country's service in Ireland. 'Tis true Oxenham had formerly promised
him to assist him in that noble undertaking ; but having already waited
his leisure for so doing two years, and not knowing how much longer
it would be, if at all, ere his occasions would permit him so to do, he
might think himself disobliged from his promise, and so he undertook
something himself."



216 ENGLISH SEAMEN

and his great guns, and taking with him two small pieces of
ordnance, went, with all his men and six Maroon guides,
about twelve leagues into the interior, to a river which dis-
charges itself into the South Sea. There he cut wood and
built a pinnace, " which was five and forty foot by the keel " ;
embarked in it, and secured for himself the honour (if so it
may be called, under such circumstances) of being the first
Englishman that ever entered the Pacific. In this vessel he
went to the Isla de Perlas, five and twenty leagues from
Panama, and there lay in wait for the appearance of a vessel
from Peru. After lurking ten days, he captured a small
barque bringing gold from Quito ; and, six days afterward,
another with silver from Lima.

Not satisfied with this, he searched the islands for pearls ;
and having found a few, returned to his pinnace, made for the
river in which he had embarked, and, when he was near the
mouth, dismissed his prizes, thus incautiously allowing them
to perceive where he was entering. The alarm was soon
given ; first, by some negroes from the island, who, as soon as
he had left them, hastened in a canoe to Panama.* Juan de
Ortega was immediately dispatched with 100 men, beside
negro rowers, in four barques ; and he falling in with the
prizes on his way was by them directed to the river. Here,

* There is a more romantic but far less likely story (Prince calls it
" another guess account "), that in one of the prizes Oxenham found
"two pieces of especial estimation ; the one a table of massy gold set
with emeralds, sent for a present to the king ; the other, a lady of singu-
lar beauty, married and the mother of children. The latter grew to be
his perdition ; for he had capitulated with these Symerons, that their
part of the booty should be only the prisoners, to the end to execute
their malice upon the Spaniards for their cruelty to them ; showing their
revenge by roasting them, and eating their hearts. John Oxenham was
taken with the love of the lady, and to win her good-will, what through
her tears and detestation of this barbarous action, breaking promise
with the Symerons, he gave the prisoners their liberty, except the lady ;
and they, making haste to Panama, sent out forces to intercept him,"



HAWKINS AND DRAKE 217

however, he was at fault ; for the river discharged itself by
three channels : he had made his choice to ascend the great-
est of these streams, "when feathers were observed coming
down one of the smaller channels, from whence it was inferred
that the pirates had plucked some fowls upon its banks.
Here, therefore, he entered ; and, after four days' search,
discovered the pinnace, with six Englishmen on board.
These men leaped ashore, and ran for their lives: one was
killed in his flight, the others escaped. Ortega, leaving
twenty men in his boats, entered the country with the rest
of his force ; and, pursuing such traces as were to be found,
came upon a hut or barrack, from whence the English, upon
the alarm given them by their comrades, had fled, but where
they had left their booty, and whatever else might have en-
cumbered them. He removed the treasure to his barques,
and thought it more prudent to wait awhile for the chance
of events, than to enter upon a painful and uncertain pursuit.
In this he judged wisely. There had been a dispute
between Oxenham and his men when they had got their
plunder ashore : he had required them to carry it to their
ship, promising them their shares ; the sailors, however, de-
manded a present division of the spoil : he was angry that
his word should be doubted, and they were incensed that he
made any difficulty in satisfying their claim. His life was
threatened : the matter, however, seems to have been com-
promised, and Oxenham went in search of negroes to act as
carriers. These he procured among the Maroons ; and re-
turning with them, met his men who had escaped from the
pinnace, and those who were fleeing from the barrack. The
loss of their booty at once completed their reconcilement : he
promised larger shares if they should succeed in recapturing
it ; and marched resolutely in quest of the Spaniards, relying
upon the Maroons as well as upon his own people. But
Ortega was prepared for such an attempt : the Spanish
were experienced in bush-fighting, and made such advantage



218 ENGLISH SEAMEN

of their experience, that, with the loss of seven killed and
wounded, they slew five of the negroes and eleven English-
men, and took seven of Oxenham's men prisoners. Thus
defeated, he made for his ship with the remainder of his men ;
and Ortega, having buried his dead, returned with the
treasure, the pinnace, and the prisoners to Panama. Advice
had been sent from thence to Nombre de Dios : vessels
were despatched to search along the coast for the English-
man's ship ; and when Oxenham and his people reached the
spot where they had, as they hoped, concealed it, it was gone.
Nothing remained to them but to trust to the friendship of
the Maroons, till they could build canoes, in which it was
their intention to try their fortune upon the Northern Sea,
if they could surprise some vessel there. But in this, which,
if time had been given them for attempting it, would have
been no forlorn hope, they were prevented. The Spaniards,
who knew how insecure they must be while fifty such ad-
venturers were at large in the country, sent 150 men under
Diego de Frias to hunt them out : some who were sick fell
into his hands ; and the others, whom he failed to take,
Oxenham being one, were, after a while, delivered up by the
negroes. They were brought to Panama ; and Oxenham
was then asked whether he had his queen's authority for
entering the King of Spain's dominions ? This could not be
produced, nor was it pretended : summary condemnation
followed, and the prisoners were executed as pirates, except
Oxenham, the master, the pilot, and five boys, who were sent
to Lima, the latter as fit subjects for mercy and conversion
because of their youth ; the three former as being the chiefs
of the crew, of whom it was expedient that an example should
be made in the Peruvian capital. In that city Oxenham and
his two companions suffered death * as common enemies of

* Prince says : " There is a family of considerable standing of this name
(Oxenham) at South Tawton, near Okehampton, of which is this strange
and wonderful thing recorded ; that at the deaths of any of them a bird



HAWKINS AND DRAKE 219

mankind ; " thus miscarrying," says Camden, " in this great
and memorable adventure ".*

Another freebooter followed Drake's course the ensuing
year. This was Master Andrew Barker, of Bristol, who,

with a white breast is seen for a while fluttering about their beds, and
then suddenly to vanish away ".

Howell has this account in one of his letters, written from London
in 1632 : " As I past by St. Dunstan's, in Fleet Street, the last Saturday,
I stepped into a lapidary or stonecutter's shop, to treat with the master
for a stone to be put upon my father's tomb, and, casting my eyes up
and down, I spied a huge marble, with a large inscription upon it, which
was this, to my best remembrance :

" ' Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly young man, in whose chamber,
as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a bird, with a white breast,
was seen fluttering about his bed, and so vanished.

'" Here lies also Mary Oxenham, the sister of the said John, who
died the next day, and the same apparition was seen in the room.'

" Then another sister is spoken of. Then,

" ' Here lies hard by James Oxenham, the son of the said John, who
died a child in his cradle a little after ; and such a bird was seen flutter-
ing about his head a little before he expired, which vanished afterwards.'

" At the bottom of the stone there is,

" ' Here lies Elizabeth Oxenham, the mother of the said John, who
died sixteen years since, when such a bird with a white breast was seen
about her bed before her death.'

" To all these there be divers witnesses, both squires and ladies, whose
names are engraven upon the stone. This stone is to be sent to a
town hard by Exeter, where this happened. Were you here I could raise
a choice discourse with you hereupon " (Epistola Ho-Eliance, book i.,
sec. 6, ep. ix.).

* Hakluyt, iii., 526, 527 ; Camden, 251, 252. The account of this
adventure we owe to Lopez Vaz, a native of Elvas, who was taken in
the Plata, by one of the Earl of Cumberland's ships, having with him
the Discourse which he had written concerning Drake's attempt on
Nombre de Dios, and the subsequent expedition. The manuscript came
into Hakluyt's hand. "The Spaniards of that country (Darien)," he
says, " marvelled much at this one thing, to see that, since the con-
quering of this land, there have been many Frenchmen that have come
to those countries, but they never saw Englishmen there, but only these
two : and although there have many Frenchmen been on the coast, yet



220 ENGLISH SEAMEN

having traded for some years with the Canaries, left one
Charles there, the son of Dominic Chester, a Bristol merchant,
as his agent. The said Chester devised means of securing
for himself a certain portion of his employer's goods, and this
with a good conscience, under favour of his father's patron-
saint and namesake. For when Captain Roberts arrived with
a cargo, and with charge to bring home returns for Barker,
this Charles accused him to the Inquisition, and, on the pre-
text that he was Barker's partner, the whole property was
confiscated to the Holy Office, such portions only excepted
as the informer received for his meritorious services, or had
previously secured for himself. By means of some humane
friar, Roberts was delivered from prison, at the cost of all he
had brought with him in his ship ; and returning empty, the
charges of his voyage were added to Barker's loss, making it
amount to nearly 2000/. It was in vain to seek redress, " for
no suit prevaileth against the Inquisition of Spain ". So
Andrew Barker, in recompense of his injury, and also to
recover his loss from the Spaniards themselves, fitted out two
barques, one called the Ragged Staff, himself being captain,
and Philip Roche master thereof; the other, named the Bear,
had one William Coxe for her master and captain. They
sailed from Plymouth, on Whitsunday ; burnt two villages in
the Isle of Maya, in revenge for their trumpeter there treach-
erously killed by the Portugals, and having reached Trinidad,
began their piracies and their fatal disputes among themselves.

never durst they put foot upon land ; only these two Englishmen ad-
ventured it. All these things coming to the hearing of the King of
vSpain, he provided two galleys, well appointed, to keep those coasts ;
and the first year they took six or seven French ships. And after that
this was known, there were no more Englishmen or Frenchmen of war
that durst adventure to approach the coast, until this present year 1586,
that the aforesaid Francis Drake arrived there with a strong fleet. But
it is likely that, if the King of Spain live, he will in time provide sufficient
remedy to keep his countries and subjects from the invasion of other
nations."



HAWKINS AND DRAKE 221

In the Bay of Tula (about eighteen leagues south-west of Cartha-
gena), they took a frigate and treasure therein, to the value
of 500/. in bars of gold and ingots of silver, with some quantity
of corriente, or coin, in reals of plate, and " certain green stones
called emeralds, whereof one, very great, being set in gold,
was found tied secretly about the thigh of a friar". The
frigate they left ; and finding that some Spanish men-of-war
were in pursuit of them, passed on to the mouth of the
Chagre, and there landed ten men to seek the Maroons, who,
it was supposed, were ready to join with the English and
French against the Spaniards. The men returned without
having discovered them, but brought with them " a disease
called there the Calentura, which is a hot and vehement fever";
they infected others, and some eight or nine died.

Between the Chagre and Veragua they took a frigate, in
which was some quantity of gold, and where they found also
four cast pieces of ordnance which had belonged to Oxenham's
ship. This capture was made in good time, the Ragged Staff",
because of her great leakage, being no longer seaworthy ;
wherefore they set the Spaniards ashore, removed her crew
into the prize and then sunk the vessel. At Veragua, the
ill blood between Barker and his master Roche, which had
been hardly repressed before, broke out afresh ; they fought,
and Barker was wounded in the cheek. They made from
thence, by the direction of certain Indians, for the Bay of
Honduras, and captured on the way a barque with some
money and provisions on board, and the Escrivano of Cartha-
gena, "who, being a man of some note, was put to his
ransom " ; the rest were dismissed freely. The first race of
freebooters were in nothing more honourably distinguished
from their successors than in this, that they exercised no
cruelty upon their prisoners, and committed no murder.
Arriving at the Island of St. Francisco, in the mouth of the
Bay of Honduras, Coxe, the master of the Bear, with a party
of mutineers, boarded Barker's ship, took possession of it



222 ENGLISH SEAMEN

and of all his booty, and set him ashore upon the island,
where he and one Germane Welborne fought, and both were
wounded. Barker would then fain have returned to the ship,
but this was resisted, and he was told that he should not
come on board till they were ready to depart. Whatever
may have been their intentions with respect to him, his
troubled life was near its close ; for, one morning, at day-
break, a party of Spaniards arriving secretly in the island,
surprised the English and slew nine of them ; of these Barker
was one ; about twenty escaped by getting on board. Coxe
then, with two parties, in a pinnace and a skiff which he had
taken at the island, surprised the town of Truxillo in the bay,
and took there " wine and oil as much as they would, and
divers other good things, but no gold or silver, nor any other
treasure which they would confess. But before they could
return to their ship, some men-of-war chased her ; the pinnace
shifted for itself and got safe, leaving for haste those that
were in the skiff, being eight persons ; what became of them
afterwards God knoweth." Their misfortunes did not end
here ; for having now determined to sail for England, and
being in the main sea, homeward bound, about sixty leagues
from the isle, the frigate their prize, "wherein was the
treasure for the adventurers, and that which pertained to
the captain, to the value of 2000/., being over-set with sail,
with a flaw of wind was overthrown, and all the goods there-
in perished ". Fourteen men were drowned in her ; Coxe
and eight others were saved. They had built a frigate upon
the shore of the Honduras, in place of the Bear, which seems
to have followed the fortunes of its old companion the Ragged
Staff; in this they reached Scilly, when, Roche having died
on the passage home, Coxe and Andrew Brown divided the
remaining prize money among the survivors, "delivering to
some five pounds, to some six, to some seven, to some more,
as every man was thought to have deserved " : the barque
and the guns (Oxenham's among them) were left at Scilly to



HAWKINS AND DRAKE 223

the use of Brown. " Divers of our company," says the person
from whom Hakluyt collected his relation, "were committed
to prison upon our arrival at Plymouth, at the suit of Mr.
John Barker, of Bristol, as accessories to his brother, our
captain's death, and betrayers of him unto the enemy. And
after straight examination of many of us, by letters of direc-
tion from his Majesty's privy council, the chief malefactors
were only chastised with long imprisonment, when, indeed,
before God, they had deserved to die : whereof some,
although they escaped the rigour of man's law, yet could
they not avoid the heavy judgment of God, but shortly after
came to miserable end. Which may be example to others to
show themselves faithful and obedient in all honest causes to
their captains and governors." *

It appears then that the persons who went upon this
piratical voyage thought they were engaged in an honest
cause. Most men who enter upon unlawful courses, either
form a code of convenient morals for themselves, or act upon
the accursed opinion that there is nothing to be hoped or
feared beyond the grave. But there were circumstances,
which made the light in which these precursors of the
buccaneers regarded their proceedings, appear plausible to
the nation as well as to themselves. During great part of
Elizabeth's long reign, Spain and England, though formally
at r peace, were in a state of manifest enmity and of private
warfare ; and that enmity was on both sides more acrimonious
than could have been generated in any ordinary war. No
English subject, while trading with those parts of the
Spanish dominions with which the trade was authorised by
treaty, was safe, unless he was a Roman Catholic. The In-
quisition looked upon all heretics who came within its reach
as amenable to its laws, no matter what their country ; they
were rebellious subjects of the Universal Roman Catholic

* Hakluyt, iii., 528-530.



224 ENGLISH SEAMEN

Church, and, as such, to be seized and punished, wherever
that wicked Church was strong enough to enforce its pre-
tensions. If the confiscation of English property, and the
imprisonment and ill usage (even to tortures and death) of
English subjects, should have the effect of bringing on
hostilities between the two crowns, whatever might be the
policy of the Spanish Government, this was what the clergy
and the Inquisition desired. The English people resented
this before the queen could venture to resent it otherwise
than by unavailing remonstrances ; and the injured parties
took a shorter course, in which some gallant spirits, and many
desperate ones, were ready to join. Thus, in Barker's case,
he had just cause of complaint against the Spanish authorities,
by whom he had been iniquitously deprived of his goods ; and
if he could have indemnified himself by the forcible seizure
of property belonging to the Inquisition, or to the Spanish
Government, without injury to any other parties, this would
have been nothing more than what by the law of nations
might be justified, when national law had been by the other
party set at nought : but this was impossible ; and what, if
so restricted, would have been a just act of reprisal, was an
act of piracy when committed against the King of Spain's
subjects. So the Spaniards naturally and properly considered
it. They knew nothing of the injuries upon which Drake as
well as Barker is said to have founded his right of making
war upon the King of Spain ; nor would they indeed have
allowed them to be injuries ; nor that, if they had been such,
any such right could be derived from them. While, therefore,
the private warfare continued, they executed as pirates all
whom they made prisoners ; and this was conformable to the
acknowledged law of nations.

The first adventurers of this stamp did not, however, con-
sider themselves pirates, for two reasons : first, because they
professed to carry on hostilities only against the Spaniards,
not, like the Vikingar and Vitalians, against all who traversed



HAWKINS AND DRAKE 225

the seas ; secondly, because they had good reason to believe
that, although not commissioned by their own Government,
they were acting with its connivance, and under its tacit sanc-
tion. In this way of thinking, therefore, they were fairly at
war, carrying it on at a twofold risk, seeing that, if taken by
the enemy, they had no mercy to expect ; but also with a pro-
spect of far greater gains than could be obtained in any other
service. The danger might have been little different in
ordinary wars ; for whether war should be what was then
termed good or bad, depended in those days upon the
temper of an individual commander, not upon any fixed law
or general usage. But this formed no part of their considera-
tion. Among such men, those who were not thoughtless of
danger were regardless of it. Some were of as heroic a
spirit as the greatest of the Spanish conquerors ; others were
of no better qualities than the worst of them ; and perhaps
not a few were perfectly aware that they were pursuing a
safer course upon the seas at whatever hazard, than if they
had been braving the laws at home.

There was another circumstance which undoubtedly entered
into the views of the better adventurers, and was not without
some influence upon all. A strong feeling of indignation
had been excited against the Spaniards for their cruelties in
the New World, by a relation ascribed, on no good grounds,
to Bartolome de Las Casas, and published in many languages,
with engravings, in which the acts of the most atrocious
barbarity were represented. In one respect it was, perhaps,
well that this impression should have been produced, lest
posterity, in astonishment and admiration at the intrepidity,
and perseverance, and unparalleled achievements of the con-
querors, should have overlooked their crimes. Contemplating
the history of their conquests with that religious temper
wherewith all history ought to be contemplated, nothing
more mournful is to be found in the annals of the human race.
We can perceive only that abominations, like those of the

15



226 ENGLISH SEAMEN

Canaanites, prevailed among all the more civilised nations of
the New World ; and that the Spaniards, who were the
appointed instruments of Divine judgment, substituted other
evils in the place of those which they extirpated ; sacrificed
more victims to avarice than the Mexicans to their idols ;
and are now suffering from the consequence of their long-
continued and unrepented offences. Further than this,
the course of Providence is not evolved. The first chastise-
ment which the Spaniards received was from those ad-
venturers who now assailed them in their conquests, and led
the way for the buccaneers, the Vikingar of the New World.
Even these wretches thought it some justification of them-
selves that they were taking vengeance for the Indians ; and
that feeling, in a certain degree, was entertained also by
Drake and his contemporaries.

Moreover, the Spaniards founded their right of conquest
on Pope Alexander's grant, the validity of which grant was,
of course, denied by a people who had thrown off the papal
yoke. England acknowledged in the Spaniards no right but
that of the strongest to those parts of America which they
actually possessed, and none to those extensive regions in
which they had formed no settlement. Least of all could
the English, in an age when the spirit of maritime enterprise
had been excited, submit to an assumption of dominion, which
pretended to exclude them from the Caribbean Sea, and from
the Great Pacific, on which Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first
European who ever beheld it, had not looked with a more
ambitious eye than the first Englishman by whom it was
seen, Francis Drake.

There can be little doubt that the plan of Drake's voyage
was communicated to the queen, and by her approved. Sir
Christopher Hattoii introduced him to Elizabeth, and it is
said that she gave him a sword, with this remarkable speech :
"We do account that he which striketh at thee, Drake,
striketh at us ! " It is said, also, which is less credible, that



HAWKINS AND DRAKE 227

he had a commission from his sovereign. This would have
been inconsistent with her cautious policy ; it was enough
for her at this time to assure him of her secret sanction.
The expedition was fitted out at his own cost,* "with the
help of divers friends, adventurers ; it consisted of his own
ship the Pelican, 100 tons; the Elizabeth, of 80, captain, John
Winter ; the Mart/gold, a barque of 30 tons, captain, John
Thomas ; the Loan, a fly-boat, of 50, captain, John Chester ;
and the Christopher, a pinnace, of 15, captain, Thomas Moon ".
These ships he manned with an able and sufficient crew, "to
the number of 164, men, gentlemen, and sailors, and fur-
nished with such plentiful provision of all things necessary,