all one, and he
was forced to seek a new lodging in the hold." Such circum-
stances call forth, in such men, the qualities by which alone,
with God's blessing, they can be overcome ; the earl, upon
all occasions, encouraged his men by his promptitude, his
presence of mind, and his example ; and the small store of
provisions was distributed equally to the prisoners and to his

* Sir William Monson, Churchill's Coll., iii., 162. " All these disasters,"
Monson says, " must be imputed to Capt. Lister's rashness, upon whom
my Lord of Cumberland chiefly relied, wanting experience himself. He
was the man that advised the sending the ships of wine for England ;
otherwise we had not known the want of drink. He was as earnest in
persuading our landing in the face of the fortifications of St. Mary's,
against all reason and sense. As he was rash, so was he valiant : but
paid dearly for his unadvised counsel ; for he was the first man hurt,
and that cruelly, in the attempt of St. Mary's, and afterwards drowned
in the rich ship cast away at Mount's Bay." He values that ship at

IOO,OOO/.



THE EARL OF CUMBERLAND 109

own people. On the last of November they spoke a vessel,
which promised them some barrels of wine the next morning;
but their hopes were disappointed, for the vessel went on
shore during the night. The next day, however, he fell in
with another, which helped him with some beer, but not
enough for him to venture upon making for England : so as
the wind served, he put into Ventre haven, on the west coast
of Ireland. There their sufferings ended, and on the 20th of
December he sailed for England. On arriving in London,
he learned the recent death of his eldest son ; but was com-
forted a few weeks after by the birth of a daughter, the Lady
Anne Clifford, afterwards the famous Countess of Pembroke.

In this voyage he had taken thirteen prizes ; and although
the one which was lost was worth more than all the rest, yet
the profit doubled the outlay of his adventure. Encouraged
by this success, as well as inflamed by former disappointments,
and being thoroughly possessed by the spirit of the age, he
obtained a ship of 600 tons from the queen, with which, and
with four other vessels, he set forth in 1591, at his own charge,
for the coast of Spain. On the way he met with several
Dutch ships, coming from Lisbon, and with spices on board,
which were Portuguese property : " So greatly," says Monson,
" were we abused by that nation of Holland, who, though
they were the first that engaged us in the war with Spain,
yet still maintained their own trade into those ports, and
supplied the Spaniards with ammunition, victuals, shipping,
and intelligence against us". They who regarded the conduct
of the Dutch merchants in this point of view, and made it a
ground for reproaching the nation, did not bear in mind that
the struggle in which the Low Countries were engaged with
Spain was, in its origin, purely a religious war, and that many
of these merchants might be of the Romish religion, conse-
quently Spanish at heart, and acting as much in conformity
with their own sense of duty, as Roman Catholic Christians