[Illustration: “It may be truly said that the commandment of the Sea is
an abridgement or a quintessence of a universal monarchy.”

  Francis Bacon
]




THE LAST FIGHT OF THE REVENGE

[Illustration]




[Illustration:

  THE LAST FIGHT OF THE
  REVENGE
  BY S^r WALTER RALEIGH

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION
  BY HENRY NEWBOLT,
  M.A., AND ILLUSTRATIONS
  BY FRANK
  BRANGWYN, A.R.A.

  LONDON: GIBBINGS AND
  COMPANY 1908
]




CONTENTS


  Some Appreciations                                _page_   11

  Introduction                                               15

  Facsimile of original Title Page                           57

  The Last Fight of the Revenge                              61

[Illustration]




LIST OF PLATES


  1. Queen Elizabeth going on board the Golden Hind
         (_By kind permission of the Committee of
         Lloyd’s Register_)                         _page_   19

  2. The Last Fight                                          59

  3. Galleons in Harbour                                     73

  4. Loading the Galleons                                    85

  5. The Galleon Fair                                        97

  6. A Captured Galleon (_From a picture in the
         possession of Colonel Goff_)                       105

[Illustration]




SOME APPRECIATIONS


“In the year 1591 was that memorable Fight of an English _Ship_ called
the _Revenge_, under the command of S^r Richard Greenvill; Memorable (I
say) even beyond credit, and to the Height of some Heroicall Fable. And
though it were a Defeat, yet it exceeded a Victory.”

                                                     Sir FRANCIS BACON

[Illustration]

“S^r Richard Greenfield got eternall honour and reputation of great
valour, and of a experimented Souldier, chusing rather to sacrifice
his life, and to passe all danger whatsoever, then to fayle in his
Obligation.... And rather we ought to imbrace an honourable death then
to live with infamie and dishonour, by fayling in dutie.”

                                                   Sir RICHARD HAWKINS

[Illustration]

“Than this what have we more! What can be greater!”

                                                           JOHN EVELYN

[Illustration]

“Struck a deeper terror, though it was but the action of a ship, into
the hearts of the Spanish people; it dealt a more deadly blow upon
their fame and moral strength than the destruction of the Armada
itself.”

                                                          J. A. FROUDE

[Illustration]

“Perhaps in all naval history there never was a more gallant fight than
that of the Revenge off the Western Isles.”

                                                       PROFESSOR ARBER

[Illustration]


[Illustration]

  And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over
      the summer sea,
  But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the
      fifty-three.
  Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built
      galleons came,
  Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder
      and flame;
  Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her
      dead and her shame.
  For some were sunk and many were shatter’d, and so could
      fight us no more--
  God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world
      before?

                     _Tennyson, “The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet.”_

    _By permission of Messrs Macmillan & Co., Ltd, the owners of
    the copyright._

[Illustration]




INTRODUCTION

[Illustration]




[Illustration]


Which is the greatest name upon the roll of English ships? Which is the
most sure of a lasting and effectual renown? There was a day when all
England would have given but one answer. If you ask the Elizabethan of
1580, you will find him very positive upon the point, and not a little
exalted. Drawn round the world by the Divine

[Illustration]

Hand, under the Northern and Southern Pole stars, victor over a
hundred enemies, ballasted with royal treasure, & steered by the
captured charts of Spanish Admirals, the little ship that sailed as
the _Pelican_, comes home again as the _Golden Hind_. She brings her
fabulous booty and her still more fabulous romance from Plymouth Sound
to Deptford, and then and there the great names of the past--the
_Christophers_, the _Great Harrys_, the _Dragons_ and the _Swans_--are
all finally eclipsed. Drake, kneeling upon her deck, receives his
knighthood from the hand of Gloriana, and the _Golden Hind_ herself,
bidding farewell for ever to wind and wave, is laid up as a national
monument--“consecrated to perpetuall Memory.”

[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH GOING ON BOARD THE GOLDEN HIND]

[Illustration]

She is remembered still, but it is hardly for her own sake; her
story is a part of Drake’s, and not the greatest part. Question your
Elizabethan again some ten years later, and hers is no longer the name
that he will give you; he will speak of things that are even nearer
to his heart, and to ours; for though an Englishman will always, I
suppose, lick his lips over a tale of treasure, it is the fighting
and not the plunder that he is really fitted to enjoy, and in his
imagination even the jewels of the _Golden Hind_ will shine with a less
bright and steady glow than the battle-lanterns of the _Revenge_.

The _Revenge_ is a part of no man; she saw many captains and more
triumphs than one. She had a personality, as great ships always have;
she had a career, a life of her own. She has a life after death; not
only a posterity but a true survival.

[Illustration]

She may be said, in no merely figurative sense, to be on active service
still. If the day ever comes when she no longer helps to keep the sea
for us, it can only be when Time shall have paid off the British Navy.

The last of her successes is more freshly remembered by our friends
than by ourselves. A neighbouring potentate, whom pride in his English
descent had exhilarated to a pitch of splendid audacity worthy of an
Elizabethan, challenged us by a telegram encouraging a vassal State to
throw off the suzerainty of the Queen. If the message meant anything,
it was a promise of armed support; but the promise had none of the
Elizabethan hardihood to back it, and proved bankrupt as soon as the
Flying Squadron put to

[Illustration]

sea. It was not that this force was unknown, or suddenly created;
the ships had long been on the Navy List, their names, guns, tonnage
and complement all as familiar to the German Kaiser as to the rest
of the world. But there was a sense abroad of something more than
brute strength: a memory of great traditions, of inherited skill, of
undaunted and indomitable tenacity. When on that January 15, 1896, the
English Admiral hoisted his flag in the _Revenge_, and Her Majesty’s
Marines marched on board under the command of Captain Drake, the enemy
disappeared from the seas, and we made haste to forget another naval
victory.

The lesson, we may hope, remains; this was not a triumph of physical
force. The challenger’s nerve, and not his ships, failed him; he feared
his

[Illustration]

own destruction more than he desired ours. In an age even more
materially minded, if possible, than those which went before it, we are
increasingly diligent to measure our armour and our guns, to reckon up
our horse-power and the number of our hits at target practice. It is
not for any man to blame us; we should be wrong if we neglected these
things, but we should be still more wrong if we forgot for a moment
that there were years in our history when it was not we but our enemies
who had the advantage of armament, and that whether by combination or
otherwise, such a time may come upon us again. Build as we will, we
cannot secure ourselves against it for ever; but we can forestall it by
facing it with the remembrance of the past. It was by moral superiority
that the

[Illustration]

Elizabethans came through their trial. The Spaniards were contending
to maintain their hold upon the wealth of the world, and they fought
as men will fight in such a cause--courageously, but not desperately;
the English fought as, at sea, they must always be fighting, for
national existence, and they took care--it was a great part of their
strength--to leave their enemies in no doubt that they meant in every
engagement to make the affair fatal to one side or the other. This is a
policy which we did not follow in the latest of our wars; we may have
been justified, we had our reasons, and we paid the full price; but
on the day when we abandon it upon the sea, we shall have thrown away
our only sure defence and our deadliest weapon. Men and nations are
never so nearly invincible and never half so terrible as when they are
armed with contempt of death; and that such an ardent temper can defy,
discourage and destroy mere bulk or numbers, “even beyond credit and to
the Height of some Heroicall Fable”--this is the meaning of the last
fight of the _Revenge_.

[Illustration]


[Illustration]


II

It was in 1577, the year in which the _Golden Hind_ sailed from
Plymouth on her ever-memorable voyage, that the _Revenge_ first
took the water. Probably, says Arber (but I cannot find upon what
authority), she was built at Chatham by Sir John Hawkins. According to
Sir John Laughton she was launched at Deptford. Ships

[Illustration]

are the children of predestination, as every sailor knows: from the
moment when they leave the slips they are either lucky or unlucky.
In the opinion of the younger Hawkins the _Revenge_ “was ever the
unfortunatest Ship the late Queene’s Majestie had during her Raigne.”
He supports this view by a list of hairbreadth escapes, which might as
easily be quoted to prove her the especial care of Providence, many
times miraculously preserved to be the scourge and dishonour of the
Queen’s enemies. First, says Sir Richard, “Comming out of Ireland with
Sir John Parrot, she was like to be [but was not] cast away upon the
Kentish coast.” Then, in 1586, “in the Voyage of Sir John Hawkins, she
struck aground coming into Plimouth, before her going

[Illustration]

to Sea”; but to sea she went nevertheless. Upon the coast of Spain
she was “readie to sinke with a great Leake,” and (though she did not
sink) “at her return into the harbour of Plimouth, she beat upon Winter
Stone”--again without fatality. She escaped a still greater danger
when, soon after, she twice ran aground in going out of Portsmouth
Haven, lay twenty-two hours beating upon the shore, and was forced off
with eight feet of water in her, only to ground again “upon the Oose,”
where she stuck for six months, until the following spring, testifying
to the skill of those who built and the clumsiness of those who sailed
her. Being at last got off and brought round into the Thames to be
docked, “her old Leake breaking upon her, had like to

[Illustration]

have drowned all those which were in her.” Neither then, however, nor
in any of her mishaps, does she appear to have actually drowned anyone,
not even when, in 1591, “with a storme of wind and weather, riding at
her moorings in the river of Rochester, nothing but her bare Masts
overhead, shee was turned topse-turvie, her Kele uppermost.” One might
have thought that this final proof of her indestructibility would
convince her detractor. Drake, at any rate, knew a good sea-boat when
he saw one, for he chose her for his flagship when he sailed against
the Armada as Vice-Admiral, and the Calendar of State Papers contains,
under the date of November, 1588, a “Device of Lord Admiral Howard,
Sir F. Drake, Sir W. Wynter, Sir John Hawkyns, Capt. Wm. Borough and
others, for the construction of four new ships to be built on the

[Illustration]

model of the _Revenge_, but exceeding her in burthen.” (She was but of
500 tons herself, and carried at most 260 men and forty guns.) To this
evidence we may add the statement of a Spanish prisoner, bearing the
delightful name of Gonsalo Gonsalez del Castillo, who writes in 1592
that in England “they have been much pained by the loss of one of the
Queen’s galleons, called the _Revenge_; they say she was the best ship
the Queen had, and the one in which they had the most confidence for
her defence.”

Such was the _Revenge_, and, if she had her share of misfortune she
had also her full share of prosperous service. She bore Drake’s flag
as Vice-Admiral from January 3, 1588. On May 23, at the head of sixty
sail, she escorted the Lord Admiral Howard into Plymouth; then, till
July 12,

[Illustration]

she watched and longed for the “felicisima Armada.” On Saturday
the 20th, while the enemy crept up Channel in heavy rain, and the wind
fell lighter and lighter, she tacked and tacked her way out painfully
through a night of deadly anxiety. She had her reward. On Sunday,
“conspicuous with an extravagant pennant and a banner on her mizzen,
and fighting almost at grappling distance,” she battered Don Juan
Martinez de Recalde in the _Santa Anna_. Towards evening the Admirals
held Council on board her; when night fell her lantern led the fleet,
until Drake, finding himself among strange sail, extinguished it and
lay by for daylight. Howard and the rest went after the Spanish lights,
and when dawn came the _Revenge_ found herself alone,

[Illustration]

and drifting within a few cables of the huge _Nuestra Señora del
Rosario_, flagship of Don Pedro de Valdes, Captain-General of
the Andalusian Squadron and one of Sidonia’s best officers. The
Captain-General was “spoiled of his mast the day before,” and had
smashed his bowsprit in collision; but he tried to stand out for
conditions of surrender. The Vice-Admiral replied that he was Drake,
and had no time to parley. That ended the matter; the galleon went into
Dartmouth “under the conduction of the _Roebuck_” and the _Revenge_
“bare with the Lord Admiral, and recovered his Lordship that night,
being Monday.” Aboard of her went poor Don Pedro and forty of his
officers; also their cash, to the tune of fifty thousand ducats.

[Illustration]

On Tuesday the 23rd, the prisoners, or those of them who were allowed
on deck, witnessed the battle off the Isle of Wight, the failure of the
galleasses with their countless oars, and the rescue of the _Triumph_,
in which our first _Victory_ and our first _Dreadnought_ distinguished
themselves. They saw, too, in the bird-like line-ahead flights of the
_Revenge_ and her consorts, their quick concentrations and dispersals,
what Mr Julian Corbett has described as “the first dawn of those modern
tactics which Blake and Monk were to develop and Nelson to perfect.” By
the end of the day they were probably all deaf; the unknown eyewitness
who wrote the _Relation of Proceedings_ for Howard, declares that
“there was never seen a more terrible value of great shot, nor more hot
fight than this was; for although the musketeers

[Illustration]

and harquebusiers of crock were then infinite, yet could they not be
discerned nor heard for that the great ordnance came so thick that a
man would have judged it to have been a hot skirmish of small shot,
being all the fight long within half musket shot of the enemy.”

On the 24th fresh ammunition arrived, and the fleet was divided into
four squadrons, of which _Revenge_ was to lead the second.

On Thursday the 25th, in a calm, the galleasses ventured again and were
finally knocked out of the fight. For the next two days “the Spaniards
went always before the English Army like sheep” until on Saturday
evening they suddenly came to an anchor off Calais.

On the night of Sunday the 28th, the Lord Admiral “caused eight ships
to be fired and let drive amongst the Spanish fleet; whereupon they
were forced to let slip or cut cables at half and to set sail.” When
day came, Howard stopped to take a prize, and it was the _Revenge_
who led the last great chase northwards, pounding Sidonia himself in
the huge _San Martin_, sinking, scattering and driving ashore his
followers. “It was the hour,” says Mr Corbett, “for which Francis Drake
had been born.” But glorious as it was, it was not yet the hour for
which the _Revenge_ had been built.

[Illustration]


[Illustration]


III

Drake was beyond doubt the greatest man who ever set foot in the
_Revenge_, but it was not for him, or any like him, to sail her to the
fulfilment of her unparalleled destiny. The imagination of two great
peoples has made of him an almost supernatural hero, a gigantic figure
of romance; but in spite of his inexhaustible courage,

[Illustration]

his dazzling fortune, and the touch of extravagance which he caught
from the spirit of his time, he was neither a Don Quixote nor a Prince
Fortunate of mere adventures. For him there was nothing that could not
be dared, but it must be dared with method and for an end in view;
for him wisdom could never be “wisdom in the scorn of consequence.”
Setting aside their natural bravery and the fashion of the day, there
was little in common between this heroic prototype of the modern
Englishman, and Sir Richard Grenville, the inheritor of a temperament
which has long been practically extinct among us, and was even then the
characteristic of a dwindling

[Illustration]

class. The men of courage without discipline, of enthusiasm without
reason, of will without science--a type of arrested development
surviving from the days beyond the Renaissance--fell with the Stuart
Kings and were finally buried with the rebels of the ’45. It is easy to
say that they were of no use, these turbulent, insensate, self-willed
children of aristocracy; at the least they added colour and vivacity
to life, and these are something; now and again they had their great
moments, when folly touched the height of tragedy, and left a true
inspiration for those who are not too sober or too senile to receive it.

Men have always liked to think of definite characteristics as the
hereditary possession of certain families--often, no doubt, without
much justification, but surely not altogether so in the

[Illustration]

case of the Grenvilles. Reading their records without any preconceived
belief, we cannot but hear one note ringing out again & again through
at least three centuries and a half. We hear Sir Richard’s grandson,
Sir Bevil--it goes without saying that he was a Cavalier--swearing “to
fetch those traitors out of their nest at Launceston, or fire them in
it.” We see him, “after solemn prayers,” charging furiously “both down
the one hill and up the other” at Bradock Down; or again dying on the
brow of Lansdowne Hill, after he had stormed it in the face of cannon,
“small shot from the breastworks” and “two full charges from the
enemy’s horse.”

His brother, another Sir Richard, was a Cavalier, too, and a Grenville
to the backbone; hated by his men for his iron discipline--“no doubt,”

[Illustration]

says Clarendon, “the man had behaved himself with great pride and
tyranny over them”--he was even more intolerable to his superiors; he
flatly refused to act under Hopton, and drove the Prince of Wales to
imprison him in despair. A more attractive, but still characteristic,
member of the family was Bevil’s son, Denis, Archdeacon of Durham,
whom we find, after James II had already fled the kingdom, preaching
in the midst of his enemies “a seasonable loyall Sermon”; collecting
a war fund from the prebendaries for his fallen sovereign; bolting
to Scotland on horseback; captured, but escaping to France; coming
back incognito and escaping again. Ardent Jacobite and equally ardent
Protestant, he defied the Court at St Germain to convert him to
Romanism, and when they would

[Illustration]

not allow him to read the English Service, consoled himself by
publishing at Rouen a manifesto with the exquisite title of “The
Resigned and Resolved Christian and Faithful and Undaunted Royalist in
two plain farewell Sermons and a loyal farewell Visitation Speech.”

It must be admitted that even so late as the eighteenth century--the
Venerable Denis lived till 1703--these gentlemen were the opposite
of tame; even when they were “Resigned” they were at the same
time “Resolved” and “Undaunted.” This is even more true of their
fourteenth-century ancestor, Sir Theobald, the first Grenville of
whom I have found anything essential to relate. He, at the age of
twenty-two, thought fit to rebel against the paternal despotism of John
Grandison, Bishop of Exeter, who had

[Illustration]

instituted a nominee of Sir John Raleigh’s to the Grenville family
living of Kilkhampton, in defiance, it would appear, of the lawful
patron’s rights. Sir Theobald made war at once in the best Grenville
manner. At dawn on Sunday, March 24, 1347, he invaded the Manor of
Bishop’s Tawton with 500 followers “armed with divers kinds of weapons,
offensive and defensive, after the fashion of men going to mortal war.”
They stormed the Manor-house, the Sanctuary and the Manse; killed
some of the defenders, took plunder to the value of two hundred marks
(the Bishop’s estimate) and otherwise “multipliciter perturbarunt
pacem et tranquillitatem Domini nostri Regis.” The Bishop’s peace and
tranquillity being also disturbed, he at once excommunicated the entire
army. Sir Theobald

[Illustration]

then brought and won an action against Raleigh in the King’s Bench;
the Bishop’s man appealed to Rome, with the inevitable result; the
King’s Bench judgement was annulled, with costs against Sir Theobald.
Cheered by this, the Bishop sent the Abbot of Hartland and the Prior of
Launceston to Kilkhampton one fine July day to put things to rights.
The Grenville army, with faces masked and painted, bows bent and
arrows notched, met the Church Militant in a narrow lane and routed
it shamefully; the pursuit lasted for a mile, and Sir Theobald then
fortified and held Kilkhampton Church for several days. After eighteen
months more of contumacy, peace was made; from the terms we may judge
how hard the Grenville had pressed his tremendous adversary. He knelt,
it is true, and confessed his guilt--there

[Illustration]

there was no denying that--but the Bishop, in return for this
preservation of his dignity, had to revoke his own institution and
admit a new rector upon Sir Theobald’s presentation; Raleigh got
nothing but the barren pleasure of reading aloud the Act of Submission.
The significant points of the story are to me, first, that this boy of
twenty-two gained his end in the teeth of all Rome; second, that to
gain it he cared not what he did or suffered; and last, that it was
never worth the money or the crimes it cost him.

It is vain, I think, to deny that in such a family group as this, Sir
Richard Grenville of the _Revenge_ would be in every sense at home. His
record is plain. In 1585, when Raleigh’s first colony for Virginia set
out from Plymouth in seven ships, it was Sir Richard who took command
of it,

[Illustration]

though he knew little of seamanship, and still less, apparently, of
government. Letters from Lane, the head of the colony, to Secretary
Walsingham, and dispatches from the treasurer to Raleigh himself, set
forth Grenville’s “intolerable pride” and his “insatiable ambition.”
His behaviour to his subordinates was such that they desire to be freed
from any place where he is to carry any authority in chief. But what an
irresistible fighter he is! On the homeward voyage he falls in with “a
Spanish ship of 300 tunne, richly loaden”; having no boats, he boards
her with an improvised one, “made with boards of chests, which fell a
sunder, and sunke at the shippes side as soone as ever he and his men
were out of it.” He reached

[Illustration]

home at the end of October, and was off again in the following April,
when the Justices of Cornwall report to the Council, Sir Richard having
evidently neglected to do so, that, “being about to depart to sea, he
has left his charge of 300 men to George Greynvil.” On this voyage he
sacked the Azores, took “divers Spanyardes” and performed “many other
exploytes,” but he reached Virginia too late to be of any service to
the colony, which had already left for England. Then came the business
of the Armada, in which he had at least three ships of his own engaged,
though he got little chance of distinguishing himself in his station
off the coast of Devon and Cornwall. His next voyage was that in the
_Revenge_: and here again, in the one memorable action of his life, we
cannot but see the working of the peculiar character which is visible
in all the rest.

[Illustration]

“This Sir Richard Greenfield was a great and a rich Gentleman in
England,” says a contemporary, the Dutchman Linschoten, “and had great
yearly revenewes of his owne inheritance: but he was a man very unquiet
in his minde, and greatly affected to warre: in so much as of his owne
private motion he offered his service to the Queene: he had performed
many valiant acts, and was greatly feared in these Islands [i.e., the
Azores], and knowne of every man, but of nature very severe, so that
his owne people hated him for his fiercenes and spake verie hardly of
him: for when they first entered into the Fleete or Armado, they had
their great sayle in a readinesse, and might possiblie enough have
sayled

[Illustration]

away: for it [i.e., the _Revenge_] was one of the best ships for sayle
in England, and the Master perceiving that the other shippes had left
them, and followed not after, commanded the great sayle to be cut, that
they might make away: but Sir Richard Greenfield threatened both him,
and all the rest that were in the ship, that if any man laid hand upon
it, he would cause him to be hanged, and so by that occasion they were
compelled to fight, and in the end were taken.”

Sir William Monson, another contemporary, has left behind him a similar
account, first printed in 1682. “Upon view of the Spaniards, which were
55 sail, the Lord Thomas warily, and like a discreet General, weighed
Anchor, and made

[Illustration]

signs to the rest of his Fleet to do the like, with a purpose to get
the wind of them: but Sir Richard Grenvile, being a stubborn man, ...
would by no means be persuaded by his Master, or Company, to cut his
main Sail, to follow the Admiral: nay, so headstrong and rash he was,
that he offered violence to those that counselled him thereto.”

Sir Walter Raleigh, Grenville’s kinsman, friend and apologist, tells
substantially the same story, but he endeavours to throw a different
complexion upon it, by representing Sir Richard as being in the first
instance trapped in the fulfilment of a duty. He declares that the
_Revenge_ “was the last waied, to recover the men that were upon the
Island, which otherwise had been

[Illustration]

lost.” Unfortunately, this contention is negatived by the numbers of
the men captured in her; and, indeed, he goes on to say that Grenville
afterwards “utterly refused to turn from the enemy” and boasted that he
would “enforce those of Sivill to give him way.” Sir Richard Hawkins is
more whole-hearted. “At the Ile of Flores, Sir Richard Greenfield got
eternall honour and reputation of great valour, and of an experimented
Soldier, chusing rather to sacrifice his life, and to passe all danger
whatsoever, than to fayle in his Obligation, by gathering together
those which had remained ashore in that place, though with the hazard
of his ship and companie: and rather we ought to imbrace an honourable
death than to live with infamie and dishonour, by fayling in dutie.”

[Illustration]

No man would have been quicker to lay down such a principle than
Grenville, but it is clear that on this occasion he did not observe
it, and to maintain that he did so would be to mistake the nature of
the man. He was no quiet resolute victim of duty: his stubbornness
was not that of faithful endurance. If the evidence we have quoted
goes for anything he was then, as ever, proud, rash, headstrong and
tyrannical, and he remained true to himself even in his famous dying
speech, which has been garbled by every translator for 300 years. “Here
die I, Richard Greenfield, with a joyfull and quiet mind, for that I
have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought
for his country, Queene, religion, and honor, whereby my soule most
joyfull departeth out of this bodie, and shall alwaies leave behind
it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier, that hath done
his dutie, as he was bound to do.” So it has always run; it was not
until 1897 that Mr David Hannay first translated and replaced the
fierce concluding sentence: “But the others of my company have done as
traitors and dogs, for which they shall be reproached all their lives
and leave a shameful name for ever.” That, to my ear, is the authentic
voice of the Grenville.

[Illustration]


[Illustration]


IV

Is this a condemnation? Is Sir Richard Grenville of the _Revenge_,
after three centuries of fame, to be summed up as a ferocious and
domineering fire-eater, hateful to his subordinates and disobedient to
his chief? I do not think so. It is true that we cannot look to him for
an example of what a seaman should be, or what an officer should do,
but he is none the less a beacon to all Englishmen, because he was a
great fighter and above the fear of death. To breathe the inspiration
of his genius, it is not necessary to tamper with the record of his
character; we have but to look at him as he was, with open eyes,
to think what we will of his faults, and then to turn once more to
the story of his superb valour and his supreme achievement. Beyond
question, he and all his company are among the Immortals.

  Heroes of old! We humbly lay
    The laurels on your graves again;
  Whatever men have done, men may--
    The deeds you wrought are not in vain.[A]

  HENRY NEWBOLT

    [A] Austin Dobson, _A Ballad of Heroes_.

[Illustration]




[Illustration:

  A REPORT
  OF THE TRVTH OF
  _the fight about the Iles of_
  Açores, this last
  Sommer.

  BETWIXT THE

  _Reuenge, one of her Maiesties_
  Shippes,

  _And an Armada of the King_
  of Spaine.


  LONDON
  Printed for william Ponsonbie.
  1591.
]

[Illustration: THE LAST FIGHT]




[Illustration]


Because the rumours are diversely spread, as well in England as in
the Low Countries and elsewhere, of this late encounter between her
Majesty’s ships and the Armada of Spain; and that the Spaniards,
according to their usual manner, fill the world with their vainglorious

[Illustration]

vaunts, making great appearance of victories: when, on the contrary,
themselves are most commonly and shamefully beaten and dishonoured;
thereby hoping to possess the ignorant multitude by anticipating and
forerunning false reports. It is agreeable with all good reason, for
manifestation of the truth, to overcome falsehood and untruth; that the
beginning, continuance and success of this late honourable encounter
of Sir Richard Grenville, and other her Majesty’s Captains, with
the Armada of Spain, should be truly set down and published without
partiality or false imaginations.

[Illustration]

And it is no marvel that the Spaniard should seek, by false and
slanderous pamphlets, advices and letters, to cover their own loss, and
to derogate from others their due honours, especially in this fight
being performed far off; seeing they were not ashamed in the year 1588,
when they purposed the invasion of this land, to publish in sundry
languages in print, great victories in words, which they pleaded to
have obtained against this Realm, and spread the same in a most false
sort over all parts of France, Italy and elsewhere. When shortly after
it was happily manifested in very deed to all nations, how their

[Illustration]

Navy, which they termed invincible, consisting of 240 sail of ships,
not only of their own kingdom, but strengthened with the greatest
argosies, Portugal caracks, Florentines and huge hulks of other
countries, were, by thirty of her Majesty’s own ships of war and a
few of our own merchants, by the wise, valiant and most advantageous
conduction of the Lord Charles Howard, High Admiral of England, beaten
and shuffled together, even from the Lizard in Cornwall, first to
Portland, where they shamefully left Don Pedro de Valdes with his
mighty ship; from Portland to Calais, where they lost Hugo de Moncado
with

[Illustration]

the galleass of which he was captain; and from Calais, driven with
squibs from their anchors, were chased out of the sight of England,
round about Scotland and Ireland. Where for the sympathy of their
barbarous religion, hoping to find succour and assistance, a great part
of them were crushed against the rocks, and those other that landed,
being very many in number, were, notwithstanding, broken, slain and
taken, and so sent from village to village coupled in halters to be
shipped into England. Where Her Majesty of her princely and invincible
disposition, disdaining to

[Illustration]

put them to death, and scorning either to retain or entertain them,
[they] were all sent back again to their countries, to witness and
recount the worthy achievements of their invincible and dreadful Navy.
Of which the number of soldiers, the fearful burthen of their ships,
the commanders names of every squadron, with all other their magazines
of provision, were put in print as an Army and Navy unresistible,
and disdaining prevention. With all which so great and terrible an
ostentation, they did not in all their sailing round about England, so
much as sink or take

[Illustration]

one ship, barque, pinnace, or cockboat of ours: or ever burnt so much
as one sheepcote of this land. When as on the contrary, Sir Francis
Drake, with only 800 soldiers, not long before, landed in their Indies,
and forced Santiago, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, and the forts of Florida.

And after that, Sir John Norris marched from Penich in Portugal, with a
handful of soldiers, to the gates of Lisbon, being about forty English
miles, where the Earl of Essex himself and other valiant gentlemen
braved the city of Lisbon, encamped

[Illustration]

at the very gates; from whence, after many days’ abode, finding neither
promised party, nor provision to batter: made retreat by land, in
despite of all their garrisons, both of horse and foot. In this sort I
have a little digressed from my first purpose, only by the necessary
comparison of theirs and our actions: the one covetous of honour
without vaunt or ostentation; the other so greedy to purchase the
opinion of their own affairs, and by false rumours to resist the blasts
of their own dishonours, as they will not only not blush to spread all
manner of untruths: but even for the least advantage, be it but for the
taking

[Illustration]

of one poor adventurer of the English, will celebrate the victory
with bonfires in every town, always spending more in faggots, than
the purchase was worth they obtained. Whereas we never yet thought it
worth the consumption of two billets, when we have taken eight or ten
of their Indian ships at one time, and twenty of the Brazil fleet. Such
is the difference between true valour, and ostentation: and between
honourable actions, and frivolous vainglorious vaunts. But now to
return to my first purpose.

[Illustration]

The Lord Thomas Howard, with six of Her Majesty’s ships, six
victuallers of London, the barque _Ralegh_, and two or three pinnaces
riding at anchor near unto Flores, one of the westerly islands of the
Azores, the last of August in the afternoon, had intelligence by one
Captain Midleton, of the approach of the Spanish Armada. Which Midleton
being in a very good sailer, had kept them company three days before,
of good purpose, both to discover their forces the more, as also to
give advice to my Lord Thomas of their approach. He had no sooner
delivered the news but the

[Illustration]

fleet was in sight: many of our ship’s companies were on shore in the
island; some providing ballast for their ships; others filling of water
and refreshing themselves from the land with such things as they could,
either for money, or by force recover. By reason whereof our ships
being all pestered & rummaging every thing out of order, very light for
want of ballast. And that which was most to our disadvantage, the one
half part of the men of every ship sick, and utterly unserviceable. For
in the _Revenge_ there were ninety diseased; in the _Bonaventure_, not
so many in health as could handle her mainsail. For had not

[Illustration]

twenty men been taken out of a barque of Sir George Cary’s, his being
commanded to be sunk, and those appointed to her, she had hardly ever
recovered England. The rest for the most part, were in little better
state. The names of Her Majesty’s ships were these as followeth:
the _Defiance_, which was Admiral, the _Revenge_ Vice-Admiral, the
_Bonaventure_ commanded by Captain Cross, the _Lion_ by George Fenner,
the _Foresight_ by Thomas Vavasour, and the _Crane_ by Duffield. The
_Foresight_ and the _Crane_ being but small ships, only the other were
of the middle size; the rest, besides the barque

[Illustration: GALLEONS IN HARBOUR]

[Illustration]

_Ralegh_, commanded by Captain Thin, were victuallers, and of small
force or none. The Spanish fleet having shrouded their approach by
reason of the island, were now so soon at hand, as our ships had scarce
time to weigh their anchors, but some of them were driven to let slip
their cables and set sail. Sir Richard Grenville was the last weighed,
to recover the men that were upon the island, which otherwise had been
lost. The Lord Thomas with the rest very hardly recovered the wind,
which Sir Richard Grenville not being able to do, was persuaded by the
master and others to cut his

[Illustration]

main sail and cast about, and to trust to the sailing of the ship,
for the squadron of Seville were on his weather bow. But Sir Richard
utterly refused to turn from the enemy, alleging that he would rather
choose to die, than to dishonour himself, his country, and Her
Majesty’s ship, persuading his company that he would pass through the
two squadrons in despite of them, and enforce those of Seville to give
him way. Which he performed upon divers of the foremost, who, as the
mariners term it, sprang their luff, and fell under the lee of the
_Revenge_. But the other course had been

[Illustration]

the better, and might right well have been answered in so great an
impossibility of prevailing. Notwithstanding out of the greatness of
his mind, he could not be persuaded. In the meanwhile as he attended
those which were nearest him, the great _San Philip_ being in the wind
of him, and coming towards him, becalmed his sails in such sort, as the
ship could neither weigh nor feel the helm, so huge and high charged
was the Spanish ship, being of a thousand and five hundred tons. Who
after laid the _Revenge_ aboard. When he was thus bereft of his sails,
the ships that were under his lee luffing up, also laid him aboard, of
which

[Illustration]

the next was the Admiral of the _Biscaines_, a very mighty and puissant
ship commanded by Brittan Dona. The said _Philip_ carried three tier of
ordinance on a side, and eleven pieces in every tier. She shot eight
forthright out of her chase, besides those of her stern ports.

After the _Revenge_ was entangled with this _Philip_, four others
boarded her; two on her larboard and two on her starboard. The fight
thus beginning at three of the clock in the afternoon, continued very
terrible all that evening. But the great _San Philip_ having received
the lower tier of the _Revenge_, discharged with cross-bar shot,

[Illustration]

shifted herself with all diligence from her sides, utterly misliking
her first entertainment. Some say that the ship foundered, but we
cannot report it for truth, unless we were assured. The Spanish ships
were filled with companies of soldiers, in some two hundred, besides
the mariners; in some five, in others eight hundred. In ours there were
none at all, beside the mariners, but the servants of the commanders
and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged volleys
of great ordnance and

[Illustration]

small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to enter the _Revenge_, and made
divers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitudes of their armed
soldiers and musketeers, but were still repulsed again and again, and
at all times beaten back into their own ships, or into the seas. In the
beginning of the fight the _George Noble_, of London, having received
some shot through her by the _Armadas_, fell under the lee of the
_Revenge_, and asked Sir Richard what he would command him, being but
one of the victuallers and of small force; Sir Richard bid him save
himself, and leave him to his fortune.

[Illustration]

After the fight had thus, without intermission, continued while the
day lasted and some hours of the night, many of our men were slain
and hurt, and one of the great galleons of the Armada and the Admiral
of the Hulks both sunk, and in many other of the Spanish ships great
slaughter was made. Some write that Sir Richard was very dangerously
hurt almost in the beginning of the fight, and lay speechless for a
time ere he recovered. But two of the _Revenge’s_ own company, brought
home in a ship of Lime from the Islands, examined by

[Illustration]

some of the Lords and others, affirmed that he was never so wounded
as that he forsook the upper deck till an hour before midnight, and
then being shot into the body with a musket as he was dressing, was
again shot into the head, and withal his surgeon wounded to death. This
agrees also with an examination taken by Sir Francis Godolphin, of four
other mariners of the same ship being returned, which examination the
said Sir Francis sent unto Master William Killigrew, of Her Majesty’s
Privy Chamber.

But to return to the fight, the Spanish ships which attempted to board
the _Revenge_, as

[Illustration]

they were wounded and beaten off, so always others came in their
places, she having never less than two mighty galleons by her sides and
aboard her. So that ere the morning from three of the clock the day
before, there had fifteen several Armadas assailed her, and all so ill
approved their entertainment, as they were by the break of day, far
more willing to hearken to a composition, than hastily to make any more
assaults or entries. But as the day increased so our men decreased; and
as the light grew more and more, by so much more grew our discomforts.
For none appeared in

[Illustration]

sight but enemies, saving one small ship called the _Pilgrim_,
commanded by Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the success:
but in the morning bearing with the _Revenge_, was hunted like a hare
amongst many ravenous hounds, but escaped.

All the powder of the _Revenge_ to the last barrel was now spent, all
her pikes broken, forty of her best men slain, and the most part of
the rest hurt. In the beginning of the fight she had but one hundred
free from sickness, and fourscore and ten sick, laid in hold upon the
ballast. A small troop

[Illustration: LOADING THE GALLEONS]

[Illustration]

to man such a ship, and a weak garrison to resist so mighty an army. By
those hundred all was sustained, the volleys, boardings, and enterings
of fifteen ships of war, besides those which beat her at large. On the
contrary, the Spanish were always supplied with soldiers brought from
every squadron: all manner of arms and powder at will. Unto ours there
remained no comfort at all, no hope, no supply either of ships, men, or
weapons; the masts all beaten overboard, all her tackle cut asunder,
her upper work altogether razed, and in effect evened

[Illustration]

she was with the water, but the very foundation or bottom of a ship,
nothing being left overhead either for flight or defence. Sir Richard
finding himself in this distress, and unable any longer to make
resistance, having endured in this fifteen hours’ fight, the assault
of fifteen several armadas, all by turns aboard him, and by estimation
eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many assaults and
entries. And that himself and the ship must needs be possessed by the
enemy, who were now all cast in a ring round about him; the _Revenge_
not able to move one way or other,

[Illustration]

but as she was moved with the waves and billow of the sea: commanded
the master Gunner, whom he knew to be a most resolute man, to split and
sink the ship; that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory
to the Spaniards: seeing in so many hours’ fight, and with so great a
Navy they were not able to take her, having had fifteen hours’ time,
fifteen thousand men, and fifty and three sail of men-of-war to perform
it withal. And persuaded the company, or as many as he could induce, to
yield themselves unto God, and to the mercy of none else; but as they
had like valiant resolute men, repulsed so many

[Illustration]

enemies, they should not now shorten the honour of their nation, by
prolonging their own lives for a few hours, or a few days. The master
Gunner readily condescended and divers others; but the Captain and the
Master were of an other opinion, and besought Sir Richard to have care
of them, alleging that the Spaniard would be as ready to entertain a
composition, as they were willing to offer the same: and that there
being divers sufficient and valiant men yet living, and whose wounds
were not mortal, they might do their country and prince acceptable
service hereafter. And (that where Sir Richard had alleged

[Illustration]

that the Spaniards should never glory to have taken one ship of Her
Majesty’s, seeing that they had so long and so notably defended
themselves) they answered, that the ship had six foot water in hold,
three shot under water which were so weakly stopped, as with the first
working of the sea, she must needs sink, and was besides so crushed and
bruised, as she could never be removed out of the place.

And as the matter was thus in dispute, and Sir Richard refusing to
hearken to any of those reasons: the master of the _Revenge_ (while the
Captain won unto him the greater

[Illustration]

party) was convoyed aboard the General Don Alfonso Bassan. Who, finding
none over-hasty to enter the _Revenge_ again, doubting lest Sir Richard
would have blown them up and himself, and perceiving by the report of
the master of the _Revenge_ his dangerous disposition: yielded that
all their lives should be saved, the company sent for England, and the
better sort to pay such reasonable ransom as their estate would bear,
and in the mean season to be free from galley or imprisonment. To this
he so much the rather condescended as well as I have said, for fear of
further loss and mischief to themselves, as also for the desire he had
to recover Sir Richard Grenville; whom for his notable valour he seemed
greatly to honour and admire.

[Illustration]

When this answer was returned, and that safety of life was promised,
the common sort being now at the end of their peril, the most drew
back from Sir Richard and the master Gunner, being no hard matter to
dissuade men from death to life. The master Gunner finding himself and
Sir Richard thus prevented and mastered by the greater number, would
have slain himself with a sword, had he not been by force withheld and
locked into his cabin. Then

[Illustration]

the General sent many boats aboard the _Revenge_, and divers of our
men, fearing Sir Richard’s disposition, stole away aboard the General
and other ships. Sir Richard thus overmatched, was sent unto by Alfonso
Bassan to remove out of the _Revenge_, the ship being marvellous
unsavoury, filled with blood and bodies of dead and wounded men like a
slaughter-house. Sir Richard answered that he might do with his body
what he list, for he esteemed it not, and as he was carried out of the
ship he swooned, and reviving again desired the company to pray for
him. The General used Sir Richard

[Illustration]

with all humanity, and left nothing unattempted that tended to his
recovery, highly commending his valour and worthiness, and greatly
bewailed the danger wherein he was, being unto them a rare spectacle,
and a resolution seldom approved, to see one ship turn toward so many
enemies, to endure the charge and boarding of so many huge armadas, and
to resist and repel the assaults and entries of so many soldiers. All
which and more, is confirmed by a Spanish captain of the same armada,
and a present actor in the fight, who being severed from the rest in
a storm, was by the _Lyon_ of London a small ship, taken and is now
prisoner in London.

[Illustration]

The general commander of the Armada, was Don Alfonso Bassan, brother to
the Marquesse of Santa Cruce. The Admiral of the _Biscaine_ squadron
was Britan Dona. Of the squadron of _Seville_, Marques of Arumburch.
The Hulkes and Flyboats were commanded by Luis Cutino. There were slain
and drowned in this fight, well near two thousand of the enemies, and
two especial commanders Don Luis de

[Illustration: THE GALLEON FAIR]

St John, and Don George de Prunaria de Malaga, as the Spanish Captain
confesseth, besides divers others of special account, whereof as yet
report is not made.

[Illustration]

The Admiral of the Hulks and the _Ascension_ of _Seville_, were both
sunk by the side of the _Revenge_; one other recovered the road of
Saint Michael’s, and sunk also there; a fourth ran herself with the
shore to save her men. Sir Richard died as it is said, the second or
third day aboard the General, and was by them greatly bewailed. What
became of his body, whether

[Illustration]

it were buried in the sea or on the land we know not: the comfort that
remaineth to his friends is, that he hath ended his life honourably in
respect of the reputation won to his nation and country, and of the
fame to his posterity, and that being dead, he hath not outlived his
own honour.

For the rest of Her Majesty’s ships that entered not so far into the
fight as the _Revenge_, the reasons and causes were these. There were
of them but six in all, whereof two but small ships; the _Revenge_
engaged past recovery: The Island of Flores was on the one side, 53
sail of the Spanish, divided into squadrons on the

[Illustration]

other, all as full filled with soldiers as they could contain. Almost
the one half of our men sick and not able to serve: the ships grown
foul, unrummaged, and scarcely able to bear any sail for want of
ballast, having been six months at the sea before. If all the rest had
entered, all had been lost. For the very hugeness of the Spanish fleet,
if no other violence had been offered, would have crushed them between
them into shivers. Of which the dishonour and loss to the Queen had
been far greater than the spoil or harm that the enemy

[Illustration]

could any way have received. Notwithstanding it is very true, that
the Lord Thomas would have entered between the squadrons, but the
rest would not condescend; and the master of his own ship offered to
leap into the sea, rather than to conduct that Her Majesty’s ship
and the rest to be a prey to the enemy, where there was no hope nor
possibility either of defence or victory. Which also in my opinion
had ill sorted or answered the discretion and trust of a General, to
commit himself and his charge to an assured destruction, without hope
or any likelihood of prevailing: thereby to diminish the strength of
Her Majesty’s Navy, and to enrich the pride and glory of the enemy.
The _Foresight_ of the Queen, commanded by Thomas Vavasour, performed
a very great fight, and stayed two hours as near the _Revenge_ as the
weather would permit him, not forsaking the fight, till he was like
to be encompassed by the squadrons, and with great difficulty cleared
himself. The rest gave divers volleys of shot, and entered as far as
the place permitted and their own necessities, to keep the weather
gauge of the enemy, until they were parted by night.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




A few days after the fight was ended, and the English prisoners
dispersed into the Spanish and India ships, there arose so great a
storm from the west and north-west, that all the fleet was dispersed,
as well the Indian fleet which were then come unto them

[Illustration: A CAPTURED GALLEON]

[Illustration]

as the rest of the Armada that attended their arrival, of which
fourteen sail together with the _Revenge_, and in her 200 Spaniards,
were cast away upon the Isle of S. Michael’s. So it pleased them to
honour the burial of that renowned ship the _Revenge_, not suffering
her to perish alone, for the great honour she achieved in her life
time. On the rest of the islands there were cast away in this storm
fifteen or sixteen more of the ships of war; and of a hundred and odd
sail of the India fleet expected this year in Spain, what in this
tempest and what before in the Bay of

[Illustration]

Mexico, and about the Bermudas, there were seventy and odd consumed and
lost, with those taken by our ships of London, besides one very rich
Indian ship, which set herself on fire, being boarded by the _Pilgrim_,
and five other taken by Master Wats his ships of London, between the
Havana and Cape S. Antonio. The 4th of this month of November we
received letters from the Tercera affirming that there are 3,000 bodies
of men remaining in that island, saved out of the perished ships; and
that by the Spaniards own confession there are 10,000 cast away in this
storm, besides those that are perished

[Illustration]

between the islands and the main. Thus it hath pleased God to fight
for us, and to defend the justice of our cause against the ambitious
and bloody pretences of the Spaniard, who, seeking to devour all
nations, are themselves devoured. A manifest testimony how injust and
displeasing their attempts are in the sight of God, who hath pleased
to witness by the success of their affairs His mislike of their bloody
and injurious designs, purposed and practised against all Christian
princes, over whom they seek unlawful and ungodly rule and Empery.

[Illustration]

One day or two before this wreck happened to the Spanish fleet, when
as some of our prisoners desired to be set on shore upon the islands,
hoping to be from thence transported into England, which liberty was
formerly by the General promised: One Maurice Fitz John, son of old
John of Desmond a notable traitor, cousin german to the late Earl of
Desmond, was sent to the English from ship to ship, to persuade them
to serve the King of Spain. The arguments he used to induce them were
these. The increase of pay which he promised to be trebled: advancement
to

[Illustration]

the better sort: and the exercise of the true Catholic religion, and
safety of their souls to all. For the first, even the beggarly and
unnatural behaviour of those English and Irish rebels, that served
the king in that present action, was sufficient to answer that first
argument of rich pay. For so poor and beggarly they were, as for want
of apparel they stripped their poor country men prisoners out of their
ragged garments, worn to nothing by six months’ service, and spared not
to despoil them even of their bloody shirts, from their wounded bodies,
and the very shoes from their feet; a notable testimony of their

[Illustration]

rich entertainment and great wages. The second reason was hope of
advancement if they served well and would continue faithful to the
king. But what man can be so blockishly ignorant ever to expect place
or honour from a foreign king, having no argument or persuasion than
his own disloyalty; to be unnatural to his own country that bred him;
to his parents that begat him, and rebellious to his true prince, to
whose obedience he is bound by oath, by nature, and by religion. No,
they are only assured to be employed in all desperate enterprises, to
be held in scorn and disdain ever among those whom they serve.

[Illustration]

And that ever traitor was either trusted or advanced I could never yet
read, neither can I at this time remember any example. And no man could
have less become the place of an orator for such a purpose than this
Maurice of Desmond. For the Earl his cousin being one of the greatest
subjects in that kingdom of Ireland, having almost whole countries in
his possession, so many goodly manors, castles and lordships; the Count
Palatine of Kerry, 500 gentlemen of his own name and family to follow
him, besides others. All which he possessed in peace for three or four

[Illustration]

hundred years, was in less than three years after his adhering to the
Spaniards and rebellion, beaten from all his holds, not so many as ten
gentlemen of his name left living, himself taken and beheaded by a
soldier of his own nation, and his land given by a Parliament to Her
Majesty and possessed by the English. His other cousin Sir John of
Desmond taken by Mr. John Zouch, and his body hanged over the gates
of his native city to be devoured by ravens; the third brother Sir
James hanged, drawn and quartered in the same place. If he had withall
vaunted of this success

[Illustration]

of his own house, no doubt the argument would have moved much and
wrought great effect; which because he for that present forgot, I
thought it good to remember in his behalf. For matter of religion
it would require a particular volume if I should set down how
irreligiously they cover their greedy and ambitious pretences with that
veil of piety. But sure I am, that there is no kingdom or commonwealth
in all Europe, but if they be reformed, they then invade it for
religion sake; if it be as they term Catholic they pretend title, as if
the Kings of Castile were the natural heirs of all the world; and so
between both,

[Illustration]

no kingdom is unsought. Where they dare not with their own forces
to invade, they basely entertain the traitors and vagabonds of all
nations, seeking by those and by their runagate Jesuits to win parties,
and have by that means ruined many noble houses and others in this
land, and have extinguished both their lives and families. What good,
honour or fortune ever man yet by them achieved is yet unheard of
or unwritten. And if our English Papists do but look into Portugal,
against whom they have no pretence of religion, how the nobility are
put to death, imprisoned, their rich men made a prey, and all sorts of
people

[Illustration]

captived, they shall find that the obedience even of the Turk is easy
and a liberty, in respect of the slavery and tyranny of Spain. What
they have done in Sicily, in Naples, Milan and in the Low Countries;
who hath there been spared for religion at all? And it cometh to my
remembrance of a certain burgher of Antwerp, whose house being entered
by a company of Spanish soldiers, when they first sacked the city, he
besought them to spare him and his goods, being a good Catholic and one
of their own party and faction. The Spaniards

[Illustration]

answered that they knew him to be of a good conscience for himself, but
his money, plate, jewels and goods were all heretical, and therefore
good prize. So they abused and tormented the foolish Fleming, who hoped
that an _Agnus Dei_ had been a sufficient target against all force of
that holy and charitable nation. Neither have they at any time as they
protest invaded the kingdoms of the Indies and Peru, and elsewhere, but
only led thereunto, rather, to reduce the people to Christianity, than
for either gold or empery. When as in one only island called

[Illustration]

Hispaniola, they have wasted thirty hundred thousand of the natural
people, besides many millions else in other places of the Indies: a
poor and harmless people created of God, and might have been won to
His knowledge, as many of them were, and almost as many as ever were
persuaded thereunto. The story whereof is at large written by a Bishop
of their own nation called Bartholome de las Casas, and translated into
English and many other languages, entitled The Spanish Cruelties. Who
would therefore repose trust in such a nation of ravenous strangers,

[Illustration]

and especially in those Spaniards which more greedily thirst after
English blood, than after the lives of any other people of Europe; for
the many overthrows and dishonours they have received at our hands,
whose weakness we have discovered to the world, and whose forces at
home, abroad, in Europe, in India, by sea and land, we have even
with handfuls of men and ships, overthrown and dishonoured. Let not
therefore any Englishman of what religion soever, have other opinion of
the Spaniards, but that those whom he seeketh to win of our nation,

[Illustration]

he esteemeth base and traitorous, unworthy persons, or unconstant
fools: and that he useth his pretence of religion for no other purpose
but to bewitch us from the obedience of our natural prince; thereby
hoping in time to bring us to slavery and subjection, and then none
shall be unto them so odious, and disdained as the traitors themselves,
who have sold their country to a stranger, and forsaken their faith
and obedience contrary to nature or religion; and contrary to that
human and general honour, not only of Christians, but of heathen and
irreligious nations, who have always sustained what labour soever, and
embraced even death itself, for their country, prince or commonwealth.
To conclude, it hath ever to this day pleased God to prosper and defend
her Majesty, to break the purposes of malicious enemies, of foresworn
traitors, and of unjust practices and invasions. She hath ever been
honoured of the worthiest Kings, served by faithful subjects, and
shall by the favour of God, resist, repel, and confound all whatsoever
attempts against her sacred person or kingdom. In the meantime, let
the Spaniard and traitor vaunt of their success; and we her true and
obedient vassals guided by the shining light of her virtues, shall
always love her, serve her, and obey her to the end of our lives.


FINIS




A PARTICULAR NOTE OF THE INDIAN FLEET, EXPECTED TO HAVE COME INTO SPAIN
THIS PRESENT YEAR OF 1591, WITH THE NUMBER OF SHIPS THAT PERISHED OF
THE SAME; ACCORDING TO THE EXAMINATION OF CERTAIN SPANIARDS, LATELY
TAKEN AND BROUGHT INTO ENGLAND BY THE SHIPS OF LONDON

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




The fleet of Nova Hispania, at their first gathering together and
setting forth, were 52 sails. The Admiral was of 600 tons, and the
Vice-Admiral of the same burden. Four or five of the ships were of 900
and 1000 tons a piece, some 500 and 400, and the least of 200 tons.
Of this fleet 19 were cast away, and in them 2600 men by estimation,
which was done along the coast of Nova Hispania, so that of the same
fleet, there came to the Havana, but three and thirty sails.

[Illustration]

The fleet of Terra Firma, were at their first departure from Spain, 50
sails, which were bound for Nombre de Dios, where they did discharge
their lading, and thence returned to Cartagena, for their healths sake,
until the time the treasure was ready they should take in, at the said
Nombre de Dios. But before this fleet departed, some were gone by one
or two at a time, so that only 23 sails of this fleet arrived in the
Havana.

                { 33 sails of Nova Hispania.
  At the Havana { 23 sails of Terra Firma.
  there met     { 12 sails of San Domingo.
                { 9 sails of Hunduras.

[Illustration]

In the whole 77 ships, which joined and set sail together, at the
Havana, the 17th of July, according to our account, and kept together
until they came into the height of 35 degrees, which was about the
tenth of August, where they found the wind at south west, changed
suddenly to the north, so that the sea coming out of the south west,
and the wind very violent at north, they were put all into great
extremity, and then first lost the General of their fleet, with 500 men
in her; and within three or four days after another storm rising, there
were five or six other of the biggest ships cast away with all their
men, together with their Vice-Admiral.

[Illustration]

And in the height of 48 degrees about the end of August, grew another
great storm, in which all the fleet saving 48 sails were cast away:
which 48 sails kept together, until they came in sight of the Islands
of Coruo and Flores, about the 5th or 6th of September, at which time
a great storm separated them; of which number 15 or 16 were after seen
by these Spaniards to ride at anchor under the Tercera; and twelve or
fourteen more to bear with the Island of S. Michael’s; what became of
them after that these Spaniards were taken, cannot yet be certified;
their opinion is, that very few of the fleet are escaped, but are
either drowned or taken. And it is otherwise of late certified, that
of this whole fleet that should have come into Spain this year, being
123 sail, there are as yet arrived but 25. This note was taken out of
the examination of certain Spaniards, that were brought into England by
six of the ships of London, which took seven of the above named Indian
fleet, near the Islands of Azores.


FINIS


[Illustration: “It may be truly said that the commandment of the sea is
an abridgement or a quintessence of a universal monarchy.”

                                                        Francis Bacon.
]


_Letchworth: At the Arden Press._




Transcriber’s Notes


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